As a leader, I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however, I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future.
Women helping each other – coaching, mentoring, and providing tips – is a great way for us to be our own force.
When I was president of the company, I said, ‘Okay, I can do this – piece of cake.’ Then when you are the CEO, the responsibilities multiply enormously because you worry about everything.
Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different.
When I grew up there was no web, blogging or tweeting. In fact, where I grew up there was not even television! I met a lot of my friends in school and in college, and they are still my friends today.
I asked my parents for permission to study in America and they were so sure that I wouldn’t get in and get a scholarship that they encouraged me to try. So I applied to Yale and got an excellent scholarship. I then worked for the Boston Consulting Group for six and half years.
There will never be a replacement for that ongoing physical contact. But I don’t think blogging is meant to replace the face-to-face of friendships and meetings. Blogging is a way to keep in touch with a larger group of people on an ongoing basis, in a more efficient way.
My guilty pleasures are the websites where you can look at the fashions and see how different outfits will look. You can even take a picture of yourself and download it and play with the fashions! I love playing with these websites to see what I can learn.
The first thing I’d say to women is put aside the guilt. I think we’re all genetically programmed to feel guilty for not giving total effort at the job.
I think innovation as a discipline needs to go back and get rethought and revived. There are so many models to talk about innovation, there are so many typologies of innovation, and you have to find a good innovation metric that truly captures the innovation performance of a company.
Blogging and the Internet allow us to engage in a lot more real time conversations as opposed to a one-way dump of information or a message.
I’m very honest – brutally honest. I always look at things from their point of view as well as mine. And I know when to walk away.
We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all.
Women play a couple of roles. They are in professional schools and increasingly producing the talent to keep the engines of the economy growing, but they’re also the nurturers and the caregivers.
In today’s world of blogging and tweeting, conversation has become a bit more staccato. In many ways we’re more efficient, but I think the amount of longer conversations that radiated more warmth may have gone down.
But the good news was that my elder sister refused to get married straight away and I couldn’t get married until she did so I had the licence to go off and dream.
Most importantly, we want to create a company where every employee can bring their whole selves to work.
Blogging is a great way to provide tips and advice to each other.
When you assume negative intent, youre angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response.
Most companies target women as end users, but few are effectively utilizing female employees when it comes to innovating for female consumers. When women are empowered in the design and innovation process, the likelihood of success in the marketplace improves by 144%!
My father was an absolutely wonderful human being. From him I learned to always assume positive intent. Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent.