Preface

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), American stateswoman

I graduated in the top of my class from the number one Business Logistics program in the country. I had a 4.0 in my major when I graduated from Penn State. The biggest corporations came to recruit me. I selected an $11 + billion international conglomerate.

After 6 months of working, I was in the middle of what was then considered the world’s largest leveraged buyout in history. The company announced that there would be cut backs, a wage freeze, no promotions. That was my signal to leave. I worked too hard and was too ambitious to be slowed down so early in my career.

I moved out west to California after accepting a job with another top consumer products company in my field.

The work I did was excellent and my reviews reflected it, but I always felt like I had to fight for every promotion I got. It was a mystery to me that I could be adding so much value in my roles and yet not really getting the recognition I thought I deserved. Were my standards too high? Was I with the wrong people who just could not appreciate my special talents?

The years passed. Eventually, I became aware of a male co-worker, Louis, who was equivalent on paper to my education and experience. In my mind, I thought my education and previous work experience was perhaps stronger. It just so happened that Louis took over many of the projects I had launched. I would start the project from an idea, implement it, run it as a program, and then turn the reigns over to him. Each time this occurred, the peers I had worked with on those programs, would tell me how poor of performer Louis was.

This information blew me away because management was moving Louis pretty quickly in his career. Soon, he passed me in promotions. He truly was the golden boy.

Now I began to wonder what the hell was going on. I had been so successful in school. I had the pick of any job when I got out. My results were excellent on every project I had worked on. I surpassed goals, came in under budget, increased sales, and met timelines. I developed significant relationships in other departments that didn’t even exist before my tenure. These relationships became the basis for my projects succeeding and also won me great respect from my peer group.

I began to wonder if my slow progression was due to the fact that I was a female.

I hated the idea that this could even be an option. In my generation, we didn’t believe there were differences between female and male roles. I thought I could be a fireman or a ballerina or both. It was my choice. Now for the first time in my life, I began to consider that maybe there was some bias in the workplace.

One day, I was at the copy machine and noticed that someone had left the salary information for the entire department behind. What a find! I took this information and began to compare myself to my peers. What I discovered would change my life. There in black and white, I read that Louis was being compensated more than me by over 25 percent!

Now I had proof that we were being treated differently. I needed to leave. I realized I would never fit into this environment. I told myself, it’s them.

I went to graduate school and earned a degree in Corporate Finance. I secured a software modeling job, which was more than double my previous salary, and became my first $100,000 job.

I felt like I was back on track to becoming the cream of the crop. Soon, I would be experiencing much success and happiness.

After the first month, I was starting to have some minor complaints. Probably the worst of it all was the travel. Even though the trip was only 45 miles from my house, it took anywhere from 1 ½ to 2 hours, each way down 880 to Santa Clara from Alameda. On top of that, I was flying every week to another city… Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago.

After the second month, I was becoming pretty crabby about the travel and also my working conditions. My office space was a coffee table and a side chair in my boss’ office. My job was to model distribution networks on the software. My equipment, as I described, broke every ergonomic rule, and I found myself literally in physical pain at the end of each 12- hour day I worked.

I would come home after a grueling day at the office and a couple hours on the road to my loving husband. I was always angry when I got home, so it just happened that my husband would be doing something that would make me want to yell at him. For instance, he would not greet me at the door when I got home…..or he would greet me at the door when I got home. It didn’t seem to matter what he did, I was really unhappy.

In the third month on this job, I began to realize that I needed to take control of the situation. I thought maybe it would be better if I could work out of my house instead of schlepping all the way down to Santa Clara. I proposed the idea to my boss and he agreed. Great! Things are getting better already!

At the end of my third month, my boss and I had set up a Wednesday meeting to informally review some software modeling I was doing. Wednesday morning I decided I just couldn’t bear the thought of traveling into the office, carrying all that heavy computer equipment, and working at the coffee table and so I called to tell him that I would like to continue working at home on the model and reschedule our meeting for Friday.

He didn’t want to reschedule for Friday and again asked me to come in today. I finally blurted out NO, I will come in on Friday. To which he responded okay then, I guess I’ll see you on Friday.

Friday came. I still remember the chill in the air and it was pouring cats and dogs outside. I got into my car and reset the odometer. I started up the car and began my commute from Alameda to Santa Clara.

I arrived on site at my company’s building and found a covered spot in the parking garage. I remember the conversation I had with my husband the night before.

I told him I could not tolerate the working conditions at my job and I had to start making some demands. I was going to take charge of my career. Yea, if they wouldn’t accommodate me, well…then, I’d just quit. Yea.

Yea right. I had never quit any job in my life. Especially not one where I’d made a six figure salary.

I shook the rain out of my umbrella and removed my coat. Slowly, I began to assemble what was left of the morning, when my boss called me in to his office. Great! What an opportunity! And he seemed like he was in a good mood too!

He said there was a call for me and I began to reach for the phone. Only he didn’t hand the receiver to me. Instead he moved the speaker to the center of his desk. At this point, I was a little confused, but went along with it.

The woman’s voice on the other end of the phone began to speak and she introduced herself as so-and-so from Human Resources. I remember I felt pretty good at that moment and then she began to tell me I was terminated.

My boss or should I say, my ex-boss at that moment, reached over to the fax machine and pulled off a fresh fax to my attention, which bullet pointed the details of my dismissal.

Within ten minutes it was over. I remember shaking hands with my ex and smiling and saying, “I hope and wish you the best success. It’s too bad it didn’t work out.”

I went down to the lobby of the building and called my husband and said…”guess what honey?” And he said….You quit today? I said…Noooooooooo. He said… You got fired today? I said ….Yeeeeeeeeeeees. He said, are you okay? I said..I think so.

I was devastated. This was my first six figure job and I had gotten fired after just three months….and I was still in the training phase of the job!

That incident changed me forever. First of all, it forced me to take a serious look at myself. I looked back over my career and then I began to realize…..this was NOT the first time I had experienced failure.

After five years at my previous company, I resigned to go back to school and finish my graduate degree in Corporate Finance. When I left, no one cared. Five years and no relationships to show for it. I mean, I had friendships with peers, wonderful relationships that I still have today. But, in terms of managers who wanted to keep me on their team… there was no one. The fact there were no managers eager to keep me after five years of excellent performance …was in fact a great failure on my part.

Sophia Loren said mistakes are the dues one pays for a full life. And I was just beginning to realize I had lived quite a full life.

This has been a long journey for me but the good news is that I have discovered some hopeful insights along the way that have helped me to create the success and happiness that I enjoy today.

First, the male-female thing was a bit of a cop out for me. It was easy to point to that as the reason for my misery and lack of opportunity because when I looked up in the organization all I saw were men. However, when I went back and examined the situation I was reminded that there were also some women who had achieved a high status. That very fact gave me hope that there was some formula to getting to where they got.

In addition, I also discovered that there were men who did not move up! This was an important fact because it held some clue that perhaps there was something that was necessary and it appeared to be independent of sex. That is, if some women could succeed and some men could fail or at least be held back, then perhaps the game was actually unbiased after all.

The second thing I learned is that this is a very difficult self-discovery process. I became quite depressed as I began to uncover the mistakes in my career. At the time I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong, it was only in hindsight my foibles seemed so obvious. I didn’t have the luxury of having a book or workshop to help me understand what behavior works and what behavior doesn’t work. So, it was by trial and error, and more errors that I happened upon the dynamics of relationships in the workplace. Each time I uncovered a significant principle of relationships it was like a light bulb going off-- ”Oh, no..I can’t believe I did that!”

Third, I discovered the real meaning of happiness and success.

When I was in college, I had a group of girl friends that were a lot of fun to be with. Every weekend we would go to various parties. It just so happened that some of these parties would be wildly fun, with great music, lots of cute guys wanting to talk to us, and good beer. Some of the parties would be pretty boring with no music, people sitting around talking, and maybe the worst beer you would never want to drink.

It didn’t seem to matter whether or not I was at a fun party or a boring party, I always had a good time if I was with my friends. So, I used to say, it’s not where you are but who you’re with that determines if you’re having a good time. And that’s true today. Some days you might love the work you do and some days you might be bored to death, but if you enjoy great relationships in your workplace, you’ll enjoy what you do. Therefore, good relationships are important for happiness.

Success is something I’ve tried to define over the years and I feel like I’ve knocked this one out. Success is more than just money and status, I know, because I’ve had both and the feeling of success was fleeting.

Success is the feeling that your work is valued, more importantly that you are valued in the organization. You are given opportunities to develop and stretch. You are picked to be on teams based on your outstanding reputation. People want to work with you. You can make mistakes and you know you will be protected. Everyone makes mistakes in their career and you have confidence that in making them you won’t be out on the street looking for a new job.

Success is the flexibility to modify your job as your personal life changes. When my husband and I wanted to have a baby, I went to my boss and told him I needed to stop traveling for a year and he said, what do we need to do to keep you here? In summary, the relationship you develop with your boss is key to you feeling and becoming successful. Therefore, good relationships are important for success.

The surprising conclusion from this analysis and self-discovery has been that the relationships in the organization are critical to creating success and happiness. Why was this such a surprise for me? Because somewhere along the way I was raised to believe that I could be successful based on the excellent quality of my work. I thought people would point to me and say, she’s successful because she’s really good at what she does. Favors? Relationships? Reciprocity? Asking for Help? Oh my goodness no, that didn’t even enter my mind.

My analysis began with a closer look at the dynamics of the relationship between manager and subordinate. I began down the road of discovering the principles for developing strong relationships with my superiors because I could see that this indeed was the key to achieving happiness and success in my career.

I wrote this book because I wanted to pass on the knowledge that saved me from a life of misery, frustration and disappointment. I created a workshop based on the principles in this book because I wanted to get feedback from real people on how this affected their lives.

The response has been incredible. People from every phase in their careers to every level in business have come to me for guidance. They say this information has changed their lives.

This knowledge has changed my life. I pass it on to you with the hope that you may benefit. I wish you all the success and happiness that you endeavor to create.