“Sorry, you didn’t make the team.”
Anyone who has played sports, auditioned for something, or tried out for a role has heard some version of that sentence. It is usually explained the same way. Someone else had more talent. Someone else was faster, stronger, louder, or simply better.
We are told this is meritocracy.
And in some ways, it is. Performance matters. Skill matters. Competence matters. A team trying to win a championship cannot pretend those things do not exist.
But after years of building a business and managing people, I have learned something that the tryout model often misses.
The people who end up becoming indispensable are rarely the ones who look the most impressive on the first day.
The ones who last are the ones who keep showing up.
They are curious. They are coachable. They improve. They care about the outcome of the work even when no one is watching. They are willing to do the tedious parts of the job well, the parts that do not get applause.
In my industry that matters a great deal.
Insurance and risk management are not fields that reward a moment of brilliance. They reward consistency and judgment. They reward people who read contracts carefully, who ask the second and third question, who understand that one overlooked clause or one misunderstood exposure can change the outcome of an entire claim.
The best advisors are not the ones who talk the most. They are the ones who pay attention the longest.
The same thing happens when you build a team.
When I hire people, the résumé matters. Experience matters. But what I am really looking for is something less obvious. Does this person take responsibility when something goes wrong? Do they want to learn? Do they care about improving their craft?
Those traits compound.
Give me someone who works hard, stays curious, and keeps improving over the person who believes they arrived fully formed any day of the week.
That is merit.
Which is why the conversation about meritocracy that floats around politics right now often feels strangely hollow.
We hear speeches about rewarding merit while systems quietly replace qualified professionals with loyalists who happen to be connected to the right person or ideology. The language celebrates excellence while the decisions reward something else entirely.
If merit really mattered, the standard would be competence. The standard would be effort. The standard would be the ability to actually do the job well.
In business you learn this lesson quickly because reality has a way of enforcing it. A company cannot survive very long if the wrong people are in the wrong roles. Clients notice. Results suffer. The market eventually corrects the mistake.
That is why the best organizations, and the best leaders, focus on something deeper than surface talent.
They look for the people who care enough to improve.
Because talent might get you through the tryout.
But the people who build lasting careers, strong companies, and trusted reputations are almost always the same kind of people.
The ones who refuse to stop getting better.
I am a Canadian insurance and investment professional and the President and Chief Executive Officer of Chazz Financial Inc. and Chazz Capital Assets. I write about leadership, markets, insurance, investing, and decision making, with a focus on how structure and incentives shape outcomes.
I hold a business degree and I am a Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute (FCSI®), a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU®), a Chartered Financial Planner®, a Certified Health Specialist and a Mutual Fund Investment Representative.
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