Words v. Pictures
I am a words person – I think in words, express myself in words, process emotion in words. I learn well through words. I don’t think in pictures. I don’t like to have to draw or use pictures to explain things. I don’t want to have to look at a graph and try and decipher what it represents. I want to read the data, then I understand immediately—It’s just how my brain works. I suspect there are a lot more people like me, and we just aren’t accommodated that much in today’s world of images. A long time ago, I had a conversation with a man about how frustrating it was we had to “create pictures” for our client presentations. He said to me, “you know why we have to do this, right?” I replied, “Well, I can give you the politically incorrect answer as to why”. He responded, “That will probably be the right answer…” My theory? “Because men think in pictures, and we are [...]
Ready?
It’s been a while…a long while—a little over 3 years since my last post. Why? So many reasons. Aside from a few important posts, I stopped posting regularly when I took a W2 job in June of 2016. I have worked for two different companies since then, and writing while I was employed would have created conflicts I did not have bandwidth to manage. Where have I been? I went back to my supply chain career in 2016 when I walked away from the company I formed in 2013 (Morf3D). I trusted my business partner too much, resulting in losing any leverage that would be needed to right the ship and remain in control of my business, my idea, my concept. So, I left, realizing it would be inauthentic to continue building a business with a partner I found had lied to me. The partner—who I chose poorly—when asked why he was making the choices he was, responded, “It’s just standard business practice”. Lesson learned: [...]
Catch & Release—Ready to Launch!
Want to understand the heart of Girl Authentic and how together we can bring about a new work equilibrium? Read on. I have always wanted Girl Authentic to serve three purposes: Talk to women about building their own businesses and building a different model for all of us to work in Help women shape their business ideas and approach Invest in women-led business development Today I get to share how, for the first time, Girl Authentic has provided support in all three ways. I am thrilled to announce the launch of Catch & Release, created by Jennifer Cook. Jennifer took an idea she’s had for a long time, believed in it, and believed in herself enough to make it a reality. Are you wondering what her idea was? Jennifer is an outdoor enthusiast. Her activities mostly revolve around fishing, boating, and camping, as well as other outdoor activities she and her kids do. From this love, she decided to create a way for outdoor enthusiasts to [...]
I’m Sorry
I felt compelled to write a letter of apology to my children upon waking up on Wednesday, November 9, 2016: Dear Ian and Elle, I am sorry. I am sorry for what your parents’ and your grandparents’ generation has done. Electing Donald Trump to the presidency is the culmination of several decades of neglect and selfishness, and hopefully it will be our wake-up call. We have neglected our fellow citizens, our planet, and our personal transformations. I want you to understand that Donald Trump is simply an outward reflection of our internal world – our anger, our sadness, our fear, and our disconnection from each other – our disconnection from love. We have not cleaned up our messes and have created some tremendous new ones. We have broken our education systems by not investing in them. We have broken our capitalist systems by doing whatever we could – taking out of them whatever we could, as quickly as we could with our quarterly and annual [...]
Rerouting: Is It Possible to Reach Two Destinations Simultaneously?
In our GPS world, getting from one place to another is easy: you input your destination, and you’re on your way. But what if you want to arrive at two places at once? Is it possible? Can we both work within a culture and change it at the same time? I am newly faced with this struggle, as my work life has recently taken a turn into the corporate world. I find myself wondering if I will continue to be able to strive for feminine equilibrium in the workplace while at the same time working within it. This shift in my work life has occurred amidst many other life transformations. Since I last wrote, I traveled to Japan for two weeks and completed Module 3 of SourcePoint Therapy (an energy healing modality that focuses on healing and health). I packed up my house and am living between two temporary locations in Colorado and Chicago. I closed on a new home in Chicago, but since it needs work [...]
Withholding is Controlling
It’s true when parents withhold from their children, when spouses withhold from their partners – and when organizations withhold from women. Withholding is a form of controlling. When parents withhold their love or approval from a child, or deny access to funds or fun things, it’s usually as a way of controlling or influencing the child’s behavior. The same could be said of the spouse who withholds affection or support – or of withholding in any personal relationship. It’s about control – and it’s one of the nastiest ways to control in my opinion, since it’s so difficult to resist. You can fight or address direct attempts to control or influence. But how do you fight the absence of something? I learned all this years ago through some personal growth work, and I’ve always thought about it in that personal context. It wasn’t until this month that I realized patriarchal structures do the same thing. When a business organization or some other social structure withholds [...]
Effort Never Dies
You can jump even higher than you think. But you may have to take a few steps back first. Last year I made the hard decision to walk away from a business I loved and had helped create. On the day I chose to leave, someone posted this picture and quote on LinkedIn: It is a quote from A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the well-known scientist, writer and educator who served as President of India from 2002-2007. I liked it so much that I copied it into an email and immediately sent it to myself. I needed a reminder to look at my “end” not as an epic fail, but as a F.A.I.L. – a “First Attempt in Learning.” I needed a reminder that E.N.D. means “Effort Never Dies” and N.O. means “Next Opportunity.” So for the last few months, I’ve begun getting ready for my “next opportunity.” Here’s how I’ve been doing it: I stopped and regrouped. Then I took a step back and [...]
Forget “just standard business.” Let’s do JUST business.
When someone tells you the reason they are doing something is “just standard business practice,” that’s a code. They mean “that’s just the way it is.” And that’s really code for “we’re exploiting others for our own financial gain.” Too much in business (and elsewhere!) today individuals look to maximize their own take, control, or standing in the near term – at the expense of others, and of sustainability, in the long term. But does “standard business practice” have to remain standard? Most of us buy into “that’s just the way it is,” either because we benefit from keeping things the way they are or because we feel that we don’t have the power to change it. I don’t buy into it. That’s why I’m so inspired by Paul Tudor Jones’ work with JUST Capital. The Tudor Investments hedge-fund manager announced the new non-profit in April; since then JUST Capital has been hard at work on the JUST Business Index, a ranking of companies based not [...]
A podcast with Leaders of Transformation
I met Nicole Jansen from Leaders of Transformation at a Small Satellite Conference. Nicole interviews successful Leaders of Transformation to help you gain the inspiration, education, resources, and leadership skills to transform your life and the world around you. I was thrilled with the opportunity to meet with her and talk about bringing forth the feminine in the workplace. It's podcast #28 on her site. [button colour="accent" type="squarearrow" size="large" link="http://leadersoftransformation.com/podcast-2/" target="_blank"]Head over to Nicole's site to listen![/button]
Times of Transition
How do you know if you’re achieving the balance you need in your life? It’s actually not rocket science – there are some pretty great tools for assessing yourself. Since I chose to walk away from Morf3D a few months ago I find myself in a time of transition. Being here reminded me of a huge shift that happened for me a few years ago, when I first experienced the Circle of Life assessment process. It led to some important changes for the better. I was first asked to plot myself on the “Circle of Life” in 2010. Here’s what I came up with: Not very balanced! My life was consumed by work, with very little play or exercise. I was fortunate enough to be relatively healthy physically, but I was exhausted, mentally disconnected, and likely on my way to becoming ill with some form of disease. Looking at this circle, I could actually see the imbalance. Suddenly it was easy to start formulating [...]
Do you trust your instincts when they tell you to walk away?
This is my first post since May because the last few months have been so crazy-busy. I’ve essentially been working two jobs: First, continuing to pay the bills as a supply-chain management consultant, and second, getting a lot in place for Morf3D, the additive manufacturing business I’ve been developing with a business partner for the last two years. So much was accomplished for Morf3D over the summer: Key agreements completed with equipment and service partners, a lease negotiated for a terrific new California location, and several major conferences attended to support business development. Best of all, our new Chief Technical Officer found us. I’ve said from the very beginning that I wanted Morf3D to have a female CTO – and I must admit, I had doubts that we would ever find one. Then Melissa Orme sent us a letter telling us she wanted to join Morf3D. I couldn’t believe it! After years of hoping, here she is – and she is amazing. Then, in late [...]
A podcast with CoActive Dreams
I'm in a busy season right now, but not too busy to sit down for a few minutes with Cherrie McKenzie from CoActive Dreams. Cherrie blogs to help individuals or corporate professionals succeed at the intersection of career, self and family. She contacted me after she read a comment I posted on the NY Times website, and wanted to learn more about women building new structures in business. I was thrilled to spend some time with her and help cast the vision for women paving the way to create a better balance in the workplace for everyone. [button colour="accent" type="squarearrow" size="large" link="http://www.coactivedreams.com/are-women-approaching-the-workplace-all-wrong/" target="_blank"]Head over to the post on Cherrie's site to listen now![/button]
Betwixt and Between
How do you get from where you are to where you want to be? I’ve written a lot on this blog about the need for women to build new businesses – different kinds of businesses – if we hope to achieve a better balance in our workplaces and in our lives. But how does that happen? How do you live well in the world you have, even as you work to make a better one? You live betwixt and between. That’s what I’ve been doing. I spend my days moving between two worlds. First is what I have begun to call my “old world” – working independently to provide supply-chain management and large-program management consulting services, the way I’ve earned my living for a long time. Second is my “new world” – that of building Morf3D, a company of the type I’ve proposed women build in my GirlAuthentic blogs. I’m spending 24-40 hours a week providing supply-chain and ERP implementation work, supporting a wonderful client I [...]
What the world needs now is more wealthy women
What do Silicon Valley, the Catholic Church and the nation of Germany all have in common? If the articles I’m reading lately are any guide, the answer is an under-representation of women in leadership. Germany has taken the strongest action this month, actually passing a law a few weeks ago requiring its major firms to allot at least 30% of the seats on non-executive boards to women. The same can’t be said about Silicon Valley, where a recent gender discrimination lawsuit is shining a light on a longstanding tradition of VC firms not including women in leadership (or funding them, for that matter). Meanwhile, the Catholic Church – despite some nice commentary from the Pope – may be the most entrenched organization of all. It’s unlikely to change its stance on women in leadership for centuries. This matters. We need more visible women in leadership – because balance at work begets balance in life. We will all experience more balance in our families, our social structures, [...]
When “Equilibrium” Means “No”
One of the greatest forces we have for equilibrium is the power of our own choices. I was reminded of this last month as I sat wringing my hands in Galway, Ireland, making a choice of my own. It was New Year’s Day, I was midway through a wonderful vacation with my family – and I was supposed to be working. My December hadn’t gone the way I thought it would. I’d been planning to have that whole month at home, not traveling, to work on a long list of things I wanted finished by the end of 2014. Among them was a January blog post for this website, GirlAuthentic. I like to send these posts to my creative team by the beginning of each month so we can workshop things a little. So December was my window. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead of being at home working, I found myself traveling every week of December – right up until Christmas. Two days after that I [...]
Bye-bye to the Long-Hours Culture
The title above was the subtitle of a recent article by Lucy Kellaway, a columnist for the Financial Times. This full-page piece ran in the Business section of “The World in 2015,” by The Economist. I was so excited to see a global periodical dedicate a full page of commentary to changing attitudes on work hours. Why? Because women have been leading the way on this issue for years – but it’s not actually a women’s issue. Kellaway says it will soon be “cool” for executives to put a stop to unhealthy work habits and start working more efficiently between 9 and 5. Her piece describes the future like this: “Holidays will be holidays. The out-of-office email will no longer be followed by a reply from the ski-slopes. A spare jacket will no longer be needed on the back of the office chair, as going home will be all the rage. To get your work done by a reasonable hour will not be a sign that you [...]
It Was the First Time There Was a Line
I was going to have to wait in line to use the restroom. And I couldn’t have been happier. I’ve been attending my profession’s annual global conference since I was a junior in college in 1987 (I’ll let you do the math). There was often a line for the men’s room, but never for the women’s room. It was, we used to joke, one of the perks of attending our profession’s conference as a woman. You could get into the bathroom any time, no waiting. There just weren’t that many women in our industry. And then, this year, it was different. I walked in to the restroom – and there was a line! I was a bit taken aback. I had been so used to attending the conference, and there never being a line. Another woman and I just stood there looking at each other, realizing we were sharing the same thought. This was terrific! That moment, we knew, represented a turning point. It’s something I [...]
Walking the Talk
I have great business partners. When I launched GirlAuthentic in early 2013, one of them said to me, “That’s great. Now when are you going to start walking the talk?” He was right. He and I had been talking for a couple of years about starting a business together. Now I was talking at GirlAuthentic about the need for women to build significant businesses – but I hadn’t moved beyond talk in my business plans with him. So 12 months ago, we started putting one foot in front of the other. I’m happy to say we’ve made good progress, all while we were both working paying the bills with other full-time work. In the last year we’ve incorporated Morf3D. We have a business plan. We have a market approach and strategy. We own our name and all associated URL’s, we have attorney and accounting relationships in place and we have added our Chief Sales & Marketing Officers to our Executive Leadership Team. The Morf3D website just [...]
You want a horse? Go get a horse.
I wasn’t even 6 years old when I discovered something I really wanted: My own horse. My family had just moved to a much more rural area where EVERYONE had horses – well, except me. I knew I wanted a horse. My parents got me lessons at the local stables, and many of the neighbors were kind enough to introduce us to their horses and let us ride. But, I refused to stop bugging my parents. So my dad came up with a deal he figured would put off the need to get a horse for quite a while. He told me, “When you can saddle and bridle a horse all by yourself, I will get you a horse.” Six months later I showed up in the yard with my friend Debbie’s horse all saddled and bridled. My dad asked, “Why do you have Debbie’s horse?” “You told me when I could saddle and bridle a horse by myself, you’d get me a horse,” I told [...]
Is your workplace built on love – or fear? Here are 2 ways to tell.
We are embedded in fear – more deeply than we realize, much of the time. It’s ingrained, so we don’t even realize it much of the time. It’s become part of our autopilot at work – and in life. If you want to see whether you’re operating mostly out of fear or out of love, there are two places to look: the actions you take and the language you use. Fear actions: Monitoring people’s time at work (because you’re afraid they won’t work otherwise) Not talking about whether the women are being paid the same as the men for the same job (because you’re afraid of retribution) Tolerating abusive, bullying behavior (because you’re afraid of being labeled a “whiner”) Continuing to work somewhere where you’re not happy (because you’re afraid of the unknown) Love actions: Allowing people to manage their own schedules (because you trust they want to do good work and will get their work done) Paying women the same as the men without being asked/coerced (because [...]
Closing the Gap
“We’re minding the gap, but how do we close it?” That’s the question the Women Donors Network asked recently. A lot has been written lately about all the gaps that exist for women – in business leadership, in political leadership, in the imbalance of how many hours of taking care of our families women still shoulder even if they are working full time… and I could go on. In many ways, all this talk is a good thing. It shines a light on the current state of affairs and encourages the conversations. We can only create new things through ideas and conversations. I just wish we were creating new things. All sorts of changes have been suggested in the current conversations to close the leadership gap for women – but almost inevitably, our ideas are tied to changing the current structures and barriers. We’re talking about having women behave in a certain way to try and succeed in the current structures. We’re not really providing an [...]
Step one: This conversation.
Step one: This conversation. A few weeks ago I had the honor of speaking at Penn State University’s wonderful “Powerful Women Paving the Way” conference. I love the conference name. I love that it was organized by a student organization, Women in Business. And I love that there was a diverse mixture of women and men both in the students and in the professionals and sponsoring organizations who attended. But most of all, I love that conferences like this are the right first step. They are the conversation. If we want a work environment where women can be authentic, we’re going to need to create that environment from scratch. That means more women building businesses – significant businesses. It’s going to happen in three steps. Conversation. Conferences, discussions and interactions – even online, on websites like this one – are creating the possibility in many more women’s minds of building significant businesses (businesses that strive to be the Fortune 500 companies 40 years from now). I [...]
Announcing Conversations!
Since the forming of GirlAuthentic, there have been many requests to tell people what the “model” looks like for a new business that is based on a balance of the feminine and masculine. I have resisted answering the requests with only my specific ideas. I do have some ideas, but I guarantee you they are only some of the ideas, and might not even be the most creative. Women have the opportunity today to build businesses that operate and feel the way we want them too. So, in an attempt to provide examples, my creative team and I have begun to put together a series of conversations with interesting women who have created their own businesses. We also wanted to highlight the thought processes and choices behind the structures they have put in place and how their businesses operate. Today is our first example. We’d like to present Amy Fowler Stadler, founder of Lewis & Fowler, a well-known technology consulting, strategic project management, and expert staffing [...]
We’re Thinking Too Small
Why do we hold ourselves accountable to mostly arbitrary numbers of achievement over short periods of time – by month, quarter, or year? – This is how we measure our success. Your company and your stockholders have been trained to think this way. We’re thinking way too small. Perhaps we need a different definition of success. Jim Collins’ book, “Good to Great,” only considered companies that showed sustained performance over a decade at a minimum. The first company I ever worked for took a similarly long perspective – we had a chart that showed the average up and down market cycle for our industry. It was an 8-year cycle, and the leadership made plans and decisions such as investment, hiring, gearing up and scaling back according to that 8-year timeline. Our CEO also had a well-communicated and understood 10-year plan to be the most efficient, cost effective company in our sector of our industry, so that the largest company in that industry would want to [...]
I call it the Art of Coming and Going
I call it “coming and going.” I have set up one form of it for myself, and I have seen others with many variations on the theme. What do I mean? I mean the ability to “come and go” from a job place, a company, a profession – even from work altogether. The ability to choose to work for periods of time, and NOT to work for periods of time. Why do we have this notion that we are supposed to work at least 160 hours per month for 45 years? Tolkien said it best – “not all those who wander are lost.” People who “come and go” pick up all sorts of new experiences and perspectives. If they leave a work environment and choose to return, they do so with so much more to offer. So why do policies discourage this? What if we simply stopped viewing “coming and going” as a bad thing? I have. I was lucky enough to garner a set of skills and work [...]
Three reasons “leaning in” won’t work for women
Since I started GirlAuthentic, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Sheryl Sandberg’s book and ongoing conversation “Lean In.” Sandberg is the COO of Facebook and one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World; her book is loaded with advice on how women can achieve their goals and realize their leadership potential. I tell people her advice is fine – if you’re satisfied with what’s behind Door Number One. If your goal is to become a female senior executive in one of today’s corporate structures – a statistical long shot, by the way – then Sandberg is for you. I have 3 problems with the “Lean In” conversation: It’s a gender-based conversation. “Lean In” is a discussion on how women can conform in order to excel in today’s masculine environment – a corporate world built by men, for men. What we need is a discussion on the absence of the feminine and how to bring it forth and have it be valued in [...]
We See What We See
Look at the Girl Authentic logo above. What is it? We see what we see. Until last week, every person I asked told me they saw a man’s tie first. That’s what I saw first, too. Moments later, I also saw a woman’s dress. Some people never see the dress until I point it out. Did you? We see what we see. We are conditioned to see a certain way – by our media, by our historical structures, by our societal structures. If most of us see a tie first, I believe that indicates something specific about our cultural norms. We see what we see every day. We see what we are told. We see what, historically, we are used to seeing. It’s what we are conditioned to see. Guess what? Conditioning can change. There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the historically high rates of young girls enrolling in forensic science programs at school. It’s being attributed to the strong, powerful, female roles in [...]
Women, we need you to build businesses.
The predominant business culture most of us operate in today was built by men, for men. All the rules we play by, all the expectations, all the behaviors that are talked about as helping to assure success – they’re all based on a male vibration, male patterns of behavior, male expectations. Men built these businesses. Men run them. They design for men, they build for men, they sell to men. Yet, there is actually a business case for gender diversity. It literally pays – we have data to prove it. If you build a business that includes more women, includes more of women’s perspectives, and designs for and sells to women, you will be more profitable. The research shows it. Unfortunately, that same research indicates our efforts at diversity aren’t really working. Corporate programs have made people better at talking about diversity and balance – not better at living it. And they have no incentive to change. Even though the data shows they can be more profitable by including more women [...]
Here’s What “Feminine” Looks Like at Work
What do I mean by “the feminine”? I don’t necessarily mean female. In fact “the feminine” can be displayed by either gender in the workplace. There’s a list of attributes and ways of interacting we can characterize as “feminine” – I’ve already listed some of them here. Here’s an example of one characteristic from that list – caring and loving kindness – as I saw it lived out in the workplace a number of years ago. Here’s what “feminine” looks like at work. I was working for a company in Colorado, and we had a team member in our managers’ group who found out her adult child needed very specialized heart surgery. This manager needed to go to Cleveland with her child to be present during the surgery and help with recovery. The team member was worried about how long she would need to spend away from work to be at her child’s side during the difficult time. When our director learned of her need for [...]
Incremental Change? No, Let’s Build New Business Structures Instead
Why do I believe we are going to have to build new businesses to have the balance many of us are seeking? Because, I’m impatient. I believe the current business structures will be able to change only, at best, incrementally. Let’s look at the numbers…in 1973 we had one woman CEO of the Fortune 500. It was Katherine Graham of the Washington Post. She essentially inherited the position (her family owned the business). But, she didn’t inherit it until her husband who was the CEO – the son-in-law – tragically died. She went on to be one of the powerhouses in the newspaper business over the next 30+ years. Today, we have 18 women of the Fortune 500, and 39 total for the Fortune 1000. That equals 3.9%. We have 232 CEO positions to go to reach parity in just the Fortune 500. At this pace, it will take 515 years to reach parity. I would contend there isn’t a single one of the Fortune 1000 companies today that doesn’t [...]
Working Women – Leave a Legacy
I’d be willing to bet, that most readers are going to at least initially view my comments as part of a gender discussion. That is understandable, because that is the context within which we have been talking about this issue over the past several decades. I am hopeful that as we go along, many will join me in seeing this not as a gender issue, but as a human issue. It applies to all of us, and will help everyone if we can orchestrate building something new. When we look back 40 years from now, I want the working women of today to be known for leaving a legacy. Much like we are doing today reflecting on what women have achieved thanks to the efforts of the leaders who passed Title IX, and began creating the possibility for women to have whatever jobs they wanted, I want the working women of today to be known for bringing forth the feminine by building new business structures. What [...]
