On the front page of the FT (Finance Times ) last Tuesday was a photo of three white men in their 60s all shaking hands together. This was not terribly remarkable: every day the FT is full of pictures of white men approaching retirement age. What was odd about this trio was their extraordinary uniformity. On the left was Phil Condit, departing chief executive of Boeing, and on the right the man who is to take his place. Both men had the same glasses, the same short brown hair receding sharply at the temples. They were in the same navy blazers with brass buttons and the same button-down shirts with the same top button ill-advisedly undone to reveal the same section of loose neck. The only difference was that the outgoing guy seemed to have eaten more business lunches and looked tougher. Between them sat Lew Platt, the new chairman, who had dared to be different by wearing grey instead of navy, but otherwise it was the same story with the hair, specs, shirt and neck. The clothes and the hairdo are a superficial sign of a deeper urge to be identical. My evidence for this comes from a study of CEO biographies, which I carried out last week. The biog is a curious document. Not quite a CV, it is a standard five to six paragraphs documenting the subject’s proudest achievements to date. It is posted on the company’s website and handed out at the slightest excuse. The purpose of the biography is presumably to distinguish one chief executive from another. Yet, having pored over the biogs of 24 U.S. business leaders, I can confirm that they are identical in both style and form. The result is that I cannot recall a single fact that distinguishes Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard from Richard Wagoner of General Motors or him from Samuel Palmisano of International Business Machines. This is how to write the classic CEO biog. You start off by giving the date you became CEO of your company, which you must describe as world leader in something or other. If profits or revenues have risen since you became CEO, you should quote the results and attribute them to yourself. If they have not (as is mostly the case now), you keep quiet about them. The classic biog proceeds with a list of all the other positions held on the climb up the ladder to the top. These are linked with "previously" and "prior to". The rule here is that no postings are too dull to mention. Take this from the CEO of Sara Lee. "In 1990 he assumed responsibility for Sara Lee’s Packaged Meats, Bakery and Foodservice businesses. In 1993 he added Coffee & Grocery and Household & Body Care businesses, based in Utrecht, the Netherlands..." and on it goes. I shall spare you the rest. Then there is an awards section. The tone here should be uniformly vainglorious so that it is impossible to tell whether the award is prestigious or not. It does not matter if the award was received a while back. More important still is the charitable stuff. The wording should be like this. "Samuel DiPiazza has always been very active in civic affairs throughout his career", followed by a list of all charitable positions past and present. Quantity is what counts here. Fewer than three charities does not cut it. Finally you list your degrees and educational achievements. Sumner Redstone tells us that he graduated first in his class at high school some 60 years ago--which was probably gratifying for him at the time but, 60 years on, is of dubious relevance to Viacom’s shareholders. A few end with something like "X resides with his wife Sheila near Ashland, Kentucky" but most of them skip this section, which is a shame. None takes the trouble to document previous wives in the same way they do previous jobs, which is even more of a shame. What is the author’s tone in this article