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Last month I suggested you join a discussion going on at Business Week, offering readers the chance to weigh in and comment on serious workplace topics.

The August 25 issue offers insights gleaned from readers and experts to which I’ll be referring over the next few weeks.

First up are some interesting comments from an interview with Jim Collins of Good to Great fame. Here are some comments that struck me as excellent wisdom.

“…a “stop-doing” list or not-to-do list is more important than a to-do list, because the to-do list is infinite. For every big, annual priority you put on the to-do list, you need a corresponding item on the stop-doing list. It’s like an accounting balance.”

How true! In all my experience I’ve never seen a to-do list, professional or personal, at any level or walk of life that could realistically be finished, although they were constantly added to and/or rearranged.

That made them a continued source of frustration and demotivation.

There’s a reason that IBM’s slogan is ‘THINK’ and Collins research shows that those who with the highest level of effectiveness give themselves time to think. And while his solution takes a lot of self-discipline it’s not rocket science.

“The key is to build pockets of quietude into your schedule—times when you have an appointment with yourself and it’s protected. I have on my calendar “white space” days. I set them six months in advance, and everyone around me can see them. It’s not that I’m not working, but absolutely nothing can be scheduled on a white space day.”

Technology is the excuse I hear most often for not doing this and, again, the solution is grounded in the self-discipline required to turn things off.

“You don’t report to your BlackBerry” should be engraved on your frontal lobe.

Collins also offers great advice to all those functioning in bureaucratic organizations sans the power to alter the situation, but with potential worth staying for.

Although Collins focuses on senior executives with corner office potential, his advice resonates for workers at any level.

“They were focused on what they could control. That is Job One. But they were also really good at figuring out the three to four people in the organization who really mattered and became very good at presenting to them evidence and arguments that were persuasive.”

This is advice that anyone can follow. Instead of allowing all the stuff that you can’t control or change to frustrate you, focus on what you can do while learning and tapping into your company’s social network.

Collins even answers everybody’s question, “How long should I stay—when should I give up and leave?”

“If you produce exceptional work, your ability for influence is very high. Most people, even in bureaucracies, are hard-working, well-intentioned people trying to do good things. If you ever wake up and say the majority of people here aren’t that, then for sure it’s time to jump.”

There’s a lot more packed into a fairly short interview. I hope that you’ll take a moment to read it.

What resonates most with you?

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One of the things that RampUp does for its startup clients is help implement our unique approach to awarding stock options. The original methodology was conceived by RampUp’s angel Al Negrin for his own startups and we’re currently in the process of turning the consulting service into a software program called Option Sanityâ„¢.

Among all the neat things that Option Sanityâ„¢ does is track award dates and provide an audit trail that discourages backdating.

It also provides the intelligence necessary to avoid the level of idiocy present in TeleTech Holdings’ restatement of 12 years’ worth of financials dating back to 1996.

Yup, 12 years of misdated stock options, but no misconduct!

“If we eliminate misconduct, we find ourselves in the land of cluelessness, sloppiness and ineptitude… There were other goofy mistakes, like recording option grants for folks who were no longer on the payroll…And the firm’s options accounting treated some consultants like employees.

As in many of these options messes, the compensation committee’s use of “unanimous written consents” instead of real meetings (and befuddlement over who had authority to make grants) led to massive confusion about the dates on which options were officially granted. The investigators had to reconstruct the circumstances behind every grant to figure out the “appropriate” date (and hence the real exercise price) for each one. The company admits that some dates “could not be determined with certainty.”

All of which goes to prove Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

What do you think?

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There’s no time to post about all the interesting articles on corporate culture that I find, so I thought I’d offer several up with a few notes.

Wow! A founder who not only knows the front-line people (read: those the customers see) are the key to success, but puts his founder stock where his mouth is. No, not some high tech hot-shot in Silicon Valley, but Robbie Lee, CEO and founder of U.S. Dry Cleaning Corporation, the nation’s fastest-growing chain of dry cleaning operations.

According to Deborah Rechnitz, chief operating officer, “Robbie believes very strongly that our front-line employees are the key to our success. He also wants them to know that the company values their efforts and that they too can participate in the success of the company.”

Michigan isn’t the first place most people think of when cultural innovation is mentioned, but that’s what Rich Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor has successfully fostered.

“Inside Menlo’s offices above a coffee shop a few blocks from the University of Michigan’s central campus, there are no walls.

• No cubicles.
• Nobody working long nights.
• Nobody working weekends.
• No offshoring of work to programmers in India or other countries.
• And nobody telecommuting, sort of counterintuitive for a technology firm in the era of virtual offices.
• And if a client is a cash-starved entrepreneurial start-up — is there any other kind? — Menlo might just cut its usual rates for custom software by 50% in return for equity in the client’s business or royalties from its products.”

Casino’s are the last place you expect to find good culture, but apparently Caesars gets it right.

“It’s something you hear over and over about Caesars in its birthplace; good people, the place runs right; the staff make good money. Not the best money, like they raked in back in the good old days . But still among the best.”

Many Canadian companies also have their cultural act together, among them are…

• “When people have passion projects or interests . . . there is a culture here that they’re not shy or unwilling to come forward… It’s that kind of flexibility, out-of-the-box thinking and attention to corporate culture that truly differentiates a company from competitors” explains Chris Bedford, president of Calgary-based branding agency Karo Group.

• “Creating an open dialogue where employees truly have a voice and are listened to also makes a profound difference. “We’re constantly hiring,” he says. “Not only are we overstaffed, but we’re cherry-picking the best people and it all comes because of the reputation,” according to Bruce Rabik, chief operating officer of Rogers Insurance Ltd.”

There are great lessons to be learned from these cultures and the people who create/enable them. And if you want to implement similar ideas in your company, I’m willing to bet that every one of them would take the time to address your how-to questions.

How do you foster out-of-the-box cultural idea in your company?

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A post on Yielding Wealth asking readers how they defined ‘wealthy’ reminded me of a post I wrote year ago about executive pay, which included having your taxes paid on various perks, and even on compensation.

But the “golden coffins” being made public due to a rule change 18 months ago really blow me away.

This isn’t about life insurance; it’s about really big bucks if they happen to die while still in office. How big?

“Eugene Isenberg, the 78-year-old chief executive of Nabors Industries Ltd… If Mr. Isenberg died tomorrow, Nabors would owe his estate a “severance” payment of at least $263.6 million, company filings show. That’s more than the first-quarter earnings at the Houston oil-service company.”

At 78 there’s a good chance he’ll collect, too.

And then there’s the death-related non-compete clause.

“The CEO of Shaw Group Inc. is in line to be paid $17 million for not competing with the engineering and construction company after he dies.”

We all know that the pay-for-performance principle often doesn’t hold true, but death benefits have to be the ultimate nose-thumbing on that subject.

Shareholders are in revolt and have forced Comcast to scrap its plan to pay the 88-year-old chairman of its executive committee his $2 million annual salary for five years after his death.

In addition to hard cash, stock options are subject to accelerated (read: immediate) vesting resulting in yet more money upon death.

Certainly sounds like a good motive for a murder mystery—unless you’re a shareholder.

Read the article and you tell me, are death benefits fair?

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Does one really have to be an accountant, lawyer, minister or whatever expert in order to recognize when something is likely illegal or, at the least, unethical?

“That’s not my area of expertise” is the excuse du jour on most of the financial games being played—especially option backdating.

I find it very amusing when I hear high-powered corporate CEOs explaining that they don’t have the financial or legal savvy to understand that backdating is a no-no.

In one high profile case dating back to 2006 involves Dr. William McGuire, former CEO of UnitedHealth Group, who “…relied on others to assess the legality and appropriateness of backdated stock options granted to top executives and new hires. As such, all allegations against him in a shareholder’s lawsuit should be dropped.”

I love this part, “Dr. McGuire has no formal training or degrees in finance, accounting or law,” the brief states. “His only professional training is as a medical doctor with a specialty in pulmonology.”

Maybe no formal training, but please! There’s no way he was hired to run one of the largest health-care companies in the country without good business knowledge and skills.

No formal training, but didn’t he read or listen to the news? The backdating went on for 12 years and there certainly were news stories of other companies that got in trouble doing it during that time. The cost? $1.56 billion downward restatement of earnings.

But it’s the Cablevision case that really cracks me up.

“Cablevision had awarded 400,000 stock options to a deceased vice chairman, while making it appear as though the options had been granted prior to his 1999 death.”

Cablevision just settled, “…terms of the settlement agreement, certain present and former Cablevision directors and execs will pay Cablevision $24.4 million, while Cablevision’s liability insurer will kick in another $10 million. Cablevision has also agreed to adopt a number of corporate governance changes relating to stock-based compensation awards.”

Who said that greed ends with death?

(To learn why I chose this picture just click it and read.)

Heard any good corporate greed stories lately?

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As long-time readers know, I have a rabid interest in all things corporate culture.I especially like stories about the bleeding edge of corporate culture where radical new stuff is tried and those about entrepreneurs who lose their corporate culture as they grow, figure out what went wrong and do it differently the next time.

When those two interests merge I really get excited. Here’s the story.

Reed Hastings founded Pure Software in the Nineties and several mergers later became part of IBM. ‘Hastings says Pure, like many other outfits, went from being a heat-filled, everybody-wants-to-be-here place to a dronish, when-does-the-day-end sausage factory.’We got more bureaucratic as we grew.”

Hastings was wealthy, but not happy. So he took two years off and did some deep thinking so that ‘his next endeavor wouldn’t suffer the same big-company creep.’

Now comes Netflix, where Hastings’ personnel policies are as revolutionary as his business model.

‘Hastings pays his people lavishly, gives them unlimited vacations, and lets them structure their own compensation packages. In return, he expects ultra-high performance. His 400 salaried employees are expected to do the jobs of three or four people. Netflix is no frat party with beer bashes and foosball tables. Nor does the company want to play cruise director to its employees. Rather, Netflix is a tough, fulfilling, ‘fully formed adult’ culture, says marketing manager Heather McIlhany. ‘There’s no place to hide at Netflix.”

Netflix is 180 degrees away from a mentality I detest—that of ‘paying just enough to attract talent but not a dollar more than they need to.’

Generally, people will give you what you expect, because your expectations color or taint your attitude and there’s no way to hide that. Even without Netflix-style perks you can build a high-performance culture by treating your people as adults.

What are your expectations?

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I’m sure many of you saw the story abut the escalating talent war between Vmware and Google,“Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research, estimated that Palo Alto, California-based VMware is paying $130,000 to $160,000, plus stock options –compensation that only Google can match, he said.

The programmers I know say that most offers are still tied closely to industry averages and that no one “wants to see the craziness of the ’90’s again”—except, of course, the programmers who are getting those salaries and the ones who feel they should be.

But many managers will still blow their in-house salary curves and start throwing in sign-on bonuses and other perks when chasing talent, totally ignoring the proven adage that “people who join you just for money and stock, will leave you for more money and stock.”

When the talent market gets tight is the time to remember that the best performers didn’t necessarily

• have the best grades;
• attend a prestigious school;
• work for your competitor or
• even in your industry;
• have a full head of hair that has no gray; or
• fits easily into your comfort zone.

This is the time when your hiring skill really matters; when your ability to recognize jewels where others see only lumps of coal.

Real loyalty can’t be bought with either money or stock options, it’s earned through your actions, your willingness to take a chance, to provide the place where the coal has the opportunity to become a diamond.

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A candidate recently posed a question on Startupping asking if a company should share its valuation when offering shares.

After 20+ years recruiting for startups, another nine consulting/coaching startup CEOs, including a specific approach to giving out stock options, and, shortly, releasing a software program based on our option allocation methodology, I really wanted to grab the execs in that company and shake them. But if I shook every exec who wonders if they really have to tell, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.

But just to be sure, I asked a serial entrepreneur I know what he thought and here’s his answer.

“Well, I suppose it’s not actually illegal to refuse to disclose facts about your stock plan to a candidate. It’s kind of stupid, like saying, “we can’t tell you what we are going to pay you when you join, but it’s going to be reasonable.” Who would accept that as an offer? Questions about the size of the total stock pool, the valuation of the company, the current option price and the percentage that the candidate’s initial option represents of the total stock are all fair and realistic questions that a good candidate would ask, and if the company refuses to answer them, I think the candidate should immediately get the idea that there’s something screwy with the management of the company.”

That’s really the crux of the matter. Essentially, the company is saying, “We want you to work for us, but we don’t trust you, nor do we consider our business any of your business.”

Whoee, is that an attitude to impress a candidate or what? Wouldn’t you just love to work for someone who asks for, but gives not?

Further, having staffed for startups, I know that the last thing you need is a high level of naiveté. If your candidates don’t ask about valuation it’s up to you to explain it anyway—and keep explaining until they truly understand—because if they don’t understand they have no reason to bust their buns at the level required in a startup.

Whether this company’s response was due to ignorance or information control issues it’s a very likely harbinger of their MAP and its resulting culture.

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