Shanthi looked across the table at the two people interviewing her. Both a good ten years younger than her, probably closer to fifteen, both looking confused by her answer.
The one who’d introduced themselves as Yan, with they/them pronouns, asked. “Why, if you’re coming in as a strategist, would you be spending time on the details, with the front end staff?”
Shanthi wondered if she could move to being a they/them, it sounded rather freeing, and would be guaranteed to send her parents into incoherent waffling. She was still such a child at times.
Right, answer the question. “Because your true strategy, the way your company actually turns out, is based on what you do, not what you say, so you need to bend what you do to the future you want to build, rather than create the future on clouds, then try to build a ladder with skills and materials you don’t have.”
Their faces went even blanker. Damn, she was losing them, and she was so close. She wanted this job, this proof that she was still worthwhile, still relevant. She’d made it past the CV keyword checkers, and the phone call from the recruiter, and the multiple video calls to be here, in person. Maybe she’d shown up looking older than they expected, more mumsy-looking. She had to show them that an older person was an asset.
She leaned forward, just enough to echo Yan’s posture. “Let me give you an analogy…
“Imagine this business is a building, and the work your teams do each day, the phone calls, the copywriting, the invoicing, the development, all of those things are the bricks that, day by day, brick by brick, build it into something new, something different, to what it is now.
“What that new building is, whether it’s taller, or wider, or deeper, or all of those things, depends on what those bricks are made of, and how they’re stuck together. Are you building a drystone wall, where the structure relies on each stone bracing each other stone to form a structure that can last centuries? Or are you building a triumphal arch? And is that made of marble, precariously held in place by a rickety infrastructure of wooden scaffolding, or is it granite all the way through?”
She smiled at them. “And don’t go making assumptions about the second one being better. If you need to change something, and do it quickly, the wood and marble is going to be far more fit for purpose.”
Yan looked thoughtful. “I sort of get it. You have an interesting way of describing things.”
Shanthi gave her the smile everyone said was warm and twinkly. “My background is quite diverse, and I’m used to finding non-traditional ways to communicate, when the old ways don’t work.”
That should tick a few more boxes, everyone was talking diversity these days.
The DNA of Stories 