By Steven Grant
The Customer Research Center (CRC) recently talked with two incredibly successful female professionals about the dirty little Fortune 500 secret that everyone knows about and no one talks about. One of these women, President of her own Internet consulting firm, is a living definition of smarts and tenacity; successfully shepherding her team through the Dot.Com crash and into custom website design efforts for high end brands. The other woman is just starting her own consulting firm; bailing out of a Fortune 500 with one client in tow to launch her own business. Our conversation focused on the large numbers of highly competent aspiring women executives, poised between one or two decades of grinding servitude and the upper echelon rewards bestowed on the top 1%, who are turning their pumps away from the golden ladder and taking the stairs out.
These cadres of highly skilled, highly intelligent next generation CEO's are walking away from the promise of rewards for the certitude of rewarding themselves. Their standard exit line to the puzzled companies who were just getting ready to tap them on the shoulder for that next promotion is: "I'd like to spend more time with my family." What these two career women clued us in to is that line is just a line, the real reason is too awful to reveal. Both of these successful, intelligent women knew that if they told the truth they would be stoned-no, scratch that, that interview was in Iran-they knew they could never go back to the company afterward, if they ever wanted their old jobs back.
The real reason these women are leaving is because the corporate ladder provides an escalator for the men and a greased pole for the women. Yes, Virginia, Santa Claus still thinks you should be baking gingerbread cookies, not running the $1.7 billion toy manufacturing facility in Guangdong.
There is a fundamental cultural distinction at the heart of this unfairness. Women believe in meritocracy, men believe in winning. When a project falls apart a woman is likely to say, "I wasn't a good enough leader." If a project succeeds a woman is likely to say, "I had a great team." We're hoping we don't need to spell out the logical inversion of those statements that would tumble from the tongues of men.
A male executive, hearing these statements from women, begins to think, "Maybe she isn't a good enough leader" or "Maybe the team is carrying her." The male executives, in similar circumstances, are naturally inclined to braggadocio, back slapping, feather preening, and urinating on their beards-no, no that was the article about pygmy goats-to focus attention on them and garner as much credit as possible for the minimum investment of their own energy. This is simple Darwinian logic copied over the millennia from the genes of our woolly ancestors.
In reality most firms are still hierarchical patriarchies, even when they're run by women, and far from the meritocracies for which these women originally forsook hearth and home in search of a career. Instead of saying, "I'd like to spend more time with my family." these women want to say, "I'm sick of all the incompetent jackasses getting the promotions because they kiss your behind. I could make better decisions in less time than it takes them to zip up their pants."
So someone has to tell these clueless guys the truth before they burn out the next generation of females. Wake up and make some coffee guys. There's a clear choice between the Tao of blissfully ignorant backslapping devolution and a whole new generation of career women who are going to skip the butt kissing part and go right for the kicking.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar