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OPINION
Ambition
To be effective over the long-term for an organization, our personal ambition must be grounded in mutual respect, collaborative teamwork, and integrity.
W ay back in the ancient days of 1991, as I was considering leaving the Federal Aviation Administration and re-entering the consulting world, I interviewed for a position with a national consulting engineering firm as a potential project engineer. The interview was with a former colleague/friend of mine and his supervisor, and I thought at the time that it had gone very well. We had a very interesting and far-ranging conversation.
Mitch Fortner, P.E.
Unfortunately, I never heard back from the folks I interviewed with. Sometime later, I asked my friend, “What ever became of that interview?” He said, “Mitch, we were looking for a project engineer, and you were clearly looking to become the president of the company.” In their defense, I’m certain there was more to the evaluation than that, and I probably didn’t match the candidate profile they were looking for. I may have given the impression that I was more interested in advancing my career than advancing their projects. That certainly wasn’t my mindset or my intention, as I was very interested in the position and doing good work for them. But now, looking back, that profound comment has
stuck with me for 31 years. I’ve often wondered if my ambition at the time was off-putting or otherwise offensive, and with that in mind, I thought I would flesh out some thoughts on ambition here. Let me just say up front, I believe career ambition is a fantastic quality in a candidate or employee. We interviewed a candidate recently who I believe expressed ambition appropriately and wisely. He appeared to be very willing to work hard and to learn from others with more experience as a way of growing into his next position at KSA. He was very focused on creating success for our clients and his co-workers, and he loved the description of our KSA University, our open-book management systems,
See MITCH FORTNER , page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER DECEMBER 12, 2022, ISSUE 1468
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