Archive for Women On Business News
What You Dont Know Can Hurt You
Posted by: | CommentsMany times when working with organizations on strategies to increase gender diversity in the leadership ranks the leaders will say ” lets just get all the women together and ask them what they want”. While this is noble and certainly talking with the women in the organization to understand how they experience the culture is critical it is not “the answer” . One of the most serious issues women face when attempting to advance in male dominated cultures is lack of access. Lack of access to senior leadership, opportunities, information, and organizational knowledge. As a result of this lack of access women “dont know what they dont know”. This also is a driving force in the phenomenon of women rejecting efforts to start any type of program or initiative aimed at advancing women. It is common to hear some of the women who may have be closest to breaking through to levels where women have not been represented say that they are not role models and do not want anything to do with any programs related to women or women’s advancement. This also represents the fact that women “dont know what they dont know”. Best practice programs aimed at helping women to advance are all about business and all about evening a playing field that is not providing equal career development opportunities for all. The uneven field is not something most people can see without awareness raising activity. The women in the organization are in fact often the individuals who most cannot see what is happening and “what you dont know can hurt you”. There are a long list of things that an individual needs to know about an organization in order to increase their value proposition to that organization. The most common method of learning these key lessons is access. Access to senior leaders, opportunities, experiences, assignments, and organizational learning. Without this information our careers are like a journey we take without a map. Most of our male counterparts more naturally gain this very important access due to ease of networking that very naturally takes place between people who identify with each other. Therefore our male counterparts have a map which is a very real and tangible advantage. We may think the road to our destination is straightforward and with steady hard work we will arrive. Little do we know that there are side trips and short cuts we need to know about that we cannot see without access to organizational knowledge. When we hear the lament of male leadership teams ” we would hire women if only we could find any qualified to do the job” they are not always making excuses. Because women are very often taking a less than focused journey without a map- they may not be as qualified as their male counterparts because they have not had the assignments and experiences that they need to be prepared to be the best candidate for a job. In addition, research has shown us that women are very often evaluated on experience while males are evaluated on potential which multiplies this problem dramatically. SO what is the answer to this very significant dilemma? Learn how to build access. Stay tuned for my next posting on this very topic!!
The Business Case for Building Flexible Work Cultures- Series Part II
Posted by: | CommentsIn the Part I of this series we talked about the opportunity to support our need for flexible work cultures with a solid business case. We outlined the fact that the majority of our employees require flexibility at some point in their careers. Research increasingly points to flexibility as one of the most important career considerations of staff, emerging leaders and even our seasoned leaders. If we do not offer this flexibility in our organizations we will lose productivity in our top talent pool and we may lose this top talent completely to our competitors. In addition to flexibility as a requirement for top talent, consider the possibility that flexibility can actually improve your organizational results.
We also outlined four key business strategies that can be supported by flexibility in the organization. These are:
1-Employee Attraction and Retention
2-Improved Productivity
3- Improved Customer Service and Satisfaction
4- Effective Operational Management
This second posting will cover the first two strategies. Why are these strategies key to a business case for building a flexible work culture?…….or said another way…… How will flexible work cultures actually help to accomplish these business strategies?
Employee Attraction & Retention
Kristina Shands Joins Women on Business as a Contributor
Posted by: | CommentsI’m pleased to announce that the Women on Business writing team has grown again. Kristina Shands of Authentic Communications has joined the growing list of contributing writers. You can read more about Kristina below. Please join me in welcoming her to the community!
About Kristina Shands
Kristina Shands is the owner of Authentic Communications, a communications and marketing firm specializing in telling stories that move people to action. Authentic Communications collaborates with small businesses and entrepreneurs to spark interest, create a buzz, build connections, increase loyalty and inspire action in order to attract new clients and increase visibility. Kristina works with clients on creating their own unique business story and integrating social media tools into their marketing plan.
Kristina lives at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in beautiful East Tennessee. She is an avid hockey fan and covers the Knoxville Ice Bears for Pro Hockey News website. When not writing or watching hockey, she can be found attending small town festivals across the Southeast and finding every excuse in the world to justify eating funnel cakes and snow cones.
You can find Kristina online at http://authentic-communications.com and on Twitter @authenticbuzz.
In an effort to give women business owners and women working in the field of business the publicity they deserve, WomenOnBusiness.com has launched a new Business Women News Press Release Submission feature.
The new Business Women News Press Release Submission feature allows any woman working in the business world to submit a press release publicizing their own news or news about their businesses. This is a free feature and registration is not required to submit a press release at http://www.womenonbusiness.com/submit-a-press-release/.
Press releases submitted to WomenOnBusiness.com are published in the new Business Women News section of the site: http://www.womenonbusiness.com/category/press-releases/.
You can also subscribe to feed for the Business Women News section of WomenOnBusiness.com.
Mary Bennett Joins the Women on Business Writing Team
Posted by: | CommentsPlease join me in welcoming Mary Bennett to the Women on Business writing team.
Mary has over twenty five years of experience in the accounting and consulting industry. Seventeen years of this experience has been with Crowe Horwath LLP, a top ten accounting and consulting firm. For ten years of her career Mary served as a partner at Crowe. Mary’s roles have included Practice Leadership, Market Development, Business Development, Client Service, and Organizational Development. Areas of technical expertise include Enterprise Risk Management, Internal Audit, Leadership Development, Inclusiveness Programs, and Women’s Leadership Initiatives.
Mary has recently founded MLBennett Consulting and is working with professional services firms and other organizations in Organizational Development. Services include Succession Planning, Leadership Development, Women’s Leadership Initiatives, Inclusiveness, Career/Life and Work/Life Programming, Strategic Capability Development and Executive Coaching.
Look for Mary’s posts to appear on Women on Business on Mondays!
Women Leadership and Mad Men
Posted by: | Comments
Some revolutions are bloody, and some are flash-in-the-pan moments.
The women’s movement began quietly with a book “The Feminine Mystique”, moved to bra burning, and gained traction with consciousness raising groups.
All of that seems like it was centuries ago.
We now head large organizations, are in key positions in government, and have a say in just about everything. Yet some of the pleaser and martyr behavior patterns that were handed from generation to generation are still dying a slow death.
Just watch “Mad Men” and remember how it was. You worked if you typed and delivered. No not ideas – merely the coffee to the men. While much has changed, there is more work to be done.
This is a year of both celebrating change and dialoguing about what still needs to change. CELEBRATION: in the next few months women will cross the threshold and become the majority workers in America. CELEBRATION: women professionals are in the majority in this country. CELEBRATION: women have become economically powerful in their own right.
What is the next phase of the revolution toward equality, and even beyond that, toward partnership?
Suze Orman Speaks to Women on Business Readers
Posted by: | CommentsRecently, I was asked to pose a question to Suze Orman, which she graciously answered as part of the new Suze Orman Show Channel on YouTube. I asked a question that I thought would be helpful to the Women on Business audience:
Women’s retirement savings needs differ from men’s. Women live longer, women are typically paid less than men, and the number of single, working mothers is staggering. What are the top 3 tips you would give to women in regards to saving for retirement? Are they different from the tips you give to men?
Suze’s response is included in the video below or follow the link to view Suze Orman’s video on YouTube:
Leadership Lessons: I’d Rather Be a Whale
Posted by: | CommentsPart of leadership, especially women, is to be a voice for separating the wheat from the chaff. It is time for all of us as women leaders to put a halt to the binding messages we are bombarded with about image. No, I don’t mean we should all state that overweight is better, I mean we need to begin to question what is being fed to us (sorry for the pun) about what is the standard for the acceptable and attractive woman. It is a legacy issue that if addressed now will have a vast impact on our daughters (and they are all our daughters regardless of who birthed them) of the future.
Nancy Pennebaker, a senior consultant with our organization, Creative Energy Options, Inc. (CEO) sent this to me for both the humor and the depth of the message. Our company motto, “we are all connected and no one wins unless we all do”, is embedded in the following short article. It shows that this issue of image is one that is a world issue.
Notice that the sign in the window of an exercise studio and the answer are from France, where the image of gorgeous models in clothes by Yves St. Laurent, Chanel et a.l became the standard of beauty.
Women on Business Welcomes Lya Sorano to the Writing Team
Posted by: | CommentsAnother talented business woman, Lya Sorano, has joined the Women on Business writing team. Please join me in welcoming Lya to the team, and learn more about her below.
Lya Sorano, writer and New Media strategist, is the CEO of The Oliver/Sorano Group, Inc., a marketing and PR firm established in Atlanta in 1980.
As a business writer, her topics have most often been international business, the role of women in the international business arena and information technology. She has been published by magazines and newspapers in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as the US.
In 1992, she founded Atlanta Women in Business as a membership network for business, career and professional women; its goal is the achievement of equality in the workplace.
Sorano became a Certified Georgia Master Gardener in 2005 and has since then written gardening columns or features for the Barrow-Jackson Journal, the Georgia Asian Times, The Paper and The Nooze. Her gardening blog is published at http://georgiagardener.blogspot.com/
In working with her company’s clients, Sorano helps create, among other assignments, web content, bios and on-line profiles, with LinkedIn as her specialty, and edits or ghostwrites proposals, magazine pieces or co-authored book chapters. She is Peggy M. Parks’s agent for the forthcoming (Summer 2010; Writer for Hire! Press) “Opportunity meets Motivation: Lessons from Four Women who built Passion into their Careers and Lives”.
