Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead... But Gutsy Girls Do (6 page)

5. Look at a Problem While Standing on Your Head

One of the rule-breaking strategies I use most frequently is to look at a situation from a different vantage point than the one that I or everybody else has been using. This works especially well with nagging problems, those that have been dogging your department forever but no one ever gets around to solving. (Hint: The nice thing about solving a nagging problem is that it seems less renegade to nervous superiors than other forms of rule breaking.)

When I joined
Family Weekly
as articles editor, the nagging problem was that we could only pay $500 tops for an article. At the time most magazines paid up to several thousand dollars for a piece, so we were forced to use young, inexperienced hack writers. This didn't stop the editor-in-chief from trying. He was a terrific journalist who was constantly making statements like, “Let's see if Nora Ephron will write it,” and you'd walk out of his office muttering, “Yeah, fat chance. She gets five hundred dollars to cover her lunch expenses on an assignment.” I once did call Nora Ephron about doing a piece for us and she said no with the same disdain she would have used if I'd asked her if she'd be interested in buying a device to remove toe beards. Despite the abuse we took from these hot writers, we continued to call them because we wanted to add class to the magazine.

The obvious solution was to pay more, but the company had no intention of coughing up the money. One day I started looking at the problem from a different direction. Instead of focusing on all the good writers who had turned us down and wondering whether there would have been any way to convince them, I started thinking about the few big names who had said
yes
. Was there a common denominator? In most cases the reason they'd consented was that they liked the idea of mass exposure—we had 28 million readers—during a time they were promoting a book they'd written. What, I wondered, if instead of going after big-name writers randomly, we went after only the ones who had books out, or better yet, books just coming out? And instead of approaching them directly, we'd go through the publishing-house publicity departments, which would be our ally in making the appeal. Over the next year or two I landed James Michener, Gail Sheehy, Betty Friedan, Alvin Toffler, Margaret Truman, and Robert Jastrow, among others, to write cover stories, all to coincide with the publication of their new books.

6. Steal a Great Idea from Someone Else

I don't mean to just out-and-out steal it, but rather figure out if there's some derivation that can work for you. Too often when we see a fabulous idea we get so busy kicking ourselves for not being the one to think of it that we neglect to consider how we can apply the principles to our own projects. One of my most successful column ideas was an indirect steal from someone else.

When I was at
Working Woman
I was always trying to find ways to include more real working women in the magazine, but profiles of them never rated very well. Readers were most interested in profiles of the glamour pusses of industries or in straightforward management and career-strategy pieces. One day I was at a magazine awards ceremony and one of the columns that was being honored was “All I Know” from
Golf
magazine, a feature in which a famous golf pro talked about how he had mastered a particular golf dilemma, like sand traps. Walking out of the luncheon, I came up with a column called “How I Did It.” Each month a different working woman would talk about a specific accomplishment: selling an idea to top management or adding new life to a tired product. It was an instant hit in the ratings. Though straight profiles of ordinary women weren't appealing, readers were obviously interested in the strategies they had used to get results.

One of my favorite steal stories comes from Wendy Kopp, president and founder of Teach for America. I met her after we had selected her for a special feature in
McCall's,
and she's by far one of the most dynamic young women I've ever met.

While Kopp was at Princeton in the late eighties, she worked on several extracurricular projects that made her aware of the problems many public schools across the country had attracting high-caliber teachers. She eventually decided to develop a teacher corps, composed of recent college graduates, that would go into poor areas to work. But how could she possibly recruit graduates for such an unglamorous post? This, after all, was the eighties. All around her at Princeton, Kopp watched as her classmates were being lured by investment banking firms: These firms offered prestige and security, they recruited aggressively, and they paid major bucks.

What Kopp finally decided to do was steal their techniques. She couldn't deliver money, but she could offer the other three benefits. “To guarantee prestige, we only accept the top candidates,” says Kopp. “The program is a two-year one so there's a sense of security, of being rooted for a while. And we recruit really aggressively on campuses.”

HOW TO BREAK THE RULES AND NOT GET BURNED

But if you start playing loose with the rules, isn't there a chance you'll get into trouble? Nancy Austin, the dynamic management consultant and author whom I hired as a columnist for
Working Woman,
told me recently that whenever she holds seminars with people about work, Anita Roddick's name frequently comes up. People are dazzled by her, the quintessential rule breaker who created the environmentally correct and very successful cosmetics company The Body Shop, and they talk about how much they'd love to be her. And yet when Austin suddenly asks, “Would you hire her?” there's always a deafening silence as people realize that no, of course not. They wouldn't want a wild card like that working for them.

Fortunately the atmosphere in many companies today is changing to accommodate those who have the guts to venture into exciting new territory. Also, rule breaking, done right, doesn't have to threaten your superiors. If you do something smart and effective that's not part of the official “plan,” your boss is not likely to punish you if u makes her look good.

Men have an intuitive sense of this because their rule breaking so often got a wink as they were growing up. A CEO, who asked to remain anonymous, recently described the difference between how men and women often handle the assignments he gives them. “The women will do exactly as I ask, working hard but never going outside of the outlines I give. The results are thorough and professional—but unexciting. The guys, on the other hand, veer off from the outline and come up with something really innovative that grabs me by the seat of my pants.”

That said, you can run into trouble as a rule breaker. There are several ways you must protect yourself:

1. Establish a track record of competence. You'll be much more likely to get maverick ideas accepted if you've already proven you can handle the basics of your job.

2. Get the support of your boss—and anyone else necessary. There are two basic reasons why you need your boss's blessing if you are going to do any rule breaking. Even if you have a good relationship, surprising him with anything out of the ordinary could make him think you're headstrong or too big for your britches. If you
don't
get along, rule breaking will come across to him as close to mutinous.But that's not the only reason you must have his support. It paves the way for cooperation on the part of others you'll have to deal with. My friend Stephanie Cook, senior VP at Bloom FCA advertising agency, calls this “borrowing the power.”Before Cheryl Deaton used any of her throw-out-the-books strategies as principle, she got the support of her bosses—the kids’ parents. She also brought local businesses into the loop, generating their support and cooperation because they could help fund many of the projects.

3. Know the landscape. Senator Mikulski gave me the following advice: “You can't push the envelope until you know how the post office works.” Even if you've been empowered by your boss, the climate has to be right for gustiness. Step back, observe, note what happens to those who make bold moves. Are they rewarded? Are they considered dangerous or bitchy or too out on a limb?

4. If someone tells you, “That's not the way we do things around here,” repackage your idea to seem less threatening. Or offer to try something both ways—the standard and the more experimental.

5. Share the glory. Lyle Sussman, a professor of management at the University of Louisville who wrote a management-strategy box each month while I was at
Working Woman,
once told me that “stars today must be team players” It's just a fact of life that many of your peers and even some of your subordinates are not going to be overly pleased to see you stepping boldly into the limelight. They may feel jealous, threatened, overwhelmed with a sense that you are on a very fast train and they are being left behind at a dusty little small-town station. They may allow their negative feelings simply to simmer or they may go so far as to act on them, sabotaging what you're doing, criticizing you behind your back. However, if you demonstrate that you are taking them on the train with you by including them in your projects, you have a chance that they will support your efforts rather than hurt them. Frankie Sue del Pappa, the attorney general of Nevada, says her motto is “Put your arms around as many people as possible.” When she has a news conference, she includes everybody she can up there with her.

THEY SHOOT MAVERICKS. DON'T THEY?

What if you do all you're supposed to do to protect yourself and they still try to pounce on you?

You have to be prepared for the fact that it
could
happen. Grace Joely Beatty, senior partner of the management consulting firm Gardner-Beatty in Rancho La Costa. California, says that despite the fact that there are many open-minded companies today, there are still plenty of good-old-boy operations that are immovable. You bring up one creative idea after another and they are shot down like clay pigeons. It just might not be worth your while to stay.

“Many companies want ‘maintenance managers’ who don't innovate.” says Beatty. “If you're the creative entrepreneur type, you won't do well there. IBM is such a company—look where it is now. Women, especially, think they can change such a climate through sheer willpower, but actually the
smart
move is to just get out and go to a more dynamic environment.”

If you stay and try to play by the rules, you'll be miserable If you buck the system, they'll do their best to
make
you miserable.

Use your rule breaking strategies to find your way out. Recently I had the chance to talk to Jeannie Boylan, the police sketch artist who helped solve the Polly Klaas abduction and murder. Unlike the majority of police sketch artists, who have witnesses pick out features from books, Boylan simply has witnesses describe suspects from memory—after she allows them lots of time to relax and feel comfortable. Though her sketches have consistently proven to be uncannily like the actual criminals, the police departments she worked in often made her life hell because she didn't do things the standard way. After many years of trying fruitlessly to work within the system, she told me that she's found career happiness working as a freelance consultant to law enforcement agencies.

GO FOR THE GUTSY MOMENT

There's one last thing I want to say about rule breaking, and it relates not to projects or assignments you're working on but to personal behavior. I feel I should begin with a warning similar to one of those you see on late night TV commercials that goes something like, “Do Not Attempt This in Your Own Home.” What I'm about to say is fairly provocative and risky advice and yet, it seems to have worked for many gutsy girls. When you need to get their attention, try something brash. You take what could be an ordinary moment and turn it into a gutsy one.

This story might help explain what I mean.

When I was in ninth grade, the nun who taught the honors English class always gave us the most remarkable assignments, like writing essays on current affairs and composing our own ballads. One week our project was to write and give a presentation on something the other kids in the class knew nothing about I decided to make my presentation on rats— don't ask me why—and I prepared a grisly talk on thirteen things about rats you'd never heard. My favorite was the fact that if left alone in your basement, two rats could turn into a million in just a three-year period.

I knew my talk would have the kids squirming and I decided to give it a twist Using an old fur coat from the attic and a piece of electric wire, I fashioned a life-size rat, which I hid in a paper bag behind the podium During my talk I could tell I had the class spellbound—a few students even looked nauseous. When I finished with my nasty rat facts, I told the class that I thought it would help if they had a first-hand look at what I'd been talking about. Then I pulled the lake rat out of the bag. Boys shrieked, girls squealed, and at least hall the class dived under their desks. And the nun? She sat there grinning from ear to ear.

That was the first time I saw the impact of delivering the unexpected.

One of my oldest friends is Merrie Spaeth, who runs Spaeth Communications, Inc., in Dallas and was formerly President Reagan's media adviser. She believes that rule breaking shouldn't be limited to how you handle the responsibilities of your job. Her philosophy: “I think there are some situations that call for doing something gutsy with your personal behavior.”

It's hard to give any specific advice here. You just have to let yourself get a feel for certain situations and decide if a gutsy, unexpected move on your pan could prove to be an advantage. A friend of mine says that a turning point in her career occurred the day she had to give a speech about her area to a group of top managers whom she had never dealt with before. A few minutes before going on she decided not to stand behind the podium but to take the mike and deliver her presentation from the middle of the floor. Not hiding behind the podium forced everyone's attention on her and infused her presentation with energy and spontaneity From that day forward, she said, she was on the fast track in the eyes of management.