Business Partner blueprint

  In the last blog I talked about “Women in the Boardroom -- the Truth”, and the response was amazing. It ranged from, “Hey, that was great information. I like the fact that you kept the three major points simple around being the best, be yourself and deliver, deliver, deliver”; to “You are a guy, you don't know what you are talking about. You have no idea what it is like for women in the boardroom“ (I knew that one was going to come). The most interesting one was “well, yeah, the three points you raised, those are so obvious. I didn't get anything out of it”.   Let's go back and take each one of those three points individually and give some backdrop to them. The first thing is we know there is a huge effort to create opportunity for everyone regardless of gender, age, race, creed, academic background, religious background, sexual orientation, etc. Businesses are trying to say, “look, we are a gender-blind, colorblind, religion-blind place where we embrace diversity and i

We are going to jump into a bit of a controversial topic: Women in the Board Room - the Truth. We have written previously about the need for diversity and how large corporations are making the turn to be more diverse and inclusive - and they are doing it out of necessity, out of their need for strategic survival and competitive advantage. This has impacted women in a positive way, but we are still stuck with the age-old question: is it really different for women in the boardroom? Now, obviously I am talking to you about this from what I have observed as a man, so I can say with some certainty that locker room talk does occur. I can tell you for a fact that there are men who do not believe women can do certain jobs. There are some men that really and truly believe women should not be in the workplace. Some believe women should not actually be preachers or pastors in the pulpit, so a number of issues that women have come across are very real. Let's make sure we level set on this re