What was that? Mike Lynch has trouble hearing
AUTONOMY founder Mike Lynch has come up with a novel way of dodging uncomfortable questions (of which there are a few at the moment) – he told an audience at Cass Business School this week that he is hard of hearing.
“I’m actually deaf, so in this situation what happens when we come to the questions is – you’ll ask a question, I’ll try and lipread it, and I’ll end up with ‘why does the aardvark like sharks?’” he told the room.
And what does the entrepreneur do in that situation? Styles it out, obviously.
“So at that point my brain is desperately running through all the possible things that could sound like shark and aardvark.
“I look into the corner while I desperately try to work out what you just said… And what I didn’t realise was, that giving an unrelated answer after looking into the corner for a while… makes you a visionary.”
Cue chortling from the audience.
“People start to believe you have some sort of insight, and it’s very important to play with that.”
Hmm perhaps but it was a handy time to tell this story given his team had expressly said he wouldn’t answer questions about HP that night.
Was that HP? Or beige wee?