WBEZ | CEO

Divas in the board room

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0500

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and Marissa Mayer, COO of Yahoo, are arguably the youngest and most well-known females in corporate America today. In the male-dominated world of business, where only slightly more than 4 percent of Fortune 500 companies are led by women, Sandberg and Mayer are wunderkinds who achieved early success and rose to the top at a meteoric rate.

In both financial and feminist circles they are considered rock stars, trail blazers and gurus to be studied and emulated. And this dynamic duo has not been hesitant in word or deed to proclaim and demand a new set of rules for women in the workplace.

After 13 years at Google, where she was the twentieth employee hired and the first female engineer, Marissa Mayer left Google to become CEO of Yahoo in July 2012. Her first two challenges were obvious ones:

she needed to address the company’s declining ad revenues and stock prices
she was seven months pregnant

The pregnancy issue handled itself, and on September 30, 2013, she had a baby boy.

The company's financial issues remain ongoing, and Mayer returned to work just two weeks after having the baby to give them her full attention. (She has managed to balance the financial dilemma and the demand of diapers by having a nursery built next to her office.)

Since then, she has done everything in her power to right the ship. And her most controversial decision to date speaks directly to how she sees and wants the game to be played. Starting this spring, “working at home” has been banned.

“We need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being together”, Mayer said.

Although Yahoo’s new model has generated a considerable backlash, Mayer’s message is clear: “do as I do” or move on.

Sandberg, in her recently published book Lean In: Women, Work, and The Will To Lead offers advise about how women can advance their careers, and at the same time, admonishes women for being part of the problem of why more women are not in more leadership positions. If you want to get ahead and make it big time, says Sandberg, women need to “lean in”, assert themselves more, put in more time, take on more tasks, be more ambitious.

Yes, she says, it is a male dominated world. So work harder. Believe in yourself. Don’t doubt your ability to do it all. Make more demands. Take on more. Sandberg argues that women have to stop looking for excuses and reasons for failure or mediocrity. Success costs, and if you don’t pay the price, it won’t happen.

I’ve got a daughter who is a business person, my wife is a COO of her firm and I like to think I’m a card carrying feminist. But to tell you the truth, Sandberg and Mayer scare me. Or, perhaps more accurately, they confuse me. They want women to outwork the men. They are advocating putting in the big hours, and making the big compromises, so that they too can succeed on Planet Finance. But maybe they’ve all got it all wrong. Maybe it really shouldn’t be about the big job, the big hours, the big sacrifices. Maybe it’s the system and not the players that is all screwed up. Maybe none of us, men or women, should be eager to “lean in” because the world we are being asked to “lean into” isn’t, in the long run, humanly worth it.

Maybe our two C-suite divas are on to something more important than success at work. Maybe their’s is a cautionary tale. Rather than “leaning in”, maybe all of us should start thinking about “leaning back”, and start trying to find success and accomplishments in other parts of our lives beyond our jobs.

Al Gini is a Professor of Business Ethics and Chairman of the Management Department in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.

Hiring the next CEO

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 08:00:00 -0500

According to management guru Allan Cox, succession planning is one of the most difficult issues faced by both Fortune 500 companies as well as mom-and-pop family businesses. Starting a business and growing a business are critical competencies, but passing a business on and maintaining its success over time is perhaps the true test of business acumen.

Until recently, the old rule of thumb suggested that businesses, especially small and family business, rarely made it beyond the third changing of the leadership guard. A classic example of this phenomenon in Chicago was the Schwinn Company. Schwinns were considered the Cadillac of bicycles until the mid-1970s, when bike technology, clever competitors and the third generation of the Schwinn family lost control of the marketplace. A more contemporary succession story is Apple. As of this writing, although Apple’s worth as a company is at an all-time high ($623.5 billion in market capitalization), the real question yet facing the company remains: Can Steve Jobs be successfully replaced?

According to a recent Tribune column by Phil Rosenthal on CEO salaries, there are two basic strategies to succession planning: stay inside or go outside.

Going outside

Sometimes an injection of new energy, new ideas and new leadership style is exactly what a company needs. Sometimes companies become too egocentric and lose objectivity in regard to what they are doing and the demands of the marketplace. When this happens, it is often best to bring in an outsider who can offer a new focus and perspective on how to proceed.

Staying inside

Recently-retired McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner is a major proponent of replacing leadership from within. Skinner argues that if a successful company with a solid track record cannot develop a series of internal candidates, then something is seriously wrong with the culture at that organization. For Skinner, talent management and leadership development must be a well-integrated component of a company’s overall business plan. Successful companies need to clone their own, suggests Skinner. Training for leadership needs to be part of every job within a company. In Skinner’s case, he spent 33 years doing and learning a lot of jobs at McDonald’s, including flipping burgers and running a fry machine, before his eight-year stint as CEO.

I think Jim Skinner is right: Companies that can’t develop an internal candidate are failing. Good companies need to manage a lot more than money and day-to-day operation. Companies that want to have long-term success know that growing and grooming managers is a big part of the job.

Al Gini is a Professor of Business Ethics and Chair of the Management Department in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.

Admitted terrorist ends testimony, details Lockheed Martin plot

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:00:00 -0500

Federal prosecutors say think they can wrap up their case this week against a Chicago man accused of helping plan terrorist attacks. They finished questioning their key witness, an admitted terrorist, on Tuesday.

Prosecutors say they are far ahead of schedule in their case against Tahawwur Rana, a Chicagoan accused of helping a terrorist group plan the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, and an attack that never came through against a Danish newspaper.

For the last week, David Headley was on the stand to implicate Rana as part of Headley's plea deal with prosecutors. Headley gave meticulous details about his involvement, including information on terrorist groups in Pakistan.

Rana's defense attorneys say Headley knew he needed a touchdown to save his own skin, so he gave up his friend, Rana. Defense attorneys tried to explain why Rana and Headley would need coded email addresses. They suggested it was to bash a commenter on an online forum who would write bad things about Islam. But Headley denied that was the reason.

Headley also told the jury he interacted with an al-Qaida official who was frustrated by attacks from drones. So Headley suggested they plan an attack on individuals within Lockheed Martin, the weapons manufacturer. Headley testified before a Chicago jury that he Googled the CEO to get more information for an attack, but it never happened.

New CPS leader Brizard outlines priorities, addresses union controversy

Wed, 04 May 2011 13:43:00 -0500

In the time since Jean-Claude Brizard was named CEO of Chicago Public Schools, he’s gotten a mixed welcome.

Brizard has faced questions about his accomplishments while Superintendent of the City School District in Rochester, New York. He’s also been faulted for not developing good relationships with educators and the community.

When asked what he could have done differently during the time he ran the schools in Rochester, Brizard singled out his contentious relationship with the teachers union president there.

"It really was an eye-opening experience for me to see a relationship with one person begin to deteriorate, and then you being labeled and painted as someone, which is completely the opposite of who you are as an individual," he said.

The teachers union recently delivered a no-confidence vote in Brizard.

To prepare for his new position in Chicago, Brizard says he's doing research to understand the challenges facing the district. He told WBEZ Wednesday that some of his priorities are lengthening the school day, and instituting a system in which teachers are paid based on their performance.

"But if you were to be able to boil it down to one massive goal, it really is about making sure kids are graduating from high school, prepared for what comes after high school, and of course persisting wherever they go after high school," Brizard told Eight Forty-Eight host Alison Cuddy.

Listen to his complete interview with Cuddy above.

And listen below to hear Jean-Claude Brizard explain more about his background in education, including his time at The Broad Superintendents Academy.

Federico Aubele, "Kreuzberg", from the CD Berlin 13, (ESL)

A closer look at Jean-Claude Brizard's tenure in Rochester, NY

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:08:00 -0500

Updated at: 12:40 pm on 04/19/2011

On Monday Mayor-elect Emanuel announced his pick to head Chicago Public Schools. Jean-Claude Brizard comes to Chicago from the Rochester City School District in the state of New York.

To find out more about Brizard, Eight Forty-Eight spoke with Tiffany Lankes, an education reporter in Rochester for the Democrat and Chronicle, and began by discussing Brizard’s approach during his 3-year tenure in Rochester.

A correction has been made to this story.

An earlier version of this story misstated that Brizard ushered in expanding charter schools in the Rochester school district. The district there does not have power to authorize charters.