THE SYSTEM WASN’T BUILT FOR YOU
I didn’t start a tech consulting business because it was my dream. I did it because I got tired of being told I was too much.
When I headed out to California after grad school, and a broken engagement, I had every intention of only working as a tech sales rep for a few years. My plan, guided by my advisor, was to sell and learn the market, move into marketing and get my chops there, then head to Madison Avenue to be an advertising maven.
I did make it through the sales and marketing gigs. All while being told I was too much, too smart, just plain too much a rebel. The good old boys all around me didn’t know what to do with a smart, brave woman back then. They still don’t.
An exec I’d worked for hired me for his new startup as Director of Marketing. When I showed up the first day, no one had any idea I’d been hired. Let’s just say the exec was a bit short on sharing details.
They didn’t know what to do. So they left me sitting in the lobby for an hour or so, then had the decency to bring me into a conference room where the HR guy kept asking me why I was there, when I’d been hired. Where was the offer letter? I handed him the email from the new CEO and he went pale. He excused himself and left the room in a hurry.
He came back another hour later and said he had an office for me. I grabbed my stuff and followed him to the end of a hall. To the door right there in the middle. He opened the door, turned on the light, said to make myself comfortable and skittered away.
It was a narrow long room, shelving on either side. What looked like a school desk was against the far wall, with a chair and wastebasket. I walked in, looking around at all those shelves. Boxes of paper towels and TP on the very top shelf. Cleaning supplies on the floor. I was in a closet.
A director I knew from the last company came by and sheepishly looked around, apologized for the mix up. He was a gentleman and had the good graces to be embarrassed for both of us. Me? I did what I had learned to do and brushed it away with some wise crack I don’t remember now.
The abuse and nasty cracks began the next day, whenever the CEO wasn’t within earshot.
A couple of months later, still living in my closet, I’d had enough.
I called a friend who had been recruiting me for one of her clients. A month later, I was the Director of Strategic Marketing for a startup that was on fire. A rollup of thirteen software companies, aimed at Open Systems Management. Even better, the CEO was a gem. He immediately recognized my value, loved and appreciated everything about me. Finally I’d found home.
He asked me to support a big strategic project the CTO was working on. I loved it for a while. Then my spidey senses began to sing. I’ve always had strong intuition and this time, it was screaming at me. I was on a whirlwind trip to Europe with the CTO (10 countries in 5 days) when it hit me. The whole project was a house of cards. Make that slideware that only worked on a projector.
I was so torn about what to do. The CTO was a nice guy who had been so good to me. Yet I wasn’t about to let my CEO down. The company was strategically depending on this mirage. I knew I had to share what I suspected, no matter the blowback.
I still remember my legs shaking as I walked into the CEO's office to tell him what I’d learned, what I suspected. My heart was pounding so loud I knew he could hear it, hands shaking as I took a sip of coffee. He saw the shake and had the grace to ignore it. I stumbled a bit as I began to tell my story, was I doing the right thing? As I moved into my story, I settled down. I was doing the right thing. What I’d always done, even if it got me into deep water. I was sharing what my gut said was going on, based on a lot of facts that I’d vetted and carefully checked. No matter how I spun it, I knew I was right. I can still see the concern, then worry, then stunned look on his face as my story unfolded. We sat and talked for a long time. The more questions he asked me, the more obvious it became that we had a big problem. I’d seen what others didn’t. Now I was bringing bad news to this outstanding man who I adored.
He hugged me when we were done, thanked me for telling him the truth and promised all would be okay. To this day that man is still the kindest human I’ve ever been blessed to know.
Needless to say my world changed. The company was hiring a new VP of marketing who was immediately threatened by me. We all know the kind. Tall, good-looking, swaggering, great blah blah, absolutely no substance. My project was dead before arrival, I was now working for him. He began his nasty comments designed to make me quit.
My CEO heard him one day, then brought me into his office a week or so later. He looked me in the eye with so much concern and told me he wasn't going to let me be treated like that. He had an idea. I was a natural born consultant. Tech savvy and I had an intuition about markets that was uncanny.
He and his investor were going to help me start my consulting business. They had my first two clients already locked and loaded.
I was scared. 29 years old, starting my own consulting business? My dad didn’t help. As usual, he made fun of me. When I’d run to California after my heart was broken by my college love, he’d laughed. He said I’d be back in a year with my tail between my legs.Just as he had failed when he moved to California so many decades ago. Eight years later I was still in California. Now he laughed in my face yet again as I showed my mom my new business card. Who was I to advise anyone?
A few months later, I was sitting at the big boys’ table, the only woman in the room. My investors and clients saw my ability to see markets and technology in a different light. I literally saw around corners they didn’t even know existed. I was no longer a threat, I was an asset.
The only thing that changed was my business card.
THE SYSTEM WASN’T DESIGNED FOR US TO WIN
It took me a while sitting at those tables to see past my anger and resentment at the bro club.
It finally hit me. The problem wasn’t men. It was the system. It wasn’t designed for how differently I thought, interacted, worked, spoke in meetings.
Have you ever watched men in a meeting with a boss? Men work together the same way they play sports together. The CEO or leader is coach. They will do what he wants to get a slap on the butt.
I was used to asking tough questions, being sure everyone “told the whole truth.” Men rarely correct each other in public. Sure, they ask questions and discuss. Then they go work the system in the hallways and behind closed office doors to be sure everyone knows their opinion.They don’t knock another bro at the table.
Men will work together to charge into a market or customer the same way the military takes a hill. Doesn’t matter if it’s a lost cause. Once it’s agreed, the plan is the plan. Everyone follows the leader, each has a role and if all hell breaks loose, they win and lose together.
It wasn’t just one company, or similar ones. Startup or turnaround, growing or flailing. Every table I sat at, every boardroom, every deal room, I saw the same patterns. The same roles. The same game. Much of the status quo that made me want to pull my hair out was everywhere. Which is why I wrote my first business book, Defy Gravity.
Years and many clients later, I realized the status quo wasn’t just about the system in business. This was how the system has always been. Since before there were companies, before there were boardrooms, before there were org charts. Since humans lived in clans and men hunted and women kept everyone alive.
I had to know more. So I started following the history of the system. When I finally saw the full picture, I saw a status quo deeper than I’d ever imagined.
This system has been running since humans lived in clans. Survival created two sets of roles. Males hunted, protected, led. Females held the clan together, fed everyone, raised the kids, smoothed over clan disputes. Both needed each other. Neither chose the way it was. It was a combination of human evolution and survival.
That clan system never left us. It just expanded its reach. Clan to castle to conflict to corporate boardroom. Civilizations matured and spawned more advanced civilizations. Circumstances changed, the world modernized and adapted. But beneath it all, the core system, and our human minds, reinforced the same expectations and roles that kept clans alive.
The Bottom Line
I didn’t want to believe this new reality. I had my own status quo to hang on to. It meant changing a lot of my own beliefs and behaviors.
My challenge wasn’t men in and of themselves. My challenge was the system itself. A system founded on an unwritten law of survival.
Men lead, women serve.