01. Starting from a piece of Song porcelain

There is a Ru kiln narcissus basin in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The design is simple and elegant, with a sky blue glaze throughout, without any patterns or stories, and almost silent. After standing for a long time, a layer of extremely faint light gradually floated deep in the glaze - that layer of light was so light that you were not sure if it was really there. I wanted to take another look, but the urge to "take another look" made me pause for a long time until the glaze was clear.

Later on, I realized that the glaze light did not appear when I stared, but when I softened my gaze and stood for a long time, I finally saw it.

Song people appreciated objects with the emphasis on treating them as if they were beautiful. Su Shi said, 'When it comes to painting, it's important to look like a child's neighbor.' What really matters is not whether the painting looks like it or not, but whether there is a 'charm' in that line. The "golden thread and iron wire" of Ge Kiln were regarded as the most beautiful by the Song people, who read the charm of time, chance, and irreplicability in the cracks. Observing from within, prioritizing aura, and appreciating flaws - these three points are actually the same logic when it comes to judging people.

The true appearance takes time to emerge. Interviews cannot see everyone, those who are calm and confident may not be able to withstand pressure, while those who are nervous and hesitant may be reliable. How you deal with vague instructions, how you respond to unreasonable demands, and how you talk to colleagues under fatigue and pressure - these will only gradually become apparent over time.

Look at things beyond resumes. A resume tells you what a person has experienced, but cannot explain how they went through it. Listen to how he attributes failure, discusses the company he left, and evaluates people he doesn't like - these details hide his thinking habits, responsibilities, and qualities.

Identify which "cracks" are worth preserving. The most irreplaceable person in a team often has obvious "cracks". The most skilled one may have poor emotional intelligence, while the most creative one may be disorganized. Choosing people is not about finding perfect puzzles, but about distinguishing which "cracks" come from the essence and which are just surface flaws.

We rarely see people like this today. We are accustomed to using resumes to screen a person, KPIs to measure a person, and a nine grid to position a person. Looking at the resume is' usable ', looking at the interview is' good', and the selection stops at the level of 'what can he do'. The true aesthetic of talent is not based on what they can do, but on whether you can see some possibility in them - the existence that has not yet taken shape but you have already vaguely felt.

What this narcissus basin taught me was not how to appreciate an object, but how to relearn how to "see" a person. This way of 'seeing', I call it talent aesthetics.

02. Selection and Aesthetics: One System, Two Logic Systems

Watching people and choosing people may sound similar, but they are actually two sets of logic.

The essence of selecting people is to break them down into quantifiable indicators - experience, skills, education, past performance, which are visible, tangible, and convenient for horizontal comparison. But what it can measure is only what has been achieved in the past, and it is difficult to answer what kind of person it can become in the future. The underlying traits that cannot be captured by resumes and interviews - resilience, curiosity, and underlying values - precisely determine a person's upper limit.

The process can screen qualified candidates, but it is difficult to identify potential. Potential is invisible and unquantifiable, relying on the perception, imagination, and judgment of managers, which is also known as talent aesthetics.

Selecting personnel is a standardized process, which involves checking what the position requires and adding them to the job description; Talent aesthetics is resonance. Look at what a person is and ask if they resonate with what you cherish. The former treats people as standard components and uses the past to speculate on the future. The latter treats humans as living beings and uses underlying traits to deduce directions. Selection matching criteria, traits that do not conform to the template are all risks; Aesthetic appreciation deficiency, courage often accompanied by stubbornness, creativity often accompanied by recklessness. The selection is based on the passing line; And aesthetic judgment determines how far a person can go.

The selection process is the first line of defense, guarding the bottom line of fairness and compliance. Aesthetics is your judgment after crossing the defense line. Selection and aesthetics are not a binary choice, but rather two stages of a complete employment system: screening the process first, and then judging based on aesthetics. Without a process, aesthetics will lose its fair foundation; Without aesthetics, the process will filter out those who have a pure but sharp foundation. Good employment decisions lay the foundation for the process and add aesthetic value. A mature manager and organization should possess both of these abilities simultaneously.

03.Why is talent aesthetics easily overlooked?

Since aesthetics are important, why is it still overlooked in many organizations? It's not that we don't want aesthetics, but four obstacles in human nature hinder it.

The brain is naturally averse to uncertainty. The most important thing you want to do when facing someone is to quickly come to a conclusion: can they use it or not? Aesthetics precisely requires you to stay in uncertainty - the glaze is too light, so light that you are not sure if it is really there. This uncertain state is what the brain wants to escape as soon as possible. So we invented resumes, grading tables, personality tests, and various assessment tools, not for accuracy, but for faster certainty.

We have a superstition about efficiency, and we assume that being fast is good - a 30 minute interview requires a decision to be made, and performance evaluations are conducted once a year to determine who is better. Aesthetics requires time, it requires' standing for a long time '. But 'for too long' in modern management is a luxury, even a dereliction of duty. We don't want to wait, we dare not wait, because waiting means being slow, and being slow means being inefficient.

The obsession with 'usefulness'. This is the most fundamental one. Human nature naturally seeks benefits and avoids harm. When encountering someone, the first reaction is "What use is he to me?" "What problems can he help me solve?" Aesthetics requires you to temporarily set aside this question - first see a complete person, and then talk about what he can do. But we are too afraid of wasting time, so we only look at labels, data, and past performance, and ignore whether these still work for your organization?

Attachment to 'comfort'. A truly sharp person often makes people uneasy. He will challenge your authority, question your judgment, and make you see things you don't want to see. So instinct would push him away. It's not that you can't see his value, it's that you don't want to face the discomfort he brings. This is a more concealed form of human nature. It doesn't operate at the level of 'what he does to me', it operates at the level of 'how he feels about me', and feeling is the most difficult decision basis to be recognized - even though it has been working all along.

The neglect of talent aesthetics has a deeper reason: it requires you to have a sufficiently broad vision and perspective. Can you take a person out of their position and see their growth and potential in a larger context. Can you tolerate imperfections in someone, and see the future in someone who hasn't grown up yet. Without vision, you cannot see those non-standard and diverse people; Without a pattern, you can't tolerate it even if you see it. You can see how far someone can go in your heart, no matter how big they are.

Talent aesthetics are fundamentally against human nature. It requires you to resist the aversion to uncertainty, the superstition of efficiency, the calculation of usefulness, and the attachment to comfort, but it is also because it goes against human nature that it is scarce, worthy of respect, and seen.

04. Four levels of talent aesthetic ability

Aesthetics is not a feeling, not a preference. It is a set of underlying abilities that can be seen, trained, and tested. The essence of this ability is the way one sees a person's skeletal appearance. The combination of value judgment, perceptual sensitivity, situational imagination, and action courage can help you see through a person.

Value judgment is when you can articulate what you appreciate. It's not that I think he's good, but that you can tell me what's on him, in what situations, and in what ways, that made you make a choice. You know why you appreciate someone and why you don't like someone else. This is not paranoia, it's coordinates. People without coordinates look similar to everyone, while those with coordinates can recognize their peers at a glance.

Perceived sensitivity is the ability to see details that others cannot see. The interview only lasts for half an hour, and most people remember 'this person speaks very fluently' or 'this person is a bit nervous'. But what you noticed is that he spoke a little slower when talking about a certain experience; When questioned, his first reaction was' I need to confirm 'instead of' I know '; When he mentioned the team, did he say 'we' or 'me'. These details are small, but when they are connected together, they are the skeletal form of a person. The finer the granularity you perceive, the more complete and profound the person you see.

Situational imagination is when you place a person in a scenario that has not yet happened in the future and deduce their behavior. Are you not judging if he can do this job now? Are you imagining that if he were given the most difficult project, he would take the initiative or wait to be arranged? Will you find your way when encountering resistance, or will you stop and wait for instructions? When there is a problem, will we first look for the reason or an excuse? What it shows you is not his current abilities, but his behavioral tendencies when facing the unknown - and these tendencies will grow into directions on their own.

Courage to take action is when you dare to bet on your own judgment. If aesthetics only stop at the level of judgment, perception, and imagination, it is just a momentary thought, and it must move towards an action. You gave the opportunity to someone whose resume is not good, controversial, or not fully prepared yet. You have done these things, but you have no way out - you may not be able to explain when others question you, you cannot blame anyone when the result is not good, the credit for success may not necessarily be yours, and you have to take responsibility first if you fail.

These four things: recognition, accuracy, foresight, and courage to make decisions - without one, aesthetics are empty.
Some people say that aesthetics is innate, there is it, and there is none without it. But if you look at these four actions, none of them are natural talents - they are all skills that grow after repeated judgment, correction, and consequences.
These four abilities have different weights in different industries. Some industries have relatively controllable costs, and talent aesthetics are only a bonus point; Some industries may choose the wrong person, and the cost could be over a decade, billions of dollars invested, or even the cost of one's life. Talent aesthetics has become a necessary ability, and biomedicine is one of them.

05. Biopharmaceuticals: A Place that Needs Talent Aesthetics the Most

Biopharmaceuticals is an industry that is wrapped in layers of money, data, and regulation, but it has to retain the ability that is least standardized and KPI standardized - talent aesthetics.

Why? The cost of seeing the wrong people in this industry is simply too high. It takes an average of ten years for a drug to go from research and development to market, and it is common for a single pipeline to burn billions of dollars. The direction can be corrected and the target can be changed, but once a person misjudges, the time window and huge investment will never come back.

Long cycle, high investment, strong regulation, and deep cross cutting - these four attributes combined make judging people no longer an option, but a prerequisite for survival. Can you see from the crowd the person who can withstand a ten-year cycle, remain clear headed in the face of failure, and tie cross disciplinary teams together? It is not the job description, the number of papers, or the glamorous resume that determines such people, but the aesthetic of talent.

 Under the heavy pressure of the biopharmaceutical industry, this aesthetic has given rise to four judgment perspectives. They are not replacements for the four levels of aesthetic abilities, but the landing form of the same set of abilities in specific scenarios of biomedicine - when the cost of judgment is magnified to ten years and billions, aesthetics must grow more sensitive antennae.

Character is more important than skills. The most dangerous aspect of biopharmaceuticals is not novices, but highly intelligent and skilled professionals who are adept at manipulating data. A scientist who can perfectly explain the 'results' may be more dangerous than a novice who truthfully reports the' project defects'. The role of aesthetics here is to identify honest clumsiness and stubbornness that would rather delay a project than repeatedly verify it.

Appreciate sharpness amidst fault tolerance. Ten targets, nine dead on the road. The truly valuable scientists are not those who never fail, but those who remain clear headed and do not attribute their failures to external factors. The cheapest excuse for clinical failure is difficulty in enrollment, flawed protocols, and poor CRO execution. A person with true problem-solving resilience will ask if my initial assumption was wrong? The courage to cut inward and the ability to continue deducing in uncertainty are the shining points that aesthetics should capture.

Resonance precedes matching. The most scarce in this industry are not pure scientists or managers, but cross-border translators who can connect laboratories, clinical practice, and markets. Can't you frame this kind of person - a scientist - with a job description? entrepreneur? Project manager? Both are, and neither are. You need to resonate with him to identify whether something in him is on the same frequency as your understanding of the industry and market. When everyone is pursuing GLP-1, some people are obsessed with a rare disease target that is obscure. The reason why it resonates may not be because you understand that target, but because you see a desire for unmet clinical needs in their eyes.  

System thinking is more important than local expertise. An excellent systems thinker may not understand the details in every field. When different professional functions blame each other and shift responsibility, he can systematically reverse and analyze the problem, pushing back the clinical endpoint to whether the molecular design is accurate or the animal model is suitable. He can ask the question that leaves experts stunned, and he can see the judgment and logic behind the data when others only look at it; He can see what chain reaction this decision will have five years later when others are only staring at the pipeline in front of him; He is able to reorganize everyone's interests and integrate them with the company's development direction and strategy when others only defend his department's position.

As a biopharmaceutical investor, the money you invest will not generate any cash flow for many years, and you may not even know if it will eventually become a drug. What you are facing is not a financial model, but an unverified scientific hypothesis. What you can rely on is not market size measurement, not competitor analysis - these tools have almost no usable value in the early stages. The only thing you can do is look at people. When faced with negative data, do they re-examine their assumptions or are they eager to find explanations; See if he can make critical trade-offs before resources are depleted; See if he can make the team still believe in the power of faith during the long wait. You are not looking at a project, you are judging whether a person is worth walking with for ten years.

In traditional management practices, the reason why talent aesthetics are overlooked is because they cannot be KPI based and challenge managers' control desires and habitual management methods. But in the biopharmaceutical industry, it is "necessary" to preserve aesthetics, essentially because the cost of failure is too high. You have to endure years of no output from him, you have to withstand the questioning of the organization and the pressure of time for him, you have to "pay the price" for your courage - in this industry, what ultimately allows you to cross the cycle is not your judgment of the target, but your judgment of the people.