Tag Archives: Silicon Valley

Uncategorized

On the McKinsey leadership model for women

Leave a comment

This summer in Silicon Valley saw a lot of conversation about the quality of visibility women now enjoy here.

While many women and the companies they lead or help to manage work invisibly to produce — and thus contribute to the community at large — they do so without calling attention to their gender.  Some prefer it that way and mark it as a sign that women are finally integrating seamlessly into management ranks.  I tend to be one of these people, and most of the women I respect are.

Then we have the segment of women at work who want to flex muscle in the limelight.  This ranges from provocative dress to provocative behavior.  On the way to workplace equality, they have taken a detour.  In the worst misplaced person scenarios, they get used by the folks I call the master bloggers.  These are the boys who have achieved some success and even more of a following — thanks mainly to what I believe is their desire to act out and outrageously, validating the geek myth of socially inept males finally getting some attention.  We are patiently waiting for this to get old.

Meanwhile, THE MCKINSEY QUARTERLY featured an article on how talented women thrive in business, based on research the consulting firm just completed.  As I read the article, it struck me that the leadership model McKinsey articulates — based upon interviewing women in leadership positions — is something every organization should consider for their executive teams. It's also something every person should consider as he or she shapes a career.

McKinsey calls it "centered leadership" and identifies five dimensions:  meaning, managing energy, positive framing, connecting and engaging.

Of great interest, too, are what McKinsey calls the pre-conditions for success of the centered leadership model:  intelligence, tolerance for change, desire to lead and communication skills.

What's significant for women here?  As we have injected gender balance into management ranks, we also have delivered a more useful, productive approach to leading people.  We are adding depth.  This is not just about the female perspective — this is about adding value via skills developed in the background, out of the limelight, from time served in the ranks and lessons learned through sharp powers of observation.

The McKinsey centered leadership model is something we in Silicon Valley must study as we build our companies from the ground up.  Startups and small businesses everywhere have more leverage than ever to improve the model for running companies.  I hope Silicon Valley will become headquarters for centered leadership.  And Ground Zero for responsible communication via the social media invented here. 

Uncategorized

Cuil. Too cool for words?

Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb wrote a post last night about the big coverage of Cuil, thought and/or hoped by many to be the Google killer.

The MacManus post muses about the coverage of the new search engine and the major criticism that followed its debut.  A lot of expectations mismanaged.  So MacManus cites the echo chamber and the hyperbole that stokes it.

But let’s not blame the PR people, people.  Yes, I find much of the language, elitist and cozy, too much to bear.  But somebody’s swallowing it.  And it’s not just the TechCrunches and the Valleywags.  It’s our highly trained, self-proclaimed highly professional mainstream media.

Here are the suggestions I just shared in a comment to MacManus’s post.  Let’s start stripping away the hype.  Ultimately, it’s the best thing for all concerned.

Lots of insightful comments on your interesting post.  This is not a criticism of Cuil, either.  Time will tell.

I do have comments to the press, bloggers, all the new media types “covering” startups, Silicon Valley, tech money:

1  You are part of the echo chamber.  Think before you write.  Choose your words carefully and wisely.

2  Talk with the potential enemies as well as the pals and coterie of the founders and the VCs.

3  Recognize that not everyone tells the truth.

4  If you don’t understand the technology, find someone neutral who does.  Neutral = doesn’t have an ax to grind.

5  In comparing products, rely on your own instincts and that of a true expert to unearth key points of differentiation between products and services.  Don’t just reprint what you’re being fed.

6  Start looking for the real stories of Silicon Valley.  Yes, you’re busy.  But when you take on the responsibility of distilling facts for others, you take on the responsibility to dig.  If you don’t have the work ethic for this role, find something else to do.  We’re sick of the hyperbole.  The real stories of Silicon Valley are not that far beneath the superficial surface on which you skate.

This is coming to you from someone who helps to craft and tell the stories of startups and corporations that are in this for the joy as well as the payoff — and who wouldn’t dream of yanking your chains.  Wake up.

Uncategorized

Girl Geeks: Watch out for the profiteers

My morning scan of tech blogs revealed a post on Valleywag about the woman-owned porn company's sponsorship of the upcoming Girl Geek Dinner here in San Francisco.  I'm not surprised that the scampy Gawker property supports the dinner's tacky sponsor.  [side note:  co-sponsor Facebook, where are you?]

I am surprised, however, that Valleywag is letting the porn company founder get away with this gem: "I'm a tech vet, and I used
to be very similar — you want to strip your sexuality and just live in
your brain, and be a talented, smart individual so you can compete in a
male-dominated space. You become sexless — but why can't I be both? Why
can't I be beautiful and sexy and be smart?"

This is specious logic at best, and I think the women of Silicon Valley know it.  Heck, women around the world know it.  At least those who have been in the workforce for a while.

Since when did it become necessary for any woman to demonstrate her femininity by stripping off her clothes in public for pay?  This company may be trying to position itself as an agent for artists [their word for the women on their site], but we all know what they're selling.  And will the so-called artists achieve the same level of profit as the VCs and the founders for permitting themselves to be exploited?

Girl Geek Dinners, you're being used.  Just like the women who are being told that an element of liberation is using your power over your body to expose it for pay.  Go ahead and accept this company's sponsorship and convince yourselves that whatever any woman does as an entrepreneur is OK.  Go ahead and roll down that slippery slope.  You won't like what you find at the bottom.

By the way.  The above quote also made me laugh.  I've been fighting — and winning — the argument that a woman can be beautiful and sexy and smart for years.  I had hoped it would be over by now, by virtue of my own maturity and what I figured would happen in society as well. 

Never in my wildest nightmares did I expect that I would read what I did this morning from a person of my own gender.  But, I guess we have come a long way.  Women now get to live and smirk on the dark side of a free market, too. 

I don't think this is what Susan B Anthony and Eleanor Roosevelt had in mind.

Uncategorized

Expert analysis: When will it meet the people?

1 Comment

Silicon Valley is blessed with brilliance.  Which means we are blessed with opinions that grow exponentially with each new technology and trend.

Right now, the opinions about what constitutes data portability are swirling around in the air here.  Which I applaud.  But I'm having trouble with the fact that the cloud doesn't include anyone representing the people beyond the Valley.

Last evening, I spent some time reading the blogs of some of our most insightful journalists and commentators.  Looking for Joe User in their comments.  From podcasts to blogs to tweets, I'm still not finding Joe User front and center.

I am finding a lot of folks who think they know Joe User and are telling us what he wants.  But they might be confusing this with what they think he needs.  It is possible that these folks know something we don't.  I have begun asking them to share this knowledge with the rest of us [comment 22].  If that's not the case, I'm not going to rest until I understand whether regular users around the world want one sign-in, or the ability to scrape data from one network and port it to another, or simply the ability to share data on a selective basis via tools that work within acceptable bounds for the social networks.

Until then, I'm afraid I'm going to have to view the swirling opinions as circular chatter rolling around the Silicon Echo Chamber.  And to think about ways to understand whether openness and portability are as important to Joe User as his privacy.

Here's the thing we all must keep in front of us:  we may know best, but we must begin consulting the user and the user experience in testing ourselves.  Especially since it was Silicon Valley brilliance that brought them to the party in the first place.  We changed the rules.  Now we must play by them, too.

Uncategorized

Transcending coarseness

Leave a comment

It's been a few weeks since my last post.  Work and life have made it pretty impossible to do any thinking, much less writing, about the path to the beautiful brand.

Tonight I can take a moment, at least, to reflect on what I've absorbed in these weeks.

I'm thinking about launching another blog, devoted just to the goings-on here at Technology Mission Control.  The Bay Area.  Silicon Valley.

For example.  Never have I seen so many brilliant people resort to skulduggery just out of sheer competitiveness.  We've got some things going on here that rival the Kremlin
under Brezhnev.  And this is on a volunteer project! 

The only thing I've been able to tell myself is, when I was the same age as these engineers [in their twenties], I had the benefit of reporting to a bunch of what were perceived as old guys who had a heart attack if there was a typo in a slide.  That was a major professional slip — almost an insult to the audience. 

Lucky devils.  They're out on some golf course.

Well, they deserve it.  They taught us a lot.  I learned that even the little things warrant your respect.  Not to mention the big things, like other people.  I cannot imagine what they would be saying about what gets posted on blogs and said in Twitter tweets by people about people with whom they say they're collaborating.

Fairness is a really big deal to me, and I'm getting some wacky emails about the upcoming election.  Which I can address in this blog.  It is about the American brand, afterall. 

I fully expected to see some really funny stuff flying around about the three senators chasing the Presidency.  I didn't expect to learn what names people are willing to call them, just out of fear of the unknown.  How can we have a woman?  How could we have an African American?  How could we have an aging man who might have post traumatic stress disorder?  Forget the sexism and the ageism — that stuff is mild compared to what's going around that is racist.  And the worst part is, when the senders are called on it, they don't even realize they're doing it.  It's unbelievable.

So, on to transcendence.  Out, damned coarseness.  Starting with myself.  Listening.  Breathing deeply, trying not to shock or be shocked.  Hypnosis?  Slow food?  Yoga is too distracting.  Watching an old movie.  Looking at the Golden Gate bridge.  Learning.

One step at a time.