The route to higher corporate performance - Building Gender Balanced Business

Recent articles in the McKinsey Quarterly and the Economist show that the issue of women as an economic force is beginning to take hold of the public imagination (articles listed below).

As a majority of the people who spend money and as a huge source of talent, woefully untapped as yet by most organisations, focusing on women in business is becoming one of the key management issues of the moment. Pointing out that there may be three female graduates to two male ones by 2017, the Economist reports that, “The meritocracy is inexorably turning into a matriarchy”.

Clearly, the message is getting through. However, look at the boards or executive committees of most companies and you are not going to see many female faces – if any. Many top business leaders know they should be doing something. But they either expect the process to happen naturally or are taking slow steps towards achieving a better gender balance.

Womenomics – an issue for the board

This website will reveal some of the more enlightened businessmen – for it is the men who mostly have the control to bring about change – who are transforming their organisations to appeal equally to women as well as men. They recognise the value of having a female perspective at the board table, and do not want women to behave like men. They don’t want them to be the same in some misguided attempt to treat them equally. Rather, they realise that to understand the consumers – most of whom are women – they need a more pronounced female vision at the top. Of course, they come to realise that women are different and that this should be allowed to be part of the company’s culture, not subsumed to the men.

They also can see that there is a huge wealth of talent to be found amongst the women inside and outside their companies, if only they can figure out how to attract, motivate and retain them.

New challenges for business leadership

The art of managing organisations today is to understand that they must be shaped in a way that appeals to women as much as men. If women don’t shout as loud for the top jobs, for example, then the organisation needs to encourage them to put themselves forward. According to the McKinsey Quarterly article, Lloyds TSB found that female employees were 8 percent more likely than men to to meet or exceed performance expectations. But they tended not to apply for promotion. Smart firms like Lloyds TSB recognise the talent within their midst and develop mentoring programmes, for instance, to encourage women to put themselves forward.

Research by McKinsey and others is increasingly showing that there is likely to be a correlation between a higher organisational and financial performance and the number of women on the board. In the past, gender diversity has tended to be slotted into the diversity department, perhaps an adjunct of HR. But some companies have found that they need commitment from the top and a senior manager who can influence the unconvinced men to drive change. This might at first seem to many of them to be a fluffy, politically correct intrusion into their busy lives.

But the evidence is suggesting that it could not be a harder issue: it is really about achieving higher corporate performance in an ever tougher, competitive environment. Can every business leader or board say they have done everything they can to encourage women – and if they cannot – what do they intend to do about it? Soon, the shareholders will be asking them the same question and expecting answers.

Morice Mendoza, Editor

Further reading

Centred leadership: how talented women thrive by Joanna Barsh, Susie Cranston and Rebecca A. Craske, Mckinsey Quarterly, September 2008.

A business case for women by Georges Desvaux, Sandrine Devillard-Hoellinger and Mary C. Meaney, McKinsey Quarterly, September 2007.

The triumph of feminism, Lexington The Economist, September, 13, 2008.