Passion. The life of an entrepreneur is occasionally exhilirating, and almost always exhausting. Only unbridled passion for the concept is likely to see you through the 17-hour days (month after month) and the painful mistakes that are part and parcel of the start-up process.

Community. A friend started a real estate brokerage a few years ago. By the time she'd added her second employee, she was a pillar of her 35,000-person community. No rule says that only the local banker or car dealer can organize the program to raise supplemental funds for the public library or send the high school band on a well-earned special trip. Participating in community affairs, with time more than dollars, is good business from day one. It gets your name around, adds to your distinctiveness, and, best of all, makes you an attractive employer (which is the key to sustained success).

What Diversity "Problem"?

"Dealing with Diversity Problem." "Clearing the Diversity Hurdle." Assimilating the Rainbow within the Workplace."

You've read dozens of business-journal headlines like that, right? And do you agree with me that they're silly?

Diversity problem? Hurdle?

Diversity creates one and only one thing: opportunity.

Business, in the mad global marketplace, needs a rush of serious creativity. Creativity is invariably, a byproduct of sparks, new views, juxtaposed interests, etc. How does a company acquire those assents? Diversity!

All other things being equal, which company (car maker, textile producer, bank) is going to create the more interesting product or services?

This one?

The 17 members of the executive group of Company A file in the boardroom. All U.S. born (whoops, sorry, one Canadian). Fifteen are white males, best guess at average age: 47. One female: One Japanese-American. Dress: suites, suites, suites as far as the eye can see.

Or this one?

Company B's 16-person top team noisily straggles into the boardroom attired in everything from Brooks Brothers to Calvin Klein to Banana Republic to Venice Beach leftovers. Six of the 16 are white males, four are women (two white, one African-American, one Hispanic), plus two Indian-born males, two British-born male. Average age: about 42, with two or three who are clearly on the low side of 32.

It's a no-brainer: Company B by 20 furlongs.

Sure, I'm oversimplifying. Or am I? It seems obvious to me that Cacophony, Inc, a wild mixture of colors, sexes, styles, and ages will almost automatically generate and pursue more interesting ideas than Homogeneity, Inc. My argument is a simple statistical one: The variety of experiences, from birth onward captured in a Company B executive meeting is immensely greater than in a similar meeting at Company A. An unusually high level of curiosity among Company A's OWMs (old white males) makes virtually no difference; Company B's folks bring hundreds of years of um, diverse perspectives to bear on everything from soup to software.

Is Company B a sea of tranquility? Of course not. Diversity implies clashed, subtle and overt. People (men and women, London born and L.A. born, 20-somethings and 50-somethings) will bridle at what they feel are bizarre -- and dumb -- views held by others from time to time. The Company B top team (and the rest of the company, too, assuming its makeup mimics the top) could probably benefit from a hefty does of sensitivity training. But the point of such training is not to "clear a hurdle" or "solve a problem." On the contrary, it's to help the company reap maximum possible strategic leverage from its diversity advantage.

Oh Lord, there it is again. The question;" What kind of business should I start?" Incidentially, it has a twin that also sets me off: "What should I specialize in during the second year of my MBA studies?"

Sorry, but those are two of the most profoundly upsetting questions anyone can ask -- upsetting because the answer should be obvious: Do what turns you on, not what the statistics say is best.

Business, life itself, is damned hard work if you wanna be good at it. Actually, that's precisely wrong. Business ceases to be work when you're chasing a dream that has engorged you. ("Work should be more fun than fun" -- Noel Coward.) And if the passion isn't there. then biotech and plumbing will be equal drags.

Like it or not -- and often we don't -- power is a pervasive phenomenon. From midnight decisions in the Oval Office that risk the lives of young Americans to quarrels over the kitchen table, power is part of every human equation. Yes, it can be -- and often is -- abused, in business as in all arenas of endeavor. But it can also be used to do great good for great numbers. And as a career-building tool, the slow and steady (and subtle) amassing of power is the surest road to success.

Rolodex power. Your power is almost directly proportional to the thickness of your Rolodex, and the time you spend maintaining it. Put bluntly the most potent people I've known have been the best networkers -- they "know everybody from everywhere" and have just been out to lunch with most of them.

One reason (among many) that women may well take over the world of "virtual enterprises" is that they seem to have a greater instinct for networking. And the unfettered-by-machismo males who have taken to networking will do better than those who shun it as "sissy stuff." But truth is, it has always been the age of "networkers"; and in an era where organizations depend more and more on tenuously connected outsiders to get the job done, it will only become so.

Maintain one good friend who revels in telling you that you're full of hooey. When you get to the top of the heap, nothing you hear is true (or, at least the whole truth). Keeping things in perspective is very, very difficult. The difficulty is directly proportional to the size of the heap you're sitting atop.

The best defense is one good, no-bullshit buddy. It can be a spouse. It can be a college roommate you talk to three times a year. But somewhere, somehow, you've got to keep in touch with reality. A person who can laugh at you -- and making you laugh at yourself. When Roman senators addressed the masses, they'd have an underling stand behind them whose sole job it was to lean over and repeat: "Remember you're mortal."

Quite simply, no matter how hard you try, no matter how "open" you are, you'll end up surrounded by "yes people." It's hard not to believe people who are repeating your own ideas. Resist the temptation.

CEO Hal Rosenbluth chronicled the incredible success of his travel-services firm, Rosenbluth Internationl, in...

The Customer Comes Second.

Love that title!

Who comes first? Don't be silly, says King Hal; it's employees. That is -- and this dear Watson, is elementary -- if you genuinely want to put customers first, you must put employees more first.