To create the conditions in which women’s vision can flourish, organizations must learn to value diverse ways of knowing, encourage mindfulness, support webs of inclusion, and respect the power of empathy.
Organizations need to become more proficient at acknowledging diverse ways of knowing rather than continuing to privilege what can be quantified and empirically supported. We do not mean to suggest that intuitive ways of knowing should be preferred to rational analysis — an inversion of the present practice. Rather, the full spectrum of cognition — the rich complexity of means by which humans come to know — must be recognized as having potential value. This requires abandoning the common practice of asking anyone who makes a suggestion to immediately back it up with numbers. Instead, people should be encouraged to share insights that may still be in process or that may contradict expectations.
Even insights that are ultimately discarded can have value by leading to other fresh ideas, whereas overfocusing on numerical models forestalls this. Continue reading » »
The strongest, most well-articulated vision will have little effect on your organization if you don’t enlist allies to support your view. Allies are people who are willing to listen, who try to help you when you ask, who give you feedback and explain your cause when you’re not in the room. Allies give you inside information and explain political motivations you may have overlooked.
Allies are different from friends in that your relationship with them always serves a specific purpose. Continue reading » »
When the female vision remains untapped, both women and organizations suffer. Women are unable to translate their best observations into action. What they see remains locked within them, and their connections with others can feel shallow and inauthentic as a result. What should be a source of power becomes a source of isolation and frustration. Without the female vision, organizations also lose power. Continue reading » »
Just as what we notice determines what we value, so what we value shapes our picture of how the world should be. This ethical dimension forms the third element of our vision. Unlike noticing and valuing, both of which occur within ourselves, in our minds and our hearts, the third component of our vision is manifest in our actions.
Our daily actions have real power when they serve the purpose of our larger vision, providing a link between what we are doing now, at this present moment, and what we most profoundly want to achieve in the world. Being clear about this connection — being able to articulate how our actions serve our larger vision — gives us a sense of purpose and inspiration and provides us with a yardstick against which to measure our decisions. Continue reading » »
In researching his book, we became aware of differences in how men and women perceive value as we interviewed women who had either left high positions or were considering doing so. Some of these women were clients, others were fellow speakers or panelists at corporate and university events, still others were well-known executives whose decisions were chronicled in the business press. As we listened to their stories, we were struck by a recurring theme, a phrase that we heard time and again. When asked what specifically had brought them to their decision, the majority summed it up by saying, “I decided it just wasn’t worth it.”
What does this mean? Continue reading » »
