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<p>Even established organizations have the same general problem: how do you maximize your chances of building a functioning team? </p>
<p>I’ll point directly to the top: consider the way the Obama Administration has conducted its hiring. How many high-level officers in the Federal government just so happened to be old friends of Barack Obama’s (or, in some cases, Michelle’s)? Surely the government has sufficient resources to conduct whatever employment searches and background checks - including FBI background investigations - that it wants. Yet at the end of the day, the Administration is dotted with a myriad of Barack’s old pals from Harvard and/or Chicago. </p>
<p>[Crimson</a> Tide](<a href=“http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=eceb7628-27e1-461e-b3a2-ce2ff7abb3a2]Crimson”>http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=eceb7628-27e1-461e-b3a2-ce2ff7abb3a2)</p>
<p>[Obama</a> Camp Has Many Ties to Wife’s Employer - washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/21/AR2008082103646.html]Obama”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/21/AR2008082103646.html)</p>
<p>Nor is Obama particularly unique. G.W.Bush surrounded himself with a hand-picked team from Texas, and Clinton imported a large Arkansas (and Georgetown & Yale) contingent to Washington.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, you need a team that you can trust. People are therefore naturally going to gravitate towards those they’ve successfully worked with in the past. In fact, right now, I know numerous highly qualified people who would like nothing more than to work for the Obama Administration, the problem being that they don’t actually know anybody on the inside, and they certainly don’t know Barack himself. They have no way in.</p>
<p>Now, keep in mind that this is in the world of politics, where complaints regarding nepotism would sting the most and where public scrutiny is obviously pervasive. Heck, Obama himself campaigned on a platform on meritocratic technocracy in contrast to the Bush Administration that placed a premium on loyalty. Yet Obama himself has imported his own social circle into his Administration. So if this happens in even the highest circles of government, what do you think happens in corporate America?</p>