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someone has ever given up a prepaid wireless phone number. Where housing is often uncertain, those numbers are a more reliable way to find you than addresses; giving one up may indicate you are willing (or have been forced) to disappear from family or potential employers. That is a bad sign.

Character (though it is usually called something more neutral-sounding) is now judged by many other algorithms. Workday, a company offering cloud-based personnel software, has released a product that looks at 45 employee performance factors, including how long a person has held a position and how well the person has done. It predicts whether a person is likely to quit and suggests appropriate things, like a new job or a transfer, that could make this kind of person stay.

characterize managers as “rainmakers” or “terminators,”

“Algorithms aren’t subjective,” he said. “Bias comes from people.”

Algorithms are written by human beings. Even if the facts aren’t biased, design can be, and we could end up with a flawed belief that math is always truth.

Technology distracts us. We’re wired to our smartphones. It’s increasingly challenging to be present and to listen. It’s tempting to fire off texts and emails during meetings; to surf the Internet while on conference calls or in classes; and, for some, to play games rather than tune in. While offering us enormous conveniences, electronic communication also leads to misunderstandings. It’s easy to misread intentions. We can take out our frustrations, hurl insults and take people down a notch from a safe distance.

Incivility shuts people down in other ways, too. Employees contribute less and lose their conviction,

To be fully attentive and improve your listening skills, remove obstacles. John Gilboy told me about a radical approach he took as an executive of a multibillion-dollar consumer products company. Desperate to stop excessive multitasking in his weekly meetings, he decided to experiment: he placed a box at the door and required all attendees to drop their smartphones in it so that everyone would be fully engaged and attentive to one another. He didn’t allow people to use their laptops either. The change was a challenge; initially employees were “like crack addicts as the box was buzzing,” he said. But the meetings became vastly more productive. Within weeks, they slashed the length of the meetings by half. He reported more presence, participation and, as the tenor of the meetings changed, fun.

The conference was organized around sharing best practices with universities around the world — that is, sharing best practices with our competitors. It’s amazing to hear specifics on what schools are doing to help executive MBA students through career services, tailored content or leadership skills training, among other things. What’s even more remarkable is that people genuinely share details about their programs in an effort to help other schools improve their programs.

Diversity is not just about accessing multicultural markets.  Companies must look more broadly to reinvent the way we think about how business is done.  How can diversity be pulled out of this commoditized mentality?  Diversity leadership must drive innovative perspectives.  Companies have not yet figured out how to unlock the potential within markets and processes that must be enabled globally.”

Diversity has allowed IBM to be innovative and successful for 100 years and to work across lines of differences in 172 countries, amongst 427,000 employees.

For example, are you paying attention to the Internet and how online communities continue to grow and represent different voices and points of view?