As a middle-aged white bloke, a self help guide on women's workplace empowerment was perhaps a surprising choice for me to read. But I like to expose myself to good ideas regardless of where they are coming from. It also helped that it was incredibly cheap from Amazon's marketplace and I was looking for a book to try out my new 80/20 book reading approach (more on that in another post perhaps).Verveer and Azzarelli have produced a guide which is both motivating and practical. Be warned, it does tend to lean significantly towards storytelling. But many of the stories are memorable and may just be the jolt you need.
The first chapter I jumped into was "Find your purpose". Disappointingly, this turns out to be more of an instruction rather than offering tactics and approaches on how to do so.
"Dissents speak to a future age. The greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow".
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The chapter on leadership was more useful. As a bit of a geek, I was fascinated by Google's data driven approach to getting more female engineers to apply for promotions. They found that if they accompanied job descriptions with two studies showing girls and women were less likely to put their hands in math classes and meetings (despite often being better than their male counterparts), they got more applications.
"What I found was that whenever you offer someone flexibility to manage what's important in their lives, you're avoiding them having to make a choice between what's important to them in life, and work will lose every time. The benefit of giving them a third option is that you will get loyalty you can't get any other way, no matter how much money you pay them".
Susan Sobbot
"Why the Middle Matters" is a useful reminder of the power and influence middle management can exert given their position in the organisation - and their role in raising new ideas. As a middle manager myself, I can testify that it doesn't always feel that way, although I found myself nodding at the following observation:
"Knowing where you are in the organisation, and knowing the power you have to influence and the power you have to make recommendations - don't get surprised when your recommendations gets taken".
Bea Perez, Coca Cola
as well as the expectation that as the raiser you will deliver the solution!
"You know, Mrs Clinton, the best ideas die in bank parking lots"
Anon on the difficulty of women getting startup funding from traditional sources
I was particularly moved by Pauline Brown on the power of sabbaticals:
"Little by little, things starting coming back to me that gave me joy".Ideas provoked:
- Could staff leave letter to their successors giving the instant track on what works and what doesn't?
- Can Freshpaper help Asda with their plastics-free challenge?
Finally, the toolkit at the back of the book went beyond the usual homilies. I took away the following tips:
- Think strategically about what problems will need to be solved in the future, and what your role will be.
- "Confident is the stuff that turns thoughts into action" - a wonderfully concise definition.
- The higher you aim, the harsher the criticism you will get.
- Substitute junk media for quality media - perhaps by keeping a diary of what you read and watch initially, going cold turkey and slowly introducing things back into it.
- What matters to you? What do you find yourself drifting towards when reading? What do you want to change in your own life, in your community or in the world? Make a list of your top three?
Verdict: Toolkit is gold. Rest powerfully inspiring.
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