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Leadership
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Recently I was interviewed for a . I'm often asked about whether gender plays a role in family business succession. Is it still the case that the only way women wind up as leaders of businesses is because of a sudden death of a male owner in the family? Is it still the case that family enterprises look only to the sons or sons-in-law as successor leaders? I'm happy to report that the data shows that both of these approaches to leadership are on their way out! First, is it true that women only wind up as CEOs if they've had the firm handed to them as a widow or daughter? NO! Through a five year research project on over 200 woman-led firms, we've found that women become CEOs primarily through entrepreneurial activity. In fact, only about 15% of these firms were family enterprises. I know what you're thinking.... those must be small firms they've studied. But the truth is that the average firm in our study was a $28 million business in 2004; not exactly the lifestyle businesses women are purported to lead. And what about the question of whether family firms pass on only to the male relatives? Also, increasingly not the case. Again, research we've done at the Center for Women's Leadership shows that families are increasingly looking to their women members for firm leadership. The number of women owners of family enterprises increased by 37% for the five year period between 1997 and 2002.
So how do women get to be in the running for these entrepreneurial leadership roles? Is it just in their make up (no, not their cosmetics!) or is it something they learn or acquire? Well, what do you think about men? Is it just "in them" to be leaders? I doubt you're nodding your head yes to that question. So, how can you nurture the potential leadership of your family firm, regardless of the gender of the next generation? Easy. First, assume that any of your progeny might be capable and interested in leading the business. (This might be a new or even radical assumption for your family, but try it!) Second, give them exposure to the business. Talk to them about the firm, offer them opportunities to visit or work there, and explain how the business impacts the family and the community. Third, consider the talents and passions of your children. Leverage those interests to offer them a path into the business. Be prepared for them to explore those passions in another way, but to return to the business later on - keep those pathways open by keeping them informed about the business and its connection to the family! Who knows, you might find that the person writing your retirement checks turns out to be your daughter or your daughter-in-law!
Last week at a . I ran across a strangely intriguing idea: reverse mentoring.
By now, everyone seems to get the fact that mentoring of some variety can play a key role in supporting professional success, particularly for women. Companies have created elaborate (and sometimes even successful) programs that, in their typical form, pair junior women with a more senior mentor, male or female. Colleges, too, are jump-starting the process with programs like those here at Babson for both our undergraduates and MBA's.
But reverse mentoring is different. It's, well....reversed. Paired with a junior colleague who is not like them, senior leaders are charged with listening and learning from women and minorities in their organizations. Instead of making diversity a top-down approach, this one is a combination of bottom up and meeting in the middle. No one seems to have done this long enough or with enough folks to declare an unqualified victory, but the organizations that are giving it a whirl are, like me, certainly intrigued.
A part of me says this sounds like a fancy new label for good old-fashioned two-way communication, something we'd all like to see more of our senior team taking on, in all of our organizations. But another part of me says who cares what we call it? If it works, just do it!
Check it out. Try it out. Let us know what happens.
Why is that more young girls and women don't seem to see themselves in the business world? Babson is a member of , an organization devoted to inspiring women to pursue business leadership through greater access to business education. Through its work, Forte provides exposure to business education and business career paths for young women and encourages them to make the business world their professional choice. They're doing a great job! Yet, the solution to fostering greater involvement in business leadership by women may lie not only in providing access, role models, and encouragement, but in changing the frame for how women view business.
The traditional view of business by many women, young and old, is that business is a somewhat seamy enterprise, in which profits rule at any cost, organizational politics (considered a dirty word) abound, and little of true value is created. Many often say, "I want to do something meaningful" and so they reject business as a choice.
Well, here's a different way to frame that world! What if you could be a leader of an organization that provided employment to hundreds or thousands? What if those individuals had decent food, housing, and medical care because of their employment by your company? What if the community your company was in received support not only through the employment it provided and the taxes it paid, but also through the volunteer activity of its employees and the philanthropic support it gave to local causes? What if the product your company created made a difference for your customers? What if the cash flow of your company was reinvested into the economy - through vendor contracts, employee salaries and their spending, capital project investments, among others? What kind of multiplier effect might that have?
Yes, it's true that businesses care about profits and that any group has interpersonal dynamics and power plays (just watch kids on a playground, grown-ups in business didn't invent this!), but well-run businesses are primarily focused on value creation. We need to start teaching young girls and women that business is a place where they can create real value for the world. They can be the captains of organizations that provide jobs, create important products and services, and deliver true benefits to communities. Businesses are the engines of wealth creation and social benefit. If that's not meaningful, I don't know what else is. All aboard!
Everyone here at the meetings in Stockholm is talking about the importance of networks.
While not a new topic for women entrepreneurs, it is more and more discussed as absolutely critical. Trine Winterø, the former CEO for Symbion, Inc. in Denmark, talked about a program they did for potential women entrepreneurs in which they found the women "very poor" when it came to their networking activities with the financing community. Katarina Bonde, Managing Director of Kubi Corp LLC in Sweden, suggested we all need an 'MN' - a Masters in Networking.
I'm loving this conversation because I teach the Intentional Networking section of Babson's .... and I'm now taking home with me many more "why" examples to support my "how to" approach.
While everyone generally agrees in principle as to the importance of networking for starting and growing a business, or for that matter, starting and growing a career, it is more the intentionality that we might pay attention to in building our networks.
Exercise 1: Sit down and actually think about who is in your network. That in itself is a major step forward.
Last week I attended two events in New York, put on by the Forte Foundation. The Executive Roundtable and the Corporate Best Practices Summit were both focused on the issue of recruiting and retaining the next generation. Both were lively (hey; when you get hundreds of talented, passionate women together lively is the least that can be said!) and certainly informative. But they were also sobering.
The ubiquitous Glass Ceiling that has plagued women for decades is being replaced by a Gray Ceiling of Baby Boomers. I'm one. There are roughly 76 million Boomers in America today. About half are women and three out of four are currently in the workforce. Retirement is not something we're even thinking about, much less doing. Having fought hard to gain a foothold in professions and getting joy (and a healthy pay check) from our work, we're not planning on leaving anytime soon!
But right behind us and already in the workforce are about 44 million Gen X'ers . And right behind them, just stepping into the world of work, are 80 million Millenials, and almost 70% of them are women and minorities.
According to Margaret Regan, President and CEO of , during the next ten years more than 30 million jobs will be vacated and about 20 million will be created. So over 50 million jobs are going to be filled by....a group of very talented young people who are preparing for work differently, who value work differently and who really don't aspire to be like the folks in front of them.
To paraphrase the timeless cartoon line: we have seen the enemy and (gulp) it just may be us. We're now the ceiling that our young colleagues are going to have to break through. We're the faces of the traditional organizations and career paths that are bewildering and frustrating and even unsatisfying. With our passionate take-no-prisoners approach to work, we're the role models they are rejecting.
One of our challenge here at Babson and at the Center for Women's Leadership is to prepare and support our female---and male--- students (and our young female and male colleagues) for this new world of work. But the bigger challenge? Having the wisdom and generosity the just get out of their way.
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