The Difficulty of the Hour, The Dignity of Work – a reflection

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

I’m in a reflective mood.  There seems to be such unrest, such angst, such disgust, such helplessness over the oil rig disaster.  As I write this, I’m listening to a lengthy discussion about President Obama’s address from last night on the Diane Rehm show.  The comments are absolutely predictable: “Obama is a disaster!” vs. “what did you expect him to do?”

I think back to an interview I heard years ago with an auto worker in Michigan.  His plant had just been closed down.  He sounded like he was in shock:  “I did everything I was ever asked to do.  I worked hard.  I was promoted.  And now…this.”  It had the sense of “everything really is bigger than my little world, and it really is out of my control.”

I don’t know whose “job” it is.  But it seems to me that for society to work, we need leaders who understand that their # 1 job is to do their part to keep society working.  And to keep society working, we need jobs that are available, that treat people fairly.

I think of multiple, repeated examples of CEO’s who have been rewarded for cutting jobs, maximizing profits, and we applaud them, and reward them with massive salaries and massive bonuses.  And it is understandable – but it is also undermining the very foundations of society.  If people have no work, then they cannot function.  You have a pretty hard time with “the pursuit of happiness” if you’re back down to the bottom rung on Maslow.

But this I know.  We do what we have to do. As Oriah Mountain Dreamer, put it, “we get up and do what needs to be done to feed the children.”

The changing American workplace is changing in the direction of women – Womenomics Has Arrived, and is Here to stay

The times, they are a changing

The changing American workplace is changing… in the direction of women.   This is no longer debatable.  (It is also changing in the direction of Hispanics, but that is another subject for another entry on this blog).

For last week’s First Friday Book Synopsis, I presented my synopsis of Womenomics:  Write Your Own Rules for Success by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay.

• Womenomics n.  1.  Power.  2.  A movement that will get you the work life you really want.  3.  The powerful collision of two simple realities:  a majority of women are demanding new rules of engagement at the very moment we’ve become the hot commodity in today’s workplace.

Here’s a paragraph that gets at the heart of the book’s argument:

We worried that anything that smacked of lack of ambition, of working but not always aiming for the pinnacle, just wouldn’t be professionally correct.
The overwhelming majority of women are longing to kick down that corporate ladder, flee the 8 A.M.–to-day-care-closing dash, but at the same time hang onto some real status…  We’re the ones who want more time – for our children our parents, our communities, ourselves.
Most educated women don’t want to quit work altogether, even if they could.  We want to use our brains and be productive professionally, but we don’t want to keep tearing at the fabric of our families or our lives outside of the workplace.  We need to slow down.  We want to slow down.
The situation is so dire that a majority of us will opt, when asked, for less responsibility.  We will trade duties, a title – even salary increases – for more time, freedom, and harmony.  We don’t want to quit – far from it — but time has become our new currency.

But it’s not just about the needs of women.  It is about their value.  As good journalists, they discover the trends, and make their case.  And the case is this:  the more women take positions in leadership and the more women fill key roles, the more successful companies will be.  Here is one summary paragraph (quoting one of many studies referenced in the book – this one from Pepperdine University):

Women deliver profits, often in big numbers, and we are worth hanging on to…  By every measure of profitability – equity, revenue, and assets – Pepperdine’s study found that companies with the best records for promoting women outperform the competition.

The authors, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay, are both working mothers.  They are both accomplished journalists, Claire Shipman with ABC, and Katty Kay with the BBC.  (She is also frequent guest fill-in for Diane Rehm on NPR, which gives her all the credibility a journalist could want).  They have both negotiated flexible work-arrangements that allow them to be home with their children at key times, while maintaining their professional edge and fulfilling their responsibilities.  It is the new way of working in America for a large and growing number of women. They even argue that someday, soon, men will like this new flexible approach.

Katty Kay & Claire Shipman

Here are many of the key findings and points from the book, which I pulled together from numerous chapters:

• women “at the top” produce more profits and success in all economic categories
• women have more college degrees (undergraduate:  57% cited in book — now 60%; graduate – 58%)
• to be successful (i.e., truly useful and valuable) women should act like women, not try to act like men…
• women have “a more open and more inclusive style of management;” more likely to encourage participation in meetings; more nurturing of subordinates; prefer consensus to confrontation; prefer empathy to ego… — and women superstars take their abilities to other companies better than men superstars do (because women are better at building new relationships)
• the war for talent favors women because of their education and their unique gifts/style
• we’re time-famished – but scared
• even men want more of a life
• “The millennials are influencing expectations for the entire workforce”  (“the next generation has no interest at all in the sixty-hour work week”)
• time is the currency of Womenomics
• women need to learn to say “no,” without guilt…
• Set meetings, deadlines, schedules early – and on your own terms.
• at times (maybe frequently), aim at “good enough”
• Learn to, and actually do, delegate – hand things off

I seldom say this in a blog post this directly:  you should read this book.  Women should read it to think about their own work arrangements.  Men should read it to understand the value of and the needs of women in the workplace (and, maybe, think a little about their own needs also).

{Click here to listen to an interview with the two authors on the Diane Rehm show.  This interview was rebroadcast on Labor Day, 2009.}

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We should have my synopsis, with audio + handout, up soon on our companion 15 Minute Business Books site.