It used to be that attending college exposed young adults to new experiences, new people and new ways of thinking—but that was then and this is now.

Years ago, when writing about hiring, I said,

People want to spend their time with people like themselves, that is their comfort zone, and that is where they hire. Managers prefer to hire people

• from backgrounds they understand;
• working in areas in which the manager feels knowledgeable;
• with experiences and education to which the manager can relate; and
• with a resume that makes the manager’s decision look good even if the hire doesn’t work out.

Homophily has been increasing in most social settings, including the workplace, over the years and now young people have climbed on that bandwagon with a vengeance.

Instead of the adventurous attitudes that have always been the province of youth, they want to avoid discomfort; sidestep as many human vagaries as possible and spend as much of their time as possible with people like themselves.

This is especially true of college freshmen.

Helping them avoid discomfort is a market nitch occupied by the likes of Lifetopia and RoomBug, in collusion with their universities, as well as open sources such as URoomSurf and, of course, the ubiquitous Facebook.

But some worry that it robs young adults of an increasingly rare opportunity for growth: exposure to someone with different experiences and opinions.

“Very quickly, college students are able to form self-selected cliques where their views are reinforced,” noted Dalton Conley, an N.Y.U. sociology professor…

It is not a lack in the diversity of race, nationality or even gender that is worrisome; rather it is the lack of diversity of thought.

Homogenized thinking kills creativity, stunts innovation, increases intolerance and supports bigotry.

Homogenized thinking destroys leadership—today’s and tomorrows.

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Yesterday I shared my love of crossing stuff off lists because of the sense of accomplishment it brings, but that kind of stuff is small potatoes; it lifts me up and helps me move forward, but it isn’t a substitute for hitting the goals that move my life.

I just hit the biggest one on my list and want to share it with you.

For the last several years we’ve been working to turn a consulting approach for allocating incentive stock in private companies based on the company’s values and culture into a web-based subscription service (SaaS)—and it’s finally a reality!

Not only that, but because I hate the way traditional Help works, I conceived a brand new, user friendly type of Help that our programmers implemented brilliantly—you’ll love it.

It’s a soft launch, but Option Sanity™ has its second beta client (I’m looking for three more) and is looking good.

But it feels strange; for so long the focus and the goal has been to produce the software and the website. That meant working with the programmers, tons of writing and editing, working with the guy who originated the math and mechanics of Option Sanity™ and who was primary tester and developing my own skills as a user.

Now that it’s done I keep waiting for a massive feeling of accomplishment and although it’s there it’s dwarfed by what needs to be done now—marketing, identifying and closing multiple sales channels, supporting new users, developing a FAQ based on their questions, creating a user community—the list seems endless.

With all that starting me in the face I thought I’d ask for some help.

It would be terrific if you would to www.optionsanity.com, read about the product and click Take the Tour. Unfortunately the tour isn’t done, but on that page you’ll find a link to the full app demo.

Check it out and then leave your comments on the review page. Forward the information to anyone you think would be interested

I know it will take a few minutes, but I would be eternally grateful.

Thanks!

Image credit: RampUp Solutions

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Saturday an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal entitled The End of Management and I planned a commentary on it today.

Corporations, whose leaders portray themselves as champions of the free market, were in fact created to circumvent that market.

…

Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by definition, resistant to change. They were designed and tasked, not with reinforcing market forces, but with supplanting and even resisting the market.

But when a blogger I respect writes an excellent post poking the same holes I would have poked, then it seems a waste of effort to reinvent that particular wheel.

So first read The End of Management and then click over and read Wally Bock’s comments.

Time well spent—I guarantee it.

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An old saw says that in Washington DC politics is in the water; if that’s true, than technology is in the water in and around Silicon Valley. I lived there from 1977 to 2003 and just as DC media focuses exhaustively on Federal politics our media delved into the technology world, especially at two ends of the spectrum—startups and iconic brands.

Hewlett Packard is beyond iconic—it’s legendary—and dissecting what was happening and why was a media constant.

That hasn’t changed since I left; the latest being the Hurd fiasco. I followed the stories from the original news flash, not all of them but enough to understand what happened and some analysis, but I still felt something was missing.

I kept thinking that if Hurd was really terminated for the reasons stated then he was terminated for cause, which would mean no 40-50 million dollar severance package, but instead he was allowed to resign.

Something didn’t smell right or maybe I was just suspicious because the little I knew about Hurd didn’t impress me, but, then, who am I to disagree with all the experts who raved about his turn around of HP.

A Joe Nocera’s column Friday in the NY Times offered up a more logical reason for his ouster; one that makes far more sense to me.

According to Anthony Bianco, author of The Big Lie: Spying, Scandal and Ethical Collapse at Hewlett-Packard, “There was a residue of mistrust because of the pretexting scandal. I conclude in the book that he lacks the moral character to be C.E.O.”

Then there were the company’s employees. The consensus in Silicon Valley is that Mr. Hurd was despised at H.P., not just by the rank and file, but even by H.P.’s top executives.

Worse, Hurd gutted R&D, selling HP’s future for the short-term gains that Wall Street loves.

In the final look, the people who must be trusted to do the right thing in the running of large companies is the Board, but HP’s Board has proven over and over that it lacks what it takes.

On the other hand, putting up dazzling short-term numbers that have the effect of enriching himself while robbing H.P.’s future — isn’t that what a C.E.O. should be fired for? Firing Mr. Hurd for that reason, however, would have taken courage, something that has always been in short supply on the H.P. board.

What do you think? Read the column, come back and share your thoughts.

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Many people in Washington and around the country look to venture capitalists to jumpstart companies that will generate jobs, both directly and indirectly. Once again KG Charles-Harris, EMANIO CEO and founder of M3, attended Stanford Summit, a three day gathering of those who move in the world of startups, and provides his impressions of their ability to perform.

Last week I again attended the AlwaysOn 2010 Summit at Stanford, held at Stanford University in California.  It was a beautiful setting with people from all parts of the technology ecosystem—from very large companies such as Hewlett Packard to small 2 person startups, banks, venture capitalists, angel investors and consultants.

One of the most interesting takeaways from the conference was the very different views that people had on how the venture capital industry was developing in the present environment.  On the one hand, there were strong assertions that the VC industry was in good health and that there was a lot of money looking for investment.  Most of the VCs I encountered asserted that they were very much interested in early stage investments and that they provided a unique service to founders and early stage management.

However, this was in stark contrast to the intense frustration many startups were expressing when describing their hunt for capital.  They felt that VCs were far from interested in early stage investments and were mostly focused on follow-on investments in portfolio companies or syndicated deals.  Some (probably about 70% of the people with whom I spoke), who had received investments felt that the VCs were often a distraction on the Board and either were micromanaging or otherwise not helpful.  Yet these founders and executives have little choice but to continue to seek venture money to fund their growth.

Could these developments be due to the fact that many of those running the largest firms are no longer the seasoned operating managers that brought forth the storied companies of old, like Apple, Cisco, Fairchild Semiconductor, Silicon Graphics, etc.?  Many have the impression that the generation of VCs that joined when the names on the door wanted to kick back are simply bankers; portfolio managers unable to take risk or understand a vision.

The industry has always been prone to “herd mentality,” where a lot of VC firms invest in similar startups; as was blatantly obvious during the dot com debacle.

A preference for financial manipulation and unwillingness to take risks combined with a lack of operating experience and little vision could signal a death knell for the kind of leaps that created high tech in the first place.

The upside is found in younger VCs and angels; men and women who founded or worked in startups and are putting their money where their mouth is to help create the next wave.

The question is there enough of them or will it be a case of too little too late?

Image credit: AlwaysOn

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According to a post in Forbes by Gregory Unruh, citing one at Motley Fool, many corporations include “ethical waivers” in their corporate Ethical Codes of Conduct, including Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Citigroup, Altria and many others.

Waiver clauses leave the door open for companies to violate their own code of ethics if executives and the board decide it’s a “good” idea. In effect, waivers are a “code of ethics safety valve,” the metaphorical opposite of a blow-out preventer. Why have them? Waivers will just cause problems; a corporate code of ethics is created and designed to limit management decision options to ethical choices. Usually it’s not a problem, but ethics can sometimes impinge on profits. Corporations and their shareholders don’t like to miss out on profits, so the safety valve allows them to sacrifice their ethics if the price pressure is high enough.

Why am I not surprised?

Both authors do an excellent job lambasting the idea that if it pays enough ethics can be waived, so I’m not going to restate the obvious.

Granted, it does take Board approval to use the waiver clause, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Enron’s Board waived the Code of Ethics that prohibited self-dealing by corporate officers and approved off-balance sheet “special purpose entities” and we all know the result of that.

Again, no surprises; not when so many companies put profits, share price and looking good ahead of everything.

What did surprise amaze flabergast, me was that the Goldman Board has issued no waivers.

Confronted about this waiver, a Goldman spokesman responded to blogger ZeroHedge by saying: “The ethics code, including waiver provision, was required under [Sarbanes-Oxley] (Note: It’s not.). No waivers have been requested.”

Isn’t it nice to know that Goldman considers all their actions over the last few years to be ethical.

Wow! I’m not just surprised, I’m speechless.

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I think Harvard’s Jim Heskett poses some of the most thought provoking questions in his “What Do You Think” forum of anyone on the web and his readers generate some of the best commentary.

In the current forum he asks, Is Profit as a “Direct Goal” Overrated?

In his experience, the most profitable companies are run by people who don’t focus on profit.

Almost to a person, they treat profit as a by-product of other things to which they devote most of their attention, things such as a focused strategy that delivers results to carefully-selected customers while pursuing policies and practices that leverage results over costs, hiring people with the right attitude (one that fits with the organization’s culture), and proper training and organization (often in teams).

Heskett cites Obliquity, a new book by British economist John Kay, who argues that business problems cannot be solved by drawing a straight line between cause and long-term effect because they are so complex, a manager’s information so incomplete, the competitive environment so complicated, analytic techniques so inadequate, and the number of things over which a manager has control so limited, that it is impossible to make the connection with any assurance.

Tony Hsieh is adamant about not focusing on profit, but that didn’t stop him from building a billion dollar company.

Take a few minutes and read both Heskett’s thoughts and his readers’ commentary. (The forum is open for comments until July 28.)

Not surprisingly, many of them disagreed and felt that profit is the right focus.

I think that it may have been true in the 20^th Century, but it certainly isn’t in the 21^st.

What do you think?

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Branding. The term is everywhere. No longer reserved for a product it refers to the organization itself.

Creating a great brand is an understandable and, at times, even worthy goal, but after creation it’s necessary to care for the brand, AKA, brand management.

Sadly, more and more effort is being made to ‘Teflonize’ brands and brand management has morphed into brand spin.

Anyone who watches TV knows that Toyota is spending a million dollars a day improving quality and, hopefully, fixing a culture that lost its way.

Then there is BP and its so-so-sincere promise to stay in the Gulf until they make it right—yeah, sure. Business Week offers an excellent view on the impact of the spill long before the oil even got near the shore.

Then there is the most Teflonized brand in the world, the Catholic Church, which I wrote about from the perspective of leader vs. manager a few months ago. The oldest and richest organization on the planet seems to be impervious—a true master of spin brand management. After all, what other brand could withstand the global sex scandals that are rocking the world and still see revenues (donations) increase since January 2010?

The purpose of brand management is to keep a positive image in the public eye, no matter how egregious the actions involved.

This is more easily accomplished than you would think, given the vast majority of the public has a short attention span, poor memory, a greedy nature—Louisiana already wants to resume off-shore drilling—and that’s when they are paying attention.

The question, then, is who will win?

The Teflon brands or us?

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Do you make assumptions? What sort of impact do they have on what you do?

This little exercise is well worth your time.

1. List the last 5 decisions you made;
2. list the criteria on which you based your decisions for each one;
3. think about each criteria and define what percentage of it was grounded in assumptions (you may need to analyze down several layers).

Typically, assumptions underlie most criteria if you drill down far enough.

Knowing that you would do well to remember that assumptions are insidious, sneaky and often masquerade as common sense, logical thinking or general wisdom.

After all, you don’t want your decisions attributed to the first three letters of their actual basis.

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After Monday’s post I had several emails and calls wondering if the ROI for seeing the ‘whole’ was really worth the effort considering the frequency of switching jobs and even industries, not to mention the speed at which everything changed. One caller said he was exhausted just thinking about it. (He was being factious—I hope.)

So on this Friday, before you grab the beer to celebrate your freedom, let’s consider the ‘whole’ in terms of WIIFY (what’s in it for you).

The short answer is that wrapping your mind around the whole is the difference between being considered ‘good’, ‘OK’ and ‘competent’ vs. having adjectives such as ‘great’, ‘brilliant’ and ‘world-class’ attached to your name.

And making the effort to be a ‘whole’ person provides a major benefit for you, personally by reducing—even eliminating—boredom.

Even a constantly challenging job can become routine; the two things that keep it interesting are people, who are ever-changing, and the intricacies of understanding your and the job’s impact on surrounding people and tasks and how it fits into and impacts the whole.

It’s similar to enjoying a baseball game; if you think the most fascinating position is pitcher and that’s the only player you watch, you’ll miss a lot of the action. In fact, you’ll probably miss many of the game-changing plays.

You’ll actually find a lyric harmony in the ‘whole’ and will be much quicker to notice any discordant notes giving you a decided edge within your current company as well as a more accurate assessment of what is really going on.

Mixing metaphors is not good writing, but this kind of holistic, or perhaps I should say ‘wholistic’ approach will be far more accurate in predicting whether you should fish or cut bait.

How’s that for good WIIFY?

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