There are more articles going around about how women don’t speak up in the conference room – but this time there is a new twist. Now we are being told of new perils if we do speak up – we are viewed as being too aggressive and we will be looked at disfavorably. So what’s the latest message? – We are damned if do and damned if we don’t?!
I wonder if this latest finding is because women took the last bit of advice – that women should jump into the fray – be just as aggressive as the men in the room in getting their ideas heard. Since people don’t like aggressive women (or men) the unfavorable feedback is not unexpected. I am still curious about the background (actual experience in the male-dominated conference room) of the people who write these articles because having your ideas heard in the conference room is a minor career goal.
Being the “idea person” is good, but what really counts, is being the person who implements the good idea – being the leader who puts the idea into action and makes the larger objective happen!
In time no one remembers (or cares) who came up with idea – what they remember is who achieved the objective.
When you are in a conference room and the guys are being loud, voicing their ideas it not just so the boss will say “Bob that is a great idea – you get a gold star.” It is because they want to be selected to be in charge of implementing the idea.
In the logic of the male-dominated workplace, your male peers believe that if they can fend off their competitors they will be chosen to be the leader. In their minds the leader has to defeat competitors so that is why they are so loud. But this is NOT how empowered women should think. This is NOT what empowered women do. Empowered women stay out of the Blue Zone!
Empowered women understand that leaders are not chosen, they do not wait for permission – they just do it.
This is why I wrote my articles on the Power Seat – so you bypass all of the aggressive behavior (“manterruptions”) and go right into being the leader in the conference room. And the great thing about the Power Seat is that it you don’t have to come up with the idea – it is a perfect technique to “bro-opt” back the men!
I have always chosen the projects I want to lead. I hear about a new objective and I start formulating my execution plan long before the meeting. I have already subtly picked everyone’s brains and rounded up the best ideas. That way when I pitch “my idea”, I have Bob’s, Jim’s and George’s ideas incorporated into my plan – I have them on board with supporting my plan.
Leaders have the execution plan. And that doesn’t require aggression – it is having confidence in yourself a leader because you used the Purple Approach to develop your plan. And you know your plan will work much better than any plan developed in autonomy by your male co-workers.
And one more thing – advice from my friends -on how to stop “manterruptions” in a meeting. Just invite a woman over 50 to the meeting. When a young man gets loud and interrupts we have no problem saying in a commanding voice with a stern glare “Excuse me! Someone is speaking and you are being rude. Please wait until she is done THEN you may speak.”
Empowered women know that having an idea is good, but implementing good ideas is how they build a career in the male-dominated workplace.
When I start a new project or a new job I like playing dumb. I pretend I know absolutely nothing about how to do my job.
Is that shocking? It is so contrary to what we think we should do – we should always show our knowledge and that we know exactly what to do in any work situation. How else can we take charge? How do we direct our people and make sure everything is done right?
What is wrong with conventional thinking is that we mistakenly believe that as we gain experience we fill up the knowledge bucket. We believe the 850 pieces of knowledge in our bucket are all the pieces there are. We don’t realize that there are really 1,000 pieces and we are missing 150 pieces.
When we work with a group of people, everyone is anxious to show off their 615, 783 or 847 pieces of knowledge. But what about those missing pieces?
How do we discover them?
By playing dumb.
Our goal is to change the dynamic of the meeting. Instead of everyone impressing each other with their personal knowledge we change the focus to discovering the 150 missing pieces.
Playing dumb starts with listening, not to what is being said, but to what is not.
I like to bring out my inner 3-year old who constantly asks “Why?” By asking “Why; How; Who does that; When?” we go deeper and think about why we are taking the actions we are.
Answers such as “because that is the way we’ve always done it” or “because that’s the way I like to do it” come under scrutiny. Those answers tell you people aren’t thinking and they are expecting this new project to just be a repeat of past projects. They will be unprepared for new issues unique to this project which will result in inefficiency and extra costs.
As I have risen in management ranks, increasing my dumbness has become a critical management skill. If I dictate every action then I don’t train my team to think for themselves and solve problems on their own. But if I play dumb I can guide them through the thinking and learning process.
If my team collectively only knows 600 pieces of information, through my continuous questioning like a 3 year old I can ask the questions that lead them to discovering the other 250 pieces that I know. As for the remaining 150 pieces none of us know, it is amazing how our collective thinking and questioning brings those to light.
One more thing: Do you know what else we call playing dumb?
Being a humble leader.
Empowered women aren’t afraid to play dumb and teach their team.
When I think about teamwork, I think of a group of people working together to achieve a common objective. In teamwork each person has their role and they subordinate themselves and their personal importance to the larger objective. Teamwork makes us feel good about ourselves and our achievements.
Right?? Isn’t that what teamwork is all about?
I thought so, but I had a boss who gave me a different perspective on teamwork, one I had have not fully considered before.
According to the dictionary there is a second definition of teamwork: “A group of people who form one of the sides of a game or contest.” We know this definition well – we think of sport teams. Teamwork is used in a competition that produces a definite winner and loser.
This is how my boss thought of teamwork, as part of a competition. In his logic, if there is teamwork, then there is a competition which, most importantly, produces a winner and a loser.
For me this was really surprising to figure out about him. For months I interpreted his “weekly team checks” with him giving me the thumbs-up and me giving him the thumbs-up in return as making sure we were moving forward on correcting the company problems. I never considered that by his “team check” he was really asking “you are still on MY team –right?” I didn’t consider this because I didn’t know who he and I would be competing against. Using my definition of teamwork, the objective was to improve the company’s performance and that was what my boss, my staff and I were working towards…right??
Not quite.
In my boss’s mind, for my company to move up then something had to move down – actually it is more correct to say that for the company and HIM to move up, someone else had to move down. That calls for a competition that would determine the winner and loser.
It took a few weeks but I figured out who my boss was competing against and… ooppss!!! It was the manager I was reaching out to in order to build a larger corporate team!! So when my boss saw me talking to this other manager, he thought I was defecting to the other manager’s team and working against him. This of course caused conflict between me and my boss.
To me it was an utterly ridiculous situation – this should be about teamwork and positive objectives – not about defeating another manager so my boss’s personal insecurities could be quelled.
But this situation got me thinking – had I worked for other managers who only thought of teamwork in a conjunction with a competition? Did they understand how to use teamwork without team rivalries – ust to improve performance?
Surprisingly I thought of a lot of times when teamwork was used to rally the troops in competition against another company but few when my boss touted teamwork to reach a corporate objective. I had to think back to the days when I was in the Air Force or working with the military to find real teamwork. It made me wonder how the American business culture really views teamwork.
Competition is a part of business – there is always a competitor to out-perform. Many companies I worked for were very competitive with a primary rival – like the Washington Redskins versus the Dallas Cowboys. When competing for new work from a client we weren’t just after the new work, we also had to beat our rival. Even if a third competitor got the work, that was OK as long as our rival didn’t win and us lose. We could find a victory in this kind of defeat. (It’s like the Redskins favoring any team who plays and beats the Cowboys!)
Even though competitiveness and teamwork are linked, we don’t have to defeat another group to use teamwork. We can compete against ourselves – against our old performance. This is how I inspired teamwork – I found something tangible and measureable for us to compete against – a goal. In construction, it is easy to compete against time – completing a project by a certain date. We also can compete against poor quality work – have less than 5 punch list items on each phase of work.
When we meet our objective we celebrate just as if we beat our biggest rival for a new project. We also savor the deeper sense of pride and self-confidence we achieve.
But for a lot of people like my boss, the idea of competing against yourself is a difficult concept. It requires humility and the ability to look inward, admitting that you weren’t measuring up to standards you want to set for yourself. People like my boss find it easier to look outward and push someone else down in order to prove himself to himself.
Most of the conflict I experienced at work could have been settled with my definition of teamwork, but competitiveness was chosen instead. Instead of admitting our mistakes or shortcomings, we argued that the other side was overbearing in their standards or requirements. If our team could find a way to push down and discredit their team then we wouldn’t have to admit our mistakes. While my bosses get a sense of victory in that, I don’t.
I will continue to promote my definition of teamwork where the organization works together to achieve an objective that is bigger than ourselves. I don’t need to push another entity down in order to raise us up. We can rise and other entities can remain stationary.
This is what really great managers and companies understand. It is what I learned in the Air Force and like others who have served in the military, this version of teamwork becomes part of who we are. We know that by collectively working together for an objective larger than ourselves we will always excel.
So, don’t take it for granted like I did that you and your company are working from the same definition of teamwork. Look around your company and see if they only use teamwork when competing. You may have to teach them how to have teamwork without competition. And if you have former military members in your office, they will gladly help you.
The empowered woman uses teamwork to improve performance and instill pride and self-confidence in her team.
I started this website to teach other women the concepts I successfully used in my career. Little did I know that I preparing myself for my biggest challenge yet into the male-dominated workplace.
I want to share this experience because I was in such an extreme condition and yet I dramatically changed the company in one year. I will not lie and say it was easy because it wasn’t – this was the hardest I’ve ever worked. Work consumed my life. But my experience demonstrates the capabilities of women when they are empowered to apply themselves. I am now in awe of what is in us to achieve.
This article long so read it when you have a good half hour. I dealt with a lot in my job and this article discusses only about 25% of the issues. I included music clips – the songs I associated with the issues and sang over and over again in my head to maintain my sense of humor. And as you will see, I needed my sense of humor!
I was recruited to be the General Manager of a construction company (I will call it DSC) because of my experience creating a process-driven workplace. I was a little wary about the job. Just because an employer says he wants a process-driven company, doesn’t mean he really understands what a process-driven company is.
Because this company was not in the U.S and not American, I wanted to make sure it was solid. I was assured the company which was part of a larger group of privately owned companies was profitable, functioning well and in a market full of opportunity. So, I looked forward to what I saw as an adventure.
My Job Won’t Be Hard!
Upon my arrival my boss welcomed me with a card showing a tranquil dirt road ascending a gently-sloped grassy hill. To him, this expressed the extent of the difficulty I would encounter in my new job.
That was my first hint. This is construction and there is no such thing as smooth roads. I suspected that dirt road was a bit bumpier than depicted. But, no problem, there’s a reason I drive a Jeep not a BMW.
By noon on my fourth day, I knew DSC had serious financial issues. Neither DSC nor the corporate financial department understood or used the basic principles of construction financial management. I thought back to a construction financial course I took many years ago and realized I was in the worst case scenario. DSC was projecting revenue it could not justify and didn’t know its outstanding costs. There was no way to know DSC’s true financial position.
Then as I do with every company I work for, I applied the Dollars to Doughnuts Concept. I discovered DSC had no idea how to make money in construction because there was no project management. This meant the entire middle section of the concept was missing. While a gap between the top and bottom section is common, within this corporation, they weren’t even aligned. The corporate level didn’t know what DSC did as a business, how they functioned or how they should function. And since no one within DSC had any project management training, they didn’t know how they were supposed to function either.
Dollars To Doughnuts ConceptDSC Version of Dollars to Doughnuts Concept
I thought about the four quadrants of knowledge. This corporation was in the “we don’t know what we don’t know” quadrant.
Or in layman’s terms – this is the blind leading the blind.
That gentle grassy hill just got very steep and rocky. I had to teach everyone the most basic fundamental principles of the construction business and how to integrate them into construction management processes.
My first DSC Theme Song
I didn’t need my Jeep, I needed a rock crawling Rubicon Jeep with a 5” lift!
During my first two weeks, I had a steady stream of people from the corporate staff and our sister companies inform me that DSC’s fundamental problem was a lack of accountability. I found this ironic because in the management meeting, anytime someone was questioned, they deflected by bringing up something DSC was doing wrong. I made a HUGE mental note of this. It seemed everyone liked that DSC wasn’t functioning because they used DSC to avoid their own accountability. That meant possible trouble in the future. Once I get DSC on track, how will they react when they can’t deflect onto DSC and have to address their internal performance issues?
By the end of that second week I realized a lack of accountability was merely a symptom of DSC’s real fundamental problem – Autonomy. DSC valued autonomy above all else. Each person did what they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted. And they fiercely protected their right to do so!
Its excessive value for autonomy made DSC an extreme male-dominated company. DSC was so deep into the Blue Zone that it didn’t know there were other colors in the rainbow! Even the women were pure blue.
To understand DSC’s and the corporation’s culture you have to go back in time at least 60 years and forget all management concepts that have been developed since. (This job involved time travel too!)
I pulled out some old articles written in the 1980’s that discussed old management styles to refresh my memory. I read: “People choose which competencies to develop based upon their self-image. They develop an idea of what it means to be a manager and act accordingly.” I remembered one of my first articles, Understanding Why Being a Manager Is So Important discussed this passage and I pulled that out too.
DSC is a unionized company (yes, I hear the collective U.S. groan) and most of the current supervisors had been with the company for decades. They remember the days before professionals were needed, when their senior union supervisors ran all the work. Now that they were the supervisors, they wanted the same status and autonomy their predecessors enjoyed. They believed, and were corporately empowered to believe, that when it came to doing “the work” they alone could make all decisions. There was no need for management or technical professionals such as project managers, quality managers, estimators, schedulers or even engineers for design.
The union members had a pre-industrial revolution era concept of how to do work. (Now we are really going back in time to the days before building codes! Scary but true.) They believed in the master craftsman that independently decided how to construct the project and directed the trades in what to do. As a worker moved up vertically from foreman to general foreman to superintendent , he grew in status based upon his expertise. And because they didn’t have any horizontal perspective, the higher a supervisor was in the vertical hierarchy, the greater his autonomy – there were fewer people he had to answer to. At DSC Autonomy = Status. Listening to them I often thought of teenagers, anxious to achieve adult status at 18, and no longer be answerable to mom and dad.
The Autonomy of DSC Divisions
The DSC org chart depicted these beliefs. DSC did not have a central office and each division operated from client sites or various corporate offices. Each DSC division was its own independent company working an assigned territory and reported only to me. They did not trespass onto each other’s territory. There were no shared resources – they did not share personnel, tools, vehicles or equipment. Trade workers worked for a specific superintendent and were not allowed to work for another.
I continuously hired project managers and other professionals in an attempt to fill in the middle management ranks and delegate my massive workload. But every manager I hired created more work than he relieved. The reason – each and every one of them got pulled deep into the Blue Zone and continuously engaged in intense arguments with the union workforce. The union workforce did not want a middle management layer to erode the status they waited decades to attain.
I spent my days (Sundays and holidays were the most frequent) breaking up arguments and averting physical fights, leaving me to do my work late into the night. One night while working with Mad Men playing in the background I heard:
Don’t fight with the Pig in the mud.
You get dirty.
And the Pig loves it.
I replayed the scene several times – that described DSC! I made up signs and plastered that saying everywhere. But every male manager still wound up in the mud. They ALL also wound up at the hospital with stress related ailments. Eventually they all left.
Status was important at the corporate level too. Going back to my old reference article, a passage read “It suited the self-images of the managers that they were superior, the brains for others who could only supply the brawn.” This fit the corporate culture! Most of the corporate staff was located in another larger city where “higher quality people” could be found. The town and area DSC operated in was industrial, “dirty” and a blue collar working town, (think Hunger Games, District 13) not a desirable place for professionals. Our physical separation enhanced the distinction in status between blue collar and professional.
The corporate staff did the strategic planning – the highest level of thinking. It wasn’t until my last couple of weeks that I understood that as a general manager I was under/inferior to the corporate staff. In this hierarchy they did not need my input. According to them, they were responsible to audit and evaluate (critique) DSC performance.
It always seemed odd to me that I didn’t discuss what DSC was working on with anyone. In management meetings the corporate staff gave detailed reports but the operating company GM’s (those of us who actually produced revenue) had only 5 minutes once a month to list our top projects. But if you understand that the corporate staff didn’t believe they needed our input to do their jobs to support us, it makes perfect illogical sense.
As I was writing this article I came across another passage I marked back then: “To managers employees were considered expendable, factors of employment, no different from machines. Managers demanded an allegiance they did not return. Workers responded by developing an allegiance to their unions.”
No wonder I marked it – that is DSC and the corporation in a nutshell!! I often thought to myself: Welcome to the 1950’s!!
At the corporate level, they were obsessed with returning DSC to its past glory days of being the local contractor who successfully competed with the big out-of-town general contractors. For decades DSC successfully grew without any project management or professional support! But that was 10+ years ago and a very different business climate.
The Corporate Theme Song That I Sang Several Times a Week!
Back then it was simple – Clients’ big oil money flowed like water. DSC did their work on a time and material basis – they went out, did the work, made whatever changes to the scope they wanted and got paid for every dime. This was construction project and financial management at its absolute simplest.
But then the environment changed dramatically in 2009. Oil money no longer flowed like water – oil companies competed for investors who expected higher returns, forcing them to crank down tight on budgets. DSC’s simple environment suddenly got complex – safety, construction management, quality management and financial controls were now required. But DSC didn’t evolve; it didn’t learn how to operate in its new complex construction market.
Complexity is the ultimate enemy of Autonomy and it beat the crap out of DSC! The complexity of construction project management put DSC on life support but without financial management, no one even realized it! By my third month I realized DSC would not survive another year without drastic and immediate changes.
DSC, who used billable rates established in its contracts, was losing money on every man-hour worked. Their billable rates were so far out of date they did not cover their costs. I “joked’ that their project manager rate was $20/hr. lower than the rates I used 12 years ago!
Because no one understood contracts, no one read the contracts so no one knew the contracts allowed for an annual adjustment of overhead costs. (I thought: ever hear of inflation?) Their oldest contract hadn’t updated overhead costs and non-union wages in 9 years! Even worse, that contract was about to quadruple in work. Do the math: lose $7 per man-hour for 60 men working 10 hours per day, 365 days a year! (7*60*10*365 = $1,533,000) Ouch!
Luckily the time to increase rates was upon us. I recalculated rates and increased the rates as much as each of our Clients allowed (It gave me something to do every night from 11:00 pm to 3:00 am for two weeks) I also restructured the profit calculations to capture more profit. They collected $2.50/hr. profit on regular time rates of $54/hr., overtime rates of $80/hr.and double time rates of $106/hr. I was shocked – $2.50 profit on costs of $106! I told them that was just plain Un-American!!
Rates were only one issue – DSC was hemorrhaging money everywhere. Another root problem was the women’s lack of clout. At DSC “the girls” as they were called didn’t carry the job title of Project Administrators as they do in most construction companies. They were Administrative Assistants. DSC hired girls with a clerical backgrounds believing the girls simply filled out forms in Excel and administratively cleaned up after “the guys.”
But their responsibilities weren’t that simple any more. Project Administrators are the first line of defense in protecting the financial integrity of projects. They watch over the financial and contractual processes and for this reason, good construction companies empower Project Administrators. Without any clout the girls at DSC couldn’t resolve issues. The filled out their Excel forms the best they could, then built walls for autonomy and to protect themselves from accountability for the incomplete work.
Without communication and teamwork issues remained unresolved. The associated costs mounted into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then because the issues seemed too complex to resolve, the costs were routinely written off.
Early on, I hired a phenomenal young woman to help me clean up the mess. She quit after 3 weeks and confided in me why. She worked with one of the men before (he recommended her to me) and didn’t want to work under him again. She felt that with her college degree and her experience she shouldn’t be “his girl” who cleaned up the mess he made of projects. She was burnt out from doing that with her previous employer and she knew she deserved more professionally. Because she was close friends with this man, she didn’t want to get into a power struggle as she asserted herself and ruin their friendship.
I felt bad for her because she was so capable but like the women of DSC she was pure Blue and that is what she really struggled with. She acted like a man thinking that is what she needed in order to get ahead but no matter what she would always be “his girl” and personal administrative assistant. (I always got a kick out of listening to her cuss up a storm while her little Prada handbag sat daintily on my desk.)
Her story emphasized just how deeply male-dominated the culture was. After she left, I really had to think about my strategy to move DSC to the Purple Zone.
I already began separating people into two groups – those that were willing to grow and learn (“Roundies”) and those that weren’t. The ones who weren’t willing to grow, I started calling “Flatties”. They believed the world was flat and that if we sailed too far in the direction I was taking DSC, we would fall off the edge of the earth into the abyss. When I discussed new processes, you could see genuine fear in their eyes! Their fear of the unknown, of losing autonomy and of having to acknowledge what they didn’t know would always prevent them from reaching the brave new world of the Purple Zone.
My Second DSC Theme Song.
The Flatties resisted change with everything in them. One woman was anointed as the head of the resistance movement. Her tactic was to resist until you gave up in complete frustration and backed down. In construction men often resolve conflict this way – he who backs down first loses. I was fascinated that a woman was so effective in this technique with the men. I secretly liked her for this and hoped she would become a “Roundie”.
Unlike the men who engaged her in the Blue Zone and failed, I engaged her from the Purple Zone. No threats, no hostility. I gave her a firm explanation of why procedures were changing and expressed my excitement as to how much better everything will be! (In the new world is it sunny, warm and we drink mojitos all day!) As she resisted, hoping to wear me down, I didn’t budge and maintained my chipper attitude. I responded to each and every email she sent – I could not allow her to have the last word. I kept responding and it took hours, if not all day or two days, until she gave up. The Flatties were no match for the American Dream Team! (That’s what the Flatties called the Americans in the company)
Over several months, most of the Flatties eventually left on their own. A lot of people were scared about the Flatties leaving because they were perceived to have the power and knowledge base – if they left then DSC would immediately fall apart. I’ve heard that same fear mongering many times and always found that once the bad apples leave, the good people who were pushed into the back corner step forward and flourish. And this is what happened at DSC. (Baby and Johnny tore it up on Kellerman’s dancefloor!)
I will admit that I was surprised how much so many people blossomed. They literally became different people!
With a lot of the resistance gone, I concentrated on closing out hundreds of projects with hundreds of unresolved problems. I gathered “the girls” from all of the divisions together to create a cleanup team. Some of the girls hated each other threatening to quit if they had to work with each other. To turn DSC around I had to start with the women and get them to the Purple Zone first.
I never imagined I would have to lead women from the Blue Zone and train them how to work in the Purple Zone. I encouraged and empowered their female traits and praised their use of their female traits. Soon, they all started talking and chatting away – the girls became women and a team. I used our clean-up process to train them on project change management. I encouraged them in their role as the protectors of project financial integrity. I expected them to speak up whenever they saw something wrong. They now had the clout to stand up to the men and correct them when they didn’t follow processes.
My New DSC Theme Song
And the men responded as most good construction men do – they loved the support! There was no fighting in the mud!
Empowered Purple women led the men to the Purple Zone. Hallelujah! At times the women ventured into the Pink Zone and I was surprised by how Pink some of these formerly Blue women could be. It was actually refreshing to see women be natural and true to whom they really are.
About the time we started the clean-up process I hired a new cost analyst. He was phenomenal. He knew construction financial management, he understood processes and he worked in the Purple Zone! He didn’t get dragged into the Blue Zone and fight in the mud. He took an enormous burden off of me and he was an amazing asset in growing DSC.
Mid-way through the clean-up process, we finally moved into the new central office. Standardizing processes was about to become so much easier! With everyone in one room the DSC divisions were finally forced to work together. To prevent problems, I assigned the cubicles. When everyone got situated I realized a huge mistake on my part or maybe it was just a glaring reminder that this was still a male-dominated organization. The office had rows of cubicles, two of which I considered the core rows – one with the Estimating/Planning staff and one with the administrative. In other words, one row of all women and one row of all men.
(As The Woman In The Room, I hung my head in shame!)
I had to fix this! There was one woman in particular I wanted to move over to the Estimating row. I had mentored her for months because she was in a non-traditional role. When hired, she was treated and paid like an administrative assistant and her real abilities were ignored. (I will write more about her in a separate article) I wanted her to work closely with a young man in the Estimating row because they had opposite professional weaknesses and strengths and they needed to learn from each other. Over the next few months a couple men left, and I moved her. That was the beginning of the real transition. I hired a planner – another young woman. Then, another project coordinator, also a young woman. The row was now this beautiful mix of 3 men and 3 women. Purple!!
The administrative row had a vacant cubicle so one of the superintendents used it when he came to work in the office. After a few more movements, the entire office was a wonderful Purple Zone workspace!
The project management process chart we developed together was printed large and hung on the wall. We had a small conference room where I met with the project coordination staff to review projects. My cost analyst met with the admin staff regularly to ensure DSC financials were on track. I designed a new organizational structure that addressed the realities of the limited labor pool and the DSC skill level. We were beginning to function.
For the first time in several years DSC was profitable! Our new work made good margins because we were following our processes and people were empowered to speak up when they questioned something. We started to come together as a team and one project administrator arranged pot luck lunches for celebration. We still had a very long way to go but we were moving in the right direction. I was so proud of my purple team!
Remember how I said that the corporate staff liked that DSC functioned poorly because they used DSC to deflect issues from themselves? For a few months, I was quietly saying that the time was coming when DSC would start functioning and that the corporate departments would also have to improve their performance. That time arrived.
I don’t remember what triggered it, but I came up with a somewhat tongue in cheek theme for DSC: DSC- Not Quite the F*ck Ups We Used To Be!
The multimillion dollar question was whether or not the corporate departments could accept the new emerging DSC. Were they willing to admit to their “opportunities for improvement” and take action to improve their performance too? Or would their pride stop them?
Department 1 had always been difficult to work with. I reported to HR several time that Dept. 1 management and personnel were demeaning to DSC employees. There was one project administrator in particular they openly denigrated in public and she got to listen to it on a regular basis. It was cruel. During our conference calls I felt like answering their questions with “because we’re stupid, that’s why.” After the calls, I could see the hurt on the faces of my team.
Dept. 1 was developing a new system for DSC which was several months behind schedule and plagued with issues. Dept. 1 said it was the fault of my administrative supervisor. But the underlying issue was that Dept. 1 didn’t understand how DSC operated and went forward with designing the system without a process map. The first system we reviewed had the process backwards.
The system highlighted the new complexity of our work. Completing the system took a long time not because the DSC admin supervisor was being…I will say it…a Bitch…but because Dept. 1 didn’t consider all of the administrative components outside of DSC that had to be integrated into the system. The problem was not a person; it was not understanding the complexity of the process.
As we moved to another issue with Dept. 1, DSC and a sister company proposed the standard industry process which was simple and easy. Dept. 1 rejected the process and instead came up with a cumbersome process that still didn’t do what we needed. It created a new mess! I will admit that I called their process “stupid” because it was. I told them we would be humiliated if anyone in the real world knew this is how we handled the problem.
In our next meeting to figure out how to make this process work, Dept. 1 came up with an even more complex system that required extensive system reprogramming. (WTF? They haven’t even gotten the other project right yet.) So, my Cost Analyst asked our boss if our initial solution was open for discussion. The response was ugly. (On the upside we learned our quiet and polite Cost Analyst had some brass huevos!)
Even as DSC greatly improved its performance we did not gain Dept. 1’s respect. They always reminded me of the "smart" kids in school who always had to brown nose the teacher for attention.
Department 2 whose support was critical to DSC projects refused to work with us. Even though they worked under DSC contracts, they proclaimed their complete autonomy and that DSC could not direct any Dept. 2 actions. Even my requests for support were met with “we will take it under advisement.” DSC managers and supervisors complained constantly that Dept. 2 personnel did nothing all day and never went out to the projects.
In construction, conflict between Dept. 2 and construction personnel is common but it is usually because Construction feels Dept. 2 is being too zealous in its duties. This was the first time I ever encountered Construction complaining that Dept. 2 was not being zealous enough.
Part of the conflict was due to the different pay structure between Dept. 2 personnel and DSC’s union personnel. During a typical work cycle, union personnel were paid for 15 hours more, even though they worked the same number of hours. This angered Dept. 2 personnel so they weren’t anxious to be proactive in their duties and they had very high turnover. Dept. 2’s solution was to hire women for the job because they won’t argue over pay like men do. (Yes, you read that right!)
Two years earlier, Dept. 2’s lack of diligence caused DSC’s largest client to shut down all work. Even after this Dept. 2 only did the minimum required to get DSC back to work. They did not continue to grow their functional expertise. Their current Sr. Manager, a self-proclaimed Intellectual, stayed at the 30,000 ft. level, and only associated with Dept. 2 through his manager – he didn’t associate with the working class.
The Dept. 2 Manager did not believe in the new stringent industry principles for this function and often thwarted them. (The cause for so many arguments with DSC management). His attitude put DSC, its personnel and our clients at risk. Until his attitude changed and Dept. 2 became champions for their function, clients would continue to limit DSC work on their sites. The bottom line is that DSC could not grow until Dept. 2 got their sh*t together!
Elevating issues to our mutual boss did not help DSC. Dept. 2 had one responsibility that DSC complained for years that Dept. 2 was not doing. For six months I followed up monthly directly with the Dept. 2 Sr. Manager and Manager requesting the reports. I was always promised them but never got them. I finally went to our boss to ask for his help. The Dept. 2 Manager was standing right outside the boss’s office so our boss asked if the reports were being done. The Manager replied that they were. End of story.
Our boss was very young for his position and inexperienced in industrial construction; he was more suited to the scope of work of one of our sister companies. One of his flaws is that he couldn’t deal well with problems. So, he just always wanted to hear that everything was fine. If you told him all was good, gave him the thumbs up, he didn’t dig any deeper. Managers used that to their advantage – an autonomy preservation techinique.
In early August DSC had an issue (yes we screwed up) that required Dept. 2’s support. At first Dept. 2 didn’t even respond. When they did they made mistakes, then more mistakes which upset the Client and gave DSC a big black eye. The Client requested Dept. 2 to produce the same reports I had been requesting. It took days and when Dept. 2 produced the reports they were incomplete and filled with obvious errors. Now the Client was extremely upset and the stuff hit the fan! This was the same Client who shut down work two years earlier because of Dept. 2. So there was a lot of stuff hitting an industrial sized fan!
Our boss realized he had been misled by Dept. 2.
DSC personnel were embarrassed and hurt that after all of our progress, Dept. 2 could bring us down. Our mistake was recoverable but Dept. 2’s errors…maybe not. August became a miserable month – it seemed like everything fell apart and that it was all beyond our control.
Complexity was once again, crushing DSC. Even though DSC could internally make vast improvements we were not autonomous. We relied on corporate departments to do their functions well so they could support our work. They failed us.
Internally, I questioned if we fighting a losing battle to save DSC. My gut told me that I had taken DSC as far as I could.
DSC’s future hinged on whether or not the corporate functions could learn from their mistakes and now admit that they needed to improve their performance too.
Because my boss wasn't experienced in the industrial application of Dept. 2's function, I explained to him how my previous employers exceled in this area – they got "Religion!” Our client has "Religion." Our Client is waiting for us to be born again!! We need to let them know that we have seen the errors of our ways! We will confess our sins, we will atone and go forward into the shiny light and glory! Are you with me brother? Let me have an “Amen!!” Sing it! Do you feel it?!
Can I get that Amen?! Nope. My boss is agnostic.
The first week of September we forged forward anxious to get back on track. Later that week, my boss walked into the DSC office, looked right down my beautiful Purple rows and tells me he doesn’t like it. (Somebody wants to asserts himself.)
The next week I briefly met with him and he says he doesn’t like my organizational structure. He wants to go back to the old hierarchal structure that he and my predecessor designed. (You mean the structure that failed and had managers fighting in the mud?)
Call me naïve. But, up until that meeting, I thought the DSC I was fixing was the screwed up company my boss inherited. I thought I was helping him out. But I was wrong. I was correcting the DSC he created. He created the overly-empowered union members who fought with managers. He created and encouraged the gap and misalignment between the operating companies and the corporate office. He believed in and reinforced the vertical hierarchy. He believed in Autonomy – he had Autonomy Religion!! He was the one entrenched in the Blue Zone.
He never wanted the process-driven company he hired me to create. Our early conversations were not about a process-driven company but always about how soon I could fire two individuals. Get rid of them and the Glory Days return! All this time he and I were on different pages!
Nonetheless, I kept getting things back on track. DSC still hoped that our relationship with Dept. 2 would change dramatically. After our boss realized they lied to him about producing the reports, we thought he would finally listen to us and we would get the support we needed.
I invited my boss and the Dept. 2 management to a meeting with my staff. The meeting went very poorly. In the spin, DSC got blamed for the Dept. 2 not being able to produce the reports. (Wait a second! If you are saying that DSC prevented Dept. 2 from doing the reports, then you just admitted that Dept. 2 abdicated their job! Do you get that? No.) My staff pushed back like I had never seen them push back before. They asked direct questions but got NO answers.
After the meeting, it was the first time I heard my staff openly blame my boss and say he was part of the problem. Before the meeting, my boss said he wanted to build a bridge between DSC and Dept. 2 but in the meeting he burnt that bridge down.
The next time I met with my boss and Dept. 2 accusations were launched at me. I understood how my managers had felt, being enticed to get into the mud for a fight. I kept my responses short and direct, I was not going to get dragged into the Blue Zone. I felt like I was supposed to submit to the corporate staff, accept their abuse and DSC’s lowly position in the vertical hierarchy.
Sorry guys. It just ain’t in my nature to be submissive and you know that! !n this case everything in me screamed not to submit. This is the wonderful thing about being a woman – you pick up on so many signals that men will tell you are not real, but they are! My instincts told me not to trust them. Something’s up.
My boss and Dept. 2 had to avoid all personal accountability to the Client for the way Dept. 2 messed up in August. If the Client believed the accountability was at the corporate level, (as it really) then there would be huge ramifications to the entire corporation.
So, right from the beginning they openly made DSC the scape goat (and I suspect me directly). But that in turn had even bigger consequences which I don’t think they understood. I knew that being the scapegoat placed me in a precarious situation. Any issue in the future could result in legal consequences to me personally. I do not want to wind up in court in a foreign country. I could not submit. No job was worth that.
I was dismissed.
I was told “There were many complaints about you,” making it sound like everyone in all the companies complained about me. From his tone I was supposed to interpret that I was a horrible person. (Sorry I need to wave the Bullshit flag! I understand that you may want to hurt me but I know who I am, what I have accomplished and what my team thinks of me.)
I will always remember my body language when I asked the question – I was very relaxed like a friend just told me a funny story. I was even smiling. So, "People in DSC complained about me?”
Pause and stuttering. “No. The complaints all came from Dept.2 personnel.” Then it was something about “not being on their team.”
I didn’t say anything else because I knew it would do no good. He was coached to say nothing else.
In a male-dominated, hierarchal, status-driven organization, the person on top gets to decide who will be held accountable for anything that goes wrong. It is the opposite of ‘the buck stops here.” It is the opposite of process driven company. In a company like this, that values autonomy, an individual’s independent actions are to blame for problem. One of my fellow GM’s described our boss’s management style as- fire the right person and problems go away; hire a new person and all is wonderful again, until it isn’t.
So, after working 100 hours per week for weeks and on end, the inevitable question is: Was it all worth it?
Yes! Because I learned that the concepts I discuss really do work, even in the most screwed up, archaic, male-dominated company! I now have enormous confidence in myself and my concepts. This experience put all of the concepts of The Woman in the Room in one environment and I saw how powerful they are! I know everything in my career has built to this moment and I know my mission is to empower women to lead the male-dominated workplace.
And one more thing – God bless America! I am so glad to be home!
When I entered the Air Force many years ago, I was told that I needed a “Sponsor” to help ensure my rise through the ranks. My Sponsor should be a higher ranking officer who was upwardly mobile. My Sponsor should also have a Sponsor who was a well-connected senior ranking officer who is on track for General’s rank. The trick to the system was picking the right line of Sponsors. At the very top of the officer ranks there were rivalries and the senior officer in your sponsorship line could instantly fall out of favor or lose status to a rival. If either of these happened, the entire line of sponsorship would suffer the consequences and once bright careers would be dead in the water.
The whole concept of sponsorship was to work the politics of the merciless up-or-out system.
In addition to a Sponsor, I also needed a Mentor. Sponsors and Mentors may not be one in the same. Mine were very different. The job of your mentor was to teach the ins and outs of doing the job. My first mentor was my supervisor and his career was in the toilet – but – he knew everything about everything! He mentored two of us and we got exposed to…well…the stuff you don’t see if you have to worry about politics. He was a cowboy who took risks and also took the hits as they came.
I always say that I wish everyone could have the same experiences early in their career as I had in mine. I learned soooo much!!!
But this system that I first learned was inherently male. (more…)
I came across this story that a woman (Linda) posted on LinkedIn. It goes along with a lot of my recent posts so I want to share it with you. This is one of those stories that we like to pass on. And generally that is what we would do.
But I want to take it one (actually several) steps further, as I will explain after the story. Here is the story: (more…)
I came across a statement I made in an article : The successful businessman is the Hero and the driver of our society.
If you are paying attention to the stock market, 2013 is proving this statement is true.
I don’t know what made me do it but on January 20th I turned on CNBC. That is about the time the stock market really started taking off. And I don’t know why I thought it but I thought – someone on Wall Street has decided to take over the economy and drive it. Someone has decided that Washington is dysfunctional, not going to do anything and so, they are taking matters into their own hands to end this recession. Someone is going out on a limb, with a balls-to-the-wall attitude. Someone thinks they have nothing to lose that the only other option is stagnation.
In the weeks that followed, that someone ignored all of the bears, nay-sayers, the multitude of critics and doom-and- gloom forecasters. They were successful – they made something happen. And as an added bonus the whole federal budget debate in Washington is negated.
With the economy doing well, the fiscal cliff is postponed from May to end of the summer? Into late fall? Sorry Republicans your side of the crisis is negated. Sorry Democrats, your side of the crisis is also negated – there is no need to raise taxes.
The Wall Street businessman is the Hero who saved our economy. And his reward is power!!
Ladies – this is an example we need to follow!! (more…)
The Woman In The Room is one year old!! For me this is a milestone and cause to celebrate!
At work, how do you celebrate milestones and achievements? Are they subdued? Do you talk about doing something and then nothing really materializes? Who is responsible for or takes the lead in planning the celebration?
Thinking back over my career, I’ve had one manager who made sure we celebrated achievements and one who did a pretty good job. With the rest, ideas withered and died. Men seem to be generally uncomfortable driving these celebrations. Historically they have passed the planning to the admin staff.
I’ve always enjoyed putting together something big and fun. Sometimes women are reluctant to put together these events fearing they will fall into a stereotype and deep into the Pink Zone. To prevent yourself from becoming the office party planner, pick and choose what you want to celebrate. Knowing everyone in the office’s birthday and bringing in cake is different from finding the milestones that employees should have pride in achieving. Instilling pride and recognizing hard work is what a leader does. And you don’t have to be the manager to lead the celebration.
Here are a couple of things I have done in the past and after 12 years I will finally admit that it was me who pulled off one surprise event. Think big, think outside the box and use the event to energize! (more…)
When I started my career there was a common saying about women who went into non-traditional career fields: “They are looking for a man or they want to be a man.”
Think about the two extreme options this statement presents for women. Our choices are that we are desperate to get married or that we have a gender identity issue.
Not too long ago the expectation was that once a woman married, she would soon become pregnant, quit working and opt for the life of a housewife. And many of my fellow female engineers (and STEM) did this. The top female engineering student at my college graduated a year early so she could get married! Even though she had her pick of jobs and was offered more money than any other student, she took an intern position with Junior League. We all questioned why she even got an engineering degree in, let alone do it in 3 years!
Over time I saw most of my female peers leave engineering and live more traditional lives. (more…)
In my last article, The Woman In the Arena, I quoted an excerpt from Teddy Roosevelt’s “Citizenship In A Republic” speech that he deliver in 1910. When I wrote the article I looked up the entire speech and found another excerpt that has tremendous meaning for where our culture and economy is today. I think this excerpt gives women a great sense of peace, purpose and direction.
In our current culture we are told that to be “successful” we need to aspire to become part of the plutocracy, to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. In my article “Should Women Strive For The Top 0.1%?”, I questioned why we should and if there is a certain amount of futility in it. Teddy Roosevelt, over 100 years ago, drive home my point.
Nevertheless,…there must be a basis of material well-being for the individual as for the nation, let us with equal emphasis insist that this material well-being represents nothing but the foundation, and that the foundation, though indispensable, is worthless unless upon it is raised the superstructure of a higher life. That is why I decline to recognize the mere multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country; and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes him a real benefit, of real use- and such is often the case- why, then he does become an asset of real worth. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelligences. Their places cannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a good thing that they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed rewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the service having been rendered, then admiration will only come from those who are mean of soul. The truth is that, after a certain measure of tangible material success or reward has been achieved, the question of increasing it becomes of constantly less importance compared to the other things that can be done in life. It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself. But the man who, having far surpassed the limits of providing for the wants; both of the body and mind, of himself and of those depending upon him, then piles up a great fortune, for the acquisition or retention of which he returns no corresponding benefit to the nation as a whole, should himself be made to feel that, so far from being desirable, he is an unworthy, citizen of the community: that he is to be neither admired nor envied; that his right-thinking fellow countrymen put him low in the scale of citizenship, and leave him to be consoled by the admiration of those whose level of purpose is even lower than his own.
This excerpt reminds me of the saying “with great wealth comes great responsibility.” It gives us a sense of purpose and great wealth a valuable meaning.
I have often wondered if the reason women aren’t clamoring to the top the top of the corporate ladder or to the plutocracy is because we find no purpose in it – when we get to those lofty positions we become too disconnected from the rest of society which is contrary to what women strive for. For us, this disconnection associates wealth with being low on the scale of citizenship.
But what if we take a different perspective – that we need to climb the corporate ladder and the ranks of the plutocracy so we can lead men there too. If we believe we have a moral obligation to keep our companies and the plutocracy connected to the real world then we must have parity within those arenas. We must work from the inside to ensure everyone remains good citizens of the community.
I know I have sat in many a conference room and listened to men sacrifice their values for either money or to make another entity feel inferior. I felt an obligation to steer them back to the moral high ground. This is why we need more women who understand this role in the conference room at all levels of companies.
With more women high on the scale of citizenship in all aspects of society, maybe then there will be less men low on the scale. As women that is our moral responsibility to our communities, our nation and our world.
Empowered women are high on the scale of citizenship and lead men to do the same.
I like to express myself at work. If I had my druthers, I would start every day blaring a song that fit the mood of the day. However, I was never able to put together a large enough sound system. So I found another method.
I started digging up quotes to fit the issues we were facing. I then plastered the quotes all over the office. One day my safety manager brought me this one from Teddy Roosevelt. It immediately became my favorite because it expressed what the project team faced every day.
THE MAN IN THE ARENA
Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic”
delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Even though the words are written in a masculine tense, they apply to women as well. Women should have the courage to stand up for what we believe in, to go for what we want to and to make things happen. This is what life is about.
However many women were not raised to believe we can or should go into the arena; that women can be bold or courageous. But if we don’t go into the arena, then only men are the doers of great deeds and only they know the triumph of high achievement. We return to a paternalistic society.
The only way women will ever come into their own and attain their equality is by entering the arena and daring to strive valiantly.
Empowered women enter the arena.
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One of the traits women are most credited with is improving collaboration. We get more people to open up and participate in conversations and problem solving. The result is a more complete solution to a problem.
Sounds great – in theory!
The issue many women face is that collaboration isn’t valued. Collaboration goes against the company’s driving, hard charging, make it happen culture – it is sissy stuff. In these environments the merit of an idea is based upon how hard the promoter is willing to fight for and drive his solution through. If you are not willing to fight hard for your idea, then it couldn’t have been a very good one.
Even in an environment where men are less contentious, they may already have their minds made up as to who they aren’t going to listen to, whose ideas are going to be shot down even before they are voiced. They know who is going to be shut down and shut out of all discussion. They are very good at enforcing the shut out.
For women getting their ideas heard in these environments is hard enough, let alone getting men to listen to each other and discuss all ideas.
So what’s a woman to do – how can she make a room full of men collaborate? (more…)
Have you ever noticed years that singers have their biggest hits when they sing songs that they pick or write themselves, not what the industry tells them to sing? They do best when they connect with a song that expresses who they really are.
When I think about this Garth Brooks always comes to mind – not quite country and not quite rock. He didn’t try to fit into a music industry genre – he created his own. There is something energizing and powerful about that.
Being around a lot of women entrepreneurs lately, I noticed that women start businesses that are an expression of who they are. Their businesses have a meaning or purpose to them. Women personally connect with their businesses. (more…)
