Perry Hewitt
Are effective school behaviors harming women in the workplace?
Do Women Need to Realize that Work Isn't School? Whitney Johnson and Tara Mohr point out in HBR that behaviors that enable young women to excel in school may serve them less well in the workplace. Johnson and Mohr argue, and I agree, that all employees and particularly women need to become more comfortable with behaviors like questioning authority, embracing improvisation, and engaging in self-promotion. (N.B. Approach the last of these far more carefully than your male peers.)
I'd add another important item to their list — learn how to disagree, and how to get over it. Engaging in conflict in the workplace and managing it toward resolution is part of the job, particularly in the fluid modern workplace where the need for constant adaptation can cause friction.
While school doesn't always prepare us for that conflict, athletics may. Anecdotally, I've observed that many women who can tolerate workplace conflict well have participated in team sports. We know athletics correlate with career success; a 2002 study found that 82% of women in executive-level jobs had played organized sports in middle, high or post-secondary school. Discipline and focus are two obvious benefits, but I'd argue that team sports in particular offer participants experience in managing conflict and achieving resolution.
Image credit: U.S. National Archives: Department of Labor poster 1941-1945
athletics career HBR strategy women
COVID as catalyst for digital transformation
By Perry Hewitt
It's both hard and easy to believe that the sentiment "Digital will become the core" still attracts a lot of attention in 2020. It's hard to believe: Isn't that the pivot we have all been making for more than twenty years? But it's easy to believe when we experience interactions with enterprise companies that are mired in literal paperwork and cumbersome processes that clearly require a digital...
AI summit takeaways
For several years I've served on the business council for Glasswing, an early stage venture firm focused on AI and frontier tech. Working with Glasswing has broadened my knowledge of where AI is currently viable, particularly its application under the hood in marketing technology. Three takeaways from their recent annual summit at MIT Media Lab: AI ethics are top of mind everywhere. Forget...
Talking digital problem solving with Postlight
Fun to do this Track Changes podcast with the Postlight team. In this episode, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade mock a bunch of CxO titles, and then dig in on the hard slog of marketing knowledge and learning. In the end, I make the case for closer collaboration between marketing and product teams.
New from Pew: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans
12December
Almost every event I've been to lately — whether it's within the marketing, technology, or social entrepreneurship communities — raises both the inevitability and the risks of artificial intelligence. There's a lot of excitement and trepidation, and early consideration about where the responsibility for ethical AI resides. A new Pew report captures some of those...
By Perry Hewitt January 14, 2013
Shuffling deck chairs in European football
Survival traits for 2013: agility and adaptation
Translating startup-speak for the corporate buyer
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