Happy ‘Can-Do’ New Year to All - Building Gender Balanced Business

After a year of incredible change and tumult on both a personal and global level for many, let’s celebrate. The Economist magazine, that scion of global business, has devoted its New Year’s issue to a rousing celebration of women’s progress. We salute its excellent coverage of the theme and are particularly honoured to be recognized in its pages as one of the most “prominent proponents” of what they call “the new feminism.” It is a measure of how much impact our message has had, that it is now carried by the mainstream management press.

We would not, however, be quite as quick as The Economist to claim, as the cover does, that “we did it!” In fact, the contrast among the articles in the magazine’s special report is one of the better indicators I’ve seen of the work yet to be done.

The leader concludes that today women run “many” of the world’s great companies and “are taking a sledgehammer to the remaining glass ceilings.” That the revolution is done, and that now it is just a question of time and “letting the market do the work.” This, I would suggest, is a pretty accurate measure of the perception that many companies and managers have. They are convinced that change is inevitable, and that they simply have to ensure that no unfair obstacles block the path.

The Challenge Ahead
The main article, “Female Power,” is quite different. It says that coping with the extraordinary arrival of massive numbers of women into the economy “will be one of the great challenges of the coming decade.” I could not agree more. The Economist accurately recognizes what is too rarely acknowledged: that “the economic empowerment of women across the rich world is one of the most remarkable revolutions of the past 50 years.” But that the economic revolution has not been adequately adapted to. “Social arrangements have not caught up with economic changes.” Nor have women’s “rising aspirations been fulfilled. They have been encouraged to climb onto the occupational ladder only to discover that the middle rungs are dominated by men and the upper rungs are out of reach.”

The Economist explains this last with a nod to prejudice and a focus on the personal choice forced on women between family and career in countries around the globe. I’d suggest that the underlying reason (the recognition of which is essential to its solution) is more subtle, and lies right in the columns of the third article, the Schumpeter column entitled “Womenomics.”

This editorial encourages women to “ignore the siren voices of the new feminism” who are “flirting with some dangerous arguments.” The article sets up the women vs men divide as the opposition of “touchy-feely organizations of the new feminist imagination” vs. “hard-edged companies.” A company run by the Chinese female CEO, Dong Mingzhu, is cited as a model “old-fashioned meritocracy,” because of her no-nonsense approach (“I never admit mistakes and I am always correct”). Schumpeter inadvertently, but correctly, describes this as old-fashioned.

Why We Need A New Management Paradigm
What The Economist and many companies have not quite integrated is that we are all (men and women) caught in an old paradigm of what leadership and power looks like. Quoting such a typically alpha-male-sounding woman, The Economist is demonstrating what it (and many companies) still unconsciously expects from leaders. This explains a big part of the current blockage of women on the management ladder. Companies are still locked in a power hungry, take-no-prisoners leadership paradigm that dates back to 20th century industrial challenges. Until they actively recognize this, female talent in its natural expression cannot be seen, heard or recognized as being competent, visionary or inspiring.

Luckily, modern meritocracies don’t want leaders who can’t admit a mistake. A host of progressive CEOs (both male and female), recognize that new forms of leadership are not only now possible – but desperately needed. I have quoted many of them in the book I just finished writing, HOW Women Mean Business (the sequel to WHY Women Mean Business), which will be published by Wiley this April.

Moving into a complex, multi-polar, wildly diverse and totally connected 21st century business world, it is time to innovate – we need new ideas and approaches to management and leadership. This time round, it will need to be designed with the majority of today’s workforce: women.

We haven’t done it yet. But given what women have accomplished – peacefully – in the past 50 years, I’ll be ready to bet that we’ll have finished the job in another 50.

In the meantime, keep it up ladies – and gentlemen. All my warmest New Year’s wishes to all of you who are making human history by creating a truly gender balanced world … for the very first time.