Military Action or Household Management?
I loved Hillary Johnson’s article, The Next Management Revolution, in the July issue of Inc. It reminded me of the women’s leadership classic, The Female Advantage by Sally Helgesen (Currency Doubleday, 1990). In Sally’s book, women’s ways of management are described as webs of inclusion and she includes diary studies of several women she found to be “strongly conscious of their management styles,” and who “believed that gender was important, not only to who they were, but to how they did things.”
Hillary Johnson’s piece compares “business as battlefield” and the use of The Art of War by Sun Tzu as the manual to the next revolution of “business as household” with Home Comforts: The Art & Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson serving as the ultimate management guide. Her thought for her own management of a small company was: …”wouldn’t my goals as a manager be far better served by treating the office more like a kitchen and less like a war room and fostering a sense of egalitarianism and pleasure in the process as well as the outcome?”
Yep.
As I read this I thought, first – this management revolution has been in the works for years and, if companies were paying attention, they’d have long since seen that the women’s way of leadership (whether conducted by men or women) shows much more promise and longevity. Second, I thought there may be a serious need for the US government to consider this new management style in the current international arena. War elusions? Us versus them? Who is winning? Who is evil? Take it back to the kitchen table, people! But, I’ll stay out of that.
Anyway -
Managing a business is far from black and white, and some sort of one-size-fits-all guidebook will not do the job. Each business situation and environment involves a unique mix of people and experiences, so one-size could never fit all. Still, we need writers like Hillary Johnson to remind us that there is a very effective and inclusive way to all get along for the growth of business and remain competitive while at it. Sally Helgesen’s concept of a women’s web of inclusion is at the heart of Hillary’s household/business management style, if you ask me.
From a marketing to women perspective, holding on to a war-room management style will harm any company’s bottom line. Women as consumers notice things like company culture and the number of women in upper management etc. So, if all the women in today’s large corporations, from upper management to staff, eventually leave to do their own thing or find a more revolutionary management style elsewhere, what then? Companies will have to spend even more money to figure out what women want and how to deliver it to them – because they’ve lost any inside knowledge of their market.
The negative reverberations could be endless.
Read Hillary’s piece, and, if you haven’t yet read The Female Advantage, I highly recommend you do that, as well. Let’s join the management revolution and watch how we can better serve consumers in the process.
