In our first meeting at his apartment, with my tape recorders whirring, I said, "OK, tell me the story of
Salomon's spectacular growth as a major trading entity in the world currency markets." I sat back, anticipating a lengthy response full of wonderful anecdotes and insights.
Lipschutz answered, "The currency options market, Salomon's currency options department, and I all
started at the same time and grew and prospered simultaneously."
"And ...," I said, prompting him to continue. He rephrased the same response he had just given.
"Yes," I said, "that's a very interesting coincidence, but could you fill in the details? How about some specific stories?" He responded again with generalizations. My hopes for the interview went into a rapid nosedive.
I've done interviews that I knew were dead in the water after the first hour and have ended up ditching the results afterwards. However, this interview was different. Although I felt that I was getting very little useful material during the first one or two hours of our conversation, I sensed there was something there.
This was not a dry well; I just had to dig deeper.