Female entrepreneurship is the largest growing segment of the business market. Women are increasingly walking out of large businesses in their well-heeled shoes and are forging their future as entrepreneurs.

Has your business got $ 200 million to spare?

In my recent book called Your Loss, How to Win back Your Female Talent, my co-author and I calculated that the cost of replacing lost women to an organisation with 20,000 employees could be as much as £200 million. The international consultancy Bain and Co has concluded that if corporations lose 5 percent a year of their talent base for 10 years, then investment in recruitment would need to be increased by 20% in order to keep up with the losses.

These figures just do not add up.

Why is your company still incurring these heavy losses? Why are you losing these women?

In our global research for the book, we spoke to the women who your company had trained, who then left to become entrepreneurs. The majority stated that they left at the peak their career: at the ages of 30-44. We asked them the reasons why they left their corporate careers, and the primary reason was that these skilled women did not feel fulfilled in their role.

The issue around flexibility and control were clearly reasons for pursuing entrepreneurship. However, for these ambitious women, of equal importance is their creative streak that entrepreneurship was able to satisfy. A ‘chance to be more creative’ was a key motivation, combined with more flexibility and control. Entrepreneurship presented a chance for this commercial powerhouse to be creative, perhaps to try something completely different.

What can you do about it?

If you want to save your company the millions it is losing, then you need to:

Read the numbers – measure the attrition levels by gender and rank. We suspect that you will find it is abnormally high among your female population

Stop the hemorrhaging – turn the taps off. Speak AND listen to your women about what may not be working for them in your culture. One of the resounding frustrations for the women who took part is our research was that they were not heard. Those that did attempt to voice their discontent and challenges to change the business culture, were just given lip service.

Don’t “fix the women” – don’t just set up a “women’s network” and expect all your retention issues to be resolved. Traditional women’s networks isolate, rather than integrate. This is an issue relating to your corporate culture, not a “woman’s issue”. Assess where you culture is faltering, and work to redress those specific issues.

Your company may be doing what you think is the right thing, but it is quite obvious it is not working. Women are increasingly forging their careers as entrepreneurs. Shame you wasted all that money training them up. Great news for Global Entrepreneurship Week.

For more information on the blue-print for a gender-savvy organisation, visit: www.yourlossbook.com

• Only 13% of senior executives at the vice-presidential level or higher say they are “willing to go above and beyond what is expected of them”-a decline from 29% two years ago.
• In the December survey of the Corporate Exec Board’s 79,000 member employees worldwide at 123 organizations, 20% of all respondents said they were disengaged, vs. 10% two years ago. (Employees are classified as either engaged, neutral, or disengaged.)
So, following from our example above, if you have an employee that costs you £94,500 and they are working at 50% capacity, they are in effect, costing your business £47,250 per annum. For a company with 400 employees, the average of 20% disengagement would equate to: £3,780,000. That is quite scary…

To put it simply, employees are happy with doing “what is expected”, with no passion and… at your company’s cost.

You can argue that figures can be played with to prove anything. Whether the metrics are absolute or not, the hard fact are that disengagement costs your business money. How do you increase engagement?

According to a study by the European Commission states that diversity programmes have had a positive impact on employee motivation for 58% of companies that have implemented them.

The power of harnessing diversity, is that it benefits the organisation, its employees, its customers, its shareholders. Whilst the current financial crisis has had its toll on all from grass-roots to the top of organisations, the time is ripe to invest in activities that will re-engage and refuel your employees. We are proponents of promoting diversity of thought, whereby it is the respect for the individual and what they stand for that is key. Whether someone is a woman, ethnic minority, gay, or disabled should not matter.

The challenge is that we have to fight against nature when we are looking to overcome all the stereotypes of “minority” groups. We need to fight against how our brain functions, following years of evolution and specialisation. Basically, our brains controls our existence through neural connections. As we have over 18 billion neurons, the brain effectively cheats when it is performing tasks that it may have performed in the past – it covers gaps with what it perceives should be there. Such as when we read and sometimes we miss our own typos.

Putting it in the context of work and talent management, when we are working with the subject of diversity, we effectively have to re-wire our brains. We have to re-programme the fabric of our business to a new reality. As the neuroscientist Gregory Burns put it, “in order to think creatively, and imagine possibilities that only iconoclasts do, one must break out of the cycle of experience-dependent categorization-or what Mark Twain called “education.” For most people, this does not come naturally. Often the harder one tries to think differently, the more rigid the categories become. There is a better way, a path that jolts the brain out of preconceived notions of what it is seeing: bombard the brain with new experiences. Only then will it be forced out of efficiency mode and reconfigure its neural networks.”

So what is that better way?

Embed Diversity of Thought as a strategic requirement
If you want results, diversity is more than just a box-ticking exercise. Your organisation needs to avoid falling into this trap, and embed activities into its strategy development. Consider questions such as: Where do we focus on as a business? What are our strengths? What are our possible blind-spots? What do we need to do to get the best out of our employees in those areas to maintain our competitive advantage? What is currently missing that would make a difference if it were introduced tomorrow? A useful tip: develop a scorecard – ask your leadership team, and then compare with the responses from the grass-roots…

There is no quick fix
Have you ever recovered from an injury? Physiotherapy gives us a clear understanding of how nature works: only with persistence, slight discomfort and repetitions do we create new muscle fibre. In order to engrain diversity of thought, your organisation needs drive new experiences around multi-cultural management and appreciation, with consistency and a long-term focus. Learning and personal development activities need to be targeted, flexible and often hybrid in nature, adapted to individuals’ learning styles.

Focus on Individual Leadership
Embracing the Power of the Individual is key; the only way stereotyping and unconscious bias will be reduced is by homing in on the stereotypes and contravening them – e.g. working mothers and risk aversion do NOT go hand in hand. Create role models of individuals who are breaking those stereotypes and give them predominant positions where they can act as Champions to the new leadership model and corporate behaviour.

Harness Passion
Disengagement is often a result of employees’ talents not being utilized. When we are performing mundane or uninteresting exercises, we literally “switch off”. Engagement is about the complete opposite: find what really, truly, honestly engages your employees and gives them fulfillment. As entrepreneurs show, it is seldom purely about financial gains; it is about performing and having responsibility for activities that utilize their mental strengths and individual passions.

Embrace and Reward Innovation
Readers of my blog, will have seen how Diversity of Thought is linked to innovation. Group think is a result of teams made up of like-minded people with similar backgrounds, ages, experiences and social constructs. Diversity reaps benefits only when teams and activities involve a cross-section of all of these.

So, can your business not afford not to harness diversity? I would be happy to hear your views – contact me here…

The word Ethics, come from the Greek work ethos – “character, one’s distinguishing attitudes and beliefs”. We all claim to live our lives ethically, driven by our personal mastery and ethics. Ask any business whether they are ethical, you are likely to get a resounding, yes. If you probe any further on how this is substantiated, you are likely to get a result around accounting practices and “how the books are balanced”.

Taking this one step further, ask any business whether they are diverse, and you get the “Of course, we have a strong diversity agenda”. What does that mean? It usually means that diversity scorecards are kept and that they are managed so that the targets are met. Great, metrics again… The ticks are in the appropriate boxes.

Well, I would like to ask you to consider how your company honestly fares from an ethical perspective in managing Diversity. Are there groups within your company that are not represented or marginalised? Do they have a voice? … And are those voices listened to and actioned upon?

Let’s focus on your Leadership team. How many are white, males over 40? How many are women? How many of your Senior Leaders are from ethnic minorities?

Yes, in the lower echelons of the business, you are likely to have great representation of all ethnic groups. But why do they somehow drip through the holes up the rungs in the organisational ladder?

So, if you are to be an ethical business from a people management and talent management perspective, consider:

How can you give a voice to groups that are not currently represented?

Affinity groups are great – but you need to make them part of the business rather than a separate oddity. Work with them to identify ways to tap into their specific markets or areas of representation. They are the best internal innovation forum you can get your hands on!

What can you raise the profile of diverse groups for the benefit of the business?

Try exposing the Board to thoughts or ideas that are non-traditional by asking individuals or teams to find ways they would improve the organisation in some specific ways or tap into a new market. Ask them to present them to the Board, don’t just get someone in middle-management to convey the message.

How can your business cross-fertilise values and ideas between individuals?

Making diversity part of the fabric of the organisation requires allowing your employees to celebrate who they are. Cultural drivers need to be appreciated. Enable your talented staff to communicate to each other what those are. This is not fluffy, soft-skills “stuff”. This should be part of your hard management skills to bring the best of your employees, increasing their engagement. Only when people are understood, do they feel they are part of the organisation and dedicate 100% of their all to it.

Ethical business requires more than just balancing books. Balancing representation and giving a voice to all within your organisation will lead to your long-term success.

So, banks are forcing businesses and consumers in any way they can to cough up the goods. At all risk. It is like they have been given clear instructions to get funds no-matter what. People who have up til now had gleaming credit scores with few loans and no defaults, are being treated like criminals. Like absolute dirt. Why? Because they have been caught out when the hyper-inflated credit bubble burst. One of the most heart-felt and honest recordings of bully tactics used by some of the world’s financial institutions have been logged at http://creditcrunchersdiary.blogspot.com/.

In today’s competitive world, negative customer service experience opens the door to your competition. Customers are savvy, they know what they want and will easily walk away if their requirements are not met.

In these difficult times, there are few people that have not felt the pinch. So, I would, like the author of the http://creditcrunchersdiary.blogspot.com/ blog Paola Bassenesse, believe that banks should be out to support, delight, enthuse customers and thus achieve recurring business by offering irresistible service.

I believe, like with all diversity training I deliver, it is important to see things from the customer’s point of view. Stand in their shoes (or stilettos), and try to understand and feel what they may be going through.

Consider the last time when you, as a consumer of a product, got on the phone to speak to your bank. What is it you wanted in relation to your specific problem? Were you looking for someone to read a script back at you and tell you that there is no way to look into a solution to that given problem? How did you feel?

So, my question is, why do companies insist on doing that: speaking to us like we are sorry scum for inconveniencing them?

For those companies that want to avoid this pitfall, here are some tips to consider:

1. Understand Customer Motivators

Identify what customers want from the relationship with you at that specific moment. My guess is that it is likely to revolve around options to make something happen or avoid something else occurring. In the credit card repayment scenario an example could be payments of part of that which is owed, even to the amount of £1… best to get £1 a week for a few months than a disgruntled customer.

We invite the staff to consider that customers may not have chosen to get into such financial difficulties. Nor have they chosen to have to tell a complete stranger that things are financially dire for them. Having faced the personal blow of losing a business and all my money with it, I can tell you, it is hard.

2. Listen, listen, listen!

Listen to what your customer is saying and reassure them! Repeat what the customer has said to you, using their own language. Ignore the little voice in your head that is telling you how unreasonable the customer is being. But repeat what they have said, such as “So, you would like us to freeze your overdraft charges and remove them completely? ” This goes hand in hand with the next point…

3. Use a gentle, understanding tone of voice and language of empathy

It does not hurt to say the words “I understand, it must be difficult, Mrs Ioannidis, we will look into what we can do for you”.

Even if you have to resort to a no. at least then the customer has felt that he has been listened to, rather than out rightly ignored. Empathy is key.

4. Empower customer service staff

Allow flexibility in your company processes and empower customer service assistants to use their discretion in solving customer service issues. Unfortunately, this is an anathema for most companies. However, it is critical to be able to support changes to company processes for the benefit for keeping a seriously disgruntled customer.
A great example of this is a personal experience where I received a phone call from what I believed was my mobile phone provider. I was offered to buy mobile insurance following a mobile upgrade. I signed up, and asked the persistent woman on the phone to send me the paperwork. Two weeks later. I had not heard from the company nor received the policy in the post, so I called my mobile provider, Carphone Warehouse. After a lengthy conversation, I was told that they had not contacted me, that it must have been one of the rogue companies that pass themselves as Carphone Warehouse in order to get client account details. I was shocked – I had been unaware that any such companies existed. But the most astonishing fact is, is that when I said I still wanted to sign up for the insurance, I was told that I was over the 14 days in which to do so, and that they could not do anything about it. I wanted to buy the service, but was told I could not!   Inflexibility ruled their processes, so they have jeopardised my relationship with them. What a waste. 

5. Keep Marketing informed of Customer Service Issues and Remedies

The Marketing and Customer Services departments should be on the look-out for specific trends that could lead to a new service or proposition that could help gain customer loyalty in the short term.

How about a credit card freeze, where yes, interest may be charged, but the customer only needs to pay that £1 per month minimum payment? Or a payment holiday? These are now commonplace in the mortgage market.

In a time like this, any bank or institution that was seen to behave in a humane way would reap the benefits – yes, this involves a certain financial investment; however, they would then have earned their customers’ loyalty and the positive word-of-mouth which would, in the long-term, compensate their short-term exposure.

But perhaps that is where the deep-rooted problem is – the apparent inability to consider the long-term implications of actions taken on real people, their customers and stakeholders. This has been the great determinant for banks and financial institutions being in the mess they are in in the first place…..

We hope that the lesson has been learnt and ask the business world at large: So how exactly are you delighting your customers today?

I have always advocated, and my unorthodox career “course” is an example of this, that diversity in experience and the people who support us along the way is critical. A single mentor can be good – for perhaps particular issues, in a particular context. However, what we need is a circle of mentors, a network of supporters, each with a different capability to support us along the way.

It was refreshing to see the article written by Dr. Kathy E. Kram, a professor of organizational behavior and a distinguished faculty scholar at Boston University’s School of Management, and Dr. Monica C. Higgins, an associate professor focused on leadership and organizational behavior at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, called “A new approach to mentoring“. They summarise their thoughts as follows: 

“It takes a Network .

The Situation: The traditional mentoring arrangement just doesn’t work anymore. A single senior colleague can’t possibly keep up with all the changes in the fast-moving world of work.

The Solution: People should create and cultivate developmental networks instead-small groups of people who provide regular advice and support.

The Strategy: There are a number of steps to take when setting up a network, such as carefully assessing your strengths, weaknesses and goals and figuring out what you need to know to advance your goals. And when your network is in place, you should regularly reassess it as your situation changes-while making sure that you help out your allies as much as they help you.”

The authors proceed to advise:

 ”1. Know Thyself
Although this tip may sound clichéd, it’s crucial. When people seek out help, they generally aren’t as well-prepared as they could be. Only if people know their own goals, strengths and weaknesses will they be able to figure out whom to turn to for support-and know how to ask for and apply advice effectively.

You should start by reviewing appraisals and developmental feedback that you have received. And ask yourself tough questions. What do you really enjoy doing at work? How can you best contribute, given your talents and interests? Where would you like to be in two years? In five years? Are there skill and knowledge gaps that you want to fill? Do you have a healthy balance between your work and outside commitments? Who knows you well enough to give useful feedback?

You should also assess your interpersonal skills. Are you comfortable reaching out for help, sharing your experiences and soliciting feedback? Or even just starting conversations with strangers? If you have shortcomings here, it’s vital that you address them, or you may have trouble creating an effective developmental network.

Fortunately, many organizations offer a range of activities to help people answer these kinds of questions, such as leadership-development programs and career-assessment tools.

2. Know Your Context
Knowing yourself is only half the equation. You must also know as much as possible about how to achieve your goal-whether that means a promotion, a new career or simply better balance in life.

If you’re looking to advance at your job, for instance, you must understand how the promotion process works at your company and figure out which potential sponsors might be keen on coaching you. If you want to change careers, you would want to be sure you understood the ins and outs of your desired field, everything from its hiring practices to what’s expected in the job. A good way to proceed is to build up contacts in the industry, perhaps by attending professional conferences.

These new contacts may then introduce you to people already working in the area that you aspire to join. And if you nurture these relationships, over time these people may become part of your developmental network. But it’s key to focus on a handful of relationships with individuals who seem to genuinely care about you and have wisdom or resources to offer. And be mindful of what you can offer to each of these individuals to create mutual learning.

3. Enlist Developers
Next, it’s time to actually build your developmental network, enlisting people who can help you advance your goals. So, whom should you choose?

Let’s say you’re a product manager in a technology company aspiring to reach a higher position. You’ll want to develop alliances with people at more senior levels who can sponsor and promote you, coach you and serve as a role model.

This, however, isn’t sufficient. What about peers who can help you learn to navigate the company’s politics and can share information about those at more senior levels? And are there individuals outside your organization who can help you keep learning? Professors or fellow students from graduate school could remind you about theories or practices that might be useful in your current job. Contacts at professional organizations could give you insights into new technology, while people in your family could act as a sounding board.

For some, forming outside developmental relationships may be just the kind of help they need to make a career change. Indeed, the greater the diversity of one’s network, the more open-minded one is likely to be regarding next steps.

It is critical to remember that high-quality mentoring is a process of give and take, where both parties learn from each other. So, you should approach potential developers with a sense of how they might benefit from an association with you.

What can they learn from you-new skills? Maybe they’ll be able to develop insight into how people in your job see the world and prioritize what’s important. Could helping you be an opportunity for a senior manager to hone coaching skills or to develop confidence in mentoring others?

Having a clear sense of these possibilities will make it easier for you to empathize with your allies, ask relevant questions and disclose relevant information about yourself as you ask for guidance.

4. Regularly Reassess
As your career and life unfold, you’ll need to keep reassessing your developmental network; the setup that served you well a few years ago may not work as your situation changes. You must ask yourself which developers can still help you meet your goals, and which need to be eased aside for new ones.

This may sound calculating and borderline manipulative, but remember that you’re not actually discarding old allies. As you bring new people into your network, don’t discard the old ones, just look on them in a different way-perhaps as valued friends whom you consult occasionally instead of colleagues that you frequently rely on for advice.

In short, it’s a matter of being more intentional when it comes to seeking out advice, and this is relevant for everyone, at every career stage, not just for those starting out.

For a look at a successful reassessment, consider a young software executive we’ve interviewed. When he started out, he wanted to become an expert in dealing with client problems, so he sought out a senior colleague who served as a role model and eventually provided him with exposure to clients. He was promoted several times and built a strong developmental network, including his boss, the vice president of marketing, several of his immediate subordinates and one of his peers.

After 12 years, he was interested in moving into a leadership position where he could run one of the company’s business units. But the current leaders appeared to be quite comfortable in their roles. And he began to feel that there were few people he could turn to for advice, given an increasing sense of competition among his peers (and his own fast-paced trajectory).

So, he began to build a developmental network that could help him manage his new challenges. The first person he turned to was his wife, who provided continuing support and confirmation during this difficult time. As she worked through the issues with him, she hit upon a crucial piece of advice, encouraging him to look outside the company for a new job where he could meet his goals. At the same time, he consulted an executive-search firm, which counseled him about where he might turn for opportunities.

Putting all of it together, he left his company for another firm, where he led several teams. Now he’s considering launching a start-up of his own.

5. Develop Others
As you enlist people in your network, consider how you can benefit them, as well. Remember, high-quality mentoring is about mutual learning; consider how your high-quality relationships serve to develop others and your organization.

As you enlist more senior colleagues, for instance, you’ll be providing them with opportunities to gain new knowledge from you, to hone their coaching skills and possibly boost their enthusiasm at work. Similarly, as you enlist junior colleagues in your developmental network to hone your coaching skills, you are creating an opportunity for them to bring you into their developmental networks. Exploring these complementary personal goals can solidify the relationship and ultimately help both of you and your organization.

If you’re a senior leader, meanwhile, you should also work to foster developmental networks in your organization. Just by forming your own network, and joining other people’s networks, you will serve as a role model. But you can also actively encourage coaching and mentoring among those that you manage, by designing jobs to encourage peer coaching, for example. And you can launch leadership-development programs that help individuals to develop the skills and self-awareness they’ll need to build strong developmental networks.

Ultimately, these developmental networks can enhance organizational performance and development. It is, in essence, a win-win proposition for you and your organization.”

It is great to see academia and business experience can concurr: opening your personal horizons with what I call the Mentoring Mesh, your own mesh of mentors to help you through your career course is a strategic imperative for your personal, and thus, organisation’s development.