New research reported on by Miller-McCune’s Tom Jacobs may hold clues as to what has held women back from such careers thus far.  He writes:

A team of Miami University researchers led by psychologist Amanda Diekman has come up with a different explanation. In a paper just published in the journal Psychological Science, they argue women perceive STEM careers (those in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) as largely incompatible with one of their core goals: Engaging in work that helps others.

If perception of the science/tech career is one of the lone, geeky scientist sitting in a badly lit lab working on projects that have no immediate or “social” application, you can see why anyone with more social awareness might steer clear.   But, the needs of our sustainably-oriented economy create the perfect storm – where what we most need are science and technology-oriented brains rounded out by just such empathy.  There has to be an interconnectedness of the “geeky” stuff with the human stuff, or sustainability will not be sustainable.  Women in science and technology could be the embodiment of that connection.

As in so many cases within the sustainability realm, the issue seems to be one of communication.  If girls/young women better understood the connection between STEM careers and healthier communities or environments, a lot more of them would be signing up for such college degrees and heading into the many, many jobs of those types now becoming available.  In fact, companies are probably a bit frantic already, trying to find the right minds for exactly those current and future positions.

Interestingly, those companies may already be doing a much better job communicating their sustainability stories through branding and marketing campaigns.  And, consumers are responding.  Now, could similarly focused and relevant messaging be developed and distributed in the right places and in the right way so that women will also see future, attractive, career possibilities? Of course.  The truth is that women with an underlying desire to help others will be INTEGRAL to the mix of scientists and technologists that are already so core to our sustainable future.  They should be given the power to lead the way AND to teach their peers about the human side of science.

Photo credit: Malcom Bowman

My latest HuffingtonPost piece reflects the coalescing of my consulting and master’s program work toward a new research focus.  How can we take what we know about how women think to both develop better sustainable organizations and to better serve consumers supporting those organizations?  As always, my intention is not to say that women are the greatest and the only gender to combine systems thinking with empathy.  Rather, the fact that women are good at a kind of thinking so important in sustainable business is a clue to the bigger picture.  If your organization is reviewing and developing its sustainability efforts, this clue should help you source those best suited for your team: systems thinkers that embrace and reflect an empathic perspective on life.

An excerpt from my piece:

Women have generations of practice using and developing their empathic skills. When you combine that with solid business smarts, you get a sustainability powerhouse. It’s probably safe to say that without empathy, no business leader — male or female — would come to believe in the “triple bottom line” or the “people, planet and profit” mission. It’s the empathy extra that brings people and planet anywhere near the profit.

For those of you working in or with already well-functioning sustainability efforts, let me know if the empathic systems thinker is well represented, and how/where you’ve put that sort of mind to work.

Consumer Engagement

I began the conference by attending John Marshall Roberts‘ “Worldview Learning” presentation.  Roberts is an applied research psychologist who delves deeply into the psychology of human behavior for the purposes of better communicating new messages.  He referred to psychologist Clare W. Graves and his “spiral dynamics” work, which lays out the nine different states of cognitive complexity in the ways humans think and process ideas.  According to Roberts, humans each have various combinations of the following “worldview” ingredients:  values lens, filtering style and social optimism.   Roberts’ work gives framework for helping marketers or corporate leaders understand where their audiences or workers are coming from – and how to reach them with new and perhaps uncomfortable ideas.

Within the nine different cognitive complexity states lie clues, for example, on how those with a more systemic type of thinking might communicate with and inspire those with a more individualistic thinking style or a patriotic/absolutist style. For instance, a lot of those who may need to be persuaded about sustainability in the corporate world may be of an individualistic mindset.  It takes finesse for sustainability proponents (like me) to turn what we feel is obvious and right into that which an individualistic thinker can believe and be inspired by.  Another point Roberts used was the image of “moving a rock uphill” in organizational change, in that we can conceive of moving a rock uphill by forcing it, persuading it or inspiring it.  Ideally, for the sustainability pursuit, it would be the latter.

Bruce McGregor of innovation consultancy, IDEO, reminded the SB2010 audience that change is (disappointingly!) only 10% successful.  But, to create change more successfully, he suggests we need to inspire joy, not fear; harness force with what we have already at our disposal; and “create the crowd” (which to me sounds a lot like psychologist Robert Cialdini’s concept of “social proof” – of which I am a big fan).

Other ideas about sustainability and change from the conference came in the example of Starbucks current pursuit of a recyclable cup solution.*  That brand’s sustainability team has found that sharing with and involving customers in the process of research and development, from the start, has been key to engagement and progress.  Customers gladly get involved in the challenge and now root for the company to find the solution.  Their involvement inspires them to stay loyal to the brand, which is seen as sincerely making an effort.  This serves Starbucks’ larger goal of attempting to make “bring your own cup” as popular and successful as “bring your own bag” seems to be becoming nationwide.

What that Starbucks cup research process demonstrates is something Earthsense/CRD Analytics research (also introduced at this conference) indicated and that panel member Maddock Douglas’s Marc Stoiber put so well: “the closer you (the brand) comes to the consumer with your green product or sustainability effort, the easier communicating it will be.” Starbucks is almost uniquely positioned to achieving this sort of engagement because their product is contained in a cup that millions of people handle daily – many of whom (we hope) are struggling about how to dispose of them.

*This just in – great article in Greenbiz.com about Starbucks cup initiatives.

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Stay tuned for Re-Cap, Part 2 – Sustainable Business Trends.

Let’s learn from the many institutions of higher learning that have sustainability pledges, as they are all quite similar.  Harvard’s – which comes up first in a Google search, is a nice example.

Nothing too bold or scary here.  However, by putting such a list in front of your nose and occasionally glancing at it, you will – much more likely – stop and think a bit.  You may even start to change your own behavior.  Checklists are powerful stuff: Do you take the stairs as often as possible?  Do you unplug computers and turn off lights?  Do you walk, bike or take the subway more often than getting into a car or bus?

My question: Where are all the corporate sustainability pledges?

One check list-worthy point that strikes me as so obvious for corporate decision-makers is the concept of an organization-wide pledge to make video conference calls the first option for meetings that involve different sites.  Shouldn’t initial thought always be given to that, especially given this economic and environmental circumstance?  Of course, the  video quality may not be completely there – but it may well serve quite a few purposes well enough.  The intention is to just to ever-so slightly hinder the ease of turning to employee business travel options.  The bonus is that while such a “video conference or flight” check list point concerns energy and carbon footprint most immediately, it also concerns employee productivity and life/work balance.  Last I heard, sustainability-minded businesses actually need employees who aren’t burned out so they stick around awhile.

So, why not take a look at what the universities are doing with their pledge check lists?  Develop one for your corporation that covers everyone in the same ways – from the CEO/Chairman of the Board to managers, administrative staff and facilities workers.  Unite the whole organization around the cause and compete internally to improve your numbers (by decreasing flights, for one).

Savvy colleges are clearly seeing both the public relations and community engagement aspects of the sustainability pledge.  Can your company handle such a challenge?

With that in mind, I dove into Tom Peters latest, The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence. Rest assured, I will not go into all 163 items, but will note a few that caught my attention on first glance, as follows:

Master the fine art of…nudgery. Tom is referring to ideas from a few books, including Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, which is also a favorite of mine.  Tom suggests that the toughest part of this is seeing “nudging” as an ATTITUDE and not a one-off program.  It demands commitment and integration.  And, in nudging readers to be nudgers – he emphasizes the need to be amenable to the idea of rapid experimentation/failure, quick implementation/roll out and to be able to realize that this does not require a “power position.” Nudgery is mainly the invisible stuff that is under most people’s radar.  All of which is true with sustainability.

As sustainable thinkers, we need to change our entire attitude, be fine with failure, be open to quick turn-arounds and embrace the “under the radar” work.  In most cases, the little things we can do in improving energy efficiencies, developing new packaging, or forging partnerships with community organizations etc., are not-so-sexy to the public eye or media.  But, we should be in it for the long-term shift!  So, as Tom might say: deal with it,… and start helping to nudge opportunities in a sustainable direction.

Build Green Now.  (No Excuses). The sustainability implication is obvious, but the bigger point is that this idea is in Tom’s book at all.   Consider this: it is a strong recommendation from a guy who has been a highly regarded, much lauded management “guru” for years and years. He’s not some credibility-challenged, “treehugger “emerging just as green goes trendy.  He’s been around a while and recognizes this as a smart business move.   As he puts it, “Green buildings are…NOT…controversial.”

As a savvy business person today there is no excuse for not being a green building advocate-practitioner.  While initial investments in green building may be significant, as Tom notes, those costs are recovered quickly and deliver unexpected bonuses in employee productivity, and more.  Even the most conventional of thinkers in the most traditional of businesses or industries should understand that and incorporate green building into his/her future decisions.  (Take a look at Walmart, for an example of an uber-traditional company in an uber-traditional industry that saw the huge cost savings in energy efficiency.)  Even if you think “green” on the broader scale is a bunch of hooey, energy efficiency and sustainable buildings boil down to cost savings over the long haul and are simply smart business.

Zen and the Art of Achieving Change Where It Already Exists. Tom quotes Bob Stone here: “I look for things that went right and try to build on them.” The sustainability implications lie within Tom’s summarizing words (which I’ve paraphrased) – to comb the underground for those who are creating and living tomorrow today, to anoint them as the public voice for the new corporate ways-to-be, to encourage others to learn from their ways of doing things and to applaud/award the first round of voices that come from the early “live tomorrow today” voices (and keep it going…).

This reminds me of Appreciative Inquiry, an organizational management approach based on the idea that new ideas or problem solutions come, most productively, from a look at what is already working.   Moving to sustainability is not reinventing the wheel or pointing out all the awful mistakes businesses have made in the past.  Rather, it is the next step on a continuum of smart business moves.  Given there are a lot of companies that have bits of under-the-radar sustainability to thank for their successes already, there is much good from which to start.  Just as with paradigm-shifting cultural/business “movements” of the past, the sustainable pursuit involves the further fine tuning of your business practices, based on current conditions and market demands.  There is Zen in flowing into those next sustainable steps.

***

In my opinion, Tom offers powerful tidbits of wisdom in The Little BIG Things that make excellence in management today sound a lot like super smart, sustainable thinking.  Given his example, why not revisit your corporation’s own treasure trove of wisdom, as well?  I bet you’ll see sustainable practices hidden within.

Proceed from there.

Kimpton offers specially prepared dinners for its most frequent guests, including one recently in Manhattan for top-tier female travelers. The chain has also introduced weekend trips like the one in October for its most frequent travelers and their spouses, in Oregon’s wine country. The wine-tasting getaway came with meals made by Kimpton chefs, and a balloon ride over the vineyards.

Paul Seus, a management consultant from Chicago who attended the Oregon weekend with his wife, Amy, said Kimpton’s special treatment cemented his loyalty.

“Kimpton called me and asked me if I would like to do something special,” Mr. Seus said.
“I’ve traveled my whole career, and I used to stay, well, wherever,” he said. “Now I’ll only stay somewhere else if I can’t find one of their hotels.”

As Olson’s piece shows, a lot of other hotel chains are now serving the higher standards they learned about by doing female consumer research.  Two things worth noting:

1) Being guided and inspired by women does NOT have to mean the result is pink, girly and alienating (if not horrifying) for men.

2) Today’s men are starting to “get it,” in that they are more aware that women’s higher standards raise the bar for the service they (men) receive as well.  So, of course, men are noticing and learning to expect such treatment too.

What does this mean for your industry?

Look out “marketing to women” laggards, now you risk losing the guys too.

The separate trends I see now combining to cause that shift include:

1) A new perspective on gender, and how it influences consumer behavior.

2) The evolution of business practices from shareholder-centered/traditional/linear to more stakeholder-centered/socially responsible/holistic.

3) Personal values being more integrated between our consumer and professional perspectives.

***

Today’s consumers are forcing these issues and in the process building bridges from old, “spindly,” ineffective ways of doing business to new, customer-centric, steel-girded ways of serving consumers.  Below are the opportunities for marketers therein:

The bridging opportunity in trend #1: More and more men are allowing for their perhaps more “feminine” sensibilities to influence their purchases.  In the meantime, many a brand’s marketing to women efforts – which should now be appealing to the highest consumer standard – are instead stuck in the old days, creating a bit of a pink ghetto.  The now cliched “for women” ways are for the most part unnecessary and may well turn off the men who are buying a broader array of products than ever before. The new approach- and the one that savvy brands need to take – is to treat the “feminine sensibilities” as your marker.  Be guided and inspired by what women expect, and you’ll serve everyone with more relevance. No gender about it.

The bridging opportunity in trend #2: As of fall 2008, it became official – the sole corporate pursuit of profits with responsibility only to shareholders backfired. It’s simply not sustainable to think and do business in such an old, linear way.  Businesses that have traditionally measured success on those terms  are being called to task by consumers.  Today stakeholders (not solely shareholders), in their many shapes, sizes and levels of interaction with a company are key to long term growth.  A company’s decisions must serve that entire “membership” of people to be strong. By bridging to the new stakeholder framework, profits are but one part of a triple business bottom line that includes people and planet.

The bridging opportunity for trend #3: The old way of doing business has often meant that humans dropped their personal values at the office door each morning.  But, today’s values-based buyer has changed all that.  He or she can see under the radar and behind that door.  Consumers are driving businesses to more socially responsible practices that cross the bridge to a new place: where as consumers and employees, human beings can live and work in tune with their personal values.

Though these trends were gaining momentum individually before, if slowly, perhaps it took the economic downturn of Fall 2008 for businesses for them to combine. Companies were forced to look inward and realize those bridges needed serious tending.  I believe consumers have been anxiously waiting to walk over them.

Note: If corporate social responsibility is on your radar, I am posting some great links on that topic via twitter these days, so feel free to follow me: @AndreaLearned

Tomorrow I begin a weeklong residency for a master’s program** in which I will be digging into something I’ve seen in that women’s market periphery for a while now: corporate social responsibility.  I intend to apply my years of experience with gender in marketing to something that should no longer be in the periphery for any corporation.

What are women known to do in the way they experience the world and their daily lives, as well as in the ways they buy?  They think holistically, or “it all matters.”  Why do consumers now demand corporate social responsibility from the brands they buy?  It all matters.

No longer can a brand say they are serving consumers well with one hand while they mistreat employees with the other.  Gone are the days when environmental practices can be greenwashed, because consumers are looking at brands with magnifying glasses.  And, go ahead and say goodbye to doing the right thing in pubic relations terms while hiding corrupt practices behind the curtain.  She sees you.

And, what “she” is doing with that information influences how she buys.  But, in the twenty-first century, her ways are also starting to rub off a bit more on how men buy.  So yes,  women continue to be the leading indicators of values-based buying behavior, but they are only the leaders – there’s a whole other group of consumers who are following that lead and we can’t neglect them!  Part of my work in this next two years will be to explore the nuances, the periphery, of gendered consumer behavior as it relates to brands and their corporate social responsibility.  I suspect that consumer values take priority over consumer gender differences in the new marketplace.  But, my research will look at how marketers in socially responsible businesses can integrate the greater subtleties of gendered buying behavior to serve shared consumer values with that much more relevance.

I firmly believe the brands that pay attention and work toward more socially responsible practices will win with women, and men, for the much longer term.  Keep reading my posts and articles along the way, and you’ll share in my learning process.

*If you’d like to see a copy of this newsletter, but prefer not to subscribe, email me and I’ll forward it to you.( andrea @ learnedonwomen dot com)

**Please note: my twitter presence and blog posts will be on the “light” side this next week due to this residency.

A few of the things I say:

The key point I took from the survey included in the [Time magazine] article was that consumers are starting to look at provenance: where the products come from and how they get to the marketplace.

The consuming public has really come a long way.  It was not that long ago that corporate responsibility was defined primarily in terms of the stockholder, and it was focused mainly on increasing profits.  These days, however, consumers have forced the corporate collective hand and now expect the brands they buy to reflect a triple bottom line of responsibility to profit, planet and people.

***

I imagine many of you have seen the truth in this lately.  If consumers “rise up,” then marketers have to, as well.

But, help is on its way – and actually has always been there, patiently waiting for us to notice it: the answer is in personal relationship books.  The longer I am in this field, the more I see these resources as a key to gender-focused marketing of any sort.  The caveat? Reading them may make some people a little uncomfortable, as they perhaps see a bit of their personal lives reflected.

But, here’s why it may be worth the discomfort. In the relationship books I’ve used in my research, and no matter when they were published, I have found some big “a-has” for helping clients and audiences to absorb marketing to women truths.  Consider the following:

You Just Don’t Understand:Women and Men in Conversation (orig. 1990) by Deborah Tannen.  Just one insight from this, now classic sociolingual work: that men tend to communicate around status/positioning and women tend to seek connection in their conversations.  If reading this book was the only guidance you had, you’d have learned something core to gender differences that truly apply in marketing.

How Can I Get Through To You: Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women (2002) by Terrence Real.  One insight that may seem unrelated to marketing to women, but… think again: “For men to deliberately cross over into the despised realm of the ‘feminine’ defies the structure of patriarchy itself.  When women cross the line into the ‘masculine’ domain, they reappropriate qualities the world holds in high regard.” Now THAT sheds new light on why the field of marketing to women has itself become a pink ghetto.

The New Male Female Relationship (orig. 1983) by Herb Goldberg. Just one insight that, again, has marketing to women implications: “A woman, therefore, can be just as macho as a man, and, by the same token, a man can have feminine defenses.  It is the effect of these masculine and feminine defenses that produces interpersonal problems and distortions in awareness, not a person’s gender.” To avoid “thinking pink,” marketers, too, should take gender out of it  – and consider the consumer’s masculine/feminine characteristics rather than their sex.

Finally, it was reading an Irish Times article about Himglish and Femalese: Why Women Don’t Get Why Men Don’t Get Them, the soon-to-publish book by UK author Jean Hannah Edelstein, that compelled me to write this post.  Her younger generation and non-American perspective offers yet another angle for marketers to consider as they communicate with today’s men and women. As the reviewer wrote, based on her reading of the book: Successful women use Himglish. They don’t beat around the bush. They say what needs to be done, end of story. Successful men, on the other hand, are adept at Femalese, even with each other. The marketing implications here? That it is worth learning the other’s language – both for communicating with colleagues and for working together to develop messaging with a particular gender focus (or deciding if a particular gender focus is even necessary).

Now, before you go rolling your eyes, here’s my final pitch:  In all cases, your marketing to women study must include the usual books, speakers, consultants, white papers and research.  Also, you will be ever-so much wiser to also include your own direct interaction/communication with your customers via some sort of panel or advisory board.  And, the third piece?  Stepping back from the task at hand a bit further to understand what may make the entire situation “tick.”

Human behavior and gendered roles may well be getting in the way of your team doing its best work in speaking to and serving women.  So, be brave – and start reading them at work!*  Relationship books include “secrets” that will give your brand the advantage in leveraging marketing gender intelligence.

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*If that is just not going to happen at your office, let me know.  I can brief your team on all I’ve learned that can be applied to your fresh marketing perspective.