Yesterday Women’s Agenda editor Angela Priestley wrote an article about PepsiCo chair and CEO Indra K. Nooyi’s views on having it all. To be brief, Nooyi doesn’t think it’s possible for a CEO to have it all. Angela suggested that rather than discuss having it all, CEOs should talk about what they’ve had to sacrifice as they have climbed the corporate ladder. Given the recent news regarding my resignation, I thought I should go first.
I didn’t start my career wanting to be a CEO. The thought never entered my imagination. But from the age of 17 when I was voted in as School Captain, I have known that I would do my best work from a position of leadership. And I believe that I have.
My first child was born on my 28th birthday. The truth is that it was sooner in my marriage than I had hoped and my career was flying. I had been editor of Dolly magazine for five years and sales and profitability were at an all-time high. It was literally VIP events and parties every other night and I could work through the night in my office if I chose to. And I chose to often. It was an incredibly rewarding job and I wanted to be there all the time. That changed when I moved through the trimesters of that pregnancy and I knew that it would never be the same again once I had a baby. So I resigned from that role to allow the magazine and team to have an editor that could go and see bands at very little notice, represent them at client events each week and hang around all night with the night owls in the office.
I soon came to realise that the nature of the subsequent roles that I would take in my career, each one a step closer to the top, required a level of travel or night-time activity that would prevent me from seeing as much of my sons as I would have liked. When my youngest son was born and the eldest had just started school, I was editor of ELLE magazine and deluded enough to believe that I could ‘do it all’. Once a week I would race across the city to the school from work on an early lunch break to participate in the reading group. I was desperate to be an involved mother at the school. My son loved that I was there but it didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t at anything else that the other mothers could attend, including canteen duty. Over the years I missed out on first steps (I was on a business trip to New York), first words (I was in Milan, also on business) many special assemblies, school performances, coffee mornings with the other mothers, lunches with the other mothers, afternoon teas with the other mothers and every after-school activity ever devised. As Nooyi pointed out, your children know when you’re not there networking with the mums and they don’t like it.
Since becoming CEO in October last year I have been missing out on critical time with my young adult sons. The evenings spent in another state every week or every other week were by far the greatest sacrifice I feel I have had to make for my career to date. A few months ago I had a complete meltdown about this. My youngest son is 16 and my husband works nights at The Australian. Because we are both in media and always have been (we met as junior journalists at The Daily Mirror in 1988) Graeme has rolled with the punches and time-away requirements of my career. He understands that a media career isn’t 9-5 and I understand that about his career too. The reality of the CEO role is that visible leadership is key to success and with a Head Office in Melbourne there was no other option available to me but to regularly spend nights away from my sons. In the two-and-half years that I have been traveling to Melbourne every week or every other week, I have missed some of the highs and lows of teenage life. The highs can be dealt with via an excited phone call. The lows require personal attention. I wasn’t willing to risk it.
The reaction to my decision is probably the clearest indicator of all that my theory that the gender divide is generational may be correct. Older men without career-focused partners don’t get it at all and successful older women think I have rocks in my head: “Leave a CEO role?” Those who struggled with the concept were otherwise more likely to be childless. But everyone I talked to who is part of a two-career family understood immediately and every one of them said they would have made exactly the same decision.
Make no mistake. My career wasn’t going to die with this decision. Anyone who knows me understands that it would kill me to be in anything but a role that I can drive forward. And so I have accepted a job that will continue the trajectory. And yes it will be a big job with international travel. But it won’t be every week and I will sleep well at night knowing that I will be more available to my sons most of the time.
There is no getting around the fact that pursuing a full-time career and parenthood concurrently requires some form of sacrifice. But it’s important to choose your sacrifice carefully.