We humans tell ourselves a lot of stories. Don’t let the stories confuse you about what matters to your success. Mary gives us a great perspective on why when you read about women not making it in Corporate America, you should not believe this has anything to do with your own chance for success in being entrepreneurs. Thanks for the reminder, Mary! – InPower Editors
Our beliefs shape our reality. They can help us succeed or they can limit what we achieve.
I believe that women have some limiting beliefs about what they can achieve based on old thinking about business. Every day, new ways to finance, market, and operate a company are emerging. The traditional beliefs for how a company should operate aren’t serving us well in the new knowledge-based, information economy; we need to explore new methods. And these traditional beliefs are quickly converting into myths. By adjusting how we perceive reality, just by looking at a few different facts, we can see how the world is very different than we originally thought.
Below are five myths that I will explore in the series:
- Myth #1: We need to change corporate America to advance women’s leadership
- Myth #2: Women have a hard time finding startup funding
- Myth #3: Women need to change industry ratios
- Myth #4: Women need to change to lead
- Myth #5: Do you have a small business or are you real entrepreneurs?
Myth #1: We need to change corporate America to advance women’s leadership
Myth-buster: Startups and entrepreneurs are already doing this – and more.
Every corporation I have worked with has the same fierce competitor – the startup. They have disruptive products, marketing methods, and operation styles. They cause corporations massive pain.
And experts agree:
The startup model, combined with a low cost of entry, makes them a formidable threat. With inexpensive data center infrastructure, freelance communities and ecosystems to provide support and office space, startups can move fast to disrupt an established industry.
How Corporations Can Remain Competitive with the Help of Startups, The Rivalfox Competitor Intelligence Blog
Some corporations want to leverage startup operations so they can transition into the new knowledge-based economy focused on making customers happy. But not all are that way.
Startups have been doing more than creating disruptive products; they have been revolutionizing work life, mainly through necessity with limited budgets and the need to make revenue:
- Lean planning: they plan ahead as far as is needed to make revenue and be competitive, and in turn are agile enough to respond to market changes
- Marketing: starting with guerilla marketing. Social media and content marketing have emerged as the new tools – they are free, educate the customer, and create attention to lure marketshare away from large corporations.
- Agile methodologies: prioritize what’s important for the customer right now to get a product out the door (and make money).
- Financial models: from customer payment options to raising capital, there are a number of emerging methods that are proving successful.
This list could continue with work-life balance, coworking, and beyond. The irony is that all of these “best practices” from startups are appearing in corporate operations. One could say that startups are innovating the future of work and customer interactions.
And women are actively participating in these pioneer efforts:
- Women are founding businesses at 1.5x the national average
- Women-owned firms account for 30% of all enterprises
Keep in mind, over 50% of all workers work in a small business (why they fuel they American economy).
Why do women start businesses and become entrepreneurs?
Many women view corporations today as being fundamentally flawed and limiting in their value structures. The Guardian Life Index, an initiative to understand America’s small business owners, cites “office politics” as a driving factor for women leaving Corporate America to start businesses.
With the cost of starting a business at an all-time low, women are saying “no thank you” to spending years climbing and clawing their way up the corporate ladder, dealing with corporate politics, and working long days without feeling the overall fulfillment they crave.
—Natalie MacNeil, Entrepreneurship Is The New Women’s Movement, Forbes
Our perception of work is quickly changing.
We no longer work for just a paycheck or title; we care about the quality of our contributions and the audience who will receive it. This is in line with Drucker’s prediction about the knowledge-based organization.
…[corporations of the future are] far more likely to resemble organizations that neither the practicing manager nor the management scholar pays much attention to today: the hospital, the university, the symphony orchestra. For like them, the typical business will be knowledge-based, an organization composed largely of specialists who direct and discipline their own performance through organized feedback from colleagues, customers, and headquarters.
–Peter F. Drucker, The Coming of the New Organization, Harvard Business Review
All organizations are now knowledge-based.
And like the symphony performers who care about performance quality and the audience’s experience, employees care about the product created and how users like it. Work is no longer about who is doing what, when, where, with who’s budget (the corporate view); it’s about what is being produced and if it makes money.
Corporations can’t catch up fast enough – and they won’t. Changing a corporation is similar to turning a cruise ship to the left – it takes planning and time.
A startup is a clean slate where any new process and approach can be tried and tested. There isn’t an existing structure to change; there aren’t teams who need to be coaxed into accepting a new vision. And if a process doesn’t work, gather your team and discuss how to change it.
If startup “best practices” inspire corporate change, wouldn’t it follow that if there are more women entrepreneurs leading startups and this becomes a “best practice,” that corporations would participate in this trend? And wouldn’t it follow that there would be more leadership opportunities for women because everyone else does it?
Women need to do more than sit at the table; they need get their own table and make their dreams happen – even if it is a table for one.
Only by leaving a corporate structure can women experiment to find new viable work structures, increase leadership opportunities and expand knowledge. Disruption is key to progress, and startups excel at this. The trend has started – women are founding businesses at 1.5x the national average; now we just need to make this mainstream.
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
Guide to Women in Leadership
Organizations with women in their executive suites regularly out-perform others. Yet rising female executives (and their mentors) are frustrated at how hard it is to break through the glass ceiling. In this extensive guide, Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel into higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
