Miss Management
Last month fellow business blogger Jack Yoest offered some words of wisdom for managers of the fairer sex. This he did in a post entitled "What Are the First Two Actions a New (Female) Manager Must Take?".
Men and women are different, inspite of what feminists preach. And women must manage differently. Here's how to start. Years ago I talked with Kay Coles James, who would eventually head the Office of Personnel Management for the Feds. I asked her about the challenges for new female managers. I though she would recite the usual drivel of soft skills, empathy, sharing and caring. The girly stuff. I was wrong. She hit me hard saying: (1) Fire Someone and (2) Cut Someone's Budget.
He continued, offering this explanation for why such harsh measures are preferable to the Miss Congeniality approach:
On assuming any new position of responsibility, there will be necessary changes in personnel and budget allocation. Make those changes immediately on your arrival. That will be the easy part. The challenge is to negotiate up-front with the new boss as a condition on taking the new job. The new female manager should tell her superior that 1) she will be making changes, and 2) she must have her bosses' backing.
I always advise my clients that their new bosses know where the deadwood is and want improvements made. By the new guy -- girl. Odds are that the new female manager will be doing what needed to be done -- long before she was hired.
Whether or not one agrees with what Jack wrote, there's no doubting that the name of one more female manager can now be added to the list, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female leader.Here's how USA Today characterized her shortly after her swearing in last month:
Thousands of Liberians packed the grounds of the capitol here for the inauguration address of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who became Africa's first elected female head of state on Monday (Jan 16).
Wearing a traditional African head scarf as she addressed a crowd that included first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sirleaf, 67, set out her vision for rebuilding a nation shattered by 14 years of war.
The Harvard-educated economist and grandmother promised to rid her country of corruption and set the stage for recovery from Liberia's bitter and violent past. "We recognize that this change is not change for change's sake but a fundamental break with the past, thereby requiring that we take bold and decisive steps to address the problems that for decades have stunted our progress," she said.
And has she yet taken any bold and decisive steps? Upon assuming her offical duties, has she done either of the two things that Jack advised? To answer these questions, one need look no further than today's Guardian UK, to an article entitled "Liberian president dismisses all staff at finance ministry":
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who came to power pledging to tackle corruption, has sacked the entire staff of Liberia's finance ministry.
Weeks after taking over from a postwar transitional government, Africa's first elected female president went to the ministry to deliver the news personally. Ms Johnson-Sirleaf, a former finance minister, said all the dismissed employees would be allowed to reapply for their jobs, but called on those involved in graft to "disappear."
Liberians said the ministry probably had "ghost workers" on its payrolls, whose supposed bosses pocketed their salaries.
It seems to me she didn't do either #1 or #2. She did both. At once. In one fell swoop. Now look at that picture of her again and know why it is that she was smiling. You go girl!
Tags: liberia | Africa | Politics | sirleaf| ellen johnson sirleaf I
Linked to: Don Surber |
Update: For a variety of reasons, LGBT blogger Genia Stevens of Sister's Talk doesn't think a female president could get elected in the US. I disagree!