Following the financial meltdown, I’ve had many occasions to reflect on the research Julie Johnson and I have been doing on differences in how men and women perceive, define and pursue satisfaction in their work, how they are motivated and where they find meaning. Both our interviews and our quantitative research suggest that insights gained from our study can help us understand what has happened and help lead us out of the present mess.

I was reminded of this yesterday when, following the uproar over the bonuses paid out at Merrill Lynch in the waning days of 2008, I read a piece in the New York Times written by a former Merrill banker about the culture of the bonus on Wall Street. One of his observations caught my attention: that the people he worked with felt gigantic bonuses were required because they “justified the days on end of working into the wee hours, the months on end without a single day off, the never-ending ‘fire drills’ — when a client wanted something and wanted it now, whether it was 7 p.m. or 7 a.m. — that kept the stress and adrenaline levels high.” The writer also noted that, no matter how outsized the bonus, it was perceived as satisfying only if it was bigger than what was being handed out to everyone else.

Three years ago, I teamed up with Julie Johnson, one of America’s most successful executive coaches, to create a project aimed at looking at differences and similarities in how men and women perceived, defined and pursued satisfaction in their work.

It may be a reflection of my inherent dullness, but I am fascinated by supply chain issues, one of the clearest examples of the knowledge economy at work. Last week in the New York Times there was a compelling article by Claudia Deutsch about how efforts to go green?or at least greener?are transforming how companies manage their supply chain.

Hewlett-Packer, not surprisingly, is taking the lead. And since the company orders $53 billion (!!) worth of products each year, it has the potential to make a huge impact. What HP seems to get is that focusing on social and environmental responsibility at every stage of production forces an organization to form alliances with competitors who share similar goals. That?s how you exert pressure on suppl

My fascination with the looming disaster known as the US auto industry has continued unabated over the summer. I’ve been especially intrigued by the upheaval in GM’s most successful venture in recent years, the development of the Wuling Sunshine minivan for the Chinese market. Philip Murtaugh, the executive who headed up this miracle of manufacturing and marketing in partnership with the Chinese––and who stuck his neck out by championing the vehicle inside a company with a long history of punishing passionate mavericks—has finally met his predictable fate by being forced out. The details became public over the last month, shortly before GM’s debt rating was downgraded to junk and the company decided to extend its “employee discounts” to cover the new 06 models, which it had pretty much declared it would never

I was fascinated by the Op Ed piece in yesterday’s New York Times by Simon Baron-Cohen, who researches the role of hormones in human development. In brief, Baron-Cohen believes that the production of testosterone in the womb is responsible for the penchant for “systematizing” that characterizes the male brain, while the lack of this hormone is responsible for the female brain’s greater capacity for empathy. This is why male babies tend to focus their eyes on objects, while female babies tend to focus on human faces. Baron-Cohen believes this is also the reason that autism occurs primarily in boys–– autism being an extreme form of systematizing. Of course he notes that this phenomenon exists in general, and is not true for every male and fem

I am a major fan of Henando DeSoto, the Peruvian economist and author of The Mystery of Capital. DeSoto's extensive research leads him to believe that poor countries are poor primarily because their laws do not permit ordinary people to have clear title to private property or predictable control over how that property can be used. There's no title insurance, so ownership is always under threat of dispute, and no one can get a mortgage based on a murky title. As a result, working and middle class people can't increase their wealth in the way they have traditionally done in the US-- by owning their homes and businesses. Instead, most property is owned provisionally or even illegally, which means that large numbers of people live off the grid, escaping taxes and pilfering their utilities. Meanwhile, government officials and their cronies have an easy time gaining access to properties they believe are desirable (see Zimbabwe!)

I've thought a lot about DeSoto in the last week because a few news items make me wonder if we in the US are seeing the traditional source of wealth for ordinary people-- clear title to their own property-- being chipped away. First, there was the Supreme Court decision that the town of New London, Connecticut, could use its power of eminent domain to condemn 89 owner-occupied houses standing in the way of a private developer's plan. In her dissent, Sandra Day O'Connor warned that this decision meant that no one's property was safe from any government authority that decided the land could be more economically used or exploited by another private owner.

As someone who grew up in Michigan, I've always followed the news from Detroit, and been particularly fascinated by GM. So I've found the announcement this week about massive layoff and shutdowns riveting, not only because of what it means for the prototypical corporation that shaped America's industrial age, but also because of what it seems to say about how the U.S. practices market capitalism in the global

I know it’s only June, but my vote for the coolest example of what frontline empowerment can achieve is already cast. It goes to the New York City Fire Department, which has just approved a new rope system designed not by some outsourcer but by a group of firefighters, who were spurred to action by a fire in the Bronx in which two comrades died because of cumbersome and weak ropes.

Last night, I gobbled up George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of An Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. It’s a manual for progressives that sets forth how they can think and speak effectively about their issues–– something they’ve been pretty bad at in recent years. One of the reasons I found the book fascinating is because much of what it says could be useful to women.

Lakoff is a cognitive scientist and a linguist. His major point is that we all think in terms of frames rather than focusing on facts or issues. When a fact doesn’t fit our frame, the fact simply bounces off without penetrating. For Lakoff, having effective frames is more important than having the facts. Those who control the frames, control the conversation.

I just returned from a trip to New Orleans, where I had a blast addressing 900 members of the Junior League, mostly officers and incoming or outgoing presidents. great group, and I am convinced of the truth of the League’s self-description–– that it is indeed a leadership training organization for women.

In addition to giving a keynote, I met with the board one afternoon for one of those pick-your-brain session at which I learn as much as the people I’m there to help. One of the questions that most often kept coming up was one that I’m frequently asked in many contexts: Why aren’t women better at supporting one another?

home keynotes & seminars books articles

Sally's Blog clients & comments