The Hindustan Times ran a full-page feature on FirstRain CEO Penny Herscher today, in which she opened up about leadership and empowering women in business. As a longtime leader in Silicon Valley and advocate for diversity in the workplace, Penny has a lot to say about each of those topics. Some choice excerpts from the question-and-answer article:
“What is your best decision so far as a leader?” “My best decision would be hiring the team that I have now.”
“I really look up to Indira Gandhi. She was the first woman leader of such a large country. She showed that women can lead, innovate and become most inspiring leaders of the era.”
“My advice would be that don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t. Do what you want to do and be what you want to be.”
Read the entire story here!
Yesterday, FirstRain CEO Penny Herscher was part of a panel discussion at the Ark Women Legal Forum in San Francisco. Speaking to a room of about 100 women, she and her co-panelists, Patricia Gillette, Partner, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP (moderator); Kathi Lutton, Partner, Fish and Richardson; and Pamela Fulmer, Partner, Novak Druce Connolly Bove + Quigg LLP discussed how women are helping other women by forming “stiletto networks”—all-female groups to support each other professionally in a more safe and unthreatening environment.
The panel agreed that the most effective aspect of stiletto networks is that they are truly helpful to the women involved. They’re not a place to vent or complain; women come up with a concrete action plan and challenge each other intellectually as they navigate being leaders in the male-dominated fields of both Law and Tech. As Kathi stated at one point, “We interact with the world differently, and that’s OK. And it’s good to have a network of people to think through it.”
As Penny highlighted, it’s precisely for this reason that FirstRain has made a concerted effort to have a diverse leadership team: when you assemble a group of people with differing opinions and experiences, you end up being much more creative as a group—and more effective. As stiletto networks grow and empower the women involved, everyone—including businesses—benefits.
All of the panel discussion really boiled down to one idea, whether it’s women helping women or women interacting with men. Patricia said it perfectly—that empowering women is “about relationships—baby steps, and building relationships. It’s not going to happen overnight. You have to be in it for the long haul.”
We’re excited to announce that Penny has been invited to speak at the Ark Group Women Legal Forum on Wednesday, Feb. 5. The Women Legal Forum is advancing the increasingly important dialogue on gender diversity in the legal profession, while illustrating the business imperative for the retention and succession of female leadership.
Penny will take part in a panel discussion around the themes of the book Stiletto Network: Inside the Women’s Power Circles That Are Changing the Face of Business. The panel will focus on shedding light and sharing insight on models used in business that the legal profession can learn from and adopt.
For more information on the Ark Group Women Legal Forum and to see a complete list of speakers, please visit http://usa.ark-group.com/events-details.aspx?eid=142.
Penny shared her insights into the changing relationships between CMOs and CIOs on The Economist‘s marketing blog, Lean Back. The post looks at how CMOs need CIOs more than ever as the marketing budget grows.
She writes, “Regardless of how much injustice CIOs feel, the success of their companies is increasingly reliant on their teams learning to align with CMO teams whose priorities—and very nature—are incredibly different from their own.”
Read the full blog post, “Why CMOs won’t lock CIOs out of the C-Suite,” here.
We are pleased to announce that Penny has been chosen to emcee the Anita Borg Institute’s Women of Vision awards banquet. The banquet honors women who make significant contributions to technology, and one company that has demonstrated measurable results in attracting, retaining and advancing women in technical roles at all levels. The banquet is attended by thousands of women technologists each year and will feature Hilary Mason, Data Scientist in Residence at Accel Partners and Scientist Emeritus at bitly.
Congrats to Penny!
You can see the full press release, published January 7, here.
By Penny Herscher
Your sales team is the backbone of your company, but how do you get stellar sales reps to stick around? Turnover is an issue everywhere, but one of the secrets to sales success is finding a way to maintain rock star salespeople.
Costs of turnover
Aside from losing top talent, whenever a salesperson departs, it leaves human resources working overtime to find new talent. Recruitment can drain precious resources. In addition to onboarding and training, you will be paying significant salaries to employees who have yet to achieve full productivity. On the other hand, there are less obvious costs. When a valued team member leaves, it can cause ripples among other employees, according to Christina Gomez for Executive Board sales blog. Losing a trusted colleague can cause decreased morale and sales productivity. As a result, clients can receive gaps in continuity, and sales can be lost. Suffice it to say, you don’t want to lose salespeople, but how do you get them to stick around?
1. Hire right the first time
Do an impeccable job of hiring from the beginning. Hiring can be difficult process at the best of times, but putting in maximum effort will give you greater returns. Don’t be lazy about recruitment. Realize there are different types of salespeople and no one personality type creates the ideal salesperson. What kind of seller does your team need right now? Asking candidates to take a personality test can help to guide you in whether they’ll be a good fit, as Brittany Griffin suggests on Inside Sales. Even if a candidate seems like a winner, delve deeply into their background. Be sure to actually check references and ask follow up questions to find out if there’s anything they aren’t telling you.
2. Provide incentives for top sellers
A big problem with some companies is that they quickly advance salespeople out of vital roles. According to Griffin, a lot of businesses use appointment setters as sort of a training pool before salespeople move on to other more prestigious jobs. These valuable employees specialize in finding sales opportunities for closers and every month they remain, they become 40 percent more productive. Instead of making this an entry-level position, provide incentives for workers to remain there. Every time you advance someone from appointment setter position, you have to replace them, and you’re starting over at zero productivity. Make this a job to aim for, not just a rest stop on the way to something better.
3. Find the right climate
A good company culture can encourage salespeople to remain. According to Gomez, a judgment-oriented culture results in about 15 percent less turnover than other types of management systems. A judgment-oriented culture is defined by an organic environment that is geared more toward building relationships than a sales agenda. Such businesses are innovative and open, with guidelines but no strict rules. Give your employees space to be creative and develop their own methods and they will reward you by sticking around longer.
4. Build leadership and community
For businesses across the board, relationships among staff are the prime drivers of happiness in the workplace. Strong salespeople value good leadership and a staff that can work effectively as a team. According to a recent survey from TINYpulse, transparency is the No. 1 factor that influences employee happiness. Workers want managers to clearly outline their expectations and be open with them about what works and what doesn’t in the sales setting. Even more than that, employees value openness from supervisors, they want it from co-workers. In fact, co-workers were the single most-cited reason employees were happy in their jobs. To make sure sales teams are working together optimally, schedule frequent team-building activities.
We are extremely excited to announce that our intrepid CEO, Penny Herscher, will lead a panel discussion about on the role of women in technological advancements in manufacturing at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
The Grace Hopper Conference is nearly 20 years old, and is the largest technical conference for women in the world. It’s designed to support and showcase the contributions of women in computing. Conference presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industry, academia and government. Since promoting women in the technology is a cause that is near and dear to Penny (she’s even on the board of the Anita Borg Foundation, the organizers of GHC), we are incredibly excited to attend.
Our Panel: “The New Industrial Revolution: How Advanced Manufacturing is Creating Disruptive Opportunities for Women.”
This panel will discuss and explore the effects of exciting new technologies—from 3D printing to desktop design and fabrication—that have the potential to enable a new generation of female entrepreneurs. The panel will explore how these innovations have already begun changing the world of inventing and manufacturing, impacting the evolution and democratization of global manufacturing and defining the new role these technologies can play in the economic empowerment of women. Penny will be joined by Christine Furstoss (GE), Jennifer Lawton (MakerBot) and Kristen Turner (Ponoko).
If you’re going (and/or if this topic interests you), let us know by tweeting us at @FirstRain or write on our Facebook wall!
Conference and presentation details:
Who:
Penny Herscher, FirstRain CEO with Christine Furstoss, Jenny Lawton and Kristen Turner
Where:
Minneapolis Convention Center (MCC), Room 200 D-G
When:
3:45 – 4:45 pm on Thursday, October 3, 2013
Our world is surrounded by software. Every day teenagers spend more than 10 hours a day on line interfacing through a software layer – texting, facebook, tumblr, TV, movies – all are constructed in software and people use a software layer to interact. Even as a CEO, my day is dominated by software – Office apps, Twitter, Skype and even Words with Friends.
Software is changing our world in as profound a way as the book did starting in 1440. The book, following the invention of the printing press, democratized knowledge. Anyone who could read and write could share ideas and change the way other people thought. By 1500 there were 35,000 book titles in print and over 20MM books printed. 60 years after the invention of the computer the influence of software on our world is still growing exponentially.
And it touches everyone. Poor illiterate women in India running micro businesses through a cellphone. CEOs and bankers. Students at a Palo Alto High School. And so when I was invited to give a TEDx talk at Gunn High School two weeks ago I chose to talk about how being able to code – or at least understand enough structured logic to create software apps – is as important now as being able to read and write.
Technology is now where the jobs are, where the growth is, where the source of the major revolution of the next 100 years starts. It’s an exciting place to be and it’s a meritocracy. Everyone can learn it, just like everyone can learn to read and write.
Here’s my talk:
And the most exciting thing for me giving this talk was that at the end I was surrounded by teenage girls thrilled to have their interest in software and technology endorsed and confirmed by my talk.
We have a real problem with jobs in tech. We have more jobs than qualified people.
This is not in the news today because for much of the US population there are not enough jobs. Not enough jobs that people are trained for. And yet in Silicon Valley we have 1 tech position open for every 2 that are filled. Hiring great technical staff is tough and increasingly expensive.
But this is not just a California problem. At the Nashville Technology Council’s annual meeting last week the theme was Diversity – and all the discussion was around education and attracting IT workers to Nashville. They have 1,000 open positions and not having enough IT workers is a real, commercial problem for them.
Commissioner Hagerty, in his warm up speech, talked about the need for technical education in their schools and local colleges. Followed by Mayor Dean who covered many of the same themes and a sense of urgency about education investment. The Nashville Technology Council has a mission to “help Middle Tennessee become known worldwide as a leading technology community, the Nashville Technology Council is devoted to helping the tech community succeed.” – and their main focus this year is Technology Workforce Development.
It was really fun for me to speak to this group and their membership. 500 people, all of whom care about technology jobs in Nashville.
Here’s my talk. I cover the urgency of the need to get more women into technology and the changes we can make to help women stay in technology. Today, even if they start out in the technical field, half of our tech women leave tech in the first 10 years – they either leave in college or they leave early in their careers. It’s just too hard and too isolated.
But it does not have to be this way – and that’s what I talked about. We have to solve this problem as a country. By 2016 we will only be producing 50% of the tech staff we need as a country. Today less than 50% of our workforce (women) hold less than 5% of the leadership of the technology industry.
This is such a waste of talent. It’s a competitive, bottom line issue for any company that needs tech workers – whether they are in health care, energy or computing.
We’ve solved it at FirstRain. We have women in leadership positions in engineering – and we have a very flexible work environment. We can solve it everywhere, and as a country, if we want to.
Do women lead differently than men? Yes, usually. Do women face more barriers than men? Frequently. But do women often hold themselves back ? Yes.
I gave a leadership talk and Q&A, at a tech company in Silicon Valley a couple of weeks ago where I was meeting with female leaders in a hardcore semiconductor company. Because it’s hardcore it was a small group, and because I grew up (professionally) in a hardcore technical environment like that I spoke to the things I have seen women do that hold them back as leaders – and how to flip these challenges around and turn them into advantages.
Here are the 5 keys to leadership as a woman (although not exclusively…) and each one is the flip side of a common weakness:
1. Embrace making decisions – they are fun
Companies need people who are decisive and courageous. A common issue with new entrepreneurs and young managers is that they hesitate to make decisions. It’s tough when you don’t know what to do, but it’s better to make a decision quickly and decisively, and be ready to change it if you are wrong, than to hesitate, hash it over many times, or wait for someone else (your board, your team, your boss) – or even worse time and delay – to make it for you.
Making decisions gets easier when you learn to trust yourself and your judgement – you can feel in your gut and in the tips of your fingers what to decide. Never underestimate your own intuition – it’s not a myth, it’s real.
I simply did not understand or trust this until I read Blink (the voice is my head is uber-critical) but now I love the feeling. I am not always right, and I definitely need and value advice, but I learned to trust, move forward fast, knowing that if I am wrong I’ll also figure that out quickly, or someone I trust will slap me.
2. Never ask whether, ask when
This is a mindset that many men are good at. They come out of of the womb asking when they’ll get that raise, when they’ll be promoted, when they’ll go kill that bear, not whether. Women so often talk about whether. Should I push for that promotion, should I ask for more money, will I get funded, will they promote a woman, will they like me?
Working with mostly men, and a few women, I see a pattern in the successful women. They don’t ask whether they have a right to what they want, they assume they’ll get it. They don’t particularly care what other people think of them, they care about getting the job done. They act like they are competent, it’s in their future, they are going to get it, and there is not any question of whether, just when.
3. Hire your betters
The fastest way to build a great team is to hire people who are smarter and more experienced than you in their field, and if you are technical these are probably mostly men today.
It can be intimidating to interview people who are senior to you – I know. It can be downright frustrating when you talk to men who, when they meet you, talk down to you because you are blond and forget that you are interviewing them (can you tell I’ve been through this?). Remember, you don’t need to be “the man” – you need to get the job done better than anyone else.
Stay focused on your vision for your team. A group of people who work for and with you, all of whom are smarter than you in some dimension but who want to climb the hill with you. Plan to grow into being their leader and if they are good people they will give you space to do it. Give in to fear of being usurped and you’ll fail because you don’t hire a strong enough team.
I confess I used to always try to hire my “elders and betters”. As time goes by the first becomes more difficult, but thankfully the second is still easy!
4. Speak up and be sure you are heard
I have often heard the complaint that a woman will say something in a meeting, not have her idea acknowledged and then a man will say the same thing and everyone will jump on a agree. There are even TV ads that make fun of this reality.
Given that this does happen, develop some tactics that help you be heard, and help you confirm that you have been heard. State your input and then ask a question that causes your co-workers to engage in your idea. Repeat yourself in different words. Go to the white board to sketch your concept – whether it is a process or a product idea – it’s really hard to ignore the person at the white board. If you are in an online meeting call on a co-worker by name to get their direct input on your idea. What does not work is speaking your piece and then waiting – that is the easiest way for you to be dismissed.
5. Put the company first and get results
And finally – the playing field is not level. Fact. Deal with it. To lead men and get ahead in a man’s world you need to work harder, be smarter and be more ambitious than the men around you.
The CEO lives in the place where the company and it’s results are all that matter to her. So practice that. In everything you do put the company first, ahead of your needs. Ahead of office politics (I wish I had known this from day one – I had to learn this one). Drive to results, be sure you get recognition for your results, and you will get ahead and become a leader.
Male dominance of tech is not going to change quickly so don’t complain, or hesitate, just get on with it. And if you are a leader – men, and women, will follow you. When you look over your shoulder you will know.
