Sometimes having the things you know instinctively, or from casual observation, confirmed by expert studies is downright depressing.

I noticed it while growing up, fought it over my 25 years headhunting, wrote and article about it in 1999 called Hiring in Your Comfort Zone, and blogged about it last March in People like me.

Studies looking at its origins and insidiousness were reported Monday by Shankar Vedantam.

“It” is homophily, it’s been around forever, it’s an attitude I personally dislike and it keeps getting worse.

“Smith-Lovin’s research, for example, shows that homophily is on the rise in the United States on nearly every dimension of social identity. Ever larger numbers of people seem to be sealing themselves off in worlds where everyone thinks the way they do.”

As deplorable as this is from the social science perspective, it can be the kiss of a very slow death for companies.

Managers who, unconsciously or not, hire in their own image, no matter how they define that, do their employers harm.

A workforce that homogenizes along any lines is a workforce that will either miss, ignore, or be unable to reach a part of their market.

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

There’s not a lot on TV that I like, but I used to really enjoy Shark Tank. Past tense; haven’t watched in several years. Why? Two words: lifestyle products. With very few exceptions that’s what was being presented, whether an app, a product or a service. I understand that entrepreneurs create stuff that will get funded, and while I’m not saying they are bad investments or that the entrepreneurs don’t mean well, I am saying that I don’t care about them. They won’t change the world or even improve it. Uber and Lyft are good examples; they haven’t decreased traffic, as they claimed they would, in fact, they’ve increased it. Most in the “life style” category are focused on “personal care.” (Have you noticed that sometime in the recent past “personal growth” morphed into “personal care”?) More packaging in the landfills, more time on the screen, more focus on self — so not my mindset.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Innovation isn’t nearly as mind-boggling today when compared to what startups were doing in the late Seventies/early Eighties when I started working with them.

That’s not surprising when you consider who gets funded these days.

A recent Reuters report found that the majority of Silicon Valley startup founders that receive Series A funding come from the same pedigreed cohort: either they previously worked at a large, well-known tech firm, a well-connected smaller tech company, they previously created a successful startup, or they come from one of three universities—Stanford, Harvard, or MIT.

Not surprising when you consider the attitude of Valley stalwarts like Paul Graham of Y Combinator, who publicly stated that he would be unlikely to fund someone with a strong accent or a woman.

It’s been 15 years since I first wrote about the proclivity of managers to hire people like themselves and more over the years showing it leads to homophily and the negative impact that has on a company.

It seems it’s no different for investors.

They are funding people like themselves who were raised, educated and worked along paths similar to their own who they either know or are introduced to them by a friend.

“Like a lot of the investments [Instacart] that have come our way, a friend of a friend talked to us about it, and told us about it, and encouraged the founder and the CEO to come and chat with us. One thing led to another.” –Sequoia partner Mike Moritz

When you fund from a homogenous group, no matter where they are, creativity and innovation are watered down, because those groups tend to be insular and badly interbred talking mostly to each other.

If you’re fishing from a pond of rich white guys, you’re mostly going to get ideas that address the needs of rich white guys.

AKA, people like themselves.

Image credit: Frits Ahlefeldt

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

People Like Me is probably one of the most important posts I ever wrote. Additionally, 12 years ago I said,

A workforce that homogenizes along any lines is a workforce that will either miss, ignore, or be unable to reach a part of their market.

And in 2007 I wrote,

Keep in mind that true diversity includes MAP and mental function, not just race and gender. I’ve known managers whose organizations were mini-UNs with equal numbers of males and females, but they might as well have been cloned from the boss, their thinking was so identical.

I call it “homogenizing,” which is the polar opposite of diversity, which includes race, gender, religion, ethnicity, and MAP. Research has proven that while diversity pays, homogenizing will kill you.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A CEO (who wants to stay anonymous) called me today and said, “If charm causes bad hires, what causes “wrong hires?” He defined a wrong hire as one where a good person with good skills that seemed to fit the req was hired, but didn’t add the expected strength to the team. So I explained comfort zones and he said, “You should put that in the blog,” so I am.

I first wrote about comfort zones back around 1999 (Hiring in Your Comfort Zone) for msdn (Microsoft Developers Network, where I used to have a column) and the idea hasn’t changed a lot.

Our comfort zone is where we all prefer to do things. People want to spend their time with people like themselves. This isn’t about simple labels, such as race, religion or gender, which are more society’s labels. Our own subjective labels have more to do with schools (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, etc.), specific professions (not fields), and especially companies (think McKinsey). It’s how we choose a way to connect, because, true or not, MIT grads believe they have more in common with MIT alums than with Cal or Columbia. Doctors hang out with doctors, usually those with the same, or similar, specialty or employer, but rarely with nurses or radiology techs. We like enough knowledge commonality so we don’t feel ignorant, but can still learn. It all boils down to, “people like me (PLM).”

And that maybe fine in our personal life—but not so fine in our professional life, especially not for managers responsible for hiring. The broader the PLM definition the longer it takes to become noticeable, but it’s there if you look for it.

I’ve known the following (often more than one who fits the profile):

• Director of system development who came from a software background, hired hardware engineers with extremely strong software experience, although it wasn’t needed.
• VP of marketing with a Harvard MBA whose team were all “Ivy.”

Think of the articles you are constantly seeing of new CEOs who hire the majority or their team from their previous employer with the express purpose of getting the same mindset. Bob Nardelli, the new CEO of Home Depot is a great example of PLM hiring. And sometimes it works, at least for awhile.

But the long-term cost to companies can be high.

• When the choice is between the best applicant and PLM, PLM usually wins out, slowly lowering the quality of talent.
• PLM homogenizes the staff, reducing diversity of both thinking and thought (methodology and result) and it’s that diversity that supplies strength and creativity.
• PLM can wreak havoc on retention efforts and drive out legacy knowledge.
• PLM hiring can involve just one part of a company or create a ripple effect, e.g. slow product development, which delays delivery, crimping sales and keeping the company from achieving its revenue goals.

Yes, all of this and much more are a product of a PLM mindset.

Image credit: Jurgen Appelo

Facebook really stuck its foot deep in the doo doo pile when it claimed its racial diversity numbers, which are even worse than its gender diversity stats, are the result of a lack of qualified candidates.

What is really going on is the very real human desire to hire “people like me,” but using “cultural fit” as an excuse for their bias.

In a post shared widely on social media, the computer science student and iOS developer took Facebook and its Silicon Valley peers to task for focusing on whether potential employees are a “culture fit” — an ambiguous gauge often used to defend discrimination.

But that, of course, depends on what is meant by culture.

Culture is a reflection of the founder’s/company’s actual values — values equaling stuff such as how customers are treated and whether politics will rule over merit.

Culture is not a function of perks — or it shouldn’t be.

“Most of tech recruiting is currently not built to look for great talent,” wrote Thomas in her post.

“I’m not interested in ping-pong, beer, or whatever other gimmick used to attract new grads. The fact that I don’t like those things shouldn’t mean I’m not a ‘culture fit’. I don’t want to work in tech to fool around, I want to create amazing things and learn from other smart people. That is the culture fit you should be looking for.”

You wouldn’t necessarily expect tech, with its penchant for data-based decisions, to cherry-pick the stats, but Facebook is an amalgamate of human beings and their biases, so it’s not that surprising.

Then, of course, there’s the data — which you’d think a company like Facebook, reliant as it is on algorithms, would’ve parsed before blaming education for its diversity ills. There simply isn’t a pipeline problem as long as there are twice as many black and Hispanic computer science graduates as there are actual hires from these minority groups.

So, once again, the old programming saying ‘garbage in/garbage out’ proves true.

A perfect summing up of Facebook’s, and tech-in-general’s, “no pipeline” excuse.

Flickr image credit: gorfor

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Whose responsibility or fault, if you’re feeling judgmental, is it if a hire goes south?

No matter the circumstances, that dubious honor lies with the hiring manager.

In the decades I’ve worked with hiring managers I’ve heard every conceivable (and inconceivable) reason, but none shifted the de facto responsibility (blame, if you prefer).

Most of the time managers’ claim some variation of ‘the candidate lied…’

Of course, that’s what reference checks are for.

Often it’s the manager who doesn’t

• sufficiently think through the job;
• consider the current team’s competencies;
• accurately share the culture; or
• was even consciously aware of the culture;
• consider the candidate’s career interests;
• etc., etc.

The main thing to remember is what good hiring actually means:

Hiring the right person into the right position at the right time and for the right reasons.

Change any “right” in this sentence to “wrong” and you’ll end up with a bad hire, but a bad hire does not mean a bad person.

Bad hires have four basic ingredients—

• charm,
• bad reqs,
• poor hiring skills, and
• homophily

all of which are a function of the hiring manager’s MAP and can be overcome.

Founders, like many managers in larger companies, frequently claim they are too busy to take time to lay the groundwork for solid hires and then wonder why they make hiring blunders.

Poor hiring leads to high turnover.

High turnover shrinks your candidate pool because it wrecks your street rep and street reps are forever—good, bad or indifferent—nothing fades away in this digital age.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Innovation isn’t nearly as mind-boggling today when compared to what startups were doing in the late Seventies/early Eighties when I started working with them.

That’s not surprising when you consider who gets funded these days.

A recent Reuters report found that the majority of Silicon Valley startup founders that receive Series A funding come from the same pedigreed cohort: either they previously worked at a large, well-known tech firm, a well-connected smaller tech company, they previously created a successful startup, or they come from one of three universities—Stanford, Harvard, or MIT.

Not surprising when you consider the attitude of Valley stalwarts like Paul Graham of Y Combinator, who publically stated that he would be unlikely to fund someone with a strong accent or a woman.

It’s been 15 years since I first wrote about the proclivity of managers to hire people like themselves and more over the years showing it leads to homophily and the negative impact that has on a company.

It seems it’s no different for investors.

They are funding people like themselves who were raised, educated and worked along paths similar to their own who they either know or are introduced to them by a friend.

“Like a lot of the investments [Instacart] that have come our way, a friend of a friend talked to us about it, and told us about it, and encouraged the founder and the CEO to come and chat with us. One thing led to another.” –Sequoia partner Mike Moritz

When you fund from a homogenous group, no matter where they are, creativity and innovation are watered down, because those groups tend to be insular and badly interbred talking mostly to each other.

If you’re fishing from a pond of rich white guys, you’re only going to get ideas that address the needs of rich white guys.

AKA, people like themselves.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

August 23^rd was an interesting reading day for me.

First I read about the ingredients that nine different entrepreneurs utilized to create great cultures and are applicable to any company of any size.

Then I read what some would consider a rant about how culture was used to enable legal discrimination.

The ingredients described in the first article made me smile and shout ‘yes!’, because they are the same things I’ve been preaching for years.

However, the twisted use of culture to legitimatize bigotry and discrimination enraged me—as it always has.

I have long recommended using culture as a hiring filter and still believe it is one of the best around, since attitude is far more important than skills when it comes to who you hire.

People who believe manipulation is the correct tool for getting ahead do not belong in a company that promotes strictly on merit and accomplishment; in fact; they can easily destroy it.

However, a talent for manipulating people has nothing to do with age, gender, race, creed, color, alumni status or the myriad of other differences that may take you out of your comfort zone.

Flickr image credit: Paul Dixon

I had a solid dose of déjà vue when I read yet another article about the cancellation of Yahoo’s work-from-home policy, but this one from a different angle.

What about all the single people? And all the people without kids? We need to stop acting like they’re not part of the work-life conversation.

Some things never change.

I never married and after five decades in and around the workplace I find it dispiriting that almost nothing has changed.

The original version (before my time) was “Jim won’t mind, because he’s single”; the great improvement is now it’s “Jim or Judy won’t mind, because s/he’s single.”

Back then companies/managers assumed that singles were easy to relocate, because they didn’t own homes and moving costs would be minimal, since singles don’t own furniture or much stuff.

There are plenty of managers who still think that way.

Males were given hiring preference, because “they had families to support,” and while it may be 2013, that attitude still exists, however deeply buried.

Bias.

Unconscious or not, it has the power to taint, damage and even destroy anything/everything.

Bias drives homophily, not just in people, but skills; is grounded in assumptions and negates the diversity that leads to success.

Bias can lay waste to your culture and, in doing so, destroy your company.

Bias is a four letter word.

Flickr image credit: Jim Linwood

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Flattery and agreement can be a lethal combination for a CEO, according to research by Sun Hyun Park, James D. Westphal and Ithai Stern.

“Our theory suggests how high levels of flattery and opinion conformity can increase CEOs’ overconfidence in their strategic judgment and leadership capability, which results in biased strategic decision making,”

In the same vein, John O’Farrell, Andreessen Horowitz, says that founder-CEOs need to be especially careful.

“Hire people who are different from you, and who will have the courage to challenge you when it matters.”

The road to failure hell is paved as much with yes-people, which leads to homophily, as with good intentions.

What you want are those who think differently, but have similar values.

Values are the foundation of your culture, not race, creed, gender, university, sorority/fraternity, fashion brand, etc.

Whatever your culture, by using it as a hiring filter you can get out of your comfort zone and stop hiring people like yourself—who are most likely to become yes-people.

Option Sanity™ avoids ISO flattery.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Yesterday I wrote abut new approaches to recruiting, a la online puzzles, to find tech talent from non-traditional sources, as well as advice from a successful entrepreneur who says that the most important traits to look for are behavioral and can only be identified through good interviewing, which requires time.

All this says that younger entrepreneurs are willing to try radically new, as well as mastering old, approaches to finding talent.

The one thing I’ve found that many are not willing to do is hire outside their peers.

An old attitude that dates back decades (if not centuries) and which can be boiled down to five words—“people like me,” which defines your “comfort zone.”

It doesn’t matter that it’s illegal to say it involves age, but it does.

The bias is dangerous, especially when hiring more senior people as you grow. Consider these points,

• Can that brilliant developer you hired lead?
• Does the Twitter whiz kid understand creating and implementing a complete marketing strategy?

What exactly does a twenty-something a year or few out of school know about employment law, strategy, team-building, managing, conflict resolution, contract negotiation, the list goes on and on.

Whatever gave people the idea that creativity and innovation dropped off as experience increased?

One of these days in the not-too-distant future you are going to lose out on an opportunity because you are outside the company’s/manager’s comfort zone and the company is going to lose out on the richness of your experience.

How do you hire? What have you missed out on recently?

Option Sanity™ rewards performance.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Image credit: kevinspencer