Why the Best Man for the Job Is a Woman

Esther Wachs Book

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061865572
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Wirtschaftsbiographien

Playing With The Big Boys -- And Beating Them At Their Own Game!

From Meg Whitman of eBay to Marcy Carsey of Carsey-Warner and Oxygen Media, today's leading businesswomen show how to make it in the notorious boys' club of corporate America.

Gone are the days when men called the shots. More and more women have replaced men or excelled over rivals in male-dominated industries because they possess the qualities of leadership that top firms are seeking today. Esther Wachs Book introduces the new Female Leader and reveals the seven key, and uniquely female, qualities of leadership that are turning the world around -- and allowing more women to achieve success.

Filled with compelling insights gleaned from the country's highest-ranking businesswomen, Why the Best Man for the Job Is a Woman reveals how these exceptional women have soared to the top and captures their strategies for success.

1

PIONEERING THE NEW PARADIGM

Orit Gadiesh has been breaking into boys’ clubs and performing under pressure since she was an aide to the deputy chief of staff in the Israeli army at the age of seventeen. In the war room, she helped army strategists draft a plan to overcome opposition from all sides. She served during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period in Israeli history known as the War of Attrition, when the tiny nation was attacked frequently across all its borders and Egypt was a bitter foe. Back then, the choices her superiors made literally had life and death implications. But today she is the one leading the troops—as chairman of one of the most macho American consulting firms in the industry, Bain & Company. At the age of forty-two, she took on that prominent role after its founder, William Bain, Jr., brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy.

Gadiesh is not alone. Based primarily on her marketing savvy and business acumen, Margaret (Meg) Whitman was recruited to run eBay, Inc., turning the on-line auctioneer into a household name and one of the leading businesses on the Web practically overnight. After building a $20 billion international business for energy giant Enron Corp., Rebecca Mark, a divorced mother of twins, landed the chairman and CEO job at the company’s new water arm, Azurix. Darla Moore left her family’s South Carolina farm to rise up in New York’s male bastion of banking. Then she assumed control of husband Richard Rainwater’s stock portfolio and nearly tripled his net worth. Shelly Lazarus became chairman and chief executive officer of advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather after winning the hefty IBM account, the largest in the history of her agency. Ellen Gordon turned her father’s Tootsie Roll Industries from a sleepy candy maker into a winner on Wall Street, and one of the strongest performers in the business. Although she started as a secretary at ABC Sports, Patricia Fili-Krushel rose to become the highest-ranking woman in television after assuming the presidency at ABC Television Network. Not only was she given greater responsibilities than her male predecessor, but she helped her network achieve one of its biggest programming successes in years—Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

These women are all “new paradigm” leaders, noted for their abilities to blend feminine qualities of leadership with classic male traits to run their companies successfully, and become some of the most powerful women in American business. Nearly all have reached the president, chairman, or chief executive officer level of thriving companies raking in well over $100 million in revenues. All are active leaders who have not merely kept the companies they head in a successful holding pattern. Instead, they have dramatically boosted profits and revenues. Most have taken over their companies from men and topped their results. They have also launched new initiatives that have significantly added value to their firms. They do not bother trying to run their companies just like their male predecessors, nor do they follow established norms, because they are outsiders to the corporate world. They have taken risks in their careers and developed their leadership skills by working diligently in overlooked, disparaged, or undiscovered areas of business. By excelling in these professional danger zones, they have become confident enough to rely on their own instincts and to exercise their own judgment. They lead in their own new way, and they are part of a new generation of women who chose a different path to excel in the corporate world.

Up until the mid-1990s, women were still conspicuously absent from top positions at almost all the largest companies in the United States. Catalyst reported in 1996 that only 2.4 percent of the chairmen and chief executive officers of Fortune 500 firms were women. So where were the women in business if they weren’t storming the boardrooms of America’s most important firms? They were beginning to succeed on their own, primarily by building their own small businesses.

“Now, a second wave of women is making its way into top management, not by adopting the style and habits that have proved successful for men, but by drawing on the skills and the attitudes they developed as women,” explains Judy B. Rosener, the University of California at Irvine management professor who in 1990 wrote an influential article called “Ways Women Lead” for the Harvard Business Review. “They are succeeding because of, not in spite of, certain characteristics generally considered to be ‘feminine’ and inappropriate in leaders.”

SUCCEEDING LIKE A MAN

When the first generation of women entered the workforce in earnest in the 1970s, they succeeded in the only way they could: by imitating the qualities and characteristics associated with their male colleagues. Authoritarian leadership structures were pervasive, and tight control was a hallmark of the businesses men made. America’s booming economy of the late 1960s bolstered the common view that traditional male management styles were highly effective. And women were not exactly welcomed into management ranks. It was judicial mandate rather than goodwill that prompted companies to begin opening their doors to women. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made discrimination against women in education or employment illegal. But the passage of equal opportunity legislation did not ensure equal treatment.

Developed on assembly lines and factory floors during the Industrial Age, the “traditional” approach to corporate leadership was particularly well suited to huge manufacturing runs of essentially undifferentiated products. Some of the management techniques that were used seem lifted from a military manual: operating through a hierarchical structure, command-and-control system, top-down decision making, domination of employees, and reliance on standardized codes for judgment and evaluation of others.

But as the women’s liberation movement helped America’s females set their sights on goals apart from getting married and having families, they began to struggle to rise through the ranks of these companies. Although increasing numbers of women graduated from college and went on to professional schools, most landed in low-paying jobs that Ms. magazine labeled “the pink-collar ghetto.” This professional slum spanned sales, secretarial, and food services, many of which offered only part-time jobs. In 1979, women’s incomes represented only 59 percent of male earnings, while unemployment rates exceeded male averages by about 20 percent.¹ The wage gap revealed not just the denial of equal pay for equal work, but more subtly the assumption that certain tasks, traditionally performed by women, were inherently less valuable.

Few females became top managers during the decade, and those who did had virtually nonexistent track records—so to be successful, women abided by the rules of the men’s clubs they were joining. Looking the part was essential in establishing credibility. Women adopted a style of dress that resembled that of their male counterparts, replete with neckties and big shoulder pads. Competition was the name of the game, and winning at any cost, whether within or outside the company, was the goal. Rank was the primary source of respect in this milieu, where traditional leaders told underlings what to do, and they, in turn, carried out orders. The tight structure favored by male leaders kept them at a distance from their customers. And the various levels of rigid vertical hierarchy coupled with a high degree of employee specialization distanced senior executives from workers.

Women took on male methods to excel in corporations because of the negative stereotypes associated with their own gender. Conventional wisdom at the time affirmed that women were doomed to fulfill supporting roles, as men took all the leads in a company, because of inherent female weaknesses—it was assumed that women lacked ambition and experience, were just too friendly and helpful, and failed to lead or take charge.

As a result, few women in the 1980s climbed to the top rungs of the corporate ladder. In fact, according to various studies, women’s already paltry numbers in senior executive suites in numerous industries, from advertising to retailing, were starting to decline by the conclusion of the decade.² The rate of expansion in numbers of women appointed to Fortune 1000 boards slowed by the late eighties, after women’s share of the director chairs reached 6.8 percent. Women were hardly moving into chief executive suites—most were just there to take dictation.

For all these reasons, a “feminine style” of management has long made women executives wary. Stereotypes persist that female managers have trouble in the workplace, and yet the women in this book—and many whom you encounter in your daily life—excel because of the very traits that were once deemed weak or inferior.

Regardless of gender, today’s CEO can no longer tap his or her company’s full potential using a command-and-control style long associated with the masculine mind-set. With buzzwords like “integration,” “consensus,” “collaboration,” and “teamwork” being tossed around, the model for great leadership is undergoing a major overhaul. The next generation of leaders will be those who can build a vision based on awareness of economic transformation, then help their partners and staff fulfill that vision. As Patricia Aburdene, coauthor of Megatrends for Women, puts it, “Leaders who spark people today don’t just tell others what to do. The struggle is more about how to invest in a well-educated workforce, then develop effective ways to mine its brain power. The key to this is catalyzing your resources.”

THE ESSENCE OF NEW PARADIGM LEADERSHIP

New paradigm leaders are redefining stereotypes of how women guide companies, and illustrate every day that they can play with, and beat, the big boys at their own game. In the past, that meant being just as aggressive as, if not more aggressive than, male rivals and colleagues. Now, top women executives, like their male counterparts, have to draw on a wide range of skills to get to the top and stay there.

To grow their businesses, new paradigm leaders combine many of the managerial talents traditionally attributed to men with many of the stereotypically “weaker” female skills. The traditional view of men at work is that they are assertive, seek to take charge and dominate, rely on hierarchy and status as a power base, and use standard codes for judging the performance of others. A common conception of female executives today is that they merely nurture, mentor, promote family-friendly policies, and seek consensus. The women in this book cannot be belittled by such preconceived notions. While management gurus may promote some of these features, most know that these attributes will not assure success in our global economy. Because of their knowledge, these women have styles and business skills that men feel comfortable with—otherwise, they would not be able to hold on to their positions of authority. Yet surpassing male rivals is something they have done throughout their careers. Standard yardsticks such as revenues and profits document their success. In technology, stock price and market capitalization also display their prowess.

Many women fall into this leadership category, making the group limited yet hardly finite. Brilliant top executives who draw on both feminine and masculine styles include media maven Oprah Winfrey, Oxygen Media’s Geraldine Laybourne, Elektra Entertainment Group’s Sylvia Rhone, Avon Products’ Andrea Jung, Walmart.com’s Jeanne Jackson, and Paramount Pictures’ Sherry Lansing. A disproportionate number of women in technology are featured here for two reasons. First, the technology sector is the fastest-growing industry in the United States, and the field has been the biggest driver of economic expansion in recent years. Second, men have traditionally dominated this industry.

There are many, many accomplished women out there who were considered for this book. But the fourteen women examined on these pages were selected because they personify the seven characteristics ascribed to new paradigm leadership. They include:

Orit Gadiesh, chairman of Bain & Company

Ann Winblad, partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Meg Whitman, chief executive officer of eBay, Inc.

Marcy Carsey, cofounder and co-owner of the Carsey-Werner Company and partner of Oxygen Media, Inc.

Darla Moore, president of Rainwater, Inc.

Rebecca Mark, chairman and chief executive officer of Azurix Corp.

Patricia Russo, chief executive officer of Lucent Technologies’ Global Service Provider Business

Ellen Gordon, president of Tootsie Roll Industries

Shelly Lazarus, chief executive officer of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

Marilyn Carlson Nelson, chairman and chief executive officer of Carlson Companies

Patricia Fili-Krushel, president and chief executive officer of WebMD Health, the consumer division of Healtheon, and former president of ABC Television Network

Kim Polese, cofounder and chief executive officer of Marimba, Inc.

Martha Ingram, chairman of Ingram Industries

Loida Lewis, chairman and chief executive officer of TLC Beatrice International Holdings, Inc.

WHY NEW PARADIGM LEADERS EXCEL

New paradigm leaders achieve for three main reasons:

1: Self-assurance compels new paradigm leaders to stay motivated and take risks.

New paradigm leaders understand that risks are a necessity in business and that self-assurance provides the backbone to take them, but confidence has never been associated with women in business. The female executives in this book defy that stereotype. All of these women are goal-oriented and have extremely driven personalities.

Early in her career, Rebecca Mark saw that taking risks was vital to her success at energy giant Enron Corporation. Rather than feeling intimidated, she took on increasingly difficult challenges and became known for that, going so far as to stake her reputation as a force in the energy industry on her ability to accomplish the near-impossible. As a result, she became a top contender to succeed her boss, Kenneth Lay, as chief executive officer of $31 billion (1998 sales) Enron Corporation, after she persevered to pull off a multibillion-dollar power plant deal in India.

2: An obsession with customer service helps them anticipate market changes.

All these women possess a preternatural sense of customer demands that enables them to anticipate changes in the marketplace early enough to capitalize on them. While it’s both easy and understandable for executives who reach the top levels of their companies to get bogged down in the big-picture, long-range strategy and planning, the executives featured in this book make a thorough understanding of customers a number one priority. In most cases, that means working long hours and traveling far more than they’d like. Orit Gadiesh flies over 17,000 miles every month to meet with clients both in the United States and abroad, and spent 100 days traveling outside the country for business in 1999. Shelly Lazarus spends about 250 hours a month with customers.

3: New paradigm leaders use “feminine” traits to their advantage.

The leaders in this book have effectively used traditional “feminine” qualities such as empathy, collaboration, and cooperation in their management styles to achieve better results. Pretending that men and women are the same requires females to keep adapting to the male culture of business. Men and women often bring different approaches to looking at problems, opportunities, and decisions. The more approaches available, the better the outcome for both individuals and companies.

Shelly Lazarus worked her way up the corporate ladder for twenty-seven years before becoming chief executive officer of the $10 billion (1998 billings) Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. But she did not do it alone. Lazarus realized early on that if she wanted to build the company’s advertising business, she would need to invest her colleagues with a sense of ownership in a project, and trust them to execute.

The women who embody new paradigm leadership are more than just trailblazers. They do not merely break stereotypes, but point their companies in new directions to capitalize on changes in the marketplace. As business theorist James Champy wrote, “Free markets need free men and women to invent the future.” These female executives are doing just that.

THE SEVEN KEY CHARACTERISTICS
OF NEW PARADIGM LEADERSHIP

1: Selling the Vision

With unemployment at an all-time low, today’s employees are about as loyal to the company they work for as they are to a brand of paper towel. Never before in corporate America has the “vision thing” mattered so much to anyone outside the executive suite. A leader with a fresh, independent plan for her company’s growth and future has a distinct advantage in luring and keeping great talent and eager investors. Vision is not about lofty ideals, but about a concept that is easily understandable to all and will take a business to the next level.

Orit Gadiesh, head of Bain & Company, jump-started the elite consulting firm that stalled in the early nineties amid an exodus of top executives and lagging revenues. The spark plug? A new vision that spelled out how to reinvent the company, redirect its focus, and restore its healthy pride. Employees originally heading for the door were won over ...