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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Get Four
|  | FEBRUARY 11, 2005
By Diane Brady and Michelle Conlin Fiorina's Lesson for Female CEOs [Page 2 of 2] CONTRADICTORY TRENDS. Yet, operational exposure is especially critical when you're a hotshot being handed a tough turnaround situation, as Fiorina and many other women often are. Add to this the sense that, in one former CEO's words, "as a woman in charge, you often feel utterly alone." Following the money also tells the story: In a world where scorecards are made of paychecks, a tiny 5.2% of women are among the top-earning corporate officers. When it comes to promoting women, two seemingly contradictory trends are at work. On the one hand, companies are often reluctant to put women in challenging senior positions for fear that they might fail in full public view. Yet, with so few women in the senior ranks, companies also have a tendency to pluck the hard-charging stars and plop them squarely in the spotlight before they're ready. EXPERIENCE GAP. That's the best explanation of why the average age of female CEOs in the Standard & Poor's ExecuComp database, which tracks more than 1,500 small- to large-cap U.S. companies, is 51.5, vs. 55.4 for men. (The gap was even larger before Fiorina joined the tiny club of women top execs.) Many are sharp, accomplished CEOs with celebrity status. But when running a major corporation, four years of experience can make a big difference. Consider the track record of Mattel's (MAT ) Jill Barad. Like Fiorina, she was a crackerjack marketer and was credited with boosting the Barbie brand. But she turned out to be a poor team builder and financial naif who overpromised to investors. In her three years as CEO, Mattel went from a well-run, profitable toy giant to chaotic, money-loser. Earnings tumbled. And Barad was finally forced to quit in February, 2000. Long-time board member William D. Rollnick called her "the best marketing person I've ever met." But she had little grasp of the other functions critical to her job, such as manufacturing, finance, and building a team of effective leaders at the top. EXECS IN SYNC. Fiorina might have studied another, more positive lesson from Avon's Andrea Jung. She's closely teamed with Susan Kropf, Avon's president and chief operating officer, who has extensive operating experience. Jung is the leader in marketing, strategy, and vision. Kropf is the master at execution and operations. The duo are remarkably in sync when it comes to what needs to be done at Avon -- to the point, Jung notes, where "we actually finish each others' sentences." That said, Jung argues that her 15 months as chief operating officer -- a job the board gave her in 1997 because members felt she wasn't ready for the top job -- were critical in preparing her for the CEO role. "It gave me greater scope as a CEO and a better appreciation of all the parts and linkages of this business to make the right decisions," she says. Promoting the marketing star before testing her in that role was out of the question, adds former CEO James Preston. "She had not had an operating position," he adds. "That's a different set of skills." For Fiorina, a stronger footing in operations might have helped to raise her performance on the job at HP. Instead, for years, she steadfastly refused to even consider hiring a COO, questioning why her critics wanted her to have one while male CEOs at other big tech companies didn't. It was a convenient defense. Unfortunately it belied the evidence: HP had recurrent operational problems, and those other companies did not. We may never know the extent to which she was denied the opportunity to learn operations -- or failed to recognize the need to broaden her experience before reaching so quickly and dramatically the top. But her fall, like that of all fallen corporate leaders, ultimately lay in her inability to effectively manage the myriad factors that have an impact on the bottom line.
 With Peter Burrows in Silicon Valley Brady is a senior writer, and Conlin is an associate editor for BusinessWeek in New York Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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