Best Apps for Busy Women

Keeping in touch with my clientsContributed by Carlo Pandian, blogger for Media Recruitment

Do you ever wish that you had more hours in the day to get everything done?

Between work, household chores, family life, side projects and everything else you are responsible for, it can sometimes feel like your to-do list will never end. Unfortunately, unless you are able to bend the fabric of space and time you will never have more than 24 hours in a day!

However, what you can do is learn how to use those 24 hours more efficiently in order to get more done. This is known as the art of time management. Streamlining your tasks and getting yourself organized will help you to do more with less effort and finally feel less overwhelmed with everything on your plate.

In your quest for efficiency, why not let your smart phone be your time management tool?

You already carry it with you everywhere you go, and now you can use it to keep yourself organized. There are many great time management apps out there for which help you to make lists, schedule appointments, plan your day and much more. Try a few different types of apps until you find the one that fits your needs and helps you the most.

Here are some of the best apps for maximizing your time management.

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What Are You Doing on 12/12/12? Mark Your Calendar to Help Women on Boards

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businesspeople talking in meeting room and woman smilingBy Robin Madell (San Francisco)

As most of us know by now, companies with a strong proportion of women on their Boards of Directors perform better—it’s just that simple. But right now, according to August 2012 statistics from Catalyst, the percentage of board seats at Fortune 500 Companies held by women is only 16.1 percent in the United States. Among the organizations working to change this is 2020 Women on Boards (WOB), which has set a goal of increasing the percentage of women on corporate boards to at least 20 percent by 2020.

To this end, one of WOB’s initiatives is called simply “12/12/12.” That’s the date—December 12, 2012—that the organization plans to host a national conversation on gender diversity in U.S. corporate boardrooms. To understand more about this event and the organization behind it, The Glass Hammer spoke with Malli Gero, WOB’s Executive Director and Co-Founder.

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Five Tips to Step Outside Your Comfort Zone and Build Your Network

Two female friends talking.By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Networking. It’s one of those things we all know we should do, but for many people, it just doesn’t come naturally. One of those people was Laurie Dalton White, Managing Director of Hill + Knowlton Strategies, and Conference Director for the Pennsylvania Conference for Women, the Massachusetts Conference for Women, and the Texas Conference for Women.

According to White, the conferences – which have helped over 150,000 women connect over the past thirteen years – are designed to provide a comfortable space for women to swap ideas, success strategies, and business cards. She explained, “Our goals are to provide women a space to educate, inspire, and encourage each other to achieve their goals.”

Here’s how she managed to achieve her own dream of connecting women so that they can help one another thrive – and become an expert networker along the way.

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Voice of Experience: Anne Milne, Managing Director, Emerging Markets Corporate Research, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

anne milne@baml comBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Looking back on her career, Anne Milne, Managing Director of the Emerging Markets Corporate Research at Bank of American Merrill Lynch, believes she could have benefited by focusing on career development earlier on.

“When I first started work, like many women, I thought if you just worked hard, you’ll get recognized, not realizing you need to market yourself to seniors – and not just your direct senior but people high up too,” Milne said. “A lot of the time, people might not know how hard you’re working.”

Similarly, she said, seeking input from mentors can help with advancement. “I think maybe what I could have done more is ask for more advice.”

It’s also important to set long-term goals and plan your advancement, she added. “You have to look at your career as a business and don’t get too emotional about it. Set larger term goals.”

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Why Female Bosses Matter

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A Happy business woman with other colleagues in the backgroundBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

We all know that having a role model to look up to can help us grow and advance in our careers. Being able to see “someone like you” thrive at the top is an inspiring privilege that the first generation of women to enter the workforce in large numbers did not have for themselves.

Even today, there are few women leading corporations or law firms, and that means it can be difficult to envision your own self becoming a leader when no one in executive leadership resembles you or knows from experience the kind of challenges you’ve faced. But fortunately, as more and more women are finding ways to make it work, more junior female professionals are able to climb to the next rung of the ladder.

And in fact, one new study out of Wharton and Harvard Business School, shows that the number of female supervisors has a direct impact on the promotion of women in up-or-out professions.

But – the study is complicated. While female bosses do help women climb the ladder a little easier in up-or-out jobs, people are more likely to leave a firm when there is a higher proportion of peers of the same gender. In clearer terms, more women on a team means more women will leave the company. Similarly, more men on a team means more men will leave that company.

The researchers, Katherine L. Milkman and Kathleen L. McGinn, believe the root cause of this is the intersection of “social cohesion” and “social comparison,” in the particular context of a competitive up-or-out environment. Fortunately, there is a solution, and leaders who can crack the challenge here have a better chance of increasing the number of women making it to the top in the future.

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Networks Matter: Women, Quotas, and Board Appointments

iStock_000009245275XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Recently it was revealed that the European Union’s justice commissioner Viviane Reding was likely to move forward with a proposal to implement boardroom gender quotas. The Financial Times reported that companies throughout the EU’s 27 member states will have to meet a 40 percent target for women board directors.

The FT’s James Fontanella-Khan writes:

“According to the draft, companies larger than 250 employees or with more than €50m in revenues would be required to report annually on the gender make-up of their boards. Those that miss the mandatory quota would be subject to administrative fines or be barred from state aid and contracts.”

Furthermore, a report by the New York Times continued, while publicly traded companies will have until 2020 to meet the target, state-owned companies will have to do so by 2018.

The news comes off the back of two recent studies that showed how personal networks make a huge difference when it comes to board appointments – “who you know” significantly influences which boards you’ll be appointed to, and how much you’ll get paid.

And because most boardrooms in the UK and around the world are dominated by men, women have less of an opportunity to break through – simply because of whose personal networks they belong to and in what context they are there. The research shows that networks matter – and that’s why gender quotas may help close the gap.

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From Ladder to Lattice: How the Economy Changed the Meaning of Career Growth

 

Meaning of Career Growth In many ways, the recession was a wakeup call for corporate America. As companies cut back their workforces, those remaining were asked to do more with less. Now, we’re all expected to be generalists, not only willing, but capable of learning across the organization. We have to ease effortlessly into new roles and responsibilities while expanding on our already-existing skill sets, regardless of our official job description or title. And according to Joanne Cleaver, titles aren’t even really relevant anymore; they fall short in conveying the full spectrum of a person’s skills and experience.

In other words, the economy has changed the meaning of career growth: the ladder is gone and the emerging model is the lattice.

Cleaver’s new book, The Career Lattice: Combat Brain Drain, Improve Company Culture, and Attract Top Talent is her guide to strategic lateral moves, compiled after conducting dozens of interviews and case studies on how individuals and employers can grow and thrive in a slow-growth economy. The book couldn’t have been possible without Cleaver’s research partner, The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), a national nonprofit that collaborates with major employers and thousands of colleges to introduce new career pathways for working adults. CAEL was actually credited with popularizing the term “career lattice” back in 2002. (And the idea of latticing was also bolstered by Cathy Benko and Anne C. Weisberg, in their book Mass Career Customization.)

According to Cleaver’s book, a career lattice is a diagonal framework that braids lateral experiences, adjacent skill acquisition, and peer networking to move employees to any of a variety of positions for which they have become qualified. Cleaver writes that the lattice is about evolution. It’s about adding new skills, experience, abilities, and networks to those that already exist. It’s about letting go of the bits that are no longer relevant in the workforce while blending in new elements that anticipate and encourage the growth of individuals and organizations.

Cleaver says there are two crucial elements that need to be in place to make latticing work: the willingness to celebrate growth no matter how it looks, and the ability to recognize a wide spectrum of professional development. The look of success is changing and employers need to be able to not just recognize, but rally around these newly emerging paths to growth.

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Coaching To Listen to Your Inner Voice

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

Are you ever in situations where no matter how hard you push your brain you remain confused about important decisions? As I faced my own personal mid-life questions, my brain often came up short on answers to these:

  • “What is a successful life look like for me?”
  • “Do I take an assignment where I’ll be making more money but will be working for someone I don’t connect with?”
  • “I feel restless, like I should be doing something different, but how do I find out what that is?”
  • “What work life balance is right for me?”

Interestingly, one of the most read articles on Harvard Business Review’s site is Clay Christensen’s “How Will You Measure Your Life?” suggesting we all ponder these questions from time to time. Yet our workplaces seldom equip us with answering them. As we get into higher level positions we are faced with many decisions where the answers are not black or white, but dwell frustratingly in the gray. With all the emphasis in the business world on facts and data and logical conclusions, it’s easy for us to let an important part of our decision-making center lapse.

This part is called our inner voice or intuition. I call it the inner coach. Our inner coach connects us to our own authenticity, our core, our values. When we listen to our inner voice it helps us be at peace with important decisions. It also helps us be a more authentic leader.

Albert Einstein said “the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Here are five practices that have worked for me to tap into the gift we all have been given.

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Voice of Experience: Judith Posnikoff, PhD, Co-Founder & Managing Director, PAAMCO

judithposnikoffBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“I think what I wish I had known when I was starting out was to be a little more flexible – to really jump into opportunities even if they’re outside the path I expected to follow,” began Judith Posnikoff, PhD, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Pacific Alternative Asset Management Company (PAAMCO).

Posnikoff began her career as an academic – and had intended to stay there, she explained, until one day she got a fateful call from a friend asking for help at his firm. That opportunity eventually led to a whole new career, she explained.

“Really look at opportunities, even it seems way out of what you considered before,” she added.

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Voice of Experience: Gabriela Franco Parcella, Chief Executive Officer, Mellon Capital Management Corporation

gabrielaparcellaBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to Gabriela Franco Parcella, CEO of Mellon Capital Management Corporation, it’s important to keep an open mind when thinking about where your career might take you. Looking back on her early career, she said, “I could have had more impact on a company in my first 5 years by thinking more broadly.”

“We put ourselves in boxes. I thought of myself as a lawyer and I thought I would always be a lawyer. It took a while before I realized I could use my lawyer skills in other roles.”

After moving from Mellon Capital’s legal department to roles in operations, and gradually gaining more responsibilities, Parcella was named CEO of Mellon Capital last year. She encouraged young women to keep their minds open to various career paths.

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