Hakuna Matata - Tantric Interview Techniques

A few weeks ago, I read something about the fact that too much experience gets in the way of successful innovation. It was on the HBR Blog Network, written by the CEO of a "managed innovation company" (my words) and flagged by the owner of a boutique firm advising on strategy. I guess they both have some interest in this proposition being true.

Strange to think that they are both offering their wealth of experience to avoid you being weighed down by your own! All experience is equal but some experience is clearly more equal. That's what self-help is all about, after all. And it's a hundred and fifty years old. Snake-oil anyone?

The HBR article talks about the curse of knowledge and the situation where some variant of pattern recognition causes us to make assumptions that are simply wrong. Sound familiar? The technical term is cognitive bias. All organisations and people have cognitive bias and there are many ways around to try to assist us in thinking out of the box, but in a structured way. Why is so much of management speak "oxy-moronic"?

You may well ask why I am coming back to this idea. It's part of my own self-help regime and I wanted to share it. I am at a stage in my career where I might easily fall victim to excessive cognitive bias - ECB - (being a know-it-all or inadvertently positioning as a know-it-all). So, this post offers some gratuitous (see definition 2) advice on how to avoid the pitfall.

I had a conversation today about a CEO position. Just an early exploration. Just a friendly exchange. Would it be interesting? Small company, so would I be able to "re-size"? Could there be a cultural fit? Is the industry interesting for me? Is relocation an issue? You can guess the format. It was not a cold call. We had set up a time.

Thankfully, the call turned out fine - we will explore further and the role is very interesting - but looking back, I feel my interviewer had to make unnecessary allowances. In short, I was trying to close a sale and the potential customer was just browsing the aisles. This customer was even kind enough to make their intentions clear from the outset. I didn't listen carefully enough. I did not pick up the signs well enough.

It's always a temptation to want to take control in these situations, seeming to know intuitively what needs to be said, in what tone and at what point. Our ECB sends twice as many signals to our mouth than it does to our ears. And that is precisely the wrong ratio. Evolution/God (delete as appropriate) gave us one mouth and two ears, maybe to be deployed with that same balance!

I am sharing this now because it was not intuitive. If it's not intuitive for you either, learn from my error.

I felt very wise when posting my views on dealing with recruiters in February, somehow pushing the idea that you always have to take the initiative and create the momentum. The reality turns out to be that this is perhaps not always appropriate, or even necessary.

As in all things tantric, getting to the end takes time. Be calm. No worries. Let it build.