Tag: Diversity

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Just don’t die – the art of growth

I was honoured to speak last week at an event organized by Investible and FD Global Connections for International Women’s Day.

With the theme #SheScalesGlobal, I wanted to focus on what I passionately believe are the foundations for success for anyone in business, whatever their gender in growing a business globally. 

The core requirement for anyone wanting to forge new markets is one of determination and resilience. Making it personal and being super determined with a minimum view of do whatever it takes, as long as you don’t die. See everything you pursue as an opportunity to continuously learn. Scaling into new markets is so much more than translation. It is localisation. And the only way you can localize is to understand the local landscape, the social, economic, political, business and personal aspirations of a country (and for large countries, the counties or regions).

International Women’s Day reminds everyone of what women continue to achieve (Apple’s advertising for International Women’s Day raises the bar I think), and more importantly, it reminds us that our own futures are ultimately in our own hands.

For any list of successful women, whether they are women from history, or women you know and work, I suspect they share a number of traits: they were the first to break barriers, they knew what they wanted to do, and they developed the skills and strategies needed to get there.

I acknowledge that the need to champion women remains, to call out their successes, and to call out entrenched biases when we see them. But I have never wished to measure myself, and any success I’ve had, only against half the population – so I speak not as a woman in business who has experienced success, but as a business leader that has experienced success.

When a vision prevails

One example comes from my time as President and COO at Altium. In the mid-2000s, Altium (a global, listed Australian software company) was expanding into China. We had a huge opportunity there, because China had declared its intent to change from “made in China” to “designed in China”. Altium’s electronics design software, though widespread, was universally pirated. Rather than take a heavy-handed legal route to clawing back revenue, we decided to emphasize and offer the added value users would get from using legitimate versions of the product. 

Our vision was to legitimize our software and our customers, our strategy was to compete with, and not police software.

Noting Mao’s famous statement that “women hold up half the sky”, my experience in China was interesting. I was in my mid-thirties, the most-senior women executive in Altium, and the second-most senior of any executive after the CEO, a mother of 3 children, and they could not understand how this was even possible, for a company so well-known in China, in a culture with a one-child policy still in force.

The question was often asked there how I did it, and I made the answer, especially with the language barrier associated with being in China, very straightforward: because I want it enough.

The second example is of course Digivizer. I’m still often asked how it was that I chose to leave the corporate safety of Altium, to start a new company with new technology, again with still-young children at home. Again, the answer is that I wanted it enough.

This time, though, the vision was mine alone, for what the new company should be, what skills I would need in finance, operations, and leadership, and also to know when things simply couldn’t be done, in a company with a handful of resources. I wanted to help all businesses harness the digital footprint of their customers and prospects and make sure we built a platform that was affordable and easy to use. 

I went from running a company of 450 and 2000 reselling agents globally to starting a company with 2 people, growing it today to a company of 50+ people.

About three years ago, we expanded into south-east Asia, setting up a hub in Singapore and hiring great talent in 12 other countries around the region, including Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Thailand. In Digivizer’s case, we did this by learning as we went. We were moving too fast for the government bureaucracy to keep up, and we went from client contract signature to open for business in five weeks.

And in all of these examples, this has not been about any focus on my confidence as a woman, and everything about my confidence, skills and expertise as a business person. 

It’s been about building the confidence to use radical candour and about managing by Objectives and Key Results, as we do in Digivizer.

Neither of course is gender-specific. And I might add neither does success become a destination reached. It is a continuous journey where I keep striving to the next peak, only to enjoy the view of the next I set to conquer.

Sharing what I have learned

My first point is a simple statement of intent: whenever I’m faced with biases, I acknowledge them, challenge them by ignoring them, going around them or over them. This is not about the empowerment of women, more a fundamental position in life that I’ve chosen to take. 

Universal rules that anyone can apply include: 

  • Focus on seeking to add value to a business or a relationship
  • Embrace people who focus on growth and seek to create great outcomes
  • Focus on talent, not gender
  • Don’t do what is asked, instead deliver what is needed and do what delivers greatest value
  • Remove yourself as the limiting factor. We often place a lid on our growth because we do not think big enough
  • Develop the mindset that you are the best person for the job
  • Choose to pursue where your strengths and passions will best be used, and where they will make you most successful
  • Make sure you understand the problem you solve and the value proposition you are offering, this should guide your priorities
  • Identify what’s negotiable, and what’s not and stick to it (especially around balancing time with your family commitments)
  • Do what makes you happy and pivot when you need to – growth implies change, so recognizing what makes you happy and continuously adapting what you do and how you work to ensure that you feel congruent in all you do!

In short, in business, the first rule is don’t die:then change, pivot, be flexible, then never give up. Put all your energies behind what you believe in, so that you are determined to smash through barriers. Only we can be responsible for our own futures and success. 

I’d love to know more about your experiences and inspirations. Please share your tips and thoughts below!

With thanks to Investible, FD Global Connections, Hotwire Global, and everyone who attended the event.

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

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Digivizer creates additional annual day of paid leave to celebrate International Women’s Day for all employees

Today we make a commitment to workplace equality and diversity to recognize International Women’s Day: Digivizer is introducing an additional day of paid leave for all employees.

A fun Digivizer dress up fundraising initiative for Loud Shirt Day (supporting deaf children)

I wanted to make the sentiments behind International Women’s Day around equality and diversity tangible for all our employees. Granting an extra day of paid leave to all employees, to be taken whenever it suits them each year, helps put the focus on work flexibility, and allows them to acknowledge and celebrate the commitment they make, and the support they receive from their partners and families.

One way to support every employee is to provide a flexible workplace that helps them find balance across all aspects of their life, including family, health and wellbeing. If we define success by the outcomes we create, who we are, and the value we deliver, rather than defining how, when and where this is done, businesses and people will flourish. Workplaces of the future should always be about results, not effort.

If we recruit the best talent we can afford, true workplace diversity will follow.

To make the workplace of the future meaningful and real, we have to change now. Some of those changes will be large in scope, others simple to make. Our responsibilities as leaders, entrepreneurs and business owners remain clear: make decisions that empower all employees to be the best they can, in workplace environments that allow them to succeed.

Thank you to all of Digivizer’s employees, for their contribution and commitment! As International Women’s day reminds us all, Be Bold for Change!

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

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Diversity in teams means everything (but what does diversity mean?)

Earlier this year at the World Economic Forum at Davos-Klosters, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau now-famously said: ‘Diversity is the engine of invention. It generates creativity that enriches the world.’

He was talking at a social, national, political and national security level, in the context of opportunities for those living and seeking to move to Canada,.

And as we celebrate International Women’s Day today it set me wondering about diversity in the workforce, often debated and much misunderstood: what it means, how it delivers, what responsibilities we have to a global workforce, how we balance new entrepreneurs with deep experience.

I attribute the success we’ve had at DIGIVIZER to date to how we’ve gone about building our team and culture.

The outcome is a remarkably diverse group of employees, but the goal was to never set out to be “diverse”.

So why is this the natural outcome?

Further to Trudeau’s remarks, I too have realized that meaningful diversity comes from opportunity, and from hiring the best-possible skills that we can, from wherever we can.

By focusing beyond technical skills, to things like offline experience, attitude, and personal and behavioural attributes like entrepreneurial spirit, preparedness to embrace uncertainty, and being prepared to commit to a cause, we have a team of men andwomen, young and old, from ethnic backgrounds as diverse as Chinese, Korean, British, Fijian, Tongan, Sri Lankan, Indian, New Zealander, American, French and Australian.

Vision, and that elusive great idea, might provide the spark, but the fire that follows will only be kept alight by great people doing clever things who are prepared to collaborate, learn, teach, apply.

We’ve created our own success by hiring great people at DIGIVIZER, and true diversity has been the result.

We’ve not had to adopt forced quotas or a window-dressed facade masquerading as diversity.

Everyone is bound together by the commitment, investment and sacrifices they all make in choosing to stay with us, and we’re extraordinarily proud of them.

It’s a very special moment when a group of people with a number of options at their fingertips choose to go with you.

What’s been tremendously exciting in our first five years is seeing this diverse team sharing our vision with our customers and the market, helping them make brave decisions to change the status quo about how they market and sell to, and more importantly engage with, their customers and prospects.

Helping our clients break free from constrained thinking and convention about what’s best for their customers.

Creating market-defining technology that rewrites how marketing and selling are done.

Defining – and delivering – new-style influencer programs, and active audience paid targeting, underpinned and supported by real-time data, that deliver measureable increases in sales, brand reach, market awareness, and more (with the data to prove it).

Any start-up and early growth company measures progress by the milestones it passes. They lend substance to what you seek to achieve.

More importantly, our team holds me accountable for real progress, not just some illusion of progress. Behind that accountability sits meaningful, wonderful diversity.

It keeps me firmly in a learning mindset, which serves our company well.

This article is also publish on LinkedIn.

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The “If not, why not” diversity question your organization needs to be asking now

This article was first published in VALIDITY COACHING’S FORETHOUGHT newsletter:

The “If not, why not” diversity question your organization needs to be asking now

gender_equality_by_meppolThere has been considerable debate in recent media and boardrooms following the announcement in December 2009 by the ASX Corporate Governance Council of their proposal to expand the Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations to require each entity listed on the Australian Securities Exchange to adopt and disclose a diversity policy that includes measurable objectives relating to gender.

Within their suggested diversity policy, listed entities will be required, on an “if not, why not?” basis, to disclose in their annual report:

  • Their achievement against the gender objectives set by their board; and
  • The number of women employees in the whole organization, in senior management and on the board.

Alongside the new recommendations, changes will be made to the guidance commentary to:

  • Encourage nomination committees of listed entities to include within their charters a requirement to continuously review the proportion of women at all levels in the company. Commentary will be required to highlight the responsibility of the nomination committee to address strategies on board gender diversity and diversity in general.
  • Require that the performance review of the board include consideration of diversity criteria in addition to skills
  • To disclose what skills and diversity criteria they look for in any new board appointment.

There has been much lip service paid to the issue of gender balance in the past, and with the council expecting to provide an exposure draft of the proposed changes to the Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations for public consultation in early 2010, with an anticipated implementation date of 1 July 2010, soft-discussions will no longer suffice.

Many organizations who have promoted an equal opportunity and pro-women position, still have considerably fewer numbers of women in senior executive level positions or at the board than their male counterparts.  When they do, they tend to skew towards what is perceived to be the “soft skilled” roles of Human Resources, Customer Services and Marketing.  Evidence has proved that a more balanced gender representation across organizations has not necessarily followed the talk.

It is expected that by placing this issue firmly at the boardroom table, the question of “if not, why not” will be applied.  However every manager at all levels of an organization should be looking at the answers to the question of “why are we at this point at all?”

What are the barriers to building greater gender diversity?

One of the biggest barriers to gender diversity is an organization’s (and broader profession’s) cultures built around people’s historically-based and inherent beliefs, behaviours and biases. Generally these are around the previously designed and seen to be successful roles of the “perfect worker” and that of the “perfect mother”, which can also be culturally and socially reinforced.

It is unlikely that organization’s today would have an overtly discriminatory or conscious block to women progressing with equal opportunity into senior ranks. In the majority of cases the barriers are more likely to be delivered through indirect organizational messaging and policies, poor role-modelling, inconsistent behaviours, little formalized support, too little flexibility and too few examples.

In a Catalyst research paper of 2007 that collected responses of 1231 male and female participants across US & EMEA titled “The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership: Dammed if You Do, Doomed if You Don’t”, found that women faced clear predicaments in the workplace that their male counterparts didn’t.  Some of these were around stereotyped expectations and behaviours. The Predicaments found for women in the research included:

  1. Extreme Perceptions – Too soft, too tough, and never just right. When women acted in ways that are consistent with gender stereotypes, they were viewed as less competent leaders and when women acted in ways that are inconsistent with such stereotypes, they were considered unfeminine.
  2. The High Competence Threshold – Women leaders face higher standards and lower rewards than male leaders. Respondents’ comments revealed that women leaders are subjected to higher competency standards. On top of doing their job, women have to prove that they can lead, over and over again and manage stereotypical expectations constantly.
  3. Competent but Disliked – Women leaders are perceived as competent or liked, but rarely both. Respondents’ comments revealed that when women behave in ways that are traditionally valued for men leaders (e.g. assertively), they are viewed as more competent, but also not as effective interpersonally as women who adopt a more stereotypically feminine style.

In summary, gender stereotypes misrepresent the true talents of women leaders and can potentially undermine women’s contributions to organizations as well as their own advancement options.

The consequences of not dealing with culture can be dire to organizational strength.  Here in Australia, Melbourne Business School associate professor Isabel Metz (as reported in The Australian Financial Review), managed to survey 44 senior women who left the banking and finance sector to verify their reasons for departure.

Although the sample was small, the findings speak volumes.  Almost half (45 per cent) of the interviewees who left their jobs after returning from maternity leave, abandoned plans to continue working for their organisation because of unfriendly work-family rather practices that didn’t give them a fair opportunity to return or to continue to work, such as a lack of part-time positions or expectations of very long work hours.

And Twenty-seven per cent of the women cited broken employment promises and legal obligations upon their return from maternity leave as a primary reason for their departure.

The reason we don’t hear much about these soft-discriminatory practices in organizations is the negative stereotyping or consequences in future employment for women who are seen to be “taking up the torch” or “mounting campaigns” that promote the rights, opportunities and equal numbers of women in the organization.  Women can also feel the consequences of resentment amongst her peers and her seniors from those who see the argument as one-sided and that the issues of unfriendly work-family practices impact both male and female workers equally. 

Some women who have made it to the top and have children and who are seen to be making themselves available 24/7 can also face negative stereotyping by others who believe they are not meeting their family responsibilities or are not setting the right example of balance to others.  This issue of stereotyping is unlikely to be applied in the same way to their male counterparts working in the same way.

Needless to say the question from most should be “what type of organization puts pressure on female and male employees to be available to work 24/7 or excessive hours over long periods of time”.   The burning and churning of talented and professional people, whilst maybe fuelling innovative SME start-ups, eventually takes its toll on larger organizations. 

Organizations are looking to see how they can address the issues of work/life balance and flexible work practices to ensure talent growth and energy-sustainability and to secure a continuous tap into the much wider and more experienced talent pool. It is about having the courage to allow talent to spawn in organizations – without trying to camouflage it with gender biases.  The financial benefits will follow.

Organizations of the future will see the question of gender diversity not being about the issue of developing women as a “special needs” program – it will instead focus on creating contexts in our eco-systems that provide women and all employees with opportunities to deliver value.

Organizations will focus much more around the greater opportunity of individual talent management and contribution.  If you have a star performer or developing talent with loads of potential, irrespective of gender, the organization will work to provide a custom program of development to help them realize their success in all aspects that are important to them – in their careers, personal, health, spiritual and social lives. The real job of managing will be to remove barriers, provide employees with the right resources, step out of the way and allow them to shine.

The way employees work, where they work, when they work will be inconsequential to how they successfully deliver the desired results and work with others in the organization.  No single rule, no single mould nor “one rule to suit the majority” will prevail. 

This type of flexible work environment will require some overhaul and change of existing systems, but these usually follow the change first in expectations and determinations of an organization’s working culture.

Supporting Gender Diversity through an organizations culture:

In addition to setting quota targets, there are some practical considerations you and your organization can consider today in answering the question of “if not, why not”:

  • Include in management agendas and communications messaging and discussions designed to bring desired cultural and behavioural changes to address gender diversity
  • Look at the requirements of the positions and determine if there are any gender bias and overhaul the specifications focusing on what business outcomes are looking to be delivered.(Research has shown that traditional managerial roles are set-typed as masculine, meaning that characteristics deemed necessary to be a successful manager are stereotypically associated with men).
  • Expose career paths & all aspects of business to your talented people.  The more visible the paths are to the top, the more choices provided to get there, the more experiences made possible and clearly made available to all talented employees irrespective of gender across the organization, the more likely the balanced take up from both sexes.
  • Identify & name your top talent – equally looking for talented female and male candidates who may be at different stages of their careers and develop custom programs to help them realize their career potential and aspirations.
  • Introduce a strong mentoring & coaching program – engaging both external and internal coaches to help executive women plan, prepare and realize their career aspirations
  • Identify where corrective coaching and changes are required to remove perception, stereotyping, behaviours and other barriers or current limitations across the senior leadership and management team
  • Encourage, introduce and financially support official networking engagements (professional & social), cross-function teamwork & leadership groupings.  Encourage these networks to be built both within and external to the organization to ensure exposure to strong role models, mentors, and key decision makers  
  • Develop and suggest strategies for promoting flexible working environments, removing barriers that allow people to deliver in diverse and flexibile environments and time frames
  • Invite, encourage, promote and champion advocates and change-drivers for gender diversity (& diversity in general) in your organization.
  • Encourage female senior executives to take an active role at mentoring, coaching & championing what is possible and identifying the key ingredients for their success.  

The old adage of “what gets measured gets done” is one of the implied principles of the ASX Corporate Governance Council’s recommendations.  One step short of enforced quotas, it relies more on the position of “naming & shaming”.  The more visibility bought to specific numeric gender targets, strategies and progress, the more likely they will be achieved. 

It is a shame that it will take legislation to put this issue and opportunity for business growth on the table.  There is much evidence to prove that diversity in the workforce is something an organization can capitalize upon.   

Our roles and responsibilities as leaders, as investors, as employees, as industry representatives – will be to hold organizations accountable for gender diversity.  Action is required and the clock is ticking. 

VALIDITY COACHING is a key sponsor of the HR Summit 2010.