The International MBA Women Careers Day - Event Summary by Morice Mendoza
“It’s all about learning to dance together – men and women – and to work in tandem to deliver the best value for all,” Avivah Wittenberg-Cox told an audience of MBA women during a unique one-day online conference on March 4, 2009, entitled the International MBA Women Careers Day, organised by MBA-Exchange.com and the gender website, www.WOMEN-omics.com.
Wittenberg-Cox, a consultant on the issue of gender in organisations and publisher of WOMEN-omics.com, organised three sessions during the day to investigate why companies need to change their management approaches and cultures in order to provide an environment in which women have the chance to excel to the same extent as men.
The online conference that addressed these issues was timed to coincide with International Women’s Day while giving women MBA students and alumni the opportunity to learn more about the challenges they face in their careers. The online discussions were attended by women MBA students and alumni and employer representatives and recordings are now available at the following links.
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Why Women Mean Business – Presentation by Alison Maitland
Alison Maitland,
writer, presenter and moderator
In the first session, Alison Maitland, a business writer, presenter and moderator, presented the arguments found in the business book, Why Women Mean Business – Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution, co-authored by Maitland and Wittenberg-Cox. Maitland opened with a picture of a sign saying, “Danger – Men Working Above.” This summed up the essence of her presentation. She explained how women had become a huge economic force as workers, consumers and business leaders that were typically being under-used. The failure to release this economic force is one of the greatest challenges of our times, she suggested. A quote from the Economist magazine summed up the point: “Forget China, India and the internet: economic growth is driven by women.”
Maitland outlined that some 60% of graduates across the world are women; 80% of the people making purchasing decisions in consumer markets in the US are women; and studies have proved that having more women in senior management teams greatly improves business performance.
That reflects the huge economic opportunity that women represent. But the reality, said Maitland, is that very few women today have made it to the top management tiers of organisations across the world. The answer is for companies to focus on the issue as a business issue, she suggested. They need to understand that gender differences in their workforce are a business advantage. You don’t need to treat women as the same as men. They are different and it is in this difference that the complementary skills are brought to bear on organisational performance. There needs to be commitment from the CEO and the top teams to drive change and a programme of gender diversity should be driven across all fronts, Maitland added.
The aim would be to create “gender bilingual” organisations, Maitland said. For example, they should ensure the words used in their recruitment campaigns appealed to women as well as men. They shouldn’t ask women to solve the gender issue – it’s wider than that. They should enable women to be equal but different and recognise that adapting an organisation to women can be good for the men too. She ended her presentation with a quote from Olivier Marchal of Bain & Co, “In improving the gender balance, women may hold the key, but men generally still control the lock.”.
“Forget China, India and the internet: economic growth is driven by women.”
Panel Discussion - How to Recruit, Develop and Retain Female Talent
The second session was an online panel discussion with three senior business leaders: Jean-Michel Monnot, Vice President, Group Diversity & Inclusion of Sodexo; Cathriona Hallahan, Managing Director, Microsoft EOC (Operations Centre); Helen Ziv-Douki, Panamax Pacific Trading Manager, Cargill Ocean Transportation BU.
Work Flexibility
The panel agreed that work flexibility was extremely important foe career women to enable them to progress in their careers and manage their outside responsibilities. Helen Ziv-Douki said that she had the support of her manager in this regard. She always leaves work at the same time at 6.30pm every day to look after her young son. But after he is asleep she will sometimes work later in the evening. Cathriona Hallahan agreed that flexibility and working virtually was important and said that her international team worked together through video conferences most of the time but tried to meet up every quarter or half year face to face. Jean-Michel Monnet added that flexibility is welcome for men as well as women and should be encouraged as a company-wide programme. It takes years to change mindsets, he said. A flexible culture has been instigated at Sodexo HQ in France, he added, which has been like a “revolution”. They faced plenty of resistance but have managed to make it happen.
He offered three points on what persuades men to support such changes. First, do they understand the present system discriminates unfairly against women? Second, do they feel the need to change in their hearts? In one case, the company asked men to mentor high-potential women and this completely changed their outlook. After that experience, they understood the woman’s position better and agreed with the need for change. Third, they have to do something.
Mentoring
The panel also agreed that mentoring was vitally important. Helen Ziv-Douki said it was important at all stages from lower management to the top. Cathriona Hallahan stressed the importance of having mentoring from someone external as well so you can get advice on the general direction of your career and life as well as specifically looking at your day-to-day issues.
The panel also agreed it was important to enable women to stay in the fast track if they wanted to after a career break. Cathriona Hallahan said that sometimes women and men who had come back after a break felt they had to earn their stripes again. But in fact companies are usually more than happy to integrate them back into the fast track straight away. Jean-Michel Monnot said that companies should challenge the notion that their high-potentials had to be under 35. Also, he suggested it was a good idea to ask women who were leaving on a career break what their expectations were. Did they want the company to stay in touch and keep them up to date? What were their long-term expectations?
Women in operational roles
The panel also discussed how to encourage women to take up more P&L operational responsibilities and whether they were deterred from doing so because of the long hours. Jean-Michel Monnot said this was a myth. It was perfectly possible for women to take on these roles and that this stereotype needed to be challenged. Cathriona Hallahan agreed and said that in her working life she organised when she came in or left the office according to her own needs. It was not always perfect but it was not necessary to spend long hours at the office to prove that you were doing your job. I do that by the results I get, she said.
In closing Cathriona Hallahan said that leadership was about aligning long-term strategic goals with your own career goals. She added you will need support from others at home to help too. Jean-Michel Monnot quoted his boss, CEO Michel Landel who says that women often like power but they also like to share it. He said that in these tough economic times it is worth asking whether we can move to a better business model where the two sexes share responsibilities more. Helen Ziv-Douki said she felt things were changing as companies such as Cargill recognised the need to support women more. What she expects is to get the flexibility she needs to be able to grow in her career in the same way as man would get.
“In one case, the company asked men to mentor high-potential women and this completely changed their outlook. After that experience, they understood the woman’s position better and agreed with the need for change.”
“The 21st Century is Ours” - Presentation by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
Avivah Wittenberg-Cox,
consultant, author and publisher
In her presentation entitled “The 21st Century is Ours”, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox said that the purpose of her talk was to “zoom in on the differences between men and women to help the listeners manage their own careers better and help them manage teams better.”
The Rise of the “Pomegranate Organisation”
Setting the wider context, Wittenberg-Cox outlined some big trends which have shaped the world we live and work in today. First, she discussed the emergence of a different style of management from the old, pyramid-shaped organisations, where there were clear hierarchies and reporting lines, to the new, flatter and more matrix-based “pomegranate” style organisations. The challenge in the modern organisation, she said, is for managers to “maximise the amount of juice they can squeeze out of every kernel.” Women’s skills and styles are especially suited to the “pomegranate” organisation, she added.
The Second Generation of Women At Work
Secondly, she compared the revolutionary influx of women into the workforce as similar to a wave of new immigrants. As first generation immigrants, women had to “keep their heads down, adapt to the new culture and learn the local language.” But all the time, said Wittenberg, women had their own “mother tongue”, the language they used to communicate with each other. The current generation of women business leaders are similar to second generation immigrants, much more comfortable with the business world in which they operate. They still have to the two languages – women’s “mother tongue” and the corporate one – and are adept at switching between them. They are “bilingual” in this sense, she said. Men, on the other hand, Wittenberg-Cox suggested, are not aware of the other feminine side of women at work. Men have been conditioned to feel they should treat women equally and the same, therefore encouraging women to suppress their feminine side.
Gender Differences – the Career Cycle
Wittenberg-Cox then discussed some of the gender differences. She pointed out that a recent survey of alumni from some of the top Grand L’Ecoles revealed that only a small number of women were aware of significant differences between men and women in their styles of work and only a fraction of the men were. For example, studies had shown that women tend to ask less for promotions and salary increases. But in the survey, only 8% of the men said they were aware of this and only 42% of the women.
The first difference outlined by Wittenberg-Cox was in the career cycles typically led by women. First, they emerged in their 20s confident and believing that they had been educated to succeed. Then they hit the “complicated decade” in their 30s. Two important things happen here that many women are unprepared for – hence she calls this phase, “Culture Shock.”
The Culture Shock Phase
First, most companies start to identify their high-potential leaders in the 28-35 age range, at just the time that women tend to consider raising a family. “This was not designed to discriminate against women,” said Wittenberg-Cox. “But it is a policy, designed for a workplace dominated by men, which has probably done more than any other policy to eliminate women from the talent pipeline.”
Second, women often fail to realise that companies want their high-potential leaders to make the transition from being good worker bees to becoming more versatile leaders, adept at being visible, networking, coalition building, being creative, thinking out of the box and so on. “Women are often oblivious to this dramatic shift in expectations,” said Wittenberg-Cox. “It is where having a mentor can help a lot.”
Thirdly, there is the self-affirmation stage usually in a woman’s 40s where her career tends to peak. She has more energy, after children have grown, to focus on the work and is eager to throw herself in. “I believe that it is in this phase that companies have the chance to really get the best out of their women leaders.”
The Difference A Woman Can Make
She gives an example in the career of Vivienne Cox, now Chief Executive of the BP Group’s activities in Alternative Energy. She joined BP after University and stayed there throughout her career. She married late and had a child when she was 39. It was then that the Chief Executive of the time, Lord Browne offered her the chance to run the company’s $90 billion downstream business. It was a huge opportunity, said Wittenberg-Cox, but Cox told Browne that she would not have the time to do it. Most managers would have said, “Too bad”, said Wittenberg-Cox, but Browne said, “Yes and that’s why I want you to do it. I trust you and I want to show the organisation that this job can be run in any kind of way provided you have the right person at the top.” Many other companies would have let someone like Cox turn down the promotion and have lost the contribution she could make. It was thanks to Cox that BP launched its renewable business, Wittenberg-Cox said. “How many companies have lost the potential contribution of a talented woman like her because they could not figure out how to accommodate her particular needs?”
Gender Differences – Communicating
Wittenberg-Cox went on to discuss the second area of differences, the styles of communications, which she said was, in her view, one of the biggest factors impeding women’s advancement to senior management. For example, men tend to organise themselves around power and status and women around rapport and orientation, something that can be seen as early as in the playground. In the male world, it is about who is the fastest or loudest or who has the biggest profits. Whereas, for the women, communicating tends to be around sharing information in order to create a common understanding. Women who try to put themselves above others, she said, are not always well received by other women because they don’t respond to that sort of masculine power play. In another example, men marketing themselves will often come across as boastful to women while women’s unwillingness to do the same is seen as lack of self-confidence.
Tips for the Career Woman
Wittenberg-Cox offered three tips for women. First, pace yourself. See your 30s as a time when you will inevitably have to alter the pace. Use it to develop new networks and gain new knowledge and come back more fully into the fast track later. Second, accept that company politics has been shaped by men and if you want to change it, you need to learn the rules and play their game first. And, third, recognise the importance of having partners who support you. First, the corporate partner – work for progressive companies. Look at how many women they have on the executive committees. One or less is not a good sign. Second, your manager is very important. Successful women have always been helped by at least one enlightened male manager who understands the system. Third, your spouse or partner. Here, Wittenberg-Cox said, you may have to make a hard choice. Fine if you have a very enlightened and supportive partner. But if not, you may have to choose to go it alone to pursue your career.
