UNLEASHING FEMININE POTENTIAL AND EMBRACING DIVERSITY

It’s been a week of two halves.

 

The first about “not getting it” – me, my e-mails as Orange, my provider, collapsed; Orange – not getting the restrained fury their laconic call centre is creating.

 

The second about being cheered up by a presentation from Kirstin Furber HR Director of BBC Worldwide on the power of women. On the basis of what she said the future will be better (and better looking than the past.)

 

USA data shows women have recently built twice as many companies as men;
whilst they find it much harder to get funded than men, that doesn’t stop them succeeding.

They succeed because:

 

1. Their motivations are huge…”I wanted to do something for me…but I realised it was also for the people who worked for me – which was better.”
2. They want to create a good, sustainable business not just get rich.
3. They tend to be kinder than men, looking to create a business that outlasts them.
4. Their sense of the zeitgeist is profound noticing gaps in markets
5. They are good at “pattern recognition”- a key barometer of success in business
6. When a female CEO is interviewed she’ll tend to have her top team there with her, in support and answering their special interest questions. (Male CEO’s tend to be seen alone – as the leader.) Women see themselves as conductors of an orchestra – they don’t make the noise.
7. Women in general want their company to be smarter than they are.
8. Women tend to be more right brain users but they really work at and try being good at left brain too – their male counterparts tend not to work much at their right brain.
9. Women have an “irrational love” of their customers whom they regard as part of their family.
10. Men are measurement obsessed and love doing plans and revising them interminably. Women are looser about possible outcomes saying: “No one expects things to turn out quite the way we predicted.”

 

The future’s bright if our managements and leaders – female and male - follow the “ten commandments” above but the future certainly isn’t Orange unless they start to have a more irrational love of their customers than they showed this week.