By Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)
It is Wednesday morning when I sit down to interview Molly McGregor, the Director of Corporate Affairs at the International Securities Exchange. McGregor is getting ready to attend a conference in Rhode Island as the representative of ISE’s Political Action Committee (ISE PAC) the upcoming weekend.
“That’s one thing that has changed,” said McGregor, “I used to throw a few items in my suitcase, and I was out the door. Now, I have to consider the baby’s needs as well – diapers, food, and formula. No more dashing off to the airport with a small carry-on bag. When possible, I try to bring my family with me to conferences, especially if they run through the weekend.”
As a new mother, Molly McGregor is just beginning to experience the trade-offs that come with a nine month old son and a full time job.
“The challenges change on a weekly basis as he grows and his needs evolve,” she said. Finding the right balance between commitment and flexibility is an issue McGregor struggles with. As someone who used to be able to devote whatever time was needed to the task at hand, she is realizing there are now things in her work life and home life that are non-negotiable, and everything else needs to be kept flexible.
“For example, my son’s day care had a picnic and instead of bringing homemade cupcakes, which I would have normally done and certainly wanted to do, I had to buy cookies at the store,” she said. “If I have to let go of something I will, but I was not going to miss that picnic.”
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35 under 35, Molly McGregor, Director of Corporate Affairs, International Securities Exchange
Movers and ShakersIt is Wednesday morning when I sit down to interview Molly McGregor, the Director of Corporate Affairs at the International Securities Exchange. McGregor is getting ready to attend a conference in Rhode Island as the representative of ISE’s Political Action Committee (ISE PAC) the upcoming weekend.
“That’s one thing that has changed,” said McGregor, “I used to throw a few items in my suitcase, and I was out the door. Now, I have to consider the baby’s needs as well – diapers, food, and formula. No more dashing off to the airport with a small carry-on bag. When possible, I try to bring my family with me to conferences, especially if they run through the weekend.”
As a new mother, Molly McGregor is just beginning to experience the trade-offs that come with a nine month old son and a full time job.
“The challenges change on a weekly basis as he grows and his needs evolve,” she said. Finding the right balance between commitment and flexibility is an issue McGregor struggles with. As someone who used to be able to devote whatever time was needed to the task at hand, she is realizing there are now things in her work life and home life that are non-negotiable, and everything else needs to be kept flexible.
“For example, my son’s day care had a picnic and instead of bringing homemade cupcakes, which I would have normally done and certainly wanted to do, I had to buy cookies at the store,” she said. “If I have to let go of something I will, but I was not going to miss that picnic.”
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Ask-a-Career-Coach: How to Get Focused on Your Future
Ask A Career CoachThere’s no way around it. Career advancement requires strategy: intentional, ongoing, long-term thinking and action. But today’s “on-demand” workplace conspires against full presence and total attention. It’s a challenge these days for anyone to look away from the current client crisis to focus on her own future.
But look away we must.
If you’re serious about giving your career the sustained attention it requires, here are three strategies for developing the habit of deep focus:
First, give up the myth of multitasking. It’s not a productivity tool. It’s an excuse for perpetual distraction. Our brain does not conduct its activities simultaneously. It works sequentially. When we think we’re multitasking, we’re actually zigzagging and backtracking between different tasks. This constant “switching,” it turns out, is terribly inefficient and even detrimental to higher-level activities such as strategic thinking. Your career strategy isn’t going to appear in the cracks between phone calls and text messages.
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On Being Bold: Thought Leadership and Why It Is Risk/Reward
Featured, Next LevelThought Leadership is creative, progressive and often full of risks as you need your team to follow through on your vision, whether it is the next innovation of a product or just a process that needs to be improved.
“If you’re scared of offending people, don’t be a thought leader,” said Nicki Gilmour, Founder and Publisher of The Glass Hammer at a panel discussion on thought leadership.
The event hosted by Barclays Capital‘s Women’s Initiative Network and the YWCA of the City of New York was entitled “How to be a Thought Leader.” Along with Gilmour, the panel featured Carol Hymowitz, Editorial Director for ForbesWoman, and Barbara Jones, Editorial Director of Hyperion Books and VOICE. The event was moderated by Monica Hanson, Head of Financial Institutions Debt Capital Markets at Barclays Capital.
By the end of the discussion, Hanson summed up what makes a thought leader: freedom from worry about criticism, energy to put your plans in motion, and the intellectual curiosity to think about how the status quo could be better and to come up with innovative new ideas.
Yes, all of these things do describe thought leaders – plus the ability to effectively communicate your ideas and plans.
As Gilmour said, “You do have to have an appetite for risk.”
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Voice of Experience: Dorothy Collins Weaver, Co-founder and CEO of Collins Capital
Voices of Experience“It’s a good thing I’ve been blessed with two things – I’ve been blessed with lots of energy and a love of the vertical learning curve,” said Dorothy Collins Weaver, Co-founder and CEO of Miami-based hedge fund of funds, Collins Capital.
From founding her hedge fund of funds, to supporting an orphanage in Colombia, to chairing the Miami Federal Reserve, to chairing “We Will Rebuild,” the federal relief effort following Hurricane Andrew’s devastation of Miami in 1992, as well as leading several other philanthropic and civic endeavors, Weaver’s boundless energy and love of learning have driven a career spanning continents and industries.
Based on her experience, she advises, “Be in the room where decisions are being made. Roll up your sleeves. Get dirt under your fingernails.”
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In Case You Missed It: Business News Round-Up
NewsBritish banks produced encouraging Q2 results, mainly due to a reduction in impairment charges and booming retail and commercial business. The Bank of England and the European Central Bank left benchmark interest rates unchanged. THe ECB president announced eurozone economic recovery “surpasses expectations”. In the US, non-farm payroll figures raise the prospect that the Fed will reinstate a quantitative easing programme to stimulate growth. And Chinese manufacturing output grew at a slower rate in Q2 and predictions for Q3 are for further slowing.
Economic Backdrop
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Three Measures of Accountability Key to Sustainability Initiatives Moving Forward, Say CEOs
Corporate SustainabilityIn June, Accenture released “the largest CEO-based study on sustainability of its kind to date,” based on more than 100 in-depth interviews with world business leaders and an online survey of 766 UN Global Compact member CEOs.
The study, entitled “A New Era of Sustainability,” [PDF] reveals the attitudes toward sustainability held by top leadership in a variety of sectors, including “automotive, communications, consumer goods and services, energy, financial services, metals & mining and utilities.”
Said Peter Lacy, UNGC-Accenture CEO Study Project Lead 2010 and Managing Director, Accenture Sustainability Services, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Latin America:
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35 under 35: Carol Paterson Smith, Head of Hedge Fund Clients at Rothschild Blackpoint
35 Under 35Carol Paterson Smith has one key piece of advice for women in business – and it’s a good one.
And, as a hugely successful and influential woman in the City of London, her words of wisdom carry some weight. Paterson Smith is head of hedge fund clients for Rothschild Blackpoint and, in her early 30s, is one of the City’s most connected and stylish players.
Early days
“When I graduated, I knew I wanted to do something intellectually stimulating and I also knew I wanted to move into sales. I’ve always been very commercially focused – I was an Avon lady in my mid teens. When I was 18 I managed a sales team in Edinburgh. My mum runs a business and is very successful; she’s a great role model who has always encouraged me.”
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Five Innovative Ways to Improve Gender Diversity at Your Company
Industry Leaders, LeadershipWhat makes a firm’s gender diversity programming really work? According to Jacqueline Akerblom, National Managing Partner for Women’s Initiatives and Programs at Grant Thornton LLP, it comes down to culture change. For the Global 6 accounting firm’s workforce, she said, diversity initiatives are “fully ingrained into the culture of the firm.”
But it wasn’t always like that. Six or seven years ago, Akerblom said, the company noticed it was losing a lot of its female employees. Recognizing the value of its women, the firm set out to keep them. Since 2004, when its women’s initiative was launched, the number of the women partners at the firm has increased by 184 percent, growing from 31 to 88.
How did they do it? Innovation. Here are five ways the company has succeeded – and your company can too.
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Hard Questions: Why won’t we work for women?
Featured, News, Office PoliticsYou don’t have to look too far into management research to uncover that all the statistics point to one thing: we prefer to work for men. When Ella Edmonson Bell asked her MBA students whether they would rather work for a woman or a man, most of them said they’d prefer a male boss. When ForbesWoman asked their Facebook community the same thing, the answers were the same. Admitting our preferences doesn’t seem to be a problem – we’re happy to confess that we want to work for men – but why do we feel like that in the first place? What’s so problematic about working for a woman?
“One way of explaining this phenomenon is gender schemas,” says Dr. Birute Regine, a developmental psychologist and author of Iron Butterflies: Women Transforming Themselves and the World. “A gender schema is an unconscious cultural assumption we hold about men and women. One schema is that women are first assumed incompetent and therefore not leaders, whereas for men it’s the opposite – that they are first assumed competent until proven otherwise.”
The problem with ideologies of this type is that we don’t necessarily know that we have them, and they tend to be pervasive. “Both women and men hold these assumptions,” adds Dr. Regine. “So perhaps women prefer male bosses because they assume they are more competent, and don’t give women the same benefit of the doubt or confidence going in. Women bosses may not be as supportive because, even though they know that they themselves are competent, these schema lead them to assume that other women are not.”
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Shaking Up Bankers’ Bonuses: New Legislation in the EU and UK
News“Since banks have failed to reform we are now doing the job for them,” says Arlene McCarthy, the vice chair of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) and the woman who has just spearheaded new rules on bankers’ bonuses. “We have a duty as legislators to respond to the public’s concerns by voting in favour of these tough reforms to end the obscene bonus culture. At a time when the government is making substantial cuts, scaling back public services and support to families and businesses, our constituents expect banks to prioritise stability and lending over their own pay and perks. The banks have had two years since the 2008 financial crisis to do this and have failed to act, so now we will do the job for them.”
Gone are the unlimited cash bonuses and exceptional pension payments; in come rules about capping bonuses to salary and distributing shares instead of cash. Bankers might not be happy, but taxpayers will appreciate the shift towards a culture of transparency and accountability that focuses on repaying public loans.
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