Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [25]
WHY GOOD GIRLS DON'T FOCUS
Focusing on one clear goal or mission is hard for a good girl. She's been programmed to “do it all.” to try to please everybody, and so she's reluctant to limit the dimensions of her vision. If she sacrifices certain projects or products, she worries that she won't be viewed as the wonder girl who can handle ten things at a time Or she believes that she'll be letting down people whose needs don't get included in the plan.
Fear can also keep a good girl from developing a big plan for the future. Recently a friend complained to me about a good girl on her staff who had failed to form a vision for her area. “At first I thought she was overworked, that she didn't have time, so I gave her an extra two staff members,” she said. “When that didn't work, I thought it was my fault—that I'd led her to believe that all the big-picture stuff had to come from me So I told her she had complete freedom to chart the course for her area. And she still didn't do it. I've finally come to believe that the idea of creating a mission scared her. She'd be accountable for it. A lot less risky approach was to force me to lake that responsibility.”
I feel that's been true for some of the good girls who've worked for me. If you've got your head lowered and your nose close to the grindstone, where you focus on the minutiae of every day, there's less chance you'll be hit by one of the SCUDs whizzing by. It feels safer that way.
And yet that's an illusion. Without a goal, you won't know where you're going. The people who work for you will feel adrift, confused, and quite possibly angry (and though they aren't likely to run squealing to the New York Times, they might do equally mutinous things). Your boss will sense that while you may be putting in the hours, you don't have much to show for it.
WHY YOU NEED A BIG VISION EVEN IF YOU HAVE A LITTLE JOB
Now, if you're fairly low on the company totem pole, you may be thinking that this chapter isn't for you. A vision is something for someone who oversees an entire operation, or at the very least, a department But no matter how small your domain— even if you are only in charge of managing yourself—you need a vision, a goal for your area and an awareness of how the steps you take can make that goal achievable. Your vision, of course, must directly relate to the overall vision of your company.
When I was in my twenties, I was stupidly reluctant to do this because I thought a vision was something my bosses were supposed to come up with, whereas I was supposed to follow their lead.
Looking back, however, I realize how much more effective I would have been in my job if I'd created a “big picture” in my mind, plus how much more focused I would have appeared to my bosses.
Of course, creating a vision is best done when you arrive in a new job. If you've been in your job and don't yet have one, you need to get your head out of the file drawer and start looking toward the sky.
HOW TO CREATE YOUR VISION
Words like vision and mission have a tendency to sound very grand and idealistic, like something starring Glenn Close on the Hallmark Hall of Fame Yet a good mission should be grounded by reality, even while it's smart and innovative. Ian Wilson, a senior management consultant at SRI International, says that a vision is a “coherent and powerful statement of what the business tan and should be… .” Can and should are the key words The word can has to do with your resources and capabilities. A vision is meaningless if n calls for funding or skills or peoplepower your department doesn't possess or can't ever possess. The word should relates to the values and aspirations of management.
When you create your vision, it should be as specific as possible Name your destination and also spell out the directions for getting there And the more criteria you can offer