I Shouldn't Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know (28 page)

Take something for yourself.
Don’t be so busy thinking of how you will cope with change in your job that you neglect to determine what might be in it for
you.
In one of my editor in chief jobs, I had to enlist a group of staffers to work on an exciting brand extension. They complained about all the extra work and wondered why they weren’t being compensated. Yet to me it was clear that the skills they were learning could enable them to start their own businesses one day. Figure out how to leverage change for yourself—with new contacts or skills to be acquired if you play your cards right.

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Bravo! You Landed the BIG JOB. Now What?
 
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T
here will be good jobs in your life, jobs that you’ve worked hard to attain and signal that you’re seriously on your way. Then there’s the BIG JOB, the one that puts you on top, that makes you a boldface name in your field. If you’ve been reading this book, that’s probably what you’re aiming for. And if you’ve used the strategies that I’ve discussed so far—developing game-changing ideas, being a dynamic boss, managing your
career
along with your job—there’s every chance that you’ll get there.

My first BIG JOB was running
Child
magazine. All the editorial-side decisions of the magazine—regarding covers, content, PR, etc.—rested with me. I walked into work that first day feeling nervous but exhilarated.

After you’ve landed a BIG JOB, it would be nice if you could (after uncorking a bottle of champagne to share with those close to you) simply settle down to the work at hand. But you can’t. People are watching you now. They are expecting results. And some of them are expecting you to fail. Love the BIG JOB, delight in the power and prestige it offers, but, as you roll up your sleeves, know that you must also navigate the situation intelligently and carefully.

Do not
—I repeat,
do not
go in acting like a hard-ass.
In an attempt to look invulnerable, some women start a BIG JOB with a take-no-prisoners approach. Though that kind of toughness may work in certain cases, it has the potential to backfire big-time, especially when employed in the first days and weeks of a new job. At first people almost wet their pants when you walk into a room. But then they start gathering and whispering together and begin to feel strength in numbers. They start bad-mouthing you behind your back and both consciously and unconsciously begin to do things to undermine you and your mission.

The far more effective approach, I think, is to present a picture of someone who is sure of herself, ready to make a difference, open to discussion, inclusive, and willing to make stars out of the people who perform well as the new mission is tackled.

“The worst thing you can do is be prescriptive,” says Michele James, a cofounder of the executive recruiting firm James & Co. “You need to listen, be available. It’s in this period, too, that the soft data will start to bubble up.”

Nail down your vision—and share it.
I talked earlier about how it’s important to have your mission in mind. In a BIG JOB you need more than a mission, you need a
vision
. It’s the difference between having a few goals you wish to execute and creating a winning, enticing, and perhaps totally new direction for the future. A vision not only gives
you
a road map to follow but also helps the people who work for you feel energized and engaged. Boil it down to a compelling sound bite and share it.

Many of the visions drummed up by leaders are too fuzzy to provide much help to anyone. Others are so earnest that you wonder if people feel kind of creepy being associated with them. One way to make a vision both clear and exciting is to make it
visual.

That’s what Ann Edelberg did when she took over the job of producing MSNBC’s
Morning Joe.
“I decided to treat the show like an incredible cocktail party,” she says. “Every day I wanted the show to feature the next big thing, the thing with street cred, and nothing that said ‘has been.’ I always erred on the side of edgy and cool. If the show was a restaurant, I saw it as Nobu—cool and sexy and hip, even though not everyone would want to eat there. The guests we invited had to fit within those parameters. And I told the guests to view being on the show not as an interview but as a conversation.”

Unless your job is to salvage some huge disaster, it’s not necessary to trash what was done before you arrived. I’m always surprised by new editors in chief who come into a magazine and use their first letter from the editor to explain how they’re overhauling a product that really sucked before they got there. That kind of letter must make both the staff and the readers feel like bozos. Focus on the future, not the past.

As soon as you can, meet with your direct reports one by one.
No matter how crazy busy you are, find the time to do this in the first week or two. People get offended if you don’t. Tell them in advance that you’d like an update from them regarding what they’re working on. This is a good chance to start to learn what’s really going on and begin to
sense
where the land mines are. You may be tempted to try to probe for a little dirt, but at this point people are in defense mode, so they’re probably not going to tell you where the bodies are buried. And you don’t want to look too eager for dirt.

This is also a time to share your vision individually with your top people. There’s no need to go into tons of detail. That’s because you’re still figuring it out, and also it helps to be a bit of a mystery now. Tell them you will share more as the weeks unfold. It’s good to keep them guessing a little, make them feel intrigued. And besides, anything you say is likely to be repeated.

Divide and conquer.
Though some people will respond to your presence graciously and embrace your vision, others will make you feel as though you’re an interloper who has disrupted their perfect ecosystem. A few may even bare their teeth like wolves whose territory has been threatened.

I’ve taken over five different magazines, and I’ve always been stunned by the way some people respond to a new boss. When I started at
McCall’s
, one senior editor strolled by my office, popped her head in the door, and announced that there were certain ways things were done there and she’d be glad to show me. Sometimes even the good ones become victims of a pack mentality.

What they don’t seem to realize is that you may have been given carte blanche to fire anyone you desire. But don’t be rash. Take a few weeks to get the lay of the land, determine who’s worth keeping and who isn’t, and begin to engender loyalty.

In the beginning, avoid big group meetings if at all possible. Let your gut tell you who the best people are and spend as much one-on-one time with them as possible. Tell them you’d like their impressions of something fairly neutral—like on an article about the field or a report that was done just before you arrived. That will help you (1) gauge their strengths and weaknesses and (2) begin to form a bond with them.

Once you sense you can trust someone—and the person’s judgment—pick his or her brain to learn as much as you can about the operation. You want to figure out the history, the real obstacles, the festering problems—all of which will enable you to hone your vision and the strategies you need to implement to pull it off. You don’t want to look desperate. But you can say things such as “I’d like to hear what
you
think about the way this plan was implemented” and “You were here when the study was done. What, in your opinion, are the key findings?” Because you’re new, you won’t have all the answers, so let people guide you to a certain degree—without looking needy for the info.

When I arrived at
Working Woman
, the three senior editors seemed to greet me with—dare I say it?—disdain. I was seven months pregnant the day I started and had no experience in business reporting, and they clearly thought I’d duped the owner of the company. (One of them later wrote an article admitting that she’d been too much of a good girl to throw her hat in the ring for the big job, but I clearly hadn’t been, even with a belly the size of a beach ball.) But there was an associate editor named Louise who I quickly realized was incredibly well informed about business and business writers and also eager to embrace a new boss. I started working with her as much as possible.

A few weeks after I started, I asked Louise for insight into a move I wanted to make. “I think it’s time to introduce a couple of new columns in the magazine,” I told her. “I’d love to hear your recommendations for columnists.” She gave me two names, and as I looked into them, I realized they were perfect. We signed both of them within a month. Today, I almost can’t believe who those two columnists were. One was Gail Collins, who now is the marvelous
New York Times
op-ed columnist, and the other was Andy Grove of Intel, who a decade later was named
Time
’s Man of the Year. Louise, wherever you are today, thank you!

Know as you go.
When you land a BIG JOB, you may be past the point of requiring a course in Web design or public speaking, but there’s still stuff you must know to succeed. And you probably have to put your hands on it fast. Instead of freaking about it, consider what you need to know
this minute
.

After Alexa Hirschfeld started Paperless Post (that’s the incredible company that allows you to send fun and gorgeous e-vites) with her brother, she said she read about fifty books—by everyone from Peter Drucker to Seth Godin—but only when the info was required. “I would pull in as much information as I needed to know at that time about the thing I was trying to solve,” she says. “Sometimes I would feel that if I didn’t end up finishing a book that night, I might not be able to do my job the next day.”

When I became the editor in chief of
McCall’s
, it was the first time I was editing a magazine that had to sell big-time on the newsstand, and I didn’t feel my cover line writing skill was particularly strong. I’d always admired direct response copywriting (have you ever received an enticing pitch in the mail to buy something or subscribe to a magazine? That’s direct response writing) and bought several books on the subject. Then I went a step further: I paid one of the top writers in the field to come in and teach me as much as she could in a morning. It was one of the smartest things I ever did. (Come on, you didn’t think I came up with cover lines such as “Never Lose an Orgasm Again” without any training, did you?)

And the day I started at
Cosmo
, I hired Jane Buckingham as a contributing editor. Jane is an expert on Gen Y and Gen X, and I knew, as a baby boomer, that I needed her insights if I was going to run
Cosmo
successfully.

Do one big thing and thereby buy yourself some time.
When I was at
Working Woman
, a top female executive we interviewed shared that tip for starting a BIG JOB. It’s such wise advice. Yes, you need to get the lay of the land and gather info, but people are waiting for you to
do something
. So do something smart and splashy but relatively low risk. It will manage expectations and allow you time to really get your game on.

But once you’ve acquired the knowledge you need, don’t sit tight, take action. Sooner is almost always better than later. One of my favorite quotes is from Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
: “There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Take it “at the flood.”

Beware of haters.
Subordinates who had wanted your position (or some of the duties of the position) will attempt to sneak responsibility or power away from you. Let them know (without losing your cool) that it’s not acceptable, or they will keep trying until they are successful.

Fire the dissenters.
Because you must. Give people a chance to come on board, and if they don’t, get rid of them. Otherwise, they will drag you down, I swear.

Be a little bit scary.
It’s not bad, as I said, to keep people guessing, and it’s not bad to keep them on their toes. You don’t have to be bitchy or mean. Don’t talk too much; make them wonder what you’re thinking. It will guarantee that they’re less complacent and more focused during your first days and months in your new job.

Part III

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Success: How to Savor It
 
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O
ne of the events that partly shaped my sense of how I hoped to live my life as a career woman happened when I was still in college and long before I was even certain what I wanted to do professionally. It was my junior year, and the school had invited a professor from a neighboring women’s college to come and talk about feminism. My college had only recently gone coed after 175 years of being an all-male institution, so we had hardly any female professors of our own. Almost all the girls on my floor decided to attend the lecture. The women’s movement was in full bloom then, and we were eager to hear someone discuss how it might impact our lives.

I was curious, too, about what the woman would look and sound like. Back in the early and mid-seventies, there weren’t many female role models in the career world. I wondered if she would wear a snappy pantsuit, which was popular then for working women, or if she’d be all jean-jacketed out, like many of the feminists I saw in the media.

The lecture turned out to be amazingly inspiring. The woman lit a fire in many of us about all the emerging possibilities for women in the world. Here’s the funny thing, though. I don’t recall anything specific she said that night, but I do remember in vivid detail what she wore. She was dressed in a gorgeous black cocktail dress—and that was the thing that helped shape how I wanted to live my life.

Why was that dress so important to me? At the time there was a lot of the emphasis in the media about the struggle ahead for women. And it
was
tough in so many respects. But what that dress said to me was this: you may have to struggle at moments and you will have to work your butt off, but you can be a success, and you can have a fabulous, delicious time while you’re at it.