Not long ago I sat in on a meeting of senior people at a large, well-known company. There were 12 around the table: two Brits, an American, a South African, two Germans, a Frenchman, an Italian, an Argentine and three further people whose accents I couldn’t quite place. All were successful, and all presumably bright or else they would not have survived in a company that does not employ slouches. All spoke goodish English and were debating a subject vital to their business. Yet this was the most dreary, pedestrian and jargon-bound business discussion I think I’ve ever witnessed.
I can think of various reasons it was so dire. For a start, they were discussing “talent”, a subject on which it is easy to talk utter tosh. And the presence of a journalist, notebook on lap, wasn’t exactly an invitation to let their hair down.
Yet I suspect the main problem was something more worrying. The group was simply too diverse.