Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [34]
One of the most dazzling buy-yourself-some-time moves is the one Christie Whitman, the governor of New Jersey, made on the day she took office. A few minutes into her inaugural speech she mentioned that during her campaign she had promised to put $1.4 billion of people's tax dollars back into their pockets by cutting taxes over the next three years, with the first cut coming in July. Then to everyone's shock she announced, “Why wait until the next fiscal year starts in July?” She asked her “partners in the legislature” to “enact a 5 percent income tax cut for every family in New Jersey effective January 1, 1994—17 days ago.”
3. Call a Turnaround a Turnaround
Studies show that women tend to attribute their success to outside forces, and if you don't, other people will be quick to do that for you. If they can, they'll take the credit themselves, or they'll chalk it up to the marketplace, upper management, or luck. A friend of mine who turned around a magazine with an inventive change in the editorial learned that the circulation department was taking credit for the increase in renewals. Okay, maybe the clock radio sent to new subscribers played a role, but it wasn't the only factor. And yet the editor's efforts were overshadowed by the circulation department's forceful championing of its own efforts.
To prevent this you have to frame your turnaround in people's minds. Send out memos that keep people posted on the changes and their impact. When you talk to co-workers, use phrases like, “Thanks to our turnaround, we can …” And let the numbers get out there, too. If there's an 11 percent increase in customer sales, let everyone know.
As soon as DeLibero took over New Jersey Transit she began issuing quarterly reports to employees that she called Vital Signs. She gave plenty of facts and figures detailing the progress she was making.
CHAPTER FIVE
Strategy #3: A Gutsy Girl Does Only What's Essential
If you're a good girl, it goes without saying that you work hard for your money. After all, you want to prove yourself, get an A-plus on important projects, and please those who matter. The sure way to do that seems to be to work your tail off. Chances are there are plenty of lunch hours when you find yourself at your desk with a tuna salad and melba toast and plenty of evenings when you're the one who turns out the lights. You feel a lot of satisfaction (and yes, admit it, even a little smugness) in working harder than many of your colleagues, though sometimes that satisfaction turns to irritation when you realize that often you seem to get stuck with all the work. Just once you'd like to be heading out the door early on a Friday. But you know that in the long run you will be well rewarded for all your hard, hard work.
Well, I've got bad news. Despite what you've been encouraged to believe, all your hard work is no guarantee of rewards or success.
Okay, okay, just like me you've read all those profiles of top executives in Fortune, in which they play that one-upmanship game about the hours they put in—there's the 60-hour workweek and the 80-hour workweek and the 100-plus-hour workweek. Sure, some jobs do involve a mind-boggling number of hours, but I've come to see that many good girls get caught up in working long hours purely for work's sake, not because it's really necessary. They devote more attention to some projects than they have to, or handle certain assignments that they should actually give to someone else.
The trouble with working your tail off this way isn't simply that you end up without clean panty hose, a decent social life, a knowledge of twentieth-century fiction, or anything in your fridge other than expired low-fat yogurt. If you're creating endless make-work for yourself, you don't have time to focus on your gutsy-girl plan, on making something happen that's all yours—and that will make you a star.
A gutsy girl knows that the hours she clocks are no reflection of how good a job she's done. The secret is to stop trying to do everything and start