Ellen read my book, Find Your Everest before someone chooses it for you and emailed that the book inspired her to come out of retirement to write her book to inspire and coach women. This is her Everest now even though she was living a very comfortable retired life. The book made her reflect on how she had risen to the top without either connections or credentials that seem prerequisites to advance in a corporate culture, let alone rise to the top of executive responsibilities. She gave me the permission to share this inspiration.
Although this is a professional woman’s success story, the lesson applies to all bright and restless humans, men and women, young and old, and people of all colors, black, white and all shades in between.
Ellen’s mom had trained her as a dancer. At 18, she packed up her suitcase and put her on a bus from Flint, Michigan to New York, New York to become a dancing star on Broadway. Ellen only knew one person, another young dancer from Flint who was a few years older and was already dancing in Broadway shows. Ellen stayed in her apartment at start. She was talented and she landed a Broadway dancing role in No No Nanette, directed by Busby Berkeley, a superstar director of the old 1920s Gold Digger movies.
Progress is rarely a linear path. Success as a dancer was short lived. After just a few years, when Ellen was settling into the sense of her own identity as a dancer and performer, she got injured and could no longer dance as much as she could before. She had no college education, money, or place to live. She learned to sing. Agility is an innovator’s tool. Even so, all Ellen’s dancing and singing earnings were consumed by medical bills. She needed health insurance. She took a job that Xerox had found nearly impossible to fill: a sales rep’s position on New York’s notorious 42nd street, which was then a raunchy red-light district where predatory pimps and disgusting peep-shows leeched on young women. Ellen, a young, petit, and beautiful girl went into the back offices of sleazy peep-show outfits and found her calling as a gutsy and savvy sales lady. She discovered that she had acquired the NY street-smart grit to hold her own with the shadiest of the shady characters you could find anywhere on the planet. She quickly got noticed within Xerox for not just covering a perpetually open sales territory but overachieving her quota. She had a compelling reason to work hard and she innovated and grew an enviable work ethic to not fall in poverty.
Authenticity and dedication often attract opportunities. A new door opened for Ellen when a senior sales manager who was visiting New York to meet a Dallas client’s headquarters office noticed Ellen’s enthusiasm and performance. He invited her to apply for a job in his office. She did and she excelled in selling in Dallas as well. A few years later, Ellen found herself promoted to a headquarters position in El Segundo, California.
Headquarters in companies like Xerox and IBM of the past, and in today’s world, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, and Apple are corridors of ego showdown. Which medals of achievement do you have, where did you study, whom do you know, who is shielding and promoting you, and what’s your next move are the questions people are asking when they see a new face. Your move could impact their career trajectory to win a larger share of funding, get approval to head a more prestigious project, or have a bigger geographic reach of their team. Some of these people are borderline ego maniacs or even psychopaths. Most people working in a headquarter job, young and old, tenured or not, have an agenda beyond their current job.
In this hyper-competitive headquarters environment, here comes young, enthusiastic, bubbly, and highly successful Ellen. She goes to meetings with a mission to impact the salespersons’ ability to sell fast and sell more. She is a breath of fresh air for many and a problem for some. She spots a major problem right away. Many people making decisions have never been in front of the customers. Most of these brilliant minds have never sold and don’t really know the dynamics of selling or the customers’ decision criteria and processes. They are bright analysts with degrees from fantastic schools, but they lack real life sales experience. Unable to challenge Ellen’s direct sales experience, they are confused about how to hide their own inadequacies. In the mean while, undeterred, driven, and motivated to fix things to speed sales and grow marketshare, Ellen powerfully and unabashedly shares her insights, zipping in and out of product team meetings one after another for months.
In meeting after meeting, Ellen is a superstar. She is making an impact. She’s showing the teams why they are missing their targets and how they can fix the gaps. She is fast, sharp, and right. One day her manager calls her into his office for a private talk. She’s obviously excited and ready to receive kudos.
What she gets instead is a serious dressing-down. He says to her, “Ellen, in every hour-long meeting that you attend from now on, I need you to be silent until the last ten minutes. If the meeting is less than an hour long, speak only in the last five minutes.” Then he raised the stakes. I want to promote you, but if you break these rules, I will kick you off my team. Ellen trusted her manager and valued him as a mentor. She was flabbergasted. What just happened?
Trust is a powerful basis for collaborative progress. She respected her boss and although confused by the tone and message of this meeting, she complied with his instruction. Immediately, Ellen sensed a massive shift on the teams where she was previously educating and correcting the heads of various functions. She was adding tremendous value but her style of not holding back, which many annoying New Yorkers can have, was alienating managers. Not wanting to confront or harm Ellen, a bright, ambitious, and young professional, in open meetings, the other functions’ managers were complaining to her manager behind her back. Ellen’s insights were embarrassing the managers’ lack of knowledge in front of their subordinates. They wanted to comply with Ellen’s recommendations but her style was shining the light on what they did not know. They had no place to hide and she gave them no chance to escape.
By waiting until the last ten minutes, she had given the teams sufficient time to process the problem and come to some of the same or similar solutions that Ellen would have recommended herself. When they did not discover the right solution and were ready to explore new ideas that were outside of their domain, Ellen became their savior. Ellen had gone from having the reputation of a “know-it-all New-York braud” to “wow, she knows what she’s talking about.” The teams even started seeking her validation even when they thought that they had a fix.
But Ellen had greater ambitions and a bigger problem. To advance her career, she needed to overcome a major hurdle. How to move up in the company without having a college degree in a company where a college degree was a prerequisite for an executive level promotion? She asked her boss what he had meant when he promised her a promotion for keeping silent until the end part of the meeting. He was a bright man and wanted to do right by Ellen. He sponsored Ellen to attend a prestigious executive MBA program at the Simmons College in Boston. Once she got her MBA, she had new tools and legitimacy, and no longer had a major barrier blocking her path. Focus, drive, and dedication melt away the barriers that otherwise block progress. Whether Ellen had a college degree, or from where was irrelevant now. Ellen rose to the top. She was one of the top six female executives in her division when she chose to retire.
Silence is golden, she said to me, when you are a bright, young, and beautiful professional woman. She is writing her own story to inspire women who fear that the lack of credentials will slow or stop their progress in life.
Ellen is a role model because she has drive, she sizes the problem, she demonstrates agility, and is innovative in finding solutions. She does not complain, but rather forges ahead with her focus on solving problems. Seh earns respect for her work ethic and mentors reach out to help her. Her lesson here, to listen, to give the teams the opportunity to grow their own insights before Ellen plants her fixes, is valuable for all regardless of age, experience, gender, or any other consideration that separates us. It showed consideration, gave them dignity, and opportunity to learn and grow. They became stronger as a team.