When Staff Peek in Each Others Address Books

At a large secondary school in Krommenie, NETSHEILA is working with a selected group of teachers to start a process that will create a culture of cooperation in the school.

We have only just begun and already the results indicate that bringing people together who have a passion for what they do and a passion for why they do it, supports them in being successful. The school has over 1700 staff members. It is unlikely that a metalwork teacher and a Dutch language teacher would sit at a table together. Even more unlikely is for them to have an intimate conversation about projects they are working on that need resources beyond what they currently have. And because they had exactly that conversation together, the metalwork teacher discovered that the father of the Dutch teacher owns a metal workshop in a nearby town and could be one of the people he needs for his larger-than-life project.

It is not even a coincidence that, when you put four or five people around a table, one of them has resources another may need. Most people have a vast network of friends, relations, and acquaintances that they have known since childhood. They have hobbies. They have connections through their faith, their sport. In a NETSHEILA network training our goal is to make use of the fact that people are social animals. We focus on organizations that have big commitments. With the staff, we look at the social capital available in the room, the people resources. NETSHEILA advocates bringing the outside world into the work environment. Rather than taking "life" (family life, private life) out of "work" we operate on the assumption that when people in the community are connected, the community works.

In the next phase of the project we will create strategies to implement the ideas people have, using the social capital resources available in the school. Imagine, in the example above, that the metalwork teacher gets in touch with the Dutch teacher's father and they start working together on a project that involves the students. If you are worried that a person's private resources are being used by the school and that that is not quite right, consider the following scenarios. Will the Dutch teacher be upset that her personal resources are being exploited for the school? I doubt it, and I can imagine that at home a new conversation can start about the school and how it is working with the community. Will the father be upset his daughter talked about him at school? Given that he has now been given an opportunity to find new staff and support the teacher to train them while they are still in school, I doubt that too. Should the school be upset that people are bringing in outside resources - both human resources (the father) and economic resources (his workshop)? Hardly: the school can use all the support it can get in fulfilling its social duty to educate young people an give them experiences now, in a protected environment, that will be useful to them when they enter the next phase of their lives.

A NETSHEILA workshop interrupts the "work-life" dichotomy by giving permission to participants to see their friends and family as social actors that have meaning beyond the bounds of their personal relationship. Without fail people who know each other, and people who don't know each other, begin to ask the questions. Why they do this is simple: they are committed people and they know they can't do everything alone. They grasp with both hands the opportunity to work with colleagues to have everyone be successful. A school is up to big things and when the staff works together, the resources in the form of social capital are endless.

The researcher Granovetter coined the terms "weak ties" and "strong ties" to distinguish the linkages between people. Strong ties are what you find in families. People have each others back. People know each other. In poor communities, people are often tightly bonded. What they miss is ties to other groups. In areas or zones of high unemployment, few people know people with jobs, so they can't ask friends for a job and they have few people to mirror or learn their own work-related behavior. "Weak ties" are the links to other communities, other people. In the case of the metalwork teacher and the Dutch teacher, the Dutch teacher was a weak link to the metalwork workshop and all the resources that entails in the nearby town. The teachers at this school have renamed the terms "Open Links" and "Closed Links" as they associate "weak" with "inadequate". A justified choice.

Metal statue by Annemie de Wit honoring the children's book series Kameleon, written by Hotze de Roos in Krommenie

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Lin McDevitt-Pugh MBA is management consultant with a particular expertise in involving networks in your organizational goals. The intention is to support big goals by bringing in fun, ease and connectivity. Call +31 6 150 48468 to see how NETSHEILA can support your organization. We work in Dutch-language and English-language environments.

Only 40% of the New Women Commissioners in Dutch Listed Companies are Dutch

8 September 2012. An article in the Financial Daily (Financiële Dagblad) and other media this weekend quotes the most recent findings of the Dutch Female Board Index: in 2012 one in four of the newly appointed Supervisors- the top management layer in a company - is female. In 2011 only 14.3% of the new appointees were women. Two months ago in this blog, you read that the talent pipeline that should lead to more women in top positions in major Dutch companies is too limited. There are not enough women in the sub-top to be promoted to the top, according to new research by Dutch daily newspaper the Volkskrant.

In 2016 companies by law must have at least 30% women in their top management and supervisory or executive boards. In 2011 the numbers did not increase from the 20% of women at the top in the preceding year. EU commissioner Viviane Reding published this week a concept proposal that will demand that by 2020, 40% of all executive boards of large companies be women. Contrary to the Dutch, who only require companies to publish the percentages and are not sanctioned in any way if they do not meet the 30% mark, Reding is considering several kinds of sanctions, including fines or exclusion from government contracts.

At present, 13.3% of all Supervisors in the 472 companies listed on the Dutch stock exchange are women. Half of these companies have no women on their executive boards.

In July we quoted findings from the Volkskrant that in all, 7592 women work in management positions in the 35 companies in the Volkskrant research. Many work in an international post and are not Dutch nationals. Prof. dr Mijntje Lückerath-Rovers (Nijenrode University) runs the Female Board Index and suggests that the reason more women are being invited onto executive boards has to do with recent changes in how companies see the role of the boards. No longer is 'board experience' a primary motivator - this was what kept the old boys network standing - but specific knowledge is now more valued. Women are expert in 'doing it right' and having specific knowledge.

In my conversations with leading women, and listening to powerful speakers like Claudia Woody of IBM, there is no reason why more Dutch women cannot take their place on the boards of listed companies in the Netherlands. There is no reason why women cannot powerfully claim a career. There is no reason to conform to the very strong ethos in the Netherlands that women should work hard, be nice, and hope that others notice their value. Women do work well. In the conversations women bring up their observation that they are better at keeping to budget than men, they are better at keeping projects within the time limits. And as Claudia Woody says, they are better at sitting behind their computers while men stand at the water fountain and talk with their colleagues about their ideas and ambitions.

Women do not have to change a single thing about themselves. The architecture of the company does however need to change. Value must be put on specific and grounded knowledge. This is the next frontier for women to challenge and succeed at. That, and women being able to find each other, to propose good women when a supervisory position becomes available.

There are a number of organizations and individuals doing very good work to create the change that needs to happen.

One is L-Women at Work. They organize an annual conference about advancing the careers of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women across Europe. They are developing the business case for L-Women in the business environment and, looking at the female commissioners in the Netherlands, lesbians are well represented.  The next conference is in Amsterdam on 9 November 2012.

Hanske Plenge manages a Linked In group entitled vrouwelijke commissarissen en toezichthouders and offers coaching and meetings for women wanting to enter this field. Her workshop "Meer Kijk op Toezicht" (Getting a Good Grip on Supervision) regularly sells out - and she offers them a number of times a year.

De Beuk, organization advisers, offer training for women under their Leading Ladies program.

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Lin McDevitt-Pugh

Lin McDevitt-Pugh is Director of NETSHEILA and is specialized in building network expertise in organizations. In October 2012 she will provide a training for women who want to get into top management layers with organization advice company De Beuk. Call her on +31 6 150 48468 to discuss how your organization can benefit from better networking strategies.

Quotas the “only way to increase number of women in boardrooms” say women’s business networks

From the collection at Aletta, Institute for Women's History

Compulsory quotas for women in the boardroom are a key way forward, according to a new poll of influential women’s business networks, carried out by leadership consultancy, White Water Group. 

The research presents a sobering view from the ground a year after the government-commissioned Davies report concluded that companies needed to achieve 25 per cent of women on UK boards by 2015 or face compulsory government measures. The poll asked leaders of 30 corporate women’s networks, representing well over 10,000 women at some of Britain’s top firms, what had changed since the Davies report was released in February last year revealed that: Two thirds had seen no change in the opportunities for women in their companies, with 80 per cent of those surveyed saying that they think that it will take up to 20 years to reach 30 per cent of women in the executive suite with a further 20 per cent thinking it will take even longer.

However 67 per cent believed that the introduction of quotas will be needed to achieve the target of 25 per cent of women in senior positions by 2015.

The UK Prime Minister David Cameron wants to “accelerate” the increase in women on the board of top UK firms, preferably without resorting to quotas. This survey suggests that women in management don’t believe that self-regulation will be enough.

Averil Leimon, co-founder of White Water Group, said: “Statistically the proportion of female directors at FTSE 100 companies rose from 12.5 per cent in 2010 to 15 per cent in 2011, but the women we spoke to don’t feel that change is going fast enough or far enough. Quotas may be a blunt instrument but they may be inevitable.

“We don’t believe, however, that compulsion will be enough to create change and reap the benefits of a more diverse management team. Our survey revealed that many women want more visible involvement from men, who will support the clear business case for more women in senior posts. This means mentoring women, investing in coaching and encouraging more female role models, as well as improving fairness in work practices.”

“Getting this right is not just about careers for women; it’s essential for the economy as a whole. We’ve shown that businesses with equal numbers of men and women at the senior management level are more profitable than businesses with predominantly male leaders. What’s more, demographic shifts mean that by 2030 the UK will be short of 1.3m people of leadership age. More women in senior management would address both these issues.” 

In the Netherlands, only 46.5 per cent of AEX companies has at least one woman on the Executive or Supervisory Board, according to the Dutch Female Board Index 2011. Of these, 36% do not have the Dutch nationality. Prof.dr. Mijntje Lückerath-Rovers, author of the Dutch Female Board Index, believes that if reappointment was no longer automatic after 4 years, 98 per cent of listed companies could have at least one woman on its Supervisory Board by 2016. Only 68 per cent of Boards of Directors could potentially have a place for a woman, because one hundred directors have been appointed for an indefinite period. 

In the Netherlands, where parliament has declared that by 2016 30% of board members must be women (no sanctions for failure to meet the deadline) a number of initiatives have been taken to promote women in boards. The LinkedIn group vrouwelijke commissarissen en toezichthouders
is collecting an overview of offerings. Most offerings are not specifically for women. Two are:

• The Vrouw en Toezicht-dag (Governance University and FZ Female Leaders and E&Y) June 5th. See the flyer.
• De Beuk organises workshops on women and leadership.

You can follow the White Water Women on @whtewaterwomen 

You can follow Mijntje Lückerath-Rovers on @mluckerath 

While you are at it, follow NETSHEILA on @LinMcDevittPugh

The UK material in this article is drawn from a March 2012 edition of Business Matters.

Lin McDevitt-Pugh

Lin McDevitt-Pugh MBA is a management consultant with gender expertise, project developer and manager in the public sector, private sector and civil society, based in the Netherlands. With a background in human rights and networking, she works with organizations to move the conversation from “This is not how it should be” to “This is how it will be”. Lin gets very excited when she trains organizations in working with people as creative economic resources.  By mobilizing the resources we all have at our fingertips - the people we know and the people they know - we can create unique knowledge, build trust and access the people and institutions we need to access.

Read more about Lin McDevitt-Pugh and workshops.

Read more fromNETSHEILA on women in boards in the Netherlands.

Contact: mcdevitt-pugh@netsheila.com