Ken arranged for me to meet the board. I asked them about the center: its goals, its challenges, and what it needed from a chairman. Ken called me later and said the board was surprised. They thought they were supposed to be interviewing me, but instead I had interviewed them. My objective, I told Ken, had been to learn. I wasn’t trying to persuade anyone I was right for the job. It was the same way I thought about interviews at Blackstone. If both sides could be easy, open, and direct with each other, the fit, or lack of it, would become apparent. From our conversations that day, it seemed
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