A Wrap-up of the University Club’s Roundtable on the Tech Industry

Christine Benton

The biggest challenge facing the technology industry is people. Or more specifically, the lack thereof, according to tech industry leaders at a recent San Diego business breakfast. The event, hosted by the University Club San Diego, brought together executives from a broad swath of the technology industry to discuss the state of the industry in San Diego and beyond. The discussion was led by Jim Goldman, chairman of the U.S. Technology Practice at public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and former CNBC Silicon Valley bureau chief.

The panelists didn’t identify capital or revenue as the greatest challenge facing tech industry companies. They said their biggest challenge was staffing and recruiting tech-related positions—such as software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople.

In a time of double-digit unemployment, “there are more than 6,000 technology-related positions open in San Diego alone,” said David Titus, president of the San Diego Venture Group and managing director at venture capital firm Windward Ventures.

George Mathew, president and COO of Irvine-based Alteryx, nodded. “Fifty percent of my time is spent on staffing and recruiting,” he said.

While a few were surprised by this, Titus backed up Mathews, saying that when he looks at companies to invest in, he looks for senior executives who spend a significant amount of time on staffing, pointing out that these executives are more realistic than those who turn to recruiting and staffing as a second or third priority.

The challenge is exacerbated by U.S. immigration policy, said Titus, which currently requires foreign students who matriculate and earn advanced degrees at U.S. universities to return to their home countries after graduation. “We are educating them and then sending them back,” noted Titus. “Why not allow them to work here and make our companies and economy stronger?” He urged people to support the STAPLE Act, which would authorize certain students from foreign countries to be admitted for permanent residence after earning a PhD from a U.S. university in the field of science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

Admiral Jim Zortman, sector vice president of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, shared a few ways that he has approached the staffing issue, including working with high schools and colleges within the framework of internship programs. “If you have a good internship program, by the time the intern is in his or her third year of internship you have a pretty good idea of whether they’re a good fit for your company,” he said.

In addition, he pointed out, “Not everyone peaks at the moment of graduation.” While other companies go for the top graduates, he may aim a few spots down, looking for qualities in a candidate that will help them to be strong in the long-term. Zortman mentions that, like others on the panel, his team has been able to lure candidates to move to San Diego from other parts of the country by giving them a taste of Southern California in the winter. However, many leave after two to three years, so he has learned to focus on candidates he believes will be here for the long run.

Do you share the same challenges in your industry? Use the comment section below to let us know!

Christine Benton is a director in the Technology Practice at Burson-Marsteller. Based in North County San Diego, she is an avid lover of both San Diego and Technology. You can reach her at christine.benton[at]bm.com.

I have spent considerable time speaking with business friends about trust in leaders.  These conversations were prompted by last year’s results of the 10-year annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey.  They sampled 4,475 opinion leaders in two age groups (25-34 and 35-64) in 20 countries, a 30-minute telephone survey of “informed publics.”  (www.edelman.com/trust/2009/)

One disturbing finding that led to these conversations is that only 17 percent of the 35-64 year old “informed publics” trust information given by a CEO about his or her company.  This is six-year low.

For better or for worse, my understanding is that, in terms of influence, it only takes about 15% of people agreeing to anything (a philosophy, a code of behavior, a belief) to change the tide and move the masses.  Robert Porter Lynch, who has done considerable research in the area of trust and leaders, posits that trust is the bedrock of democracy, and when our trust is damaged, we are doing damage to the very principles upon which this country is founded.  We are precipitously close to that tipping point.

Since I coach CEOs and their executive teams, I am personally appalled.  But more appalling than the sense that our business leaders have behaved badly and deserve this reputation — some do and most don’t — is my concern that all CEOs have been painted with the same brush as those who deserve to be penalized and put away for a very long time, damaging others’ reputations by association.  There are leaders who do wrong intentionally, and others who are simply careless.  In a Financial Times some months ago, for example, BP’s CEO Tony Hayward admitted that they were not prepared for a category disaster he called “low probability, high risk.” Indeed.

BP, after an estimated $20 bn leak with costs to our environment and the human psyche that are unconscionable and immeasurable finally began looking into their strategy and tools to resolve such risks.  Tony Hayward is not a bad person, but inadequate thinking and planning has exacted an extraordinarily high toll.  Regardless, whether they make a mistake of wrongful thinking, or they are out to get us as was the case with Bernie Madoff, bad decisions of those in power cost us trust in leaders inclusively.

A recent release that should be a MUST READ for every executive in the world is Herb Baum’s The Transparent Leader, in which Baum said, “A lot of executives who made headlines (because of a scandal) were just plain white-collar thieves who deserved to do time.  And there were others who were basically good people who made compromises when they shouldn’t have.  They stretched the truth because they thought they had to, and they made some business decisions that were short on integrity. They had risen to leadership positions, but they failed because they didn’t understand how to be open with various constituents and they were unable to build a culture base on trust in the organizations they led.”

Let’s assume leaders should do more to warrant our trust.  BP’s Hayward has admitted the criticism of the oil spill and subsequent inability to stop the damage was ‘entirely fair.”  Ok, it was an event, a mishap.  Let’s look at an ordinary, reoccurring factor.  Who is culpable, for instance, for extraordinarily high CEO wages?   Considerable finger wagging has been going on in the press at CEOs about this.  It isn’t the CEO who sets his or her own salary; it is the board of directors.  Yet they are invisible to the press in these stories.  So often our assumptions lead us to conclusions that malign others without full consideration for the facts.  This disturbs me greatly but I know I have done it, too.  Why is that?

Walking with a friend, I mentioned a situation that was just this kind of wrongful maligning, and she asked me, “How long does it take to find a witch?”  She was alluding to the days in Europe from 1480 to 1700 when legally sanctioned and official witchcraft trials resulted in from 40,000 to 100,000 executions. It was decided someone was a witch, and next thing you know that person was burned at the stake.

While we’ve moved beyond flagrantly burning people at the stake, we still do character assassinations every day, in the form of judgment and gossip.   Some of this finger wagging and witch-hunting and broad-brush painting is projection — making someone else responsible for what we, ourselves, don’t want to be responsible.

Without some troops I would not tackle a project like shifting the locus of my business from my computer to another system so that others could share it.  Having that locus of control shifted makes many things possible that weren’t possible before.

While I have them (before they move on with their REAL lives), Ipek (on the left) and Semih (on the right) are making possible this transition to Cooler Email and other great tools of productivity.

On a related topic, I attended a business gathering last evening where we talked about execution of strategy.  The overarching theme of the evening was that for there to be a shift in the collective consciousness of bringing our heart to the business world, and not just our head, we all need to work for the common good and make decisions with the common good in mind, not just our selfish interests.

This is a theme of mine, and fortunately not JUST mine!  Working for the common good means that as we go about our regular work, we bring in the fine art of considering how what WE do will impact others.

I have helped Semih find a school where he will get his MBA, and I will help Ipek get a job.  I met these two young adults through an earlier intern, Orcun, whom I helped find a job and in doing so I lost him as an intern.  He replaced himself by introducing me to his two friends who needed internships.  THAT, my friends, is the FINE art of getting things done!  When I released my need for Orcun to be my intern, little did I know that I would end up doubling my workforce of interns!  My deciding based on the common good turned out to be good for me, good for Orcun, and good for Ipek and Semih.

I think that’s the way the world REALLY works, and it is NOT intuitive any more than leaning into the curve on a motorcycle is intuitive.  It is a choice, and in the end things get done that should get done, even though in the beginning we don’t see the whole picture.

While this video is a long, amateurish video (I did it) of 20 minutes or so, the contents are worth watching for the joy of seeing professionalism at a young age.  The team included Ryan Rotariu, CEO; Asia Snook, VP Marketing, Kim McIntyre, VP Operations and Michelle Plamondon, VP Finance. Their challenge — to make executive team decisions while running a public, international company over a seven year period.  This is a stellar executive presentation to their “board of directors,” of whom I was one, in the Intercollegiate Business Strategy Competition (ICBSC), at the end of year six of the simulation.

I understand second hand that they participated in this simulation for a measley 1 college credit, and returned to college from the San Diego competition to take finals (they are undergraduate seniors).

Anyone who has presented results will be sufficiently impressed with their thoroughness of analysis, and indeed they did win against three competitors in their “world” of four competitors.  Enjoy!

Larry and I had occasion recently to dine at the University of San Diego (my MBA Alma Mater) with Frank Partnoy and several others from the Corporate Director’s Forum.  Pictured here to Frank’s right is Cindy Richson, an expert in corporate governance and critical member of the organizing committee of the Corporate Governance Conference that Larry chairs each year since its inception five years ago.  The group was gathered to discuss next year’s January Corporate Governance Conference.  I was there as a spouse, so my view of the event was somewhat different.

My fascination was with Frank Partnoy, law professor at USD.  First of all, he’s a very approachable and funny human being.  Second, he is the most entrepreneurial lawyer/professor I’ve met in a long time.  But third, and most fascinating to me, is the list of books that he has written, all seemingly devoted to uncovering the dirt on Wall Street and the investment world.

These books are entitled, in the order they were written, F.I.A.S.C.O.: The Inside Story of Wall Street Trader, followed by “The Match King,” about Ivan Kreuger, the infamous “Match King.”  Kreuger was known as the “Match King” because he held monopolies on the sale of matches in many countries, but his financial empire extended to banking, construction, film, mining, paper, railways, and telephones. He was a statesman as well as a financier, and usurped Jack Morgan as the leading lender to Europe. He rescued France from bankruptcy, and nearly saved Germany. He charmed everyone, from President Hoover to Greta Garbo to the journalists who put his boyish face on the covers of Time and The Saturday Evening Post. Kreuger favored perception over reality. He believed financial statements were an art, not a science. When asked to name his three rules for success in business, Kreuger advised “silence, more silence, and still more silence.”  He was found dead with a bullet through his heart.  He was labeled by some pretty significant historians, among them John Kenneth Galbraith (a favorite of mine) and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. as the greatest fraud in history.

Frank’s most recent book is called “Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets.”  I can honestly say that I have not READ these books, cover to cover, but I have met Frank, and he’s a man with a mission and it’s a mission I heartily endorse.

Here’s what his website (www.frankpartnoy.com) say about Infectious Greed.  “Recent corporate scandals have brought our attention to the dangerously complex and unregulated financial practices of some of the world’s most successful companies. Frank Partnoy, author of the riveting business bestseller F.I.A.S.C.O.: The Inside Story of Wall Street Trader, brings his impressive understanding of complex financial transactions and legal expertise to a fascinating tour of the institutions, scandals, and business cultures that brought us to this moment. In tracing the evolution of increasingly complex derivatives’ use over the past fifteen years–and an appetite for risk and return that made it possible–Partnoy demonstrates that despite the media’s narrow focus on Enron, it was only the tip of the iceberg. The culmination of a steady erosion of personal and institutional control, today’s financial landscape is loaded with ticking time bombs with far greater potential for harm and loss than any other period in our history.”

Go Frank, go!  I hope this latest book sells as many or more than your previous books, and that the people who should learn their lessons do so.  The dinner was delicious, and thank you again for sharing your roasted garlic.

There isn’t really anything to say about this gift from Earl Nightingale, except it is worth the half-hour required to soak up the encouragement and the guidance.  I’ll stop now, so you can do just that!

First, you have to trust people to do a good job, and in this instance we were speaking of someone holding the job of CEO. When a CEO reports to a board, how do you govern that CEO such that they are responsible AND allow them to do their job, their way.

In this video with Kim, you can get it straight from “the horse’s mouth,” (sorry Kim, not a literal translation)… Kim is an advisor to the corporate world. He lives in St. Louis. What you should know about Kim, in addition to his comments here on corporate governance, is that he authored a book called “The Power of No” in which Kim (and contributors) illustrate just that! Get the book, it’s excellent!  I particularly appreciate Kim’s straight talk.  No muss, no fuss, just straight talk.  We could use more of that today, with a sagging low in trust of leaders in this country (and elsewhere, we don’t on the corner on that malady).

In the name of mission (and I would say some think mission is vision, so I’m including vision here also), do the right thing. Clear communication enables a whole host of positive effects. Too many wus’s won’t take a hard stand, set a clear boundary, say no. Amazingly enough, some of the most mature, noble looking men fall into the trap of being too nice, and mucking it up for everyone from the top of an organization down to the last person to feel the effects of poor leadership.

To that I say, “Cut it out!” Get Kim’s book, read Susan Scott’s “Fierce Conversations,” and go back to the mission. Whatever doesn’t fit the vision and the mission, do not tolerate.

I just made a significant assertion and would like to test it out.  I would like to know if you see YOUR leaders fostering YOUR trust, and if so, how?  By leaders, I do not mean “representative” leaders, those whom you know only by reputation with whom you have had no personal experience.  I mean leaders whom you follow because of who they are being and what they stand for.  You might have chosen to work at a company because of exceptional leadership and your trust in that individual, or team.  You might attend a particular church because of the minister and their leadership in the area of spirituality.  You might have joined a not for profit because the leader was successful in enrolling you in the cause, and embodied a trusting presence.  I am wondering about your PERSONAL experience of leaders fostering trust.

We have experienced significant disappointment in leaders in recent months who have demonstrated the antithesis of fostering trust.  The newspapers are full of stories about business leaders at AIG, car manufacturers, financial institutions of all kinds, and political leaders who put self-interest before the interest of customers.  Self-interest at a senior executive level does not foster trust!  I have personally seen a great leader painted with the same brush because of the press around poor leadership. These disappointments, although maybe not personal, can damage our willingness to trust.

The issue of leaders fostering trust is subtle and powerful.  If I were to conduct a survey, what issues would I need to include in that survey to generate an understanding of what, in a leader, fosters trust?  I welcome your comments, your questions, your concerns.