Gender Relations

The 5th Annual Fast 50

Fast Company staff — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:34:19 -0500

The 5th Annual Fast 50

12. Blue-Hair University

Rakesh Khurana, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and Nitin Nohria

Harvard Business School

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Sister Cities

Fast Company — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:40:43 -0500

In this age of economic distress and emotional despair, leaders need to demonstrate more strength and compassion than ever before. As company executives work to balance hard-line authority with softer initiatives, women are rising to the top as humane bosses with winning principles.

A Change Will Do You Good

Keith H. Hammonds — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:39:56 -0500

Book: Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work
Author: Debra L. Meyerson
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Price: $24.95

Open Debate

Leslie Bennetts and Vivian Steir Rabin — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:21:50 -0500

Leslie Bennetts

Author, The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?; contributing editor at Vanity Fair

Vivian Steir Rabin

Vice president of search firm Salovey & Associates; coauthor, Back on the Career Track

Books on Aging (And Reverse Aging)

Fast Company — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:12:27 -0500

RealAge: Are You As Young As You Can Be?
by Michael F. Roizen M.D.
(Cliff Street Books, 1999)

The best compilation of scientific evidence and statistics about what exactly affects aging, for better and for worse.

Dr. Bob Arnot's Guide to Turning Back the Clock
by Robert Arnot
(Little Brown & Co., 1996)

Dark Ages

Stirling Kelso — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:07:06 -0500

Are companies obsessed with youth?

Helen Harkness, author, Don't Stop the Career Clock: It's not about age; it's about culture. No employer wants to admit that age makes a big difference, but they will say they need energy, vitality, speed, etc. Fighting change is a more common problem. A lot of people want to blame age discrimination when really they're just not keeping up with what's going on in the world.

Healthy Alternative

Chuck Salter — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:04:20 -0500

Three years ago, we introduced readers to Dr. Bill Thomas ("[Not] the Same Old Story," February 2002), a dynamic doctor in upstate New York who is determined to fix the nursing-home industry. His nonprofit company, Eden Alternative, "deinstitutionalizes" dreary facilities by introducing pets, plants, children, and dramatic cultural change to create a warmer environment. Thomas also hoped to build his own "Green Houses," small group homes designed around the Eden philosophy.

Scenes from the Culture Clash

Danielle Sacks — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:00:53 -0500

Beverly Hills psychiatrist's office is an unlikely triage center for the mash-up of generations in the workforce. But Dr. Charles Sophy is seeing the casualties firsthand. Last year, when a 24-year-old salesman at a car dealership didn't get his yearly bonus because of poor performance, both of his parents showed up at the company's regional headquarters and sat outside the CEO's office, refusing to leave until they got a meeting. "Security had to come and escort them out," Sophy says.

The Corporate Shrink

Dr. Kerry J. Sulkowicz — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:00:28 -0500

I'm the sole woman on a five-person sales team. We get along very well, but the guys occasionally go to a strip club. They invite me along, but of course I always decline. Is there anything else I should do?

Water Cooler: Help Wanted

Fast Company Staff — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:59:47 -0500

Talent seekers rejoice

Not the Retiring Sort

Danielle Sacks — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:54:28 -0500

When most people see an 85-year-old, they think Ensure. Dwayne Clark thinks Starbucks.

Clark, who cofounded AegisLiving in 1997, was dissatisfied with an assisted-living industry that gave more care to real estate than to people. Now Redmond, Washington-based Aegis is applying service lessons from Starbucks and other consumer giants to its growing 36-location chain.

The Labor-Shortage Myth

Alison Overholt — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:45:32 -0500

Want to feel extra cheerful about your career prospects? Take a look at recent pronouncements from the U.S. Census Bureau, the General Accounting Office, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Conference Board, all duly reported by a host of newspapers and magazines. "The Coming Job Boom," proclaims Business 2.0. Yep, there's a labor shortage coming!

Career Taxidermy

Shoshana Zuboff — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:49:15 -0500

When I was a young woman in a man's world, my students gave me a desk plaque: "The bad news is a woman has to be twice as good as a man to get ahead. The good news is it's not that hard." It cheered us all. Many years later, I spoke to a group of about 30 Harvard Business School women graduates and found something startling. Only one was still working full time. The rest had reluctantly taken a different path, typically after having a second child. Of those, only two had channeled their careers into part-time work. The others were full-time moms--because they had no choice.

The Women of Enron

Jennifer Reingold — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:43:14 -0500

This isn't what you think. (We'll leave that to Playboy.) Nor is it another story about the collapse of Enron or the rise of a new era of scandal, malfeasance, and mistrust. Instead, this collection of profiles is about life after corporate death. What happens when the company that built your reputation, that made you rich, that gave you an identity you reveled in turns out to be a sham? How do you grieve? Which life lessons do you take with you? Which do you toss? How do you move on?

10 Things You Didn't Know About Women

Polly LaBarre — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:42:57 -0500

The history of women is often told as a catalog of types and ideals, from Victorian shut-ins to crusading suffragettes. In America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (William Morrow, 2003), Gail Collins also chronicles the struggles of the ordinary. Here are outtakes.

Want to Know How She Does It?

Anne Kreamer — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:38:49 -0500

Anne One day, a few years after I had left my executive job at Viacom to start my own company, I was on the subway. It was midday, and I was sitting on a train with a funky grab bag of ordinary middle-class people. According to the norms by which I previously had some standing in the world, I no longer existed. I had to construct and, more important, believe in a new definition of success. When I read I Don't Know How She Does It, I was delighted by how exquisitely you captured the crux of that struggle.

How to Make Love in the Office

Alison Overholt — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:37:36 -0500

The holiday season and office parties. Office parties and spiked punch bowls. Spiked punch bowls and a little carrying on. A little carrying on and . . . Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Jack Welch and Suzy Wetlaufer. Before you know it, there you are: the dread -- and yet all-too-frequently visited -- land of the office romance, the territory that strikes fear into the hearts of executives. Go there and you risk your reputation, your job, your career. All the red lights are flashing: Warning! But is this place really so dangerous?

Power

Harriet Rubin — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:35:57 -0500

"I've never seen a time like this," says Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of Fox News and, for the past 20 years, one of the greatest architects of power in the country. Ailes has a gift: He knows what makes people stars. He's most famous for helping transform a fringy California governor, Ronald Reagan, first into a president and then into a legend. Ailes kisses frogs and turns them into presences. But now, as he assesses the art of power, Ailes has worries.

(Not) the Same Old Story

Chuck Salter — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:32:55 -0500

In 1999, after writing a book about improving long-term care for the elderly, Bill Thomas did what authors do: He hit the road for a promotional tour. He appeared on radio and television. He also met with public officials, offering his perspective as a gerontologist -- a doctor who specializes in treating the elderly -- on what was wrong with nursing homes: They were utterly devoid of hope, love, humor, meaning -- the very stuff of life. He gave lectures on the changes he had in mind, which included adding pets, plants, and children to nursing-home life.

Why Aren't There More Women at the Top?

Pamela Kruger — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:18:19 -0500

Book: Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: What Men Know About Success That Women Need to Learn
Author: Gail Evans
Publisher: Broadway Books
Price: $23.95

Book: Why the Best Man for the Job Is a Woman: The Unique Female Qualities of Leadership
Author: Esther Wachs Book
Publisher: HarperBusiness
Price: $24

Living Dangerously - Issue 34

Harriet Rubin — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:14:43 -0500

A group of women has finally figured out how to succeed in a man's world: Change it into a woman's world. (For men who dare to read this, at the end I offer a few ideas on how to survive in this new world of leadership.)

Over the years, women have tried everything to succeed in business: fitting in; biding their time in order to rise in an organization; taking shelter in pink-collar ghettos. They've finally found an approach that works: forming "girl gangs."

Life/Work - Issue 34

Tony Schwartz — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:14:26 -0500

Life-work balance in Silicon Valley? An oxymoron if ever there was one. And why should that be a surprise? The environment for startups is nothing if not competitive. Most startups are run by bright, young, single white males with few priorities beyond trying to get very rich, very fast. Early on, tunnel vision and turbo-charged adrenaline are cardinal virtues. But what happens when the fierce focus on getting the business off the ground gives way to a need to manage and grow?

Life/Work - Issue 35

Tony Schwartz — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:14:18 -0500

For Nancy Hopkins, the defining event occurred in 1994, when she was teaching a biology course that she had developed and then taught with a male colleague at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At one point, her colleague told her that he was going to write a textbook based on the course material -- with another male colleague. "Suddenly, I was out, and he was in," Hopkins, now 57, explains. The following Saturday morning, while she was sitting in front of her computer, a feeling of utter despair suddenly crystallized into a sense of determined resolve.

Living Dangerously - Issue 31

Harriet Rubin — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:12:28 -0500

Women are canaries in the coal mine of power. They fall over dead whenever work gets stifling. They groove wherever new models of business behavior are emerging: consensual management, flextime, the belief that work should have meaning. Women are early adopters of technology: They enthusiastically took to the skies right after Kitty Hawk, and they brought appliances into the home and typewriters into the office. If you want to know what's new in the world of business, look to women.

Life/Work - Issue 30

Tony Schwartz — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:09:45 -0500

Ten years ago, the "Harvard Business Review" ran an essay called "Management Women and the Facts of Life." It began with this provocative sentence: "The cost of employing women in management is greater than the cost of employing men."