I read an interesting article on the weekend about General Motor’s CEO Mary Barra. Her appointment as the company’s first female CEO in January this year earned her the ranking of #7 on the Forbes annual 100 Most Powerful Women list. It also attracted a surprising amount of skepticism from other women.
No one in their right mind would doubt Barra’s capability. Given her track record of success and industry knowledge this was clearly a merit-based appointment. However the timing of the appointment appears to be the point of contention. Two weeks after Barra stepped into the role, the safety issues and associated legal claims that have plagued the company since, emerged. A coincidence or bad luck with the timing?
I believe it’s referred to as a hospital pass in many football codes. It’s not the first time that an organisation has been accused of appointing female CEOs, more often than not the first, when the going has gotten far too tough. IBM’s Virginia Rometty is another assumed to have been elevated to inherit the failures of her predecessor but after two years at the helm she is earning kudos for her leadership.
In my experience women are great fixers and are mostly better than men in times of crisis. We are actually in the job to do the job, not for the glory of the title or the access it provides to power. We want our companies to be successful for all the right reasons and perhaps appointments like Barra’s and Rometty’s are finally recognition by Boards that it is going to take a smart woman to make the tough decisions as some of the greatest challenges in our lifetime loom large in many businesses.
I network with a number of female CEOs who were catapulted into the top job to “save the company”. In almost every case they replaced a man. My own 30-year media career is full of promotions that involved tough decision-making on day one. I have had to downsize, cut costs, reduce head count and close business units as the reward for a step forward in my career. It’s why I am astounded whenever I read that women aren’t tough enough for the top job. Please.
The thing is though that while other women may be alarmed that women like Barra and many in my networking circle have been set up to fail, the women themselves don’t see it that way. The female CEOs in those hairy positions aren’t complaining about the job ahead of them. They are getting on with it.
It may take a crisis to get another woman into the most senior role in a business but that’s still preferable to the door slammed shut in her face. Women may try and fail, as far too many men before us have, but at least we increasingly are getting the chance to try.