Monthly Archives: May 2012

It Gets Better (Or at Least Easier)

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I had a couple of conversations recently that got me thinking about this topic and I wanted to share my experience. Inspired by the “It Gets Better” movement and idea – I thought it applies significantly to stages in life and that really knowing and internalizing that it does get better might lead people to different decision.

I was at an offsite business meeting recently with Drew Garcia (SugarSync VP of Product Management) and Jason Mikami (VP of Operations). It was a beautiful Friday morning. While waiting for the meeting to start we were chatting about the great weather and I mentioned that my husband and I had enjoyed the gorgeous morning by going for an early hike at the Stanford Dish. They both looked at me incredulously – how did we manage such a thing with the kids. By way of background Drew has two children – newborn and two year old and Jason has a four year old. They are both very busy – of course with their work at SugarSync, in addition, Drew’s wife works as a management consultant at The Trium Group, and Jason and his wife have an award-winning winery that they manage.

I assured them that Steve and I were not exercising together before work when our kids were little. Our mornings then, like their mornings now, were completely crazy just getting ourselves and kids out the door to work and school. What I realized is that since they are totally in the midst of this intensive parenting/juggling mode they can’t even imagine a future beyond it. It is such an immersive, consuming experience that I just think it is human nature to feel like it will go on that way forever.

In my case it wasn’t forever but it was a long time. My oldest son is 26 and my youngest son just turned old enough (16) to drive himself. With four kids and a big age range it has been 26 years of responsibility for kids that needed morning driving. No wonder it seemed like forever. And it was many years of juggling, lack of sleep, and rushing…all the challenges that working parents experience. But amazingly enough, I blinked and that time is nearly over. I’m lucky when I get a kiss goodbye from my son in the morning – he is super independent. And for many working parents who have their children in a shorter period of time, it goes by even faster. On the other hand, I feel like I still have a potentially long professional career in front of me. Both of my parents and my father-in-law are still practicing physicians in their 70’s. My Great Uncle retired from the law at 98! I hope that my best work is ahead of me. Bottom line, I’m looking forward to that work and am glad that I slogged through that time when the juggling meant very very little “me” time.

So this is a reminder, to those in the heat of it. It gets better, or at least easier. Stick with it – you have much to contribute not only to your families but professionally as well.

The Happiness of Pursuit

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Despite their amazing foresight, I always thought the founding fathers were just slightly off when they wrote…we are endowed by our “creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.  The problem is that I believe we get confused when we pursue happiness itself as a goal.  Typically we imagine some state of being – for instance being accepted to a certain school, living in a beautiful home or attaining a certain financial status as being synonymous with happiness.  It rarely is.

By contrast, working intensely on an interesting project, using your hard-earned skills to build something you are proud of – that can feel really good.  Doing it as part of a team of similarly skilled, committed people – that feels even better.  Sure you are pursuing a goal, hopefully a very worthy one – that makes the work even more gratifying, but you are not pursing the gratification itself.  Most of us typically find our gratification and reward in the work and the process.  That is what I mean by the “happiness of pursuit”.  Beyond family, this is what I believe truly leads to happiness.

Last week, at SugarSync I witnessed and participated in this pursuit.  Both the technical and business teams came together to prepare for an important demo for a prominent journalist.  The timeline was extremely aggressive and it was a real push to be fully prepared.  The team actually added components to make the goal even more challenging.  I couldn’t help but notice the buzz and excitement in the office – it was about working hard and seeing those results turn into something tangible and cool.  Interestingly this way overshadowed the specifics of how the meeting went.

I believe the best part of working in a startup is this happiness of pursuit.  The work is challenging, the contribution everyone is making is visible, the team is tight (no room for slackers) and the goal is clear.   Of course we want that work to be rewarded with a great financial outcome for the team but the day-to-day motivation has got to be from satisfaction and happiness in the pursuit of that outcome.

Career Choices and Insidious Bias

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Continuing on the topic of the WSJ conference, I found one of the most thought provoking speakers to be Geena Davis.  She founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media http://www.seejane.org.   The institute describes itself at “the only research-based organization working within the media and entertainment industry to engage, educate, and influence the need for gender balance, reducing stereotyping and creating a wide variety of female characters for entertainment targeting children 11 and under.”   I found this work so interesting because it is directly related to two topics I’ve written about on this blog.  One is the insidious biases – these unconscious preferences we have and two – the lack of women entering the technology fields. This research uncovers a potentially major source of these biases as well as job preferences.  According to her institute’s research:

  • Males outnumber females 3 to 1 in family films…this ratio, as seen in family films, is the same as it was in 1946.
  • Females are almost four times as likely as males to be shown in sexy attire…Generally unrealistic figures are more likely to be seen on females than males.
  • From 2006 to 2009, not one female character was depicted in G-rated family films in the field of medical science, as a business leader, in law, or politics. In these films, 80.5% of all working characters are male and 19.5% are female, which is a contrast to real world statistics, where women comprise 50% of the workforce.

To summarize, using the infamous words of Woody Allen in Annie Hall – not only is the food bad (the main occupation for women in animated films is princess) the portion are small.

I found the 19.5 (call it 20) % number very sobering.  It seems that once we get to that level of penetration by women in particular fields or even levels the urgency for change goes away.  No wonder we have become so accepting of this 20% number and even consider that success – subconsciously that’s what we’ve been trained to accept as a norm.

Fortunately Geena Davis has good company working on exposing this issue – Misrepresentation http://www.missrepresentation.org/ is doing a great job exposing issues of gender bias in the media – I love their tagline “you can’t be what you can’t see” – we need to help girls imagine themselves as engineers, programmers and even VP’s and CEO’s

As I’ve found myself concluding in other blog posts where the personal action items is not clear, I’ll wrap up with the point that awareness is the first step.  Personal awareness as we consume media (and accompany our children as they consume it) and awareness of how this is impacting our society.

WSJ Women in Economy – It Starts with Data

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I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to be a member of the WSJ Task force on Women in The Economy – we’ve been meeting the last two days.  There have been so many great ideas and speakers – certainly enough to provide blog fodder for a bit.

The conference opened with some interesting data from an extensive study conducted by McKinsey.  They examined the pipeline of women in the Fortune 500 from entry level professional to CEO.  Women comprise 53% of entry level professionals, 37% of early to middle management, 26% of VP and senior management, 14% of Executive Committee members and 3% of CEO’s.

Generally, women are entering the professional work force – they are just not making it through the funnel in great enough numbers.  In fact they leak out at every stage.  There are myriad reasons – women opting into support roles, exiting completely when perhaps they could stay if there were part time or more flexible work during childrearing times, lack of desire to be in the C-suite not to mention bias in the system.  Focused programs can help – there were a significant number of companies within the survey with better results keeping upwards of a 30% female participation in the C-suite.

Interestingly, the technology firms in the study had a quite different profile – their pipeline had a very different shape.  They had relatively fewer women in entry level (30%) but more consistent participation throughout.  Top of funnel was low but the funnel leaked less.  The message for us in technology is quite clear – encouraging women to study technology fields and to recruit women business students into the technology world.

There is improvement but the rate of change is slow.  For instance, at the current rate of improvement in the federal legislative branch we’ll get to parity in 500 years.  The percentage of women on the boards of F-500 companies is also relatively stable at a low number (after some improvement in the past).  I learned that one reason for this is that the average tenure of a F-500 board member is 14 years.  That certainly slows the rate of change.

Overall I found this data eye opening.  The US is behind the top 10 OECD countries on metrics of women participating in the economy and government and the improvement is simply not happening fast enough.  On the positive side it has been incredible to be here.  Being in a room full of successful women executives, professors and political leaders – all of whom have incredibly busy calendars – yet took time to focus on this issue makes me optimistic about the future despite the numbers showing slow progress.  That attention and focus and commitment to give back to others inspired me to think about what more can I do, both through my role at SugarSync as well as in the community at large.