Autumn Marathon

Shangri-La

One of the great things about meeting with a lot of different businesses is the insight you get into management styles and business culture.  A few weeks ago I met with a fantastic company.  Extremely well-funded, its mission is as much humanitarian as it is profit-making.  Highly technological, the people who work there all graduated with sciences degrees from top universities and are extremely polished and polite.  They also have beautiful offices and seem to really enjoy what they do.  This was one of the rare instances where researching the company and interviewing for a position was enjoyable in and of itself.  At the time of the interview, I felt as though I found a common language with the folks there i.e., that we hit it off.   I was wrong - not only did I not get the job, but I did not even make it to the next interview round.

Had I been looking for them, there definitely were warning signs that the fit was not there.  For instance, when I asked questions about the function of the role I was pursuing; or why the organization had pursued strategy “x” rather than strategy “y” with its flagship product; or why it had been decided to organize as a “for-profit” rather than a non-profit - the answers were polite, but rapidly became more guarded.  “David,” the head of the organization and its sole investor, had made the decision and the interviewer “couldn’t really say why.” And the while the educational credentials and level of the folks who were interviewing me were unquestionably extremely high, it was also clear that their backgrounds were pretty homogeneous (and different from my own).  My own philosophy is that a heterogeneous workforce and a tolerance for internal disagreement are important ingredients for successful businesses.  While I certainly wish this group well and hope to read about their successes in the future, I wonder whether the absence of these qualities will prevent it from reaching full potential.