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Tuesday, January 13, 2009

TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT POLAR BEARS

Steve Cole writes:

A friend of mine would begin every interview with a prospective new employee by asking the above question, although he would change the topic each time. The point was to find out if the individual was "well-rounded" with a "broad range of knowledge, interest, and experience". He preferred such people around him, and found that they made better employees because they could find the answers to challenging assignments and problems in totally unrelated subject areas.

In the interview where I heard him ask the above question, the prospective employee knew little more than that they were white bears who lived at the North Pole, and was not hired. I wandered into his office and said "they don't live at the North Pole. They live along the Arctic Circle and their fur is actually clear, not white, but it's hollow and looks white from a distance." He laughed and said "I am not hiring you."

I know a lot about polar bears. I don't know what they weigh but I know it's over half a ton. I know they're more amphibious than land animals that happen to swim. I know they mostly eat seals and each one will eat about fifteen of them every summer, but they will eat a lot of things. I know that pappa bears don't like baby bears (except as a light snack) and that momma bears try very hard to keep away from pappa bears after the cubs are born. (If I am reincarnated as a bear, I'm going to be nice to my kids and be featured in a National Geographic special as the "good father bear".) I know what global warming is doing to polar bears (but I don't think my minivan caused it). I know that polar bears evolved from grizzly bears (so much for creationism) but they have longer necks, shorter ears, and a hump of body fat, all to adapt to the arctic. I know that a given bear will pretty much stay in the same place from when it claims a territory as a young adult until it dies of old age.

I actually know a lot of things about a lot of things. I read a lot, and watch a lot of The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and that sort of thing. I can discuss dozens of subjects intelligently and can at least make some comment (or ask a reasonable question) about hundreds more. (I once read the entire Encyclopedia Britanica. Well, sort of. I read the first paragraph of every entry and if it was interesting I read until I got bored. I picked up enough general info about a lot of obscure subjects to give me a faint bell ring in my head.) When somebody shows up who is an expert on some strange subject, I know enough to become the star pupil of the impromptu class. It's a compliment to the expert to say "I have heard a tiny bit about that; could you tell me more?"

I do find that I can apply the lessons and parallels from totally unrelated subjects to business problems and see solutions that would never have appeared with a head-on approach.