HP has made some controversial decisions lately, but is Meg Whitman a great strategic move or the kiss of death for this once great tech company? HP announced Whitman’s appointment on September 22, 2011 but given the public comments, customers seem to think it’s a bad choice. It’s my stance that HP usually leaps before it looks and I am not sure that I am sold on Whitman as … [Read more...]
A Woman’s Perspective
Consider these selected quotes from a well known novel: " A startling thought this, that a woman could handle business matters as well or better then a man. Never before had she put this remarkable idea into words. She sat quite still with the heavy book on her lap, thinking how in these past lean months she had done a man's work and done it well. She had been brought up … [Read more...]
Can a CEO be brutally honest?
Can a CEO be brutally honest? Everyone from sales clerks to CEO’s have been talking about the ‘burning platform memo’ from Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop. In the memo, Elop points out where the company is failing compared to its competitors and effectively asks what the staff plans to do about it. ( Read the full memo here, here.) In the memo, Elop takes a hard and critical look … [Read more...]
Increasing Market Profile With Women’s Initiatives
Women's Initiatives Focused on Business Growth Due to the challenging economy and increased focus on revenue generation and business growth the timing is right for women’s leadership initiatives to be a catalyst for increasing organizational market visibility. All corporate initiatives are called to directly support business strategy in the best of times and these are not … [Read more...]
The Business Case for Building Flexible Work Cultures- Series Part II
In 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 … [Read more...]
The Aspirations of Women
"Women simply do not have the aspiration to pursue C Suite roles which is why we do not see equal numbers of men and women in leadership positions." I have had this conversation more times then I wish to remember when working with organizations on increasing gender diversity in the leadership ranks. The aspirations of women can be a very perplexing yet popular topic of … [Read more...]
The Most Talked About Barrier- Work/Life Balance
This is the fourth post in a series about the barriers impacting the lack of advancement of women in business. We have discussed the background regarding women's lack of advancement and also covered the first two barriers- Lack of Career Advocacy and Lack of Visible Role Models. This final post in the series is about the most talked about barrier regarding women's lack of … [Read more...]
Visibility of Female Leaders
In the past two posts we have been talking about why we do not see more progress in the advancement of women in business , community and politics. In the first post we covered an overview of what is happening to slow down our progress. Much of what happens is subtle and not well understood. (Post May 24) In the second post we talked about the first barrier in more detail- … [Read more...]