Bruce Springsteen Keynote Address - Inspiration for Women Leaders

"There is no right way of doing it, there is just doing it." Bruce Springsteen. This is one of the great lines in this keynote speech Bruce Springsteen delivered on 15 March this year at South by South West, an event with over 10,000 music bands. Now no longer available on Youtube, you can catch it on NPR.

I recommend watching this 57 minute tour of the history of rock. As every business knows, you need 'cool people' as well as numbers crunchers to really get to understand your business. After all, we are people and we live in the world. So what does this 'cool people' have to contribute to business and specifically, to women in business?

When Bruce Springsteen picked up his first guitar in 1964, Rock and Roll had a 10 year history. Transposing that to a timescale we can understand, if he had started today he would only have had the lessons learned since 2002 to build on, and to be inspired by. There were not even 10,000 guitars to go round the bands then, he quips, they would have had to borrow from each other between gigs.

My mind shot immediately to a profound statement by top manager Pamela Boumeester that I read in this week's Dutch evening newspaper, the NRC: "We are the first generation of women to work full time." Until 1956, married women in the Netherlands were not allowed to work outside the home. It wasn't until 1996 that the term "Glass Ceiling" was invented - 16 years ago. We don't have a long history to call on, or refer to, or be inspired by. We have a short history, of women taking on tasks that to their mothers and grandmothers would have been unthinkable. Like the young Hedy d'Ancona, who in the 60s was the face of the right to decide about our own bodies movement, who kept on saying yes when opportunities became available, all the time making new doors open. She became Secretary of State for Women's Affairs when that department was created. She was a force to be reckoned with in the European Parliament.She did what Bruce Springsteen's call us to do: just do it.

Many many successful strands of rock culture have emerged since 1964. Many successful strands of women in business are yet to be invented. Some have been invented, many are yet to be invented. That is the nature of change. What we will invent will be a departure from the past. We will look at what inspires us and build that into something that inspires many.

It is important for women leaders get together and reflect on what is working and what is not working. It is important to speak out. It is important we find our voice together.

In the past week I have noticed a number of opportunities for finding others to work with, to inspire each other and create the change we want. These are all in the Netherlands:

• Lesbian women are exchanging experiences together in programs like L-Women at Work.  
• De Beuk is offering masterclasses for Leading Ladies throughout the year. 
• Karin Doms and Hanske Plenge's  have a peer-mentoring event for women in boards in April.
• Stichting Yente has developed networking books  as a contribution to the success of women entrepreneurs in established and emerging economies.

Culture change is always part of the equation. Any strategy you develop to create a new future will fail if the culture of the organization is not changed too. New thinking in this area comes from CultureSync, after years of research on reflection on what makes great companies great in both a social and a business sense. The book Tribal Leadership sets out their ideas and their roadmap to change. They find that success comes from being true to shared core values. Read Dave Logan's article in this weeks' CBS News MoneyWatch to understand how a company that is not being true to its  core values can run into big trouble. Knowing and operating from our core values is key to our success.

Bruce Springsteen closes his keynote speech with the inspiring words: "Don't take yourself too seriously. And take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don't worry. Worry your ass off. Have ironclad confidence, but have doubt, it keeps you awake and alert".

By Lin McDevitt-Pugh

Lin is owner of NetSHEila, a company specialized in maximizing the value of relationships between people to companies an organizations. As a management consultant, she has been trained in delivering results in Tribal Leadership, starting from finding the core values of each person in the "tribe". She can be contacted on +31-6-150 48468 or through the contact form on www.netsheila.com. She offers online coaching services to clients outside the Netherlands, and face to face services in the Netherlands. Follow her tweets via @LinMcDevittPugh.

Women Entrepreneurs Have Fewer Connections, Says Report Published

On December 15, 2011, The Global Entreprise Monitor published the 2010 Womens Report.
It highlights why women entrepreneurs can benefit from NetSHEila's Mobilize Networks training.

The purpose of the GEM Women’s report is to examine women entrepreneurs around the world. The report seeks to understand differences in the frequency and nature of women’s entrepreneurship, and makes comparisons with men across various societies.

One chapter was devoted to networks. Networks play a multifaceted role for women entrepreneurs and business owners, helping them to gain advice, form partnerships, secure financing, access qualified management and employees, and build value chain relationships.

The analysis showed that, in many economies, women entrepreneurs and business owners tended to have smaller networks than their male counterparts. Further, only in Israel did women exhibit more diverse networks than men; women in other economies reported the same or lower network diversity.

As Figure 10 of the study shows, both women and men entrepreneurs and business owners tended to seek advice most often from those with whom they had personal relationships—their private environment.
Women were more inclined to seek guidance from family, and spouses in particular. On the other hand, men tended to draw more heavily on the advice of friends. Men were also more likely to use other network sources, such as their work environment or professional advisors.

The goal of this report is to help policy makers, practitioners and educators recognize the value women entrepreneurs bring to their societies.

GEM seeks to promote better understanding about the similarities and differences between men and women entrepreneurs, as well as among various groups of women.

This report also aims to provide guidance for efforts aimed toward equipping women with the capabilities they need to launch and run their businesses and creating environments within which their ventures can thrive. Highlighted throughout this report are descriptions of different women’s entrepreneurship programs operating in a variety of societies.
This study is evidence that the NetSHEila network training for women entrepreneurs is needed, valuable and timely. You can see some of the work we did with women entrepreneurs in Africa on the blog  Reinforcing Competitiveness of Women Entrepreneurs.

Lin McDevitt-Pugh

Lin is founder of NetSHEila, a consultancy team bringing social values to enterprise initiatives. Call us on +31 6 150 48468 or write to admin@netsheila.com to see how we can work with you.

Growing Women's Entrepreneurial Networks in Africa

At the beginning of the year I worked with intermediary organizations for women entrepreneurs in three African countries: Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda. The organizations were set up to provide services, opportunities, networks and knowledge that will contribute to women entrepreneurs having successful businesses. The goal of my small project was to equip the intermediary organizations with the knowledge and skills they need to reinforce the capacity of women entrepreneurs to operate on export markets. I asked a successful woman entrepreneur in the Netherlands what were the most important skills to have if you want to operate on the export market. The answer was simple: you have to have a good network. Know the people who handle your product, know the people who ship, know the people who import your product, know the government officials that are dealing with exports, make sure the people you work with know the rules and regulations relating to importing in their country.  It became clear what my offering would be: to teach people to utilize networks. 

The first part of the project was a big knowledge-sharing event. We had 5 women from Ethiopia and 5 from Tanzania join the Ugandan project partners in Kampala. During the three days, the Ugandan intermediary organization brought together bankers, export civil servants, university researchers, consultants and women entrepreneurs to share their knowledge with the group. We took a road trip and visited women entrepreneurs that are exporting flowers, baskets, coffee and other products, and heard from them what works and what doesn’t work. Each had a different piece of the knowledge pie, and the end result was a banquet of knowledge that we all shared.

The next part of the project was a network training: training women to recognize who is in their network, then utilizing not only their own networks but also those of their colleagues.  The women learned from each other important business principles, like competitors can be people you partner with for bigger jobs.  They learned they could negotiate on terms where negotiation previously seemed impossible. 

The final part of the project was a trade mission. The women were invited by a business in the UK to visit and discover how intermediary organizations in the UK operate. They also met potential business partners and learned about the rules and regulations governing business in the UK that extends to imports.

All of this information, knowledge and experience has led to the intermediary organizations acquiring unique knowledge that has increased their value to their members and expanded their capacity to be successful in what they do.

The three intermediary organizations in this project continue to work together, building unique knowledge and using that for the benefit of their members. Check out the project blog, find partners for international trade projects and see some brief videos relating to this project.