How can you make a sideways step within your job yet still move your career ahead? The opportunity, even demand, is intrapreneurship.
Intrapreneurship is entrepreneurship, but within the context of a larger organization. An intrapreneur is “an employee of an established organization with an entrepreneurial mindset,” who thinks more like a start-up owner.
Alyson Krueger writes in Fast Company, “Obviously there have always been go-getters in companies who try to move the needle forward and push the status quo. But never before has there been such a push for employees to take ownership of their own corner of a company.”
Asserted in Entrepreneur, “intrapreneurship is the new entrepreneurship.”
Satisfaction and Engagement Meets Innovation and Leadership
A survey from University of Phoenix School of Business found people who are satisfied in their job are nearly twice as likely to report having the opportunity for intrapreneurship (61%) compared to those who are not satisfied (33%). It’s logical that organizations are being advised to foster entrepreneurial cultures as a way of attracting talent as well as increasing employee engagement.
Murray Newlands writes in Inc., “Intrapreneurs will become the building blocks of a company’s executive teams and leaders. They are the driving force that moves a company forward and they will inevitably rise to the top of the company as they understand the company from all levels. Starting from the bottom, they will see the company as a set of processes in which every process must evolve.”
Intrapreneurs shake up the ladder, which is one way to change the gender status quo. They do not obey traditional career paths, but creates new ones, while changing how things work from the inside-out. There are many articles that advise on the skills to be effective as an intrapreneur. But the first word that comes to mind when we hear entrepreneurial is spirit.
Here are five qualities that seem across the board inherent to stoking your intrapreneurial spirit.
Quality 1: Relentless Curiosity.
Intrapreneurs see the opportunity for something that is not yet there, which takes curiosity, perceptiveness, intuition, and being attuned to seeing trends before others. They also have to be able to question and “challenge current business practices,” not simply fall in line or put their heads-down and get on with it. Intrapreneurs don’t stay in the box. They question the box. Coming up with ideas is a mindset, and it’s value does not hinge on the success or failure of one idea.
According to Claudia Chan, founder of S.H.E. Globl Media, in Fast Company, intrepreneurial employees are asking questions such as,“What do I want to create that is going to fill a white space? What doesn’t exist that needs to exist? There is a hole and they want to fill it. There is a problem, and they want to solve it.”
Quality 2: Risk-Taking Creativity.
Chan writes, “If you’re not uncomfortable or scared, you’re not driving innovation.”
Intrapreneurs bring creativity where it did not exist before, in the form of ideas, processes, and solutions, and they embrace a spirit of uncertainty. As a visionary, you cannot know exactly what you’re doing, because what you’re doing has not been done before. It’s very important to be knowledgeable and leverage your strengths, but also find the right point to make the leap.
Susan Folley of Corporate Entrepreneurs, LLC writes, “This is the great divide between traditional leaders and intrapreneurs – the known and unknown. It is the difference between playing it safe or taking a risk, relying on past experience or experimentation, needing detailed information to decide or leveraging what you know, minimizing risks or maximizing value, asking for what you need or leveraging what you’ve got. They see what is possible. It’s a mindset, a way of operating that is foreign to many of us.”
Quality 3: Daring and Vocal Courage.
Intrapreneurship takes a willingness to step up with your ideas and be vocal, even finding a way to visualize them so they become more accessible to others.
As shared in her book Daring Greatly, researcher Brené Brown asked Kevin Surace what the biggest obstacle to creativity and innovation was, and he replied that it is the fear of even putting your ideas out there due to worries about ridicule or being belittled, yet “innovative ideas often sound crazy and failure and learning are a part of revolution.”
So it’s necessary to stoke your courage, but according to Brown the culture matters. Ask if the culture you’re in is also rewarding the value of creative courage. If you’re a woman of intrapreneurial spirit full of ideas, be in an environment in which you and your ideas will flourish.
Quality 4: Passionate & Adaptable Resilience.
Once you’ve put yourself out there, it’s important not to let your ideas die upon rejection of one articulation, but foster resilience and passion towards getting to the best work, just as a writer may have to find the real story one hundred pages into her first draft.
Rich Maloof writes in Forbes, “find a granular element of the concept that is undeniably of value.” You can always find the new simplified starting point and with iterative progress, your Plan D may be ten times better than Plan A started out.
Quality 5: Contagious Collaboration.
A large part of intrapreneurship is being able to “assemble” the right team around an idea and foster an enthusiastic start-up mentality – all hands-in, less silos and more shared accountability. If intraprenership requires a learn-by-doing approach, you’re going to need a passionate team willing to learn and relearn with you. You must be able to make a personal vision a team vision.
Intrapreneurial women will not be the first up the ladder. Instead, they’ll invent a new platform to stand on, from which the view looks different for everyone.
By Aimee Hansen
Mover and Shaker: Mary-Kate Ryan, Manager, Advisory Consulting, PwC Ireland
Movers and ShakersThis advice from one of her role models, Eleanor Roosevelt, has always resonated with Mary-Kate Ryan.
“This wisdom is still up-to-date as a great analogy of how women must challenge ourselves in the workplace. Men are more apt to claim they are the right person for any given task, while women often feel ‘imposter syndrome,’ where they’re not sure they have the capability they need. But we all know that if you put tea in cold water it’s not very good, but put it in the thick of things, in the ‘hot water,’ and you see how well it works.”
Ryan’s career has been a series of hot water scenarios that she has willingly put herself in and come out stronger. After studying economics and finance in university, she and two of her sisters opened a successful fashion boutique in Dublin which she managed for eight years, attracting a devoted clientele – think Beyoncé caliber!
She says that looking after the business and seeing the fruits of her labor in a niche market was a wonderful training ground throughout her 20s where she had to learn to be adaptable and willing to take on any role; then as she built a team, acquire a comfort level to let go and allow the team to develop as well.
After a brief stint in another business with one sister, she noticed a curiosity about the corporate sector, specifically management consulting, as she approached her 30s. Deciding to act on that gut instinct, she took a career break to go back to university and earn a master’s degree in Management Consultancy at UCD Smurfit in Dublin, something she said feels even more important at that point in your life, because you are more committed and yet able to fully appreciate the freedom of being a full-time student. She made the most of her time there, building up her network and even playing on a touch rugby team that went to the MBA Rugby World Cup in North Carolina.
Learning the Ropes in a Corporate Environment
Earning top honors in her class, Ryan felt confident that she could parlay that success into the skills needed for management consulting and joined PwC Ireland. Some people were confused by her move, expressing that she had been living the dream with her own company, but she enjoyed the leap to the corporate environment. “One of my key skills is my adaptability. I am good at jumping into new situations so I put my head down and figured out the culture.”
Since then she has enjoyed her work on long-term projects in complex environments, overcoming challenges and working with high-performing teams.
She credits her robust support network with helping her along the way. “Sometimes you just need a few conversations that remind you how capable you are and that it’s fine to not know everything because you will learn what you need to,” she says.
Her projects helping organizations integrate after a merger can be quite intense. “The change management and personnel aspect is very interesting, as each situation entails complexity and ambiguity,” she says. “There’s no magic formula and that’s what keeps it exciting.”
When she first started at PwC, she assumed it was going to be a dog-eat-dog environment but was pleasantly surprised at her experience. “Business is always going to be competitive, but I soon learned that high-performing people are also very nice and accessible.” She found that building relationships with clients worked in the same way. “As I got to know them, I found that they were more supportive than you would imagine. We all are just trying to do the job well.” And she adds, PwC offers a diversity of backgrounds that allows its employees to nourish all the aspects that make each person individual.
Along the way, she was able to acquire mentors and sponsors, which she says came about naturally because she showed she was interested, curious and enthusiastic. “Bringing those aspects to the table didn’t have immediate rewards but they put me on people’s radar. A year or so later, someone would think of me and present me with an amazing opportunity,” she says.
For example, even while working offsite, she kept in touch and because of her initiative was offered a project in Dubai with a client with whom she really wanted to work. “It came about because I maintained a network and let people know what I was interested in. If you share the views of what you want to do and have the right conversations, it will naturally happen.”
Multicultural Assignments Feed Her Work/Life Balance
In addition to her work in Dubai, she has enjoyed other international assignments because of what she’s learned about global and multicultural issues. “When I was working in Ireland, there were mostly similarities in terms of approaches, but the international assignments have shown me I can build a team of people with different backgrounds and still be able to see the commonalities,” she says. “You learn not to make assumptions, but instead to really listen and understand people’s motives and objectives.” For example, if someone is being resistant in a meeting, it could be because they don’t agree, but it also could be because they don’t understand and you have to draw them out.
She says that has made her more open-minded and perform better in cross-functional teams, as well as making her gravitate toward more global assignments with an eye to what else she can learn.
Her love of travel extends to her personal life, where she spends as much time as she can trekking and traveling, exploring her interest in different languages, cuisine and cultures.
“As Eleanor Roosevelt said, ‘Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.’ I believe that approaching life with a curious mind keeps you invigorated and allows me to bring that level of enthusiasm to my work.”
4 Tips to Calm Yourself and Your Stressed Team
Career Advice, Life HacksTip 1: Stop Multitasking
Women in financial services are resolute multi-taskers with a high probability for getting stressed out to the max. A Stanford study revealed the cognitive dangers to media multitasking. Scientists have theorized that humans simply cannot adequately process a conglomeration of various free flowing information at one time. However, that fact has not stopped female professionals from trying. Without a doubt, individuals who have mastered multi-tasking positions have acquired an invaluable skill. This, however, is a double-edged sword. Their perceived gift is stress-inducing, which means it comes with a high price. Multiple tests showed that heavy multitaskers not only consistently underperformed light multitaskers, but the flood of tasks was actually detrimental to their cognitive control. On the other hand, workers who prioritize and give individual projects full attention are actually more productive.
Tip 2: Understand the macro-environment
Financial services is a particularly stressful industry because of widespread restructuring, increased competition, and globalization. Immense changes in the economy have had a significant impact on professionals in the industry. The stress resulting from work-related irascibilities in the financial industry should not be ignored or minimized. Massive acquisitions and mergers have made headlines for years.
New developments in technology require finance professionals to acquire and utilize more technical expertise, and to perform increasingly difficult tasks with a broader skill set. Additionally, domestic and international competition has raised the bar as to what is expected of financial services. Toss in a lack of meaningful communication and a loss of teamfocus, and you have the recipe for exacerbated tension and frustration in the workplace.
What starts out as irritation from miscommunication or fatigue from a heavy workload, often leads to more serious difficulties such as burn out, anger eruptions, physical illness, loss of self-confidence, workplace violence, and insufficient staffing. Understand the reason is sometimes bigger than you and that there are certain factors in the macro-environment that cannot be overlooked.
Tip 3: Identify the source of the stress
It is unreasonable to think that one can revolutionize the entire financial services industry and make the workplace stress free. However, with expert advice, you can change the environment of your own workplace in order to reduce your stress level and the stress level of your teammates. How do you bring about a more positive atmosphere? It’s crucial to first identify the source of the stress. Is a particular project weighing everyone down? Has there been a lot of overtime? Is new technology causing stress in the office? Once you identify the stress, then you can begin the process of alleviating it.
Leaders don’t wait for staff to come up with something to make the workplace healthier. Take the initiative by providing team support and by giving each worker clear training and goals. Instead of having the type of staff meeting that allows for endless rambling, set a clear agenda that conveys a constructive tone, one that prevents individuals from monopolizing valuable time. Meetings that are productive and focused create a true haven for support rather than add to the team’s boatload of stress.
Tip 4: Think ahead
A proactive leader thinks ahead. Don’t wait until everyone is at the breaking point before you decide to act. When your team is assigned a project, use insight to determine what the team needs to deal with the challenges associated with the project. If certain tasks, changes, or clients are likely to impose extra stress on your team, then have a clear stress management plan ready. Keep the lines of communication open, and encourage feedback and team engagement. Obviously, you are not going to eliminate or even reduce to an innocuous level every source of stress in the financial services industry. However, it is both insightful and pragmatic to take advantage of every available resource and opportunity to minimize personal stress and the stress of your team. To start with there are always some simple, practical, common-sense things a good leader can do to stay on top of or avert a potential problem: When conflicts arise, settle them quickly; give the needed attention to individuals on your team; listen actively to them when they make suggestions or face difficulties; institute a strategy that will make it easy for them to transition from one project to the next; give them constant feedback and make them feel respected and valued.
Even though female professionals face highly stressful circumstances in the financial services industry, they can manage pressure by keeping the workplace positive. Multi-tasking and aimless staff meetings are not the solution, but part of the problem. Workers need to know that they are valued as team players, and they need to have clear goals on which to focus, and toward which to work. By honing their exceptional communication skills, women leaders avail themselves of yet another useful skill in managing stress.
By Kathleen Delaney
Always Number Two At Work? How To Be The Boss
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Reflect upon gender roles- maybe you were told to be a “nice girl” when you were little, while your brother was told to “go get ‘em tiger”.
Recommended reading “Nice girls dont get the corner office”.
If you can do it, why aren’t you doing it?
By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist
Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work
Voice of Experience: Denise Landman, CEO, Victoria’s Secret Pink
People, Voices of ExperienceTrue North
“I personally have a fiduciary responsibility to create value for my organization and a secure future for my business leaders,” said Landman. “Leadership is a conscious effort. It is a muscle to develop and build, and requires deep introspection. People become leaders when they decide for themselves what and who they will be.”
“For me,” continued Landman, “the best leaders have emerged as being very authentic. Authentic leaders are guided by an inner compass, or true north. Your integrity is what creates a sense of community in the organization that ultimately translates to performance.”
“Building a culture of honesty can only create positive outcomes,” said Landman. “I make mistakes as well. None of us are mistake-proof. It is often that you learn the most through your mistakes. I embrace those mistakes when they occur in my organization.”
How to Market to College Girls
Many people involved in branding want to go straight to product development.
Landman, on the other hand, needed to spend more time thinking about the characteristics of the college girl. “I needed to define her for myself. I would not allow designers to design anything until we had a clear sense of what this eighteen year old girl wants,” said Landman. “Eighteen year old girls are still young and naive, and, in other respects, preparing to be the women they will be in the future. It is a fragile age. I have to go back to what it means to be an eighteen year old, and how to translate this understanding into a product.”
Learning Your Craft
Landman spent the early days of her career perfecting the fundamentals. “It was only when I knew I could be effective with my career choice that I strive for higher levels of responsibility,” said Landman. “I couldn’t have put myself out there if I didn’t have the right stuff. I am a big proponent of honing your craft and knowing what you are talking about.”
Work-Life Integration
Landman adopted two sons (one from Russia and one from Ohio) when she was 50. When asked about work-life integration, Landman said that she and her husband made the decision that he would stay at home and she would continue with her career. “It is such a personal journey, and there is no one blueprint or roadmap to follow,” stressed Landman.“I am learning a lot about how to be the best mom while also being whole and effective in my professional life.It is hard.”
By Hua Wang
Stoking Your Intrapreneurial Spirit
Career Advice, Next LevelIntrapreneurship is entrepreneurship, but within the context of a larger organization. An intrapreneur is “an employee of an established organization with an entrepreneurial mindset,” who thinks more like a start-up owner.
Alyson Krueger writes in Fast Company, “Obviously there have always been go-getters in companies who try to move the needle forward and push the status quo. But never before has there been such a push for employees to take ownership of their own corner of a company.”
Asserted in Entrepreneur, “intrapreneurship is the new entrepreneurship.”
Satisfaction and Engagement Meets Innovation and Leadership
A survey from University of Phoenix School of Business found people who are satisfied in their job are nearly twice as likely to report having the opportunity for intrapreneurship (61%) compared to those who are not satisfied (33%). It’s logical that organizations are being advised to foster entrepreneurial cultures as a way of attracting talent as well as increasing employee engagement.
Murray Newlands writes in Inc., “Intrapreneurs will become the building blocks of a company’s executive teams and leaders. They are the driving force that moves a company forward and they will inevitably rise to the top of the company as they understand the company from all levels. Starting from the bottom, they will see the company as a set of processes in which every process must evolve.”
Intrapreneurs shake up the ladder, which is one way to change the gender status quo. They do not obey traditional career paths, but creates new ones, while changing how things work from the inside-out. There are many articles that advise on the skills to be effective as an intrapreneur. But the first word that comes to mind when we hear entrepreneurial is spirit.
Here are five qualities that seem across the board inherent to stoking your intrapreneurial spirit.
Quality 1: Relentless Curiosity.
Intrapreneurs see the opportunity for something that is not yet there, which takes curiosity, perceptiveness, intuition, and being attuned to seeing trends before others. They also have to be able to question and “challenge current business practices,” not simply fall in line or put their heads-down and get on with it. Intrapreneurs don’t stay in the box. They question the box. Coming up with ideas is a mindset, and it’s value does not hinge on the success or failure of one idea.
According to Claudia Chan, founder of S.H.E. Globl Media, in Fast Company, intrepreneurial employees are asking questions such as,“What do I want to create that is going to fill a white space? What doesn’t exist that needs to exist? There is a hole and they want to fill it. There is a problem, and they want to solve it.”
Quality 2: Risk-Taking Creativity.
Chan writes, “If you’re not uncomfortable or scared, you’re not driving innovation.”
Intrapreneurs bring creativity where it did not exist before, in the form of ideas, processes, and solutions, and they embrace a spirit of uncertainty. As a visionary, you cannot know exactly what you’re doing, because what you’re doing has not been done before. It’s very important to be knowledgeable and leverage your strengths, but also find the right point to make the leap.
Susan Folley of Corporate Entrepreneurs, LLC writes, “This is the great divide between traditional leaders and intrapreneurs – the known and unknown. It is the difference between playing it safe or taking a risk, relying on past experience or experimentation, needing detailed information to decide or leveraging what you know, minimizing risks or maximizing value, asking for what you need or leveraging what you’ve got. They see what is possible. It’s a mindset, a way of operating that is foreign to many of us.”
Quality 3: Daring and Vocal Courage.
Intrapreneurship takes a willingness to step up with your ideas and be vocal, even finding a way to visualize them so they become more accessible to others.
As shared in her book Daring Greatly, researcher Brené Brown asked Kevin Surace what the biggest obstacle to creativity and innovation was, and he replied that it is the fear of even putting your ideas out there due to worries about ridicule or being belittled, yet “innovative ideas often sound crazy and failure and learning are a part of revolution.”
So it’s necessary to stoke your courage, but according to Brown the culture matters. Ask if the culture you’re in is also rewarding the value of creative courage. If you’re a woman of intrapreneurial spirit full of ideas, be in an environment in which you and your ideas will flourish.
Quality 4: Passionate & Adaptable Resilience.
Once you’ve put yourself out there, it’s important not to let your ideas die upon rejection of one articulation, but foster resilience and passion towards getting to the best work, just as a writer may have to find the real story one hundred pages into her first draft.
Rich Maloof writes in Forbes, “find a granular element of the concept that is undeniably of value.” You can always find the new simplified starting point and with iterative progress, your Plan D may be ten times better than Plan A started out.
Quality 5: Contagious Collaboration.
A large part of intrapreneurship is being able to “assemble” the right team around an idea and foster an enthusiastic start-up mentality – all hands-in, less silos and more shared accountability. If intraprenership requires a learn-by-doing approach, you’re going to need a passionate team willing to learn and relearn with you. You must be able to make a personal vision a team vision.
Intrapreneurial women will not be the first up the ladder. Instead, they’ll invent a new platform to stand on, from which the view looks different for everyone.
By Aimee Hansen
How Digital Could Deliver Workplace Gender Equality in 25 Years
Career Advice, LeadershipBy Aimee Hansen
Earlier this month, we wrote about how the United Nation’s International Women’s Day 2016 effort emphasized accelerating gender equality. A new report from Accenture entitled “Getting to Equal: How Digital is Helping Close the Gender Gap at Work,” asserts that digital is a key factor in accelerating gender equality in the workplace.
Accenture’s report finds that doubling the pace of “digital fluency” among women could double the speed of gender equality at work.
Rather than waiting until 2065, doubling the pace at which women become frequent users of technology would bring workplace gender equality in developed nations by 2040.
Rather than waiting until 2100, workplace gender equality could be brought forward in developing nations by 2060.
The Relationship Between Digital Fluency and Gender Equality
Accenture’s report comes as global talent shortages are being highlighted by the World Economic Forum as well as Manpower Group, while women remain an underrepresented presence that could become part of an evolving and flexible workforce increasingly enabled via technology.
Combining survey data (nearly 5,000 men and women in 31 countries) with published data on digital usage by country to create an econometric model, Accenture analyzed the effect of digital fluency on gender equality throughout the career cycle for an individual. Researchers also looked at the relationship between gender equality and digital fluency across nations.
In their report, digital fluency was correlated with women’s career achievement. The U.S., Netherlands, UK, and Nordic countries have both the highest digital fluency and rank among the top performers in workplace equality.
Large gender gaps in digital fluency exist in Japan, Singapore, France, and Switzerland, and closing them would increase gender equality in the workplace.
In countries like India and Indonesia, generally low levels of digital fluency, and gender gaps within them, are holding back women’s progress.
Nations like Saudi Arabia and Japan illustrate that digital fluency is not the only factor at work, since deep-seated cultural factors also hold gender gaps wider than expected based on the model.
Though it may be argued that over time digital, and its ability to amplify the voices that are so often disenfranchised, could play into challenging the cultural factors that disempower women.
Digital Fluency as an Accelerant, Especially For Women
Accenture concludes that digital skills are helping to narrow the workplace gender gap and level the playing field and that digital fluency acts as an accelerant in every stage of a woman’s career from education and employment to advancement because technology removes many of the barriers that prevent women from working more flexibly. Digital fluency helps men and women but the
the researchers of the report found that being digitally fluent held even stronger positive effects for women than for men.
Accelerating Education
The report showed that when men and women have the same level of digital fluency, women have achieved a higher rate of education.
Women are not simply becoming better educated than they were before. They’ve become better educated than men in 16 of the 31 countries.
Digital fluency played the greatest role in enabling women to access education in developing nations – with 68% of women saying Internet was important to their education (versus 44% in developed nations).
Accelerating Employment
Digital fluency allows for more flexibility in the workplace, which is helping to close the employment gap between men and women in many countries, as more women are more able to find and participate in work.
The report found that “While men and women alike are liberated by the balance that work flexibility affords, women appear to derive greater value from it.”
In the survey, 72% of women (and 68% of men) said that women’s employment opportunities increase as digital fluency increases, with nearly half of women reporting they used digital to access job opportunities and work from home.
Accelerating Advancement
While digital fluency also proved to help accelerate women’s career advancement, the relationship was less significant. The report found that “while digital fluency is having a positive impact on pay for both men and women, the gap in pay between genders is still not closing.”
What is changing is the expectations that it’s possible to close the gap within a foreseeable future, as nearly 60% of Millennial women aspire to be in leadership positions and feel skilled for it, and nearly 3/4 of respondents agreed “the digital world will empower our daughters.” Mind you, those digitally native daughters with better education than their male peers and expanded access to work of many forms across many countries.
According to Julie Sweet, Accenture’s group chief executive for North America, “This is a powerful message for all women and girls. Continuously developing and growing your ability to use digital technologies, both at home and in the workplace, has a clear and positive effect at every stage of your career.And it provides a distinct advantage, as businesses and governments seek to fill the jobs that support today’s growing economy.”
Develop Yourself
Career Advice, Guest ContributionIf you wait for your employer, you might be waiting a long time.Recently, over glasses of wine, it came up that many of my friends felt like they weren’t being developed by their companies.
“They think we don’t care about career development because they think we don’t care about our careers because we’re millennials. Millennials…such an HR term,” complained one of my friends, who is a consultant.
“At least if they decided to develop you, you’d be getting applicable skills,” said another friend, who leads corporate training programs and is questioning her career. “I want to change my career and I’m not sure how.”
“The only kind of development we get is access to a series of boring webinars that we have to watch in the HR conference room,” said another friend in a tech company. “I fell asleep during the last one.”
Why are companies not developing their employees?
It sucks to stay at a job and not be developed. If you are at a job for a number of years, you should need to update resume every six months with new skills, projects, tasks, and reports. If you don’t find yourself doing that, well, you have an issue. I find myself regularly logging into LinkedIn to post my latest presentations, updated skills, and reports.
So you’re not being developed. Or maybe you want a new career, and don’t want to bother focusing on being developed in your current organization/role. Here are some tips on how you can develop yourself. Ultimately, you’re the one who cares most about your career, so you should be the one taking charge of it.
Really, when it comes down to it, developing your career is your responsibility. It would be great if your employer would help you, and really, any good employer will, but if it’s not happening, you need to make it happen. Develop yourself: it’s the best thing you can do for your career.
Writers bio:
Executive Presence – Do It Your Way For More Trust With Your Team
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Now we all know that if you are a woman sometimes you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t ( see every female leader who ever lived, currently Hillary Clinton could tell you about this in detail I am sure) so the least you can do is not assimilate to behaviors that feel odd to you. However, you can be interculturally competent in any situation- which means reading the room while doing it your way!
By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist
Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work
Working mothers – find the company that makes your life easier!
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist
Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work
Voice of Experience: Molly McCombe, Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer, Citi Retail Services
Voices of ExperienceFrom Strategy to Leadership
After completing her undergraduate degree in finance at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University, McCombe began her career in a commercial credit training program where she was placed in a lending position, climbing the ladder to become a vice president. She began to consider other possibilities in the business world and honed in on management consulting, attracted by its opportunities to solve a variety of challenging business problems. Setting her sights on that career path, she reverse engineered what it would take to get there and realized a top-tier business school was a must.
After earning her M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, she joined McKinsey & Company and became a consultant for financial services firms, a role she found both fascinating and challenging. Eventually she realized that she was ready to move to an operational role, where she could “practice what she was preaching,” and took a strategic role in the credit card group at HSBC, where she held a variety of positions, including leading business development, digital marketing and product development. She joined Citi in 2011 as part of Citi Retail Services, the division responsible for providing credit cards and related services to stores such as The Home Depot, Macy’s, Best Buy and many more. In her CMO role she is responsible for all aspects of joint credit marketing and analytics between Citi and the retailers, from campaign development and management through execution and assessment, as well as leading Citi’s digital marketing, loyalty, and research groups.
One of the achievements she’s most proud of is making the transition from a strategist and advisor to a manager and operator. “It’s been a 180-degree turn. I love both jobs because they’re different and yet they inform one another,” she says. She enjoys the strategic side — working on thorny problems and helping the client see them through — and also appreciates the day-to-day aspects of leading geographically dispersed teams and tackling tactical and operational issues. “I am a better leader and manager because I’ve done both,” McCombe says.
Managing the marketing of credit card programs with leading retailers puts her in a front row seat to what’s new in both the banking and retailing industries, and she is fascinated by the changing ways that people approach shopping.
“Consumers are in the driver’s seat in how they interact with retailers now, because they can leverage so much information to make informed purchases,” she says. No longer is it just about finding product and price information online, but also considering peer reviews about products and sharing experiences.
“At the same time, consumers are increasingly open to building deeper relationships with retailers,” McCombe explains. “Part of the value we bring to retailers is our experience in this area. We’re using our understanding of consumer preferences to drive more relevant offers to our retailer’s customers and enhance market share for our retail partners.”
The Advantage of Being a Women
McCombe says that women can be discouraged when they don’t see as many women farther up the ladder, which will continue to be a deterrent until the payments industry can promote and retain women at multiple levels. “It’s a challenge to say ‘I’m passionate about this industry, and I’m going to jump in,’ when there aren’t many women on the upper rungs,” she says, citing a niece who just graduated from Northwestern University who had remarked on the lack of women in senior roles. But she advocates that young women view it instead as an incredibly relevant place for women since they are the primary decision makers in households on budgeting and how money is spent. “A savvy organization is going to want that experience and input, whether they’re evaluating their product offerings or their payment options. Since I started, there is a much greater appreciation for a woman’s perspective in this business, and the opportunities are endless.”
And as women do rise to leadership positions, she says they should be sure that they are still focused on growing, learning and taking on cross-functional roles to avoid being pigeonholed.
Grow Your Network to Grow Your Career
Along the way McCombe has appreciated the opportunity to mentor and grow other professionals throughout the years, both on the consulting and corporate side. “I have been able to create a strong network around the globe that is both professionally and personally rewarding.”
She encourages women to participate in programs at their workplace for both educational and networking benefits. “These are terrific forums for junior women who want to get to know senior women; it’s a way to demystify and humanize these senior leaders. When you build personal relationships, you find out they’re just like anyone else, and I found that very empowering.”
She finds that these connections often lead to informal mentoring relationships, the type that are grounded in commonality. “It’s so helpful to have an off-the-record sounding board, where you can talk about challenges and get input on how to handle them. Mentorship and connectivity is incredibly powerful and will help retain women,” she says.
A Rewarding Personal Life
Married to a hospitality professional who owns three restaurants, McCombe appreciates that it has gotten her connected to the Chicago dining scene and its farm-to-table movement.
And McCombe remains connected to her undergraduate alma mater — serving on the Dean’s Advisory Board at the Questrom School of Management at Boston University — for a very important reason: She was able to attend Boston University thanks to an academic scholarship, and now is committed to paying it forward by sponsoring a scholarship for undergraduate women studying finance and analytics. “It’s very gratifying to be able to give back to an institution that gave me my start, and to support the next generation of women business leaders,” she says.