giving workshops to men on how to relate to women. The men actually acted very differently in workshops than women did. The men didn't nod while I was speaking, like the women. They didn't collaborate or brainstorm the same way as women. They didn't draw up lists the same way or discuss things the same way either. When I thought about my work at Sony, I realized that men and women worked differently there, too. I had always chalked these differences up to personality differences, but I started wondering if there wasn't more to it.
Well, there was! I decided to see what scientists and researchers were saying about gender differences and they had a lot to say! By the mid‐1980s, the facts were there. Men and women really were different. They think differently. They process information differently. They communicate differently.
What a huge mistake it has been, and continues to be, to try to turn women into men! Ever since that fateful workshop at the pharmaceutical company, my life has been dedicated to showing men and women how they are different, and helping them overcome the challenges caused by their differences. And we can see change happening today.
“That's a great story, Barbara. You found a way to succeed at Sony by accepting the environment and changing your nature to fit in. You just assumed, as many women and men do today, that the business environment is what it is and that you either learn to swim or drown. Men across the globe are now realizing that it's the environment that needs to change, not the women in it.”
“You have your own story, Richard. You saw through that blind spot years ago, around the time when we first met at CIBC Wood Gundy.”
“That's right, Barbara. Over the run of my career, I've learned that including women and men in my management teams led to superior results compared to men alone (or women alone, although that rarely happened). I didn't come to this conclusion until I had substantial experience in management.”
The truth is, I didn't care much about the issue of advancing women in management and leadership for the first half of my working life. What I really cared about was my own advancement. But as I took on larger, more complex tasks, I had to seek greater diversity in the creation of the teams. Inevitably I became convinced that diversity led to better results than if I had limited myself to the narrower universe of men. I didn't really know why this happened, but just accepted it as fact.
I became an advocate for this approach in the firms that I joined. My views often met with mixed reactions, but I didn't care. It worked for me, and I intended to keep doing it. As I became more senior, I was able to effect systemic change in the firms I served. We would hire more women graduates at the introductory level, we would have programs to hang on to these women through the critical first seven to ten years of their career, and we would move women into more senior levels to be visible role models not only to other women but also to men.
In order to build support for this approach I had to get the men I worked with on my side. Remember: today, it is men who lead most companies – which is why this book speaks to men about how it is in their interest to change their preconceptions and behavior.
The first task is to drop as much gender bias as possible from what I call the “plumbing” of the company, a concept Barbara and I will explore more closely in a later chapter.
This meant recruitment committees had to be balanced. Promotion committees had to be balanced, not just in terms of numbers but also in terms of power. Getting the plumbing right meant changing our hiring practices and setting targets that would help us achieve our goals. It also meant changing benefit policies to accept that good maternity leave policies see more women returning from maternity leave. It meant ensuring that we were considering women as well as men in everything we did, from interviews to succession planning and board appointments.
My employer's maternity leave policies were probably the last thing on my mind in my first five years as an employee without management responsibilities. As a male employee, what possible interest could I have in these policies? Surely people wiser and more experienced than I had adopted policies at some time in the past that were fair and reasonable to both the employee and the firm.
Once I moved into management, I remember a friend outside the equity division telling me that some people were unhappy with my leadership. I couldn't understand why, given that our financial results had dramatically improved under my leadership. What more could I do for the company and for the employees? My friend told me some employees felt that I was insensitive to their needs and were, at the least, calling my leadership into question. It seemed to center around the maternity issue.
About the same time, Richard Venn, president of Wood Gundy, asked me to come see him. I assumed that I was going to be commended for the equities division's financial performance. To my surprise, it was to discuss my role with regard to the division's maternity policies.
Richard Venn listened to me as I explained that I assumed that the company had good policies and the whole matter was someone else's responsibility. Richard said that was not good enough, that I was their leader, and they expected me to act for them. He clearly wanted me to do something and that was fine by me. I knew I would have his support.
After reflecting on it that evening I decided to go to the source and sit down with some of the employees who were being affected and find out what was bothering them. It didn't take long for these discussions to get right to the point. The point was that our maternity policies were unfair and uncompetitive and what was I going to do about it? They saw me as their boss and their only hope to effect change.
My next step was to find out why our policies were unfair and uncompetitive. Of course this was not the prevailing view of the HR department, and so, with that department's help, I began an analysis of maternity policies at other leading firms. It became clear to me that we were on the lower end of the quality spectrum.
This was not good enough. Given that we were a leading firm, this didn't seem to fit with our position in the industry. I decided that we should have the best maternity policies in the industry, commensurate with our position as a market leader. I would institute these new maternity policies for the women who worked for me in capital markets. Then the rest of the firm would follow, and they did!
“I credit you, Barbara, for my education back then. In my experience, there are diversity programs that work, but many simply don't work. Yet, companies roll them out year after year with the standard assigned quotas and metrics. Everyone wants to do the right thing, but those decades‐old initiatives just haven't moved the needle.”
“That is so true, Richard. And what we've discovered over the years is that, in virtually every instance, the differentiating factor between failure and success is whether male leaders are all in and involved. Let me explain what I mean.”
We recently conducted a study to assess the diversity programs that created a sustainable impact in advancing women into senior management. We gathered data from three technology companies, four financial services firms, and two accounting firms.3 We'll first outline the perennial diversity programs that have shown minimal success and explain why. We'll then highlight the programs that are working well and helping to move women into leadership positions.
We all know what a money pit is – an ongoing drain on financial resources. With all the best of intentions, and implemented by great people dedicated to effecting change, here are the top diversity programs that the companies in the study admit have not produced the desired results. Richard and I will explain these in more detail in later chapters.
Women's Networks
Women's networks, councils, and chapters that lacked strategy and linkage to the financial objectives of the company ended up becoming no more than social networks. Meetings often became a venue for voicing complaints, but not linked to any initiatives in order to drive positive change. Many women said that the networks increased their sense of separateness from the rest of the organization.
It's still happening today. Whenever women's councils or networks invite us to give a keynote or seminar on how women can advance in their leadership and careers, we ask what percentage of the audience will be male.
It's