Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [15]
The women who get ahead are those who learn to ignore the warnings they've been given about breaking the rules. If you look at the work history of a gutsy girl, you see that she has made her mark by ignoring “orders” and taking some bold, innovative step that wowed her bosses and left her peers grumbling in exasperation, “I can't believe they let her get away with that” or “I would have done that but I didn't think you were supposed to.”
If you're going to be a gutsy girl, it's time to think about creating your own upside-down sundae.
One of the gutsiest rule benders I know is Nancy Glass, the anchor of one of the top-rated syndicated TV news magazine shows, American journal, and a former senior correspondent for Inside Edition. Over the years, she's landed exclusive interviews with a rogues’ gallery of contemporary antiheroes that includes Jeffrey Dahmer, Amy Fisher, Imelda Marcos, and Roseanne's parents. Nancy has always told me that in her career she lives by the principle, There are no rules.
“People love to tell you the rules,” she says. “When I first started as a reporter, I was always told that to set up an interview with someone, you had to go through the standard channels, like the person's publicist or lawyer. But that's often a dead end because they really don't want the person to be interviewed. They'll just tell you, ‘No, Mr. So-and-So isn't available for interviews.’ So over time I found the one way to guarantee getting an interview was to just show up unannounced on the person's lawn. You can't imagine their shock when they first see you, but after a few minutes, after they've gotten to talk to you, they begin to trust you and feel receptive to the idea of being interviewed. I've come to believe that every opportunity is a vacuum waiting for you to fill it with your own rules.”
NO, I'M NOT SUGGESTING YOU NEED TO LIE, CHEAT, OR STEAL
It may sound as if I'm suggesting you land a chopper on someone's lawn. Not at all. In fact, it's probably best to leave that to renegade TV reporters with big blond hair. Nor am I suggesting that you lie on your resumé, cheat on your expense account, ignore company guidelines, or call your boss a butthead.
To understand what I mean by rule breaking and why it's an essential strategy, you have to consider where rules comes from—and their fallibility. Many rules are in existence because they once worked quite nicely, but there's every chance that they have become meaningless over time. People follow them out of habit, because “that's the way we've always done things here.” Other rules or directions have been set up by well-meaning people who unfortunately lack skill, talent, or creativity. These rules are supposed to offer guidance, but they only serve to hinder you.
Often, the only way to get substantial results and break out of the pack is to bend one of these rules or ignore it completely. Won't this get you into trouble? It might. But it's best to worry about that later. U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, a human dynamo who got her start as an activist by preventing the construction of a sixteen-lane highway through her town, told me that the motto that sums up so much of what she's done is, It's always better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And trust me, if they like what they see, you won't be on your knees.
The first chance I had to discover the benefit of a little rule bending was when I entered Glamour magazine's Top Ten College Women Contest as a college senior. My school had chosen me to be their candidate and I wanted more than anything to win—partly because the prize was a ten-day trip to Great Britain, but also because I saw it as a way to break into the magazine business. The application called for a photo, a description of your campus activities and awards, and an essay on the goals you had for the future. I spent two days trying