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The following article was published in the Charleston Post & Courier's Business Major, a featured monthly column in the Business Review Section on November 30, 1998. Good and bad management inspire entrepreneursBy DOROTHY P. MOORE Special to the Post and Courier Many organizations remain hierarchical with bureaucratic value systems, which are embedded, in formal and informal rules for getting things done. More than one-fifth of the entrepreneurs in our study started businesses of their own because they wanted a different organizational climate. "I think I just wanted a chance to work and to be the best I could be," said one. "What I found in the corporate environment was that they didn't encourage you to be the best you could be. They encouraged you to fit into a niche or slot to meet their expectations." In organizations people come and go. A position that is enjoyable or perhaps just tolerable becomes something entirely different when a bad manager takes over. Recalls a Philadelphia entrepreneur, "I worked for a man who resigned a month after I got there and the department became very chaotic. The job became very undoable very quickly and I didn't want to work in that kind of environment." A California entrepreneur remembered that after a management change "The new leader cut all the programs and killed all the things he had not created. The old power structure was left powerless or replaced." At best, organizational politics can be a necessary and useful but time-consuming activity. At worst, the environment becomes highly politicized. Research suggests that women are more sensitive to environments where success is based more on who employees know than on what they know and for this reason can be more adversely affected. A most deadly organizational combination is produced by the manager who hoards power, establishes a suppressive environment, follows rigid rules (unless he changes them) and hands out rewards on the basis of favoritism explaining to others that they are not qualified because they don't fit his prescription. Time and again, our entrepreneurs voiced this theme. "It was politics pure and simple. People who did not do a good job were rewarded in spite of their poor performance. People who did not fit the manager's prescription were left out." "What I was best at doing," says a Philadelphia businesswoman, "bringing an organized and thoughtful sense of inquiry into a corporate situation, was not very highly prized the higher I got in the management ranks." A woman who later started her own high tech company, observed of her former corporate environment, "A lack of vision--the mundane approach to operations. . . No one took accountability for his or her work. Responsibility was passed onto someone else." Their own focus on superior performance had often brought women we interviewed into conflict with bureaucratic, political and stereotypical organizational standards. These entrepreneurs pointed to former bosses who simply did not know what to do with competent, capable women seeking more responsibility and autonomy. "I don't think I am bragging when I say I knew I had very good managerial skills," said a Philadelphia entrepreneur, "I had a track record for being able to build a team and have a group of people work together to really accomplish exciting things. Well, this manager - whenever I made a decision, which I thought was a little decision, if I didn't consult him first, he saw it as me going around him, leaving him out. What he wanted from me was compliance. He wanted me to do whatever he said to do and to accept whatever he said. And when I didn't do that, you can't imagine the anger that evoked." Other women had found themselves in the uncomfortable situation of being female pioneers in male-created environments still dominated by men. The continuing difficulties of always being the outsider is such a common phenomenon that researchers describe them as "Tokens". One entrepreneur, who formerly had been a top manager, found the token experience educational. After observing the interactions of the top executives in her company, she changed her mind about the attraction of a top management position. "Being in there and feeling like what it felt like to be there and seeing how they operated didn't make me want to be there." For others, adjusting to the culture exacted too high a price. "I could have stayed if I had swallowed my self-respect and swallowed my self-esteem, but I wasn't willing to do that," explained a Chicago entrepreneur. Such sentiments are typical of the one-woman manager in five who today leaves an organization to start her own business. Other entrepreneurs remembered hostile environments but good bosses and the difference they made. A Dallas businesswoman recalled, "We moved into a new building. The men in every office had a big desk. The assistants - some male, some female - had a smaller desk. My mentor took one look at our new office and he shoved the small desk out and down the hall. He then went down the hall and got me a big desk. And all hell broke loose. Men at my mentor's level in the organization just couldn't stand the symbolism of my having a desk the same size as his. With clients, I had a professional position rather than a subservient role. That's one of the things that helped me when I later became an entrepreneur. I had been given self-confidence. It was a wonderful example of mentorship. But I also saw the kind of organizational symbolism that is intended to keep women in their place." Some women remembered much better organizational environments. A Philadelphia entrepreneur formerly in sales management for a large pharmaceutical company recalls, "I got a lot of support from a lot of great guys. . . It really was very rewarding." A Chicago entrepreneur remembers that "The company wanted me to stay because they are a big corporation and they wanted female managers. My boss kept saying that in five years I will probably be working for you because they are really putting a push on to increase the female roles in the corporation. They offered me just about anything I wanted, international assignments, anywhere I wanted to go. I liked the work, which is why I decided to start my own business." Sometimes a positive experience developed out of what looked at first like a bad start. A Charleston entrepreneur remembers, "When I first went to work, the first thing my boss said to me was, 'You can be replaced.' I was horrified; I was young, and innocent. Then he turned out to be a wonderful mentor, a wonderful teacher. He had just expected that there was no way I could produce." Bad bosses or good, the management lessons these entrepreneurs learned have stayed with them. "Because of my experience in the corporate environment I know the political things to do to survive, but I will not run my business that way," says a California entrepreneur, "I realize that people in the trenches get it done." Entrepreneurs with bad experiences uniformly vowed not to repeat the pattern. "I had been in an environment that was very hierarchical, very male oriented, not much personal feedback, not much opportunity for females to advance," says a Dallas entrepreneur, "I was determined that was not going to happen in any business I created." The lesson in all this is simple. It is the immediate model. If management at the lower level is not good, the reaction of subordinates to the whole organization is negative. Higher management can make no better investment than to insure that managers at all levels are operating in ways that insure all employees are being treated equitably and fairly. For Questions/Comments about this site, contact moored@citadel.edu. Site designed by Jackye Cocoros. |