Op-Ed: Don’t Let the Dreamer Syndrome Stall Gender Balancing
Contributed by Christina Ioannidis, Founder and CEO of Aquitude
In the last few years, we have seen the advent of women’s networks across the corporate arena. Corporations have been riding high on their female talent’s innate passion for a gender balanced, equitable world, as well as their innate talent as change agents, and have profited from hundreds of women’s work beyond their “day job” in order to offer training, networking, and learning opportunities for other women in their organisations. These women’s networks or employee resource groups (some companies call them by different names) are often set up by hard-working female employees with the objective of offering support and guidance to all women within their corporation.
If I could count the number of discussions where we have been told “We have no budget to support any women’s network activities,” I would be as rich as Warren Buffet.
However, women will still burn themselves out in trying to make something happen with nothing, and will fight hard to create a network with absolutely no support. This is what I call the Dreamer Syndrome – still pursuing a dream when the business does not perceive it as contributing to the bottom line.
The Error of Taking a Philanthropic Approach
We are at a point where momentum is building globally around the Gender Agenda. Governments across the world are putting emphasis on gender-balancing, some with quotas, some with a future threat of quotas. Either way, the time is ripe for women to be even more hard-nosed about what they, and their activities, bring to business.
Some we often muddle business with a social cause. Business is there to make a profit. Charities perform philanthropic acts. I have no intention to discourage and brush-off some of the excellent work that women in the corporate place have started with their gender diversity activities. It is important, instead to highlight that we have reached a point where ‘no money’ has come to mean ‘not important.’
The old adage of ‘put your money where your mouth is’ rings true. Invest, get returns; don’t invest, get disengaged employees who leave disenchanted with their employers and hence, increased employee turnover and loss of productivity.
Release Your Inner Entrepreneur
The rise of female entrepreneurship globally is no surprise. Women are increasingly turning their backs to traditionally corporate careers and forging their future in entrepreneurship. I am not suggesting that you let yourself get to that point. To create gender balanced companies, we need as many women as possible to drive change internally. However, if you focus your energy on areas that do not offer the company a return, it means that you are likely to be sidelined and stigmatized as a resource-waster. Instead, take an entrepreneurial attitude to your gender-balancing vision. Here’s how.
Raise finances: This means you have to find out the trigger points for the investors in your gender balancing project or activity. What is high on their priority list? How can what you do support that? What rate of return can your activity earn them in terms of positive perception, avoidance of loss of face, competitive advantage vis-à-vis competitors who will be left behind, increased revenues? In what timeframe is this likely to be achieved in? In the entrepreneurial world, investors and VCs tend to have a specialization, because they have an interest but also because they are likely to be able to make money sooner by using their expertise in selling the business they have invested in. The same is true for male business leaders and the gender agenda. We find that once a male executive has a daughter, their attitude to the Gender Agenda changes, and moves up their priority list.
Solve a problem: As an entrepreneur, your business proposition has to solve a problem – even if it at first it is not easily quantifiable. However, you have to somehow quantify it. The creators of the Post It note at 3M did not set out to solve the “don’t have paper to hand when on the telephone” problem; however, the problem became more apparent when they sought the benefits of the Post It product. In the Gender Agenda, what problems do you see your company having if it does not have 50% of the population reflected in its workforce? We find that the language of corporate losses as a result of female attrition in the mid-career point, at around £15 million for every 10,000 employees, pricks executive ears.
Go straight to the decision maker and seek sponsorship: much has been said in recent times about the importance of women having sponsors. Is it a surprise that the definition of a sponsor includes paying in money (an advertiser), or contributions in cash or kind? You need to think in the language of business – where cash rules. Once again, the return on investment has to be clear to the sponsor of our activity – reiterate the business benefit – how much and when. If you agree to do something for free, how would you ever raise funds and even survive as an entrepreneur? All you would be doing is getting yourself into a negative spiral work with no pay, no funds to pay your outgoings, let alone your mortgage and personal obligations.
This is why breaking from the dreamer mentality is key. Linked to the point above, seek senior executive leaders with daughters who will be more motivated by a gender-balanced future as potential sponsors.
Network incessantly: Entrepreneurs spend the majority of their time networking, building contacts, investigating new leads. If you are so passionate about increasing attraction and retention of women in your business, then you have to network and identify all the individuals who share your interest.
By its very nature, due to the fact that there are few women in senior executive roles, this means you have to network with the male leaders. Don’t segregate what you want to do and only network with your female colleagues in the business. For the gender balance to become a reality, you need to speak to the influencers: men.
What they may not have, however, is the same motivators as you. For example, women are consumers and clients, women are an internal source of intellectual property; losing women means losing investment in people. Don’t give up.
Global corporations are now increasingly under pressure to enhance their gender diversity activities and really start the dial moving in favour of sustainable change. The time is now for both men and women to act in pushing for what I call a Gender Savvy business culture. What is more, this is far from being purely a gender issue – it is also a generational issue. Corporations need to act now or risk being sidelined from their future talent too – the all-important Generation Y coming up the ranks.
If your company does not support you, it will be their loss. But you will have achieved first-hand learning on what it takes to be an entrepreneur – giving you the experience that women are increasingly turning to when setting off on their entrepreneurial ventures. Your employer, however, would have lost any hope of achieving diversity of thought and would have exacerbated its corporate blind-spots. This would be dangerous – as it is those blind spots that led to the greatest financial crisis in modern history.
Christina Ioannidis is the founder and CEO of Aquitude (www.aquitude.com
Christina is also sought-after speaker and she delivers interactive and engaging keynote speeches at conferences worldwide. She is a thought leader in the subjects of gender-savvy leadership and talent management, employee and customer engagement, effective product development and marketing, as well as innovation and intra/entrepreneurship. She has been invited to comment on Bloomberg TV, Sky News, Emirates News, The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Evening Standard, and The Guardian, among others.
