From 'Fixing Women' to 21st Century Companies
All around the world, companies are launching gender initiatives. But the attempts of many of these firms are well-meaning, but inefficient. Our own report, the 20-first WOMENOMICS 101 Survey, showed that almost 70% of the top companies in Europe don’t have any women on their Executive Committee. The reason for this glacial pace of change is that they are trying to apply a band-aid to an issue that calls for a systemic review of the business model.
The problem is with the single-model career path and relentless up-or-out cultures that are common in many highly homogeneous business models. These companies won’t become more gender balanced until their model evolves into something more gender bi-lingual.
The problem is that the people at the top, who have risen through the old system, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They have absolutely no incentive to change the system. The idea of adapting the model that has benefitted them to accommodate a greater number of women is laughable. At least while they can still find men (and a minority of women who adapt to the masculine norms) ready to do what they did, they see no reason to change things.
We are “prisoners of a paradigm”
All this, however, is unconscious. We are all, for the moment, what Professor Gary Hamel calls the “unwitting prisoners of a paradigm.” Most of these senior managers may truly believe that women aren’t making it to the top because of something they lack such as time, competence, and style. They are still asking a 20th century question: “what is wrong with these women that they are not making it to the top?” We would suggest that the 21st century question is “what is wrong with this company if we are not able to promote the majority of our high-potential talent to the key positions and what is that doing to the quality of our talent?” These two questions yield very different answers – and lead to very different solutions.
‘Fixing the Women‘
The first step most companies take, even before thinking about the issue, is to look at what other companies are doing, and then craft ‘action plans’ to do at least as much. This trend is exacerbated by rating agencies and various accreditation or award bodies who evaluate these initiatives based on a list of criteria that usually involve a list of what they like to call ‘best practices.’
In the past decade in North America, and now rolling around the world in an American-led wave, you can see the results. Company after company and almost all the professional services firms are creating women’s networks, mentoring programmes for women, and coaching and leadership training for women. All are fine programmes, and the delight of consulting firms like mine. They are popular with most women, happy to have some developmental focus. Having run many of these for a number of years myself, I know just how empowering and energizing they can be.
The only problem is that I’m not at all convinced they work. Or at least not in isolation. The focus on women in companies leads to a host of unintended consequences. And the intended consequences (usually more women in leadership) have not been proven.
“Managers are still asking a 20th century question: “what is wrong with these women that they are not making it to the top?” We would suggest that the 21st century question is “what is wrong with this company if we are not able to promote the majority of our high-potential talent to the key positions and what is that doing to the quality of our talent?” These two questions yield very different answers – and lead to very different solutions.”
These ‘fix the women’ strategies unconsciously encourage women to conform more closely to the dominant masculine norm and culture.
Women are very ready to agree that they don’t do enough networking and self-marketing. And the senior men who are invited to introduce these sessions as ‘supporters’ and ‘champions’ are perfectly content to acknowledge that women need a little extra help in order to be truly ready in some distant future for leadership roles. That way, companies discover, everyone is happy. The women are happy as they have a sense that they are overcoming handicaps. The men are happy because it confirms that women have handicaps.
Questions to ask
I would pose some other questions to the leaders of the companies launching these approaches. Here are a few:
- Do you really want to encourage half your work force to spend time learning and adopting the communication styles preferred by men?
- Have you carried out client and customer satisfaction surveys to see how appreciated are the different talent on your staffs?
- Are you promoting to the top positions the people that your customers and peers evaluate as top performers or those that today’s managers prefer for their availability and expressed ambition?
All the literature on career management is still about managing in a traditional, 20th century pyramid-style organisation, with everything it implies about the unwritten rules of the game, and the predominance of ambition and internal competition.
Before we transform the new, still-different culture of female talent into pseudo-male behaviours, it might be worth understanding the consequences of our actions.
Time is running out
We are at precisely the point in history where companies are dreaming of new leadership competencies, new collaborative cultures and newly innovative minds. But the lag time in embedding these new ideas into the corporate DNA risks costing us the opportunity of a whole half of the talent pool whose authentic styles seem naturally aligned with these new needs.
In the course of researching for my new book, How Women Mean Business – A Step by Step Guide to Profiting from Gender Balanced Business (Wiley, Spring 2010), I have interviewed many progressive male CEOs who have started transforming their companies in order to attract and retain the best talent, female and male.
For example, Damien O’Brien, CEO of the executive search firm, Egon Zehnder International, is clear about the importance of gender balance. “More and more clients around the world just expect us to field gender balanced teams,” he says. “If they look at our website and see a lot of grey-haired, white males, a lot of them would not find that very exciting on many dimensions.” However, such leaders who are clear about the need for change are rare.
The critical challenge for the majority of companies is to refrain from ‘fix the women’ policies and to start embracing their differences. With their different and complementary skills and perspectives, women may be the solution to companies adapting to 21st century talent and market realities.
Bookmarks
Featured
- ObamaMama
- Gender agenda
- Why Words Matter: Dump "Diversity," Paint a Mosaic
- On International Women’s Day: Time to Worry about Our Sons?
- OK, Quotas Are a Trend
- Gender as a Measure of … Everything
- Happy ‘Can-Do’ New Year to All
- Indian Women Mean Business
- The Fall of Sex
- Beyond Boards: Getting Real about Gender Balance
- What's Wrong With This Picture?
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