JulieAtSmartNowcom's blog

When the Going Gets Tough - Women Have Opportunities

2009-01-07T18:57:08-06:00

The New York Times Sunday section (12/14/08) had the following
article in the 8th Annual Year in Ideas: “Women in Power are Set Up to
Fail.”

Reported by Clive Thompson, the opening paragraohs read as follows:

“Are women set up to fail — by being appointed to positions of power only in hopeless situations?

Two British academics say so, and they claim to have proved it this
year. In one study, they took 83 businesspeople — roughly half of them
women — and described to them two companies, one that was steadily
improving in profitability and another that was steadily declining. The
subjects were told to pick a new financial director for the firm and
were presented with three candidates: a man and a woman who were
identical in experience and a lesser-qualified male. The subjects were
slightly more likely to pick a man to lead the successful firm but were
far more likely to pick the woman to lead the failing one. Two other
experiments with similar designs yielded the same result: When
presented with men and women to lead a company that’s going down the
tubes, people pick the woman.

What’s going on? In a
write-up of their experiments in The Leadership Quarterly in October,
the academics, Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam, called it “the glass
cliff,” which they contend is an invisible form of prejudice. In other
words, people will give women a position of power only when there’s a
strong chance of failure. Why? 'If someone has to be the scapegoat to
take the fall, you’re not going to put your best man forward,' Ryan
says. Women are thrust into desperate situations precisely because
they’re likely to fail, generating 'proof' that women can’t handle
responsibility.”

I read this with great interest because I
firmly believe that I would have never reached the level of President
or a CEO of a company unless that company was failing.    Here’s that
story.   I joined a $25 Million company, Berkeley Systems, in early
1994 as Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing. I was told by
the investors that all was not well with this company, but it had great
potential with the right sales and marketing leadership.   I joined and
dug in. It was a company that had tremendous talent and it was also a
company that was heading off a cliff quickly. In fact, my analysis
showed that it would be out of cash in four months if a reduction in
staff (also known as very painful lay-off) did not happen
immediately.   Did I mention that the Chief Financial Officer quit a
few days before I joined?

The situation that was getting
uglier each day I looked at the numbers, mostly due to unanticipated
product returns. I did a market analysis, met with top customers,
interviewed the team and put together a recovery plan working with an
interim Vice President of Finance, who turned out to be a rock star.
I presented the plan to the Board of Directors. It is important to
note that no one asked me present a plan. I did the work and made the
presentation because I saw my job as bigger than my title. I saw my
job as being a key part of company and I realized that there was an
opportunity to fix it.

My plan was approved, in part because no one else had a plan and
mostly because it was based on sound analysis with check points to
determine if it was working. I was promoted to President. I worked
with the executives, founder and employees to turn Berkeley Systems
around. It was hard work that required many hours each day from all.
There were many days, even weeks, when I thought we would fail. But we
did not. We succeeded. I was then promoted to CEO and I never looked
back.

The moral of this story? It might just be true that
women and minorities of both sexes are only given opportunities when
the established power brokers fail. And, we might fail when we take
that opportunity. But, we might succeed and show others another way to
be successful along the way.

Now is the time for those
opportunities to show up. It can be your time to seize them and
change your life, change your career and make some dreams come true. I
don’t think it will be easy. If it was, chances are it would not be
presented to you. Don’t get caught up in the reasons why something is
offered you. Do think of how you can win when it is. Grab that
opportunity for a great experience and if you are lucky and good, an
even greater success. This can be your time to shine.

The Ghost in My Closet

2008-07-23T18:53:51-05:00

My mother was a trained artist. She died nearly 10 years go. My father, who is living, is also an artist. That's his job and he supported four children and a wife as an artist. That art was important in my childhood is an understatement. My mother taught me the color wheel when I was five. She would pull fashion pictures out of magazines and use them as teaching aids for color, cut and line. I was visually groomed throughout my life with them. One would naturally think I know how to dress appropriately and figure out simple fashion things like layering. I don't. My mother, in particular, is irritated with my choices. You see, death didn't end her communication with me. My mom's ghost lives in my closet. And she doesn't use her inside voice when she talks to me. She is more like a news reporter who is standing in hurricane-force winds and yelling into a microphone about impending disaster.

She is really frustrated with me today. I tried on a light coral cashmere sweater with dark gray pants; she noted that the ensemble emphasized my boobs. I tried on a pink, white and black plaid skirt and coupled this with a striped white and pink shirt. It looked good laid out on my chair. In fact, it was sort of an interesting preppy look. Her verdict, I am too short to wear such a thing. My "canvas" wasn't big enough and therefore the outfit resulted in me looking squat. Not willing to give up on stripes, I tried on a sweater with subtle horizontal navy blue and gray stripes with a jean skirt. Simple enough, I thought as I walked toward the mirror. Her face reflected back: "Why do you even have this in your closet?" I took it off and kept searching for something with some flair, which is hard to find in my closet. You see, careful visual editing from my Mom resulted in the removal of all bright colors, pastels, pleats and bows from my closet long, long ago. She is so tough about her rules that these items seldom make it into a store's changing room with me.

The result: I have deeply buried any yearnings for wild colors, big patterns and most horizontal prints. My closet remains generally dull, full of funeral colors. I have timidly spiced it up with scattered slices of tomato red to ease the boredom. Mom taught me well and is proud of me; my closet has few exceptions to her rules. But she knows I mess up occasionally, so she is on call 24/7. Like all suppressed urges, my need for color, bad fabrics, mismatched prints and gaudy stuff still bursts out in other areas and does real visual damage. I shop for my sisters and fill their closets with every bold color, pattern and adornment I can find. They, too, have a body like mine and if they had Mom's ghost bugging them, they would be terrified of even touching those manmade fabrics. They have escaped her inspections, however. She seems to haunt only me. They don't escape the Mom look on my face when I see them wearing these type of items with too many accessories. I mean, come on, even I can bend so far.

Once in while, I have to break out. I crave more like a bad fashion junkie. A few months ago I went to an afternoon concert in Napa in a bright red flouncy embroidered top that fell off the shoulder. I'll admit now that it overemphasized my "assets" giving me the look of a DD porn star. I blindly coupled this with a plaid and striped patchwork skirt from a top name designer. This tablecloth of a skirt had enough material for maybe eight normal skirts. Its hemline was longer in the back than the front and it had a little bustle in the back giving me a JLo (remember when we called her that?) bottom. To finish it off, I added big hoop earrings and a chunky white and red plastic beaded necklace. The only thing I did according to the "rules" was to wear heels.

I heard Mom's warnings before I left. I had time to accommodate her screaming cautions, but I wasn't in the mood. I wanted to break the rules, her rules. I was feeling wild. I said to Mom, "Ha, what do you know? This is hip." She countered that it gave me huge hips and boobs. She told me it made me look even shorter than 5' 2". I told her I had heels on and that I was nearly 5'3". She said it didn't matter in this get up. She used the phrase "get up," which made me ask what century that phrase was from. She wouldn't be diverted. She said I looked 10 pounds heavier. I told her that I am old enough to know what to wear and what looks good on me. I walked out the door. I felt exhilarated. A burden was lifted. I was free of this superficial visual stuff. I was breaking a cycle one small step at a time. I beat the ghost! I won!

When I saw my friend's face, I knew Mom was right. To make matters worse, I had to walk in those 4-inch heels across someone's lawn to get to my seat. I kept getting stuck in the dirt and ruined the shoes. My skirt was so big it flowed onto the seat of the guy who was sitting next to me. He kept moving it away from his legs. He was handsome and offended. Obviously, he had no sense of humor so we wouldn't have gotten along. Obviously, he did have a sense of style. I tried moving the blouse down a bit to show some cleavage, a diversionary tactic that has worked in the past. The chunky necklace obscured the view. I took off the bauble and placed it in my handbag, but I couldn't close my bag since it was a trendy tiny one and each bead was the size of a lemon. I then wrapped it around my wrist for a big bracelet look. It was too late. I was a doomed, insecure fidget that day. I was a such a fashion don't!

The sad thing is, I know I will do it again. I can feel it in my veins. I am experiencing a new form of middle-age rebellion.

Five Mistakes That Changed my Life

2008-07-22T20:56:51-05:00

I’m
out meeting with the press right now to promote SmartNow.com and I’m
getting quite a reaction. Not to the business, but to me. You see, it’s
been awhile since I met with them, at least eight years. Many of the
people in the press are same ones I met all those years ago. Many I
don’t know. No matter if they knew me before or not, they all ask the
same question: "What mistakes have you made and what have you learned
from them?" And this isn’t a normal "check-the-box" reporter question.
This is a loaded question with heavy reference to my past, some would
say my infamous past.

First some background, I was the CEO of
Pets.com. In case you haven’t heard of it, Pets.com and its mascot, the
Sock Puppet, became the symbol for the dotcom bubble and its subsequent
bust. Some have even charged me personally with bringing down the U.S.
economy. Pets’ short period of success was fueled by positive press
about the company and myself. Pets received even more press when it
failed.

As the public CEO, I failed, and it was a very public
failure. In fact, I was labeled one of the biggest failures ever. How
bad was it? I had people laugh in my face when I introduced myself for
years after the company closed. It happened as recently as a year ago.
A couple of people asked me what it felt like to be one of the
best-known failures in the U.S. Most just walked away from me. One
woman told me to my face that I was a loser. I could go on and on, but
you get the point: I became a symbol for something greater than myself,
and we aren’t talking puppet envy here.

What most people don’t
know is that the very same week that Pets.com failed, my marriage of
seven years failed as well. Actually, it had been failing for a long
time. It became officially over that week. My husband decided to call
it quits the day before I announced to the employees and the public
markets that I was shutting down Pets. It was a really bad week.

Now,
I would like to tell you that I was down but not out. That I just
brushed myself off and got on with life. I didn’t. At first, I kept
myself hyper-busy. That lasted for about three months. Then, I sank
into a depression. I’m sure I was in shock for a long time. It was a
very dark, confused time in my life. I kept pushing myself to get back
to normal. That didn’t happen.

I never got back to myself. I
became better than I was. Note that it is almost seven years since
Pets.com failed. Mystics might say I am entering a new seven-year
cycle. I kind of think that's true because I believe there are
universal laws and truths. I do know I have been on a journey. I have
taken stock of the five big mistakes I have made in my life and fought
my way through. I’m sure I’ll make some more big mistakes in the
future, but hopefully I won’t make the same ones again.

If you have made your own mistakes and are not sure how to get on
with your life, perhaps my reflections will help you. And if you make
mistakes in the future, I hope my lessons help you in some way and that
you will learn from your humanness and not slip slide into a dark place
for long.

Mistake 1: I allowed others to
define me. I completely defined myself as a failure, as the press did.
I read every negative thing said about the company in the press and on
message boards. Many were personally directed at me. Needless to say,
the new people and jobs I attracted during this time of my life
reinforced my negative self-image. None of these people are in my life
today.

How I moved on: I got tired of and
bored with living in the past. I took stock of myself and decided that
I know myself better than others. I am the only one who has taken my
journey. I came to recognize that most reactions to me were not
personal. I knew at some intrinsic level that my active participation
in letting others define my failed past would be carried into my
future. I didn’t want to live my own version of the movie “Groundhog
Day.” I really wanted to heal. How could I have let others’ opinions of
me define and engulf me in the first place? Well, that leads me to the
second mistake.

Mistake 2: I built my image
of myself on two main supporting planks. When those collapsed, I did
too. What I mean is that I had defined myself as someone who was smart
and could figure things out and also someone who was entering middle
age as a married woman. The “smart” definition was fostered from my
childhood. I was the oldest of four children with a mother who was ill
and a father who worked long hours to make ends meet. Whenever I asked
my parents a question, they would say: “You are smart, what do you
think?” Believing I was smart helped me survive a hard family situation
and still make top honors in school. I never bought into being a
“pretty” girl; I was the smart one. But felt I was not smart enough for
Pets.com. I failed publicly. After more than 20 years of good to great
business successes, I had crashed and burned. The second way I defined
myself was as a married woman. I liked being married, belonging to a
little tribe of two. That plank was yanked out from underneath me. Or
perhaps I yanked both planks subconsciously to grow. In any case, both
foundations were gone.

How I moved on:
Where did this leave me? Lost. What did I do? I started looking for
what would feed my soul. I tried to get back to my essence, my best
self. I love drawing and painting, so I started doing this again and
working with art organizations. I love being around people who solve
problems creatively, create art, think differently and express
themselves uniquely. I rented funny movies—no kidding. I sought out
laughter. I developed relationships with very loving people who
laughed. I got involved in my community. I developed a few routines
with those around me. This included spending time with a
70-something-year-old woman who vibrated with life and owned the local
coffee shop. And, slowly, I began to see myself as more than two key
bullet points. I stopped labeling myself and saw those labels as false
security. Oddly enough, I began to feel more secure.

Mistake 3:
I stopped believing in myself. You can see how mistakes one and two
would lead to the third. For a long time, especially as it came to my
own career, I operated out of fear. Fear of failure. And I lived in
that space for too long.

How I moved on: At
some point last year, I decided that if I believed in myself then I had
to invest in myself. I realized that if I didn’t invest in myself I
couldn’t expect others to do it, either. I respond to visual goals, so
I did a vision board: I took white poster board and I pasted pictures
and phrases that represented my goals. The most prominent goal was
investing in myself on all levels. I showed myself climbing the
proverbial ladder and once again reaching for the stars. And when I had
a good business plan in hand, I invested money in my own company. This
is the first time I have started a company for myself.

Mistake 4:
I stopped taking care of myself. I had gained weight over the years and
stopped exercising. When Pets was collapsing, I started exercising
again and the pounds had started to come off, so my physical health had
started to improve. What I didn’t realize is that my emotional health
was deteriorating. I did not recognize my own depression. For at least
two years after Pets shut down, I didn’t care if I lived or died. I
never actively tried to kill myself; that would go against my
Midwestern upbringing. I just didn’t care if I lived. I was also just
starting to experience the first symptoms of peri-menopause, so I had
to come terms with my own childlessness. I had curiously decided that
if I was meant to have a child, then I would have gotten pregnant
during my marriage. Not having children reinforced my indifference to
life during this period. I didn’t have children to take care of, so
what was the point? I was also angry. The anger came in waves.

How I moved on:
I wish I would have been more proactive in my own mental health. I did
not recognize my state of mind as depression. I mean, I wasn’t crying
every day nor did I drive to the Golden Gate Bridge and contemplate
jumping. I can honestly say the thought never entered my mind. But I
was clearly depressed, and only years later did I realize how much I
needed help. I should have seen a therapist and perhaps even gone on
medication. I pulled out of this state because I started to see beauty
again (see mistake two, which also shows the healing power of art in my
life). Once I started seeing beauty, I wanted to see more of it. Once I
learned to let go of the anger and fear, I wanted to thrive.

Mistake 5: Allowing my head to rule my heart. If I would have started with this
item, it might have seemed too trite. But it isn’t. The head is the
ego. Mine was shattered. I had to exercise my heart in order to heal.

How I moved on:
To be honest, I’m not sure I have moved past this, but I am doing
better. As I moved through the other mistakes and began to heal, I also
began to see the world differently. I began to realize that I could be
comfortable letting my heart make some decisions. And when those
started showing a payoff, I allowed my heart to make even more
decisions. Life is richer in the heart zone, but I’m too analytical to
give up the head part. I’m just trying to find a better balance every
day.

That’s all for now.