Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting Ranjini Manian through our mutual friend Barbara Annis. Ranjini, who serves with Barbara on the Women’s Leadership Board at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, is author of Doing Business in India for Dummies as well as founder and CEO of a very clever firm based in Chennai called Global Adjustments.
I say “clever” because, as far as I can see, Global Adjustments provides everything that a non-Indian relocating to the subcontinent might possibly need to navigate the personal and practical changes required to make one’s way in a new part of the globe. Moving to India can be quite daunting, and requires the orientation that only an insider can bring.
I have not moved to India, but I did experience the value that an insider sensitive to the requirements of change can bring when Ranjini provided invaluable editorial insights around a piece I recently contributed to the Economic Times (of India).She also recently published this Fireside Chat with me in her own magazine, At a Glance, India’s only intercultural magazine for ex-patriots (soon to be called Culturama), also focused on questions of change for women, for teams and for India.
From this experience with Ranjini, I have gained valuable insight into how one thoughtful Indian thinks about change in a way that is quite different from how those in the West often express our reactions to change.“People fear change” borders on cliché in our organizations, and managing change requires reducing fear, or so the logic goes. Not so, says Ranjini, or certainly not necessary.To help ourselves move into new places both literal and figurative, please scroll down to Ranjini’s editorial letter in her most recent edition of At a Glance.
Her central message: it is necessary to both love and to let go for change to take place with grace.
Dell had its much-ridiculed Della site – a masterpiece of misunderstanding of a large and lucrative customer segment called women.Is British Airways far behind?I wish you could see the image currently on BA’s frequent flyer site, and see how well you think the image captured the interests and lifestyle of at least 50% of the business flying public (in other words, women).
In this image, a little stick man at the center is labeled "You." He looks like the guy on the outside of many public bathrooms for men. He is surrounded by a bevy of other figures, some in little stick trousers, some with little broomstick skirts. The copy reads: "With a complimentary companion ticket on your next trip, who will you take? Where will you go?" The choices are clearly labeled your wife, your daughter, your son, your brother, your boss, your dad, your mom, your best friend (in trousers). (Believe me, it is more compelling in a visual. If you can, go to the website, and check on promotion.)
The three questions that popped to my mind when I unsuspectingly clicked on this promotion on October 13 and smacked into this graphic were: What’s going on here? And, how could this have happened at my beloved BA?I have always really enjoyed flying with them.Finally, don’t they like me? Surely I am not the only potential British Airways business passenger who is not a married man.
The first explanation at which I grasped was corporate sabotage by a disgruntled internal marketing department determined to destroy BA’s brand with half its audience – more than that if you consider that 63% of new business travelers are women.Or perhaps it was an external assault, a thoughtless bit of artwork by poorly chaperoned external designers with no sense of the BA brand.Although I immediately wrote to BA Customer Service to find out, I have yet to get a response so can only speculate.
With or without their input, I can say this: in this instance, BA did a pretty poor job of translating the external market into internal decision making and action taking, a set of activities that is at the very essence of leadership.As the airline’s strategy was executed through its marketing decision-making, it completely missed women, unmarried people, and married gays and lesbians.(It also missed people who might want to travel with their sisters but that is perhaps a little easier to understand).
Think about this miss in terms of the five core elements of leadership:
Strategy: The target market for this offer was either mis-defined or not defined at all (either way, a strategic error)
Execution: Whatever team worked on this project, and whatever decisions were made never caught the error.Was no one thinking about BA’s market positioning or customer during the execution phase of this promotion?
Talent: Who worked on this project?Only married men (without sisters)?Or were there other sorts of people who either didn’t speak up when surely they must have noticed the problems, or, if they did speak up, were neither heard nor heeded.
Human Capital Development: Who will be working on such projects in the future?Are the people and culture being developed for the future – or for the 1950’s? Who exactly is being engaged, rewarded, promoted? Outcomes such as this are directly linked to culture, and culture is the result of who is in and who is out, who is rewarded and promoted, and for what.
Personal Proficiency:Do the people who worked on this have the awareness to realize that this is a problem, and then to act on it?Consider that I wrote to BA two weeks ago alerting them to this issue and have not heard anything back. Another friend and colleague, Jean Williams, wrote to them at the same time and heard last week that this webpage was being examined “at the highest levels.”So far, nothing has changed.Either our little 50% of the market is not viewed as having an important voice, or decisions and actions in BA take an inordinately long time.Either way, there may be a significant issue here that springs from some individual deficiencies.
Am I just being a PC American? I enlisted Jean to do a little surveying because we could hear the backlash winding up across the Atlantic already. Here are some reactions we have sought from what we have gamely tried to make a variety of sources:
“It probably is sexist...?” (female HR executive)
“Stupid rather than sexist, I guess. And crudely drawn at that.” (female board member)
“Piss poor and awfully sexist.” (female executive in financial services)
“This excludes me and my partner.” (senior level consumer products executive, a gay male)
“How lame.” (senior level female scientist)
“I’m most mad that it doesn’t allow me to take my sister.” (female board member)
“Why is the daughter so big and the wife so petite? Why is the mom bigger than the wife?Why is the son so small?Why does the dad have that strange blinder across his face?”(undergraduate psychology major)
“I know someone who will sue them.”(a prominent lawyer)
[blank stare](good male friend, a successful senior executive in manufacturing, early 50’s)
What any of us see is indeed a Rorschach of our own worldview and preconceptions – another reason to be very careful when drawing pictures, writing commentary, selecting and guiding a marketing team, or attempting to be that most difficult thing: a leader.
Would love to hear your reactions.In the meantime, I will hope to hear from BA. I hope they still like me.
My apologies to Nabil Alaoui and Mohammed Dahouch.These two gentlemen, both of Royal Air Maroc, deserve swifter praise for their quick and gracious handling of my personal travel crisis last week.Blame it on the flu – not H1N1, fortunately, but something else that kept me largely out of commission until today.My first act upon recovery is my thanks to them.
The scene: I was on a final leg of a rather grueling 10 day tour of duty that included stops and stopovers in JFK, Frankfurt, Singapore, Bangkok, Paris, Casablanca and Agadir (also Morocco). On Sunday, October 11, I took a day flight across the Atlantic from Casablanca to JFK on Royal Air Maroc.The trip itself was unremarkable – which is that you want on such flights – and my flu must have been coming on because I took down my laptop but never used it because I slept the whole way. In fact, I slept until I had to get off, which was a bit of a mad scramble.And therein lies the problem.
About 2 hours later, after passport control and customs, and shifting my bags at the transfer desk for the final leg to Boston and home, I was in Terminal 3, heading through my final security check. I unzipped my carry-on reflexively to grab my ever-present laptop for its solo journey through security– and it was gone. Empty space. My business life flashed before my eyes: when had I last backed up?Before the trip began.What had I added to the memory?Lots of stuff that I did not want to lose: revisions to writings and workshops, new names and addresses. Yowza.
So I sprinted back to Terminal 1 from Terminal 3. It was easy to calculate that at least two hours had passed since departing the Royal Air Maroc flight. Was my laptop hurtling over the Atlantic in the other direction, its permanent departure from me hastened by the jet stream?Or had my precious helpmate been tossed into a Royal Air Maroc trash bin?Might it have been spirited away to a service worker’s home to be used for all night gaming parties?What were the chances that my precious laptop and I would ever be reunited? How could I have treated my dear friend and valued colleague so callously and carelessly?
Enter Nabil Alaoui and Mohammed Dahouch, the two Royal Air Maroc service professionals at the transfer desk.I had already met Mohammed when I transferred by bag two hours earlier.I remembered him because of his friendly and open smile.He grasped the situation immediately, and, making no promises, sprang into action. First, he asked me if I was a Red Sox fan.When I confessed that was indeed the case, he hesitated, but decided to help anyway. That little act of comedy went a long way toward making me feel that I was among friends. Second, he dashed over to the Delta counter to see if I could take a later flight if the laptop was hard to find. The 6 PM I was on was the latest, so he know that time was of the essence (although I offered to stay overnight if that would make the difference). Third, he quickly ascertained that the plane had left the gate (heart plummets) but he would find out where it was (heart rises). Fourth, he quickly recruited the very willing Nabil Alaoui to head out onto the tarmac of JFK to see what he could do. Fifth, while I was waiting, he shared the story of how he himself had been robbed of $1,000 on a recent trip to Tangiers, and how he knew how it felt to lose something precious.
Within 10 minutes – no longer – Nabil came bounding back with my laptop!Both men were genuinely delighted that it was found and that they were able to help.The only way I know to thank them is to share this story – and to send it along to the powers that be in Royal Air Maroc.
I can’t way that the amenities of Royal Air Maroc rival that of, say, Singapore Air or BA, two of my favorites. But for the human touch, Royal Air Maroc in a world-beater.
The Times of London and McGraw-Hill together sponsor an annual “guru competition” – a World’s Got Talent among management thinkers.Last year’s winner was CK Prahalad -- no big surprise, given his enduring stature, and well deserved given his fascinating work in the fourth tier. Check him and others out at www.thinkers50.com .
The winners are chosen on the basis of voting and judging – don’t really know what the mix is.The criteria are:
1. Originality of Ideas Are the ideas and examples used by the thinker original?
2. Practicality of Ideas Have the ideas promoted by the thinker been implemented in organizations? And, has the implementation been successful?
3. Presentation Style How proficient is the thinker at presenting his/her ideas orally?
4. Written Communication How proficient is the thinker at presenting his/her ideas in writing?
5. Loyalty of Followers How committed are the thinker's disciples to spreading the message and putting it to work?
6. Business Sense Do they practice what they preach in their own business?
7. International Outlook How international are they in outlook and thinking?
8. Rigor of Research How well researched are their books and presentations?
9. Impact of Ideas Have their ideas had an impact on the way people manage or think about management?
10. Guru Factor The clincher: are they, for better or worse, guru material by your definition and expectation?
I am aware of this site because, as you will see if you visit it, I was also invited to be posted in a short video here as well, largely because of my co-authorship of The Leadership Code: 5 Rules to Lead By with Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood.
You may want to check it out, and see what your favorite guru has to say, or meet someone new.Would be interested to hear your impressions, either on this site, or please email me at katesweetman@verizon.net.
I have been blogging since July 1 on the Norwegian experiment: requiring boards to have at least 40% of each gender on its boards.It’s been two years: what’s the result?For the Lessons Learned, please go to my blog on Harvard’s website in which they requested I comment on that very thing:
Norwegian board members both male and female share a perspective on one particularly important governance issue: women bring an ineffable something to the conversation that supports a board's own highest values.
Former Minister of Trade Ansgar Gabrielsen frames this quality in terms of risk:“Women don’t take high risk.These big international scandals – Enron, Elf – the people who got them in trouble were men.The whistle blowers were all women.”
For a concrete example, we need look no further that Norway’s own StatoilHydro.A former board member of StatoilHydro shared the story with me. In the fall of 2004, the eight members of the StatoilHydro board were informed that the firm had provided a series of bribes to Iranian ‘consultants’ during 2002 and 2003 to gain access to oil fields. This behavior completely violates StatoilHydro policy as well as both Norwegian and US securities law (Statoil Hydro trades on the NYSE as well as the Oslo Stock Exchange ).
What was the reaction of the board?At the time, the eight member board consisted of four women and four men.According to my source, who I will disclose is a middle-aged man with a long and successful career both as a chief executive and as a member of multiple boards, the men on the board wanted to contain the matter. The four women said:“This is unacceptable.We need an open investigation of this matter. We need outside people to come in and find out what is going on.” When the vote came around whether or not to fire the CEO, the four men voted to keep him and all the women voted to fire him.At the time, the acting Chairman of the Board was a woman, and she broke the tie by voting to fire him.
What do women bring to boards?According to the Norwegians, more of a willingness to speak up and act on the firm’s own best principles – and less of a willingness to let clubby loyalties interfere. Said one male board member summarizing his take on the StatoilHydro story above: “The real issue is the fraternity of men.It is necessary to break up the in-breeding.It is unhealthy how the men protect each other.They are unwilling to go up against the CEO.Women are.”
For more on this highly sensitive issue of “male pattern bonding”, I highly recommend a column by Nicholas Kristoff that appeared a few months ago in the NY Times. In this piece, he reports on what psychological research tells us about the peculiar downside of certain all-male teams. See Mistresses of the Universe.
I also have to share with you a link to a reader’s website.Kim Dougherty enjoyed yesterday’s blog on Norway, and sent along her blog on what today’s entrepreneur can learn from the adventurous Vikings.Worth a look: www.awordfromthewise.org
And a big THANK YOU to everyone who e-mailed me following yesterday’s blog. The response has been so enthusiastic.Keep ‘em coming: katesweetman@verizon.net
Tomorrow:what advice do the Norwegians give any organization looking to on-board more women onto the board? What do they tell us that women in particular need to do differently to be successful in that lofty perch?
A number of Norwegian board members and chairs, many with CEO experience, agreed to meet with me one-on-one in Oslo last month to give their unvarnished "so-what" on the legislation two years later.
These folks included, among others: Svein Renemo, current Chairman of the Board of Statoil Hydro; Jannik Lindbaek, Ex-Chairman of Statoil Hydro; Elisabeth Grieg, President of the Norwegian Shipping Association; Barbara Thoralfsson of Fleming Invest and former CEO of Netcom, a major telecomm company; Ole Jacob Sunde, chairman of Schibsted, Norway's largest media house; Leiv Askvig, Chairman of Board of the Oslo Stock Exchange.
The ratio of the interviews was 50 percent men and 50 percent women, a fair reflection of the strived-for ratio on boards. The women I interviewed had all had been on boards before the legislation, not as a result of it--and many had opposed it. The central questions, of course, are: Was it worth it? What difference, if any, do women make--positive or negative? Would you recommend that other boards elsewhere intentionally boost the number of women on their boards, with or without legislation?
Many of the board members that I interviewed had resisted the legislation. Almost every one, in fact. Both men and women in the private sector objected to the "quotation" as they call it (in the US, we would call it a quota). You can guess the reasons: quotas are wrong because they are about diversity and business is about meritocracy; quotas are simply a form of institutionalized reverse discrimination--what about the men?; government has no business interfering with the workings of business; quotas on boards flew in the face of shareholder rights; if qualified women existed, we would already have them on the boards; women don't really want this anyway.
Two years later, in a series of one-on-one interviews, every single person said that the boards were measurably improved with the addition of the women. A couple of the boards already had a lot of women: those folks tended to think that a legislation solution had not been necessary. But those who experienced the resistance to having women on boards and then lived the difference when the issue was forced supported the legislation. The reason: the change would never have happened unless it was required.
I share below some quotes that represent the various points that the interviewees made. I do not attribute them directly because I would like to circle back to them to get their individual permission to do so, and Norway, being a sensible nation, is on vacation this month. That will come. In the meantime, here are some unedited, quite representative quotes:
* "I believe that an owner should be able to decide who should work to represent their interests on the board. I have a very big problem with someone saying that a board needs to be a certain way. But, I have to admit, looking back on it, no company regrets it."
* "If I had to generalize about the differences between men and women on boards? Women are more interested in getting the facts. Much more prepared; ask many more questions. Men tend to shoot from the hip. Women on boards are also more interested in how the organization will actually work. Think of an acquisition or a re-org to take a company more global. When women are in the discussion, they ask questions like: 'don't just show me the Powerpoint. Who are these people? What are their responsibilities? Matrix type questions. Women tend to see the organization as more of a living thing."
* "The most important value a board can give me as a CEO is free consulting help. The last thing I would want is the opinion of 3 identical men. Their job is to help me to think."
* "Think about the difference between an evening out with 3 of your girlfriends, or a guy and 3 of his guy friends, or two couple friends going out. It is always more interesting when the couples go out. Very different dynamics. The group dynamics totally change. More civilized. Less swearing, less jockeying for position. The problem with jockeying is that jockeying is about the individual's position, not about the company."
* "In general, diversity makes better decisions: experience, education, age, nationality, gender. They must reflect your customers and your markets. [Previous to the legislation], we had not thought any of this through as deliberately as we should have..."
* "I still do not think that legislation was necessary. Women are not like refugees that need to be assimilated. I don't think that Norwegian men think like that. Women were not on boards more by way of tradition. Patterns of behavior. Not about lack of respect for women's abilities. The [one] benefit of the quotation was that it made the change happen quickly."
* "The changes made (by the quotation) are less substantial than people thought they would be. We still see high quality board members. The women are as strong as the men. The board has become perhaps a bit broader in its approach, and more focused on 'the organization of the organization.' When management presents something to do--an acquisition for example--they had better think through the OD piece of it. The women are bringing their own business experience. Often they are younger, which is great--it's a huge advantage."
* "Women board members tend to take a more independent view."
* "Many of us [in business] reacted negatively because we feared it did not meet our first criteria: relevant competence. But I have learned that this quotation is very, very good. Diversity in general is good, and there is just something about having women."
* "What do women bring? We used to be a fraternity of men sitting on each others' boards. The real issue is the fraternity of men. It is necessary to break up the in-breeding. It is unhealthy how the men protect each other. They are unwilling to go up against the CEO, for example."
* "I disagreed with legislation at first. I believed that the shareholders should choose the board, full stop. The shareholders should not be handcuffed. But now I have lived it. And I have to tell you that the conversation is different and better. More open. Women are different from men: we want the whole story. We want to get at the underlying thing. We stay with that uncomfortable feeling that something is wrong until we find out what it is. We approach issues with a broader mind. We want to know the broader consequences, not just the result for the bottom line."
In blogs later this week, I will share an example from Statoil Hydro illustrating what women add to boards, at least in the opinion of the former board chair. I will also share some advice to women from board chairs around how to on-board to a board to maximize one's chances of success.
I recently enjoyed lunch in the Stortinget , the Norwegian parliament building withAnsgar Gabrielsen, former Minister of Trade, who has been internationally recognized for his bold legislation requiring – nay, forcing – publicly traded Norwegian companies to boost astronomically the percentage of women on their corporate boards from a mere six percent to a full 40 to 60 percent representation. The rationale: companies with substantial numbers of women in their senior ranks do significantly better on the triple bottom line – including the financials.This story has been reported widely in the European press (as an example, I was just sent this link to a recent BBC report ), and the governments of France, Spain and Germany have sent delegations to explore possible applications in their own business boardrooms.
In a nutshell, then-Trade Minister Gabrielsen used the power of the press to get the jump on potential political opposition and by-passed the usual parliamentary processes around introducing legislation to announce in banner headlines to a receptive public what he planned to do.While conservatives and the business world (male and female) howled its disapproval with the fury of battle-enraged valkyrie, the law passed. Now, two years later, even the most adamant opponents almost unanimously agree – some grudgingly, some enthusiastically – that the move was very good for Norwegian boards.I will report more on those reactions later this week.
While the larger story is fascinating, I was equally intrigued by the person of Mr. Gabrielsen.How is it that a lifelong politician, a conservative, a self-avowed non-feminist, took the leap of forcing such a dramatic change?What did he understand that other men in positions of power with responsibility for delivering the highest returns to their stakeholders do not?What compelled him to take action when other did not?
The following is a largely unedited version of our conversation over fiskesuppe (fish soup) and jorbaer (strawberries), Norway’s signature spring lunch.The challenge that I set to Mr. Gabrielsen:What message would you send to boards outside of Norway who will not be subject to such legislation, but who want the most effective boards they can assemble?
AG:This is about shareholders rights.This change gives shareholders more choice about a key element in value creation in a company, diversity. Diversity is a value in itself that creates wealth.It’s important that boards have diversity in education, experience, expertise, age, gender, etc.Too many boards have seven, nine, eleven people who are made in the same factory, very often with the same education, very often in the same year.They go sailing, boar hunting and salmon fishing together.They dine in the same restaurant.They are very alike.I believe in the opposite. It is important that people think their own, different thoughts, and gets to say what is needed, not what is wanted.
KS:So this really isn’t about women per se.It is about how boards are organized and function to get better results.
AG:I am not feminist.I am a conservative.I am practical, rational and I want Norway to flourish.
KS:So why focus on this? There are so many other ways to get at that objective.Why women on boards?
AG:I was trying to maximize value.For that to happen, we need 100% of our best people. We have spent billions on educating both the boys and the girls – and then we cut the girls out. That doesn’t make sense.I had found on the Internet a report. I forget which one.I saw what the scientists say [about the positive economic impact of gender equity at the top of organizations]. The reports were somewhat contradictory but I decided: ‘It cannot be worse if we use the other 50% of the population.’I was not interested in arguing.
KS:And it would have been an argument?
AG:This issue of advancing women was a topic every two to three years in Norway.The project never made progress.I realized:‘It is not ME who should provide the evidence.It is the ones who think their 50% know it all that needs to prove THEIR case.What is the reason for keeping 50% of the population out of the boardroom? My career has been about helping companies and the public sector to understand each other. I know the business sector. I had been in parliament.
KS:And so you forced the issue.
AG:Conservatives were in the majority and we were not making the big step.If you wait for everyone to get on board around an important change, you can wait forever.In October 2001, I was made Minister of Economics and Trade.In six months, I decided for myself: ‘I will be the one who makes the difference.’ I knew that the person who would make a difference had to be a conservative man from business – or a minister of trade – not from a female or a female advocate.
KS:So what did you do?
AG:My strategy started with the question:‘Who do I need to make an alliance with?’I realized: ‘I do not tell anyone.’When I switched my vote, in effect, I made the conservative majority the minority on this topic.
KS:Bold move.
AG:I found a debate in our Parliament from 1910.It was about giving the women the right to vote. Many men in Parliament made the same arguments against that as they give against having women on boards.
KS:Norway and the other Scandinavian countries are world famous for having greater gender equity than just about anywhere else on the globe.Families receive great social support when they have children, allowing both men and women time with their children when they are born, and quality care for their kids when they go back to work.Why wasn’t the situation already taken care of at the top of the house? Why, in all places, was this still a problem?
AG:From the time the first man came into the world, the one who gets power wants to keep it.
KS:Just men?Isn’t that true of mankind in general, women included?
AG:I believe that women are equal to or better than men.Why? Women don’t take high risk.These big international scandals – Enron, Elf – the people who got them in trouble were men.The whistle blowers were all women.I wanted to break up the alpha male club. We had educated 50/50 boys and girls.The women had the experience. There was no reason why they should not advance to the highest levels.
KS:You did this in such a bold way.On 22 February 2002, the headline suddenly appeared in the paper, and by 6 PM you were in the office of a rather furious Prime Minister’s office.
AG:Yes, and I didn’t move.I knew it would work out.On 8 March 2002, I invited six men and 94 women to parliament.For the six men who were there, the effect was very visual and visceral.They got it.They felt what it was like to be in such a small minority. And they realized that they knew almost all of the men and none of the women – maybe one or two.The fault was not with women but with the men’s own entirely male networks. By November 2003, Parliament supported the legislation.It took a little longer for certain members of the business community to get behind it.
KS:I have to say that you went about accomplishing your goal in what can only be described as a very male way: a forcible sort of strength and courage that took on what needed to be done with no one else’s permission.And then, when you had advanced on the issue, you creatively found ways to co-opt others to join your side.
AG:I had to force it because I knew that both the party leader and the prime minister would have said no.
KS:Why do you think the situation exists in the first place? Not just in Norway, but anywhere?
AG:There is something between men and women where they fight each other.In my view, we need both perspectives because men and women are different.Think of 10 boys on a hiking trip. Think of 10 girls on a biking trip. It is hard to name what the real difference is. The older I get, the more I see that nature is driving us.
That is if, as so often remains the case, the current top team is all or almost entirely male despite the best, sincere efforts of all concerned to find and elevate more women.
Shared below is the lightly edited (and disguised) note that I just sent to a senior level woman tasked by her CEO with leading a diversity effort.The well-intentioned CEO’s original request was for more women at the top (there is only one female on the senior leadership team); the brief quickly expanded to be “more diversity in general” and ultimately morphed to “more diversity of thought.”Here is my reaction to the situation:
Some thoughts to continue the conversation. First, thanks again for meeting. I really appreciated all that you shared, and I am impressed with what you have done.
Second, I agree that diversity of thought is the real end game here. The ultimate goal should be that your company evolves to a point where diversity of thought can flourish, and where ideas, energy and action become the points of distinction -- not gender, ethnicity or any of a host of what are now called “differences.” When you think about it, however, starting with diversity of thought as a short term goal is putting the cart before the horse. It is an outcome of other steps that must be successfully undertaken first. Chief among these steps is the issue of getting more women to the top. Why? Because as we discussed, women by definition bring diversity of thought to the top team when it is overwhelmingly male -- you have experienced that personally. It has been amply proven in many studies conducted by major and well-respected institutions that women and men as a group tend to think in ways that are more complementary than identical: they each bring different ideas and perspectives to the table. Therefore, advancing a critical mass of women into the top team is a vital first step toward your ultimate goal. Advancing women in sufficient numbers will allow them to act as their true selves; when they are in too small a minority they must either conform or simply not be heard.Getting enough women into the top team will start to free up the thinking that can immediately lead to better outcomes (wiser decisions, better communication, flatter teams), and create the conditions for other forms of diversity to flow through. And, fact is, you can only tackle so much at once, and women are half of the workforce – you will get a lot of results for the effort.
Why do organizations so often quickly move past the issue of getting more qualified women to the top and go straight to diversity of thought? Frankly, because gender is such a hot potato. This does not need to be the case. It is possible to handle the gender politics with more cool: with sensitivity and more “clinical analysis”. The more that the strengths that each gender brings to business discussion and decisions are understood, the more that gender differences can be valued in ways supportive of both men and women, then the more that positive change can occur.
By the way, developing the ability to hold these conversations and do the right analytics around gender (and, when the time is right, other forms of diversity) will also be of great help to your CEO Jerry. Clearly, his heart is in the right place: he wants to tackle the issue of diversity. It also seems to be true that he is not quite ready to take it on with the boldness that a real diversity effort requires of its CEO.
It takes the leadership of the CEO to overcome the cultural inertia and organizational systems that bias the organization away from diversity. From what I understand from our conversation, he may not truly feel fully confident through and through of the "case for change", or how to make the case convincingly (especially with his alpha male colleagues). Jerry needs more ammunition -- which you are in the process of skillfully providing him in the form of the internal “case study/diverse team guerilla action”. We also need to gather the well-researched external case into a form that he can internalize and share.
These are my thoughts at the moment. Would love to hear your reactions, and I am afraid that this note is already too long!
The senior manager, draped in the traditional black abbaya with her hair modestly tucked beneath her head scarf, smiles continuously over tea as she describes what it takes to become a female leader within a business in her small country. She treats me to one of her favorite indulgences: a proper high tea at a fancy international hotel, complete with Earl Grey tea, scones, clotted cream, and a good assortment of small sandwiches with thin slices of cucumber and egg. No crust.
I am in the country on business myself, playing a small part in an initiative that has been underway for a few years.My job is to help line managers understand better how to work with HR in an effort to improve how business gets done in general, and to help young locals, in particular, to succeed.The goal of the program (like the “–ization” goals of other oil-rich countries in the region) is to boost the number of locals in key jobs in local companies, which are primarily in the oil sector.While a goal of much of the world is to wean their economies off dependence on foreign oil, a key objective in the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia is to wean their economies off their dependence on foreign expertise, to build a business culture rich in leadership and managerial competencies that will serve the countries’ interests beyond oil in the future.
This woman laid out the central story: oil wealth is creating so many opportunities to create other businesses that the main constraint in achieving their "-ization" goal is supply. Like all the Gulf states, this one has a very small population relative to the size of the opportunity. How can these young people be trained and motivated to take on the most challenging jobs of managers and leaders? The change from traditional desert dweller to sophisticated engineers and businesspeople has come in only one or two short generations.At present, a huge workforce of ex-patriots holds most of the jobs.
Since I have not yet gotten permission to use her name for this blog, I will refer to her as L, which is not the first letter of her name. Our conversation takes about an hour, and goes like this:
K:Do young people understand what it takes to succeed at a professional level?
L:Yes, I think they do.They know that they need a formal education. Our country is providing this through schools and universities. We have some very good institutions. Women in particular are keen to get an education. More girls are now getting engineering degrees than are boys.
K:That’s pretty impressive. In the US, we like to think that we are advanced on these things, but this year marks the first time in history that the entering freshman class at MIT has more girls than boys – this despite girls’ achievements in math and science at the high school level. What do your country’s girls plan to do with their engineering degrees?
L:We need more women in the energy sector, and they start out wanting to do that.What the don’t consider is that energy sector jobs are mostly in remote locations. I myself had to drive an hour each way by myself when I started.
K:An hour’s distance is considered to be a remote location?
L:Yes.In our culture, that is considered to be a very long commute. The girl is then away from home for too long during the day. How do you have a social life?How can you care for young kids?Many parents and girls also fear having a girl driving alone for that long.
K:Maybe the companies or the government need to create some housing in the remote locations?
L:That is not really how we do it. People live with their families.Part of the challenge of "-ization" is that the girls have a hard time adjusting to the remote locations. Another hard part is a widespread issue with the boys. Boys seem to think that they can go straight to management. They seem to think that they will work for one or two years as an engineer, then get a big promotion.That’s really not how it works.
K:How did it work for you?
L:I had been a teacher. Several years ago, I joined one of the companies in the energy sector. Yes, it was in a remote location, but I was very determined to succeed. Hesitant, yes, but also determined. I had several children. The youngest one was in grade school, and we had a grandmother at home. So I could drive the one hour each way.I started as a supervisor. I took a diploma in my functional specialty.I did well, and was promoted to the head of the group.
K:Are there many locals at this managerial level?
L:Very few.Then, a year later, my boss left the company for another job elsewhere, and I became the manager.The function and the job were huge but I tackled it.
K:How would you describe yourself as a manager?As a woman trying to get ahead in this culture?
L:I do not like to make the sole decision. I always like to discuss decisions very openly. I like to be very transparent about how decisions are made. I have a meeting every week to discuss things with my team.I think this is very much a part of who I am as a manager and as a person.I also delegate authority.I tell my people: “You can make decisions up to this amount of money.” This makes them feel good.
K:One of the issues that I hear a lot about in your country is managing diversity since you have so many ex-pats. The number I have heard is that ex-pats outnumber locals 5 to 1.How do you manage that?
L:Diversity is not an issue for me because I am very transparent. In our company, all of our HR policies and guidelines are on-line.This transparency gives people a great feeling of security.They know that they are being treated fairly.If there is any policy change under consideration, we make a discussion about it.I take into account the many different points of view. Individuals may not be happy with the ultimate outcome, but they do understand that they are being taken into account.I also have a very open door policy.Anyone can come into my office and ask me anything.Ironically, the one issue I do have in that regard is that that it is sometimes very difficult for locals to be managed by other locals.They don’t want to be managed.
K:Since you are the first woman to reach your level in your organization, I have to ask: are men willing to be managed by a woman? By you?
L:Local men are not as open with me as they would be with a local man.We have a tradition here in our country.That is, the men have a tradition here in our country.They have a majlis, which is a gathering place for men. There, they discuss “manly matters.”Or, they may go to a shisha, have a water pipe and discuss matters, even matters at work.Lots of decisions are made in these places.
K:I have to say, this sounds familiar.It is guys going out for a beer, or fishing.How do you still succeed in the face of this institutionalized separation?
L:I counteract this by telephoning.By staying late to get their ears.By asking them to join me in meetings.
K:You mean, you make your own majlis?
L: (laughing) I have my own majlis, yes.
K:How typical are you as a woman here?Will we be seeing more women like you succeeding? Even going beyond what you have accomplished? You yourself are still young...
L:Most of my friends work.Far more women work than don’t. They continue their educations.Women are very determined, more determined than the men.They know that they need to prove themselves capable. They want to be able to support their families.Men tend to be more attracted to private companies where they think they can be more in charge, but women are entering the larger organizations where there are larger jobs.Many times, that is a better way to really succeed.Some of these private companies are not really businesses, if you know what I mean.
We can all wish L the very best in her career. She is a tough and graceful lady bridging a major gulf in the Gulf.
