Tim O’Reilly is attending a directors’ program at Stanford Law School where Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway fame apparently delivered this very nice (apocryphal) story:
After winning the Nobel prize, Max Planck went around Germany giving talks. His chauffeur heard the talk so many times that he had it by heart, and so one time, he asked Max Planck if he could give the address. Planck agreed, they changed places, and the lecture came off famously. But then came the Q&A, with the very first question being one that the chauffeur had no hope of answering. The chauffeur replied: “I’m surprised to hear such an elementary question on high energy physics here in Munich. It’s so simple, I’ll let my chauffeur answer it.”
This sort of story takes many forms, from cargo cult tales, to stories I’ve heard that U2′s roadies do a mean U2 concert in rehearsals — but they all go to the same point: People can be remarkably proficient at giving the appearance of proficience.
I’ve mentioned something like this before in a post about Mark Burnett and how he found it difficult to interview candidates for The Apprentice. Why? Because they may have been quacks, but they sure knew how to give good interview.
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Your point brings to mind an argument I’ve been having with coworkers regarding merits of the ‘Case’ style interview.
If a recent MBA grad comes in and gives a rippin’ case interview…….what does that tell you? That they’ve learned how to give a good case interview? I don’t think the fact that they’ve been trained to answer my questions tells me a whole lot about their qualities as an employee.
Though on the other side of the coin, I suppose if the individual completely blows the case interview, it may actually tell me a lot…
Hey John — I agree. There is a great comment on the same issue in the book “Ginger” on Dean Kamen’s Segway personal transporter. The idea behind the aggressive questioning of engineering interviewees wasn’t to prove that the interviewers knew more than the interviewees, it was to find out how the people reacted when their shell cracked and they had to confess ignorance.
I’d heard it was a Einstein.
http://www.snopes.com/humor/jokes/einstein.asp