organizational ladership, organizational change ... · organizational ladership, organizational...

ORGANIZATIONALLADERSHIP,

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE:

l___ Mobilizing Gender Diversityto Create theCompetitive Edge

A Panel Discuissioni in Honior ofInternational lVbinen s Day,

March 29, 1996

4~~~~~~~~~4

~~~~~ ~~~~The Office of the Senior Advliser, on Genider- Equialiti'The World Bank

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LEFT-HAND COLUMN, TOP TO BOTrOM; PANELISTS:

Sheila WellingtonPresident, Catalyst

Johanne TottaSenior Vice President, Strategy & Human Resources, Bank of Montreal

Dorothy Hamachi BerryVice President, Human Resources, The World Bank

RIGHT-HAND COLUMN, TOP TO BoTroM; AUDIENCE MEMBERS ASK QUESTIONS:

Jane Armitage, Poverty and Social Policy DepartmentMyla Williams, Office of tbe Vice President and Controller

For more information please contact:

OFFICE OF THE SENIOR ADVISER ON GENDER EQUALITY5

1818 H STREET, N.W., ROOM E3-056WASHINGTON, D.C. 20433

THE WORLD BANK

ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP,ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE:

MOBILIZING GENDER DIVERSITY TOCREATE THE COMPETITIVE EDGE

A Panel Discussion

Organized by the Office of the Senior Adviser on Gender Equality

In Honor of International Women's Day

JOHANNE M. TOTTASenior Vice President, Strategy & Human Resources

Bank of Montreal

SHEILA W. WELLINGTONPresident, Catalyst

DOROTHY HAMACHI BERRY, ModeratorVice President, Human Resources

TheWorld Bank

Friday, March 29,1996

This transcript has been prepared from a tape recording and edited for clarity. Nosubstance has been deleted.

MS. BERRY: Hi everyone. My namne is Dorothy Hamachi Berry. And I amthrilled to see a full house. I would like those of you who have empty seats next to youto raise your hand, so that people can sit. There are no empty seats? Standing roomonly ...that is very good news.

For those of you who are standing, I'm sorry, but I think we're going to go on. Weshould reward good behavior for being on time.

[Laughter.]

I am delighted to be here with all of you. This is an anniversary of sorts for me. Ihave now been a World Bank employee for exactly four weeks. And I did somethingnew today, which was to take the tunnel from the MC building to this [J] building. Lateron this afternoon I have another meeting here, so the trick for me will be to see if Iremember how to go through that maze.

This is imy first public event since I have come to the Bank, and I am very pleasedthat it happens to be a panel about gender issues. It was organized for InternationalWomen's Day, which was on March 8th. It has been arranged for us by Anette Pedersen,our Senior Adviser on Gender Equality, and I am very, very pleased and honored to bethe moderator.

We have some very, very distinguished colleagues here to speak to you. At lunch Isaid to them that I am hoping for an interactive session this afternoon, Because in thefour weeks that I have been here, lots of different issues have been raised, and I think itis really important for us to open up a dialogue. So that rather than the issues beingunderground, so to speak, we have a real opportunity to share the questions we have onour minds, and have some good, provocative discussions around what is interesting ortroubling. That is what we would like to do.

In terms of a format, the two people on the panel now -- the third could not makeit today because she is ill -- will each make a short presentation. Then we'll open it up tothe floor for questions or anything that is on your mind. And in case there are noquestions, I have a whole list that I will ask the panel members.

So without further ado, I am going to introduce the panelists to you, even thoughyou have bios. Let me first introduce Johanne Totta. She is the Senior Vice President,Strategy and Human Resources for the Bank of Montreal. She has had a 10-year careerin Canada's oldest and third-largest bank, which has 34,000 employees worldwide.

Her career has included management positions in operations, and in 1991 she wasappointed as the Bank of Montreal's first Vice President for Employee Programs and

Organizational Leadership, Organizational Change I March 29, 1996

Workplace Equality. In 1994, her creative approaches to leveling the playing field in theBank of Montreal helped to win it the Catalyst Annual Award. I am hoping that one daythe World Bank can win the Catalyst Award.

[Applause.]

So that's a specific goal for us.

In January 1996, she was appointed Senior Vice President for Strategy and HumanResources in Nesbitt Bums, the investment banking arm of the Bank of Montreal. In1995, she was named Woman of the Year by the YWCA. She is on the board of St.Mary's Hospital [Toronto] and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center forResearch and Education at the Carleton University School of Business in Ottawa. Soplease welcome Johanne to our panel today.

[Applause.]

To her right is Sheila Wellington, who is the President of Catalyst. I think all ofyou know what a great organization Catalyst is. Sheila served as Secretary of YaleUniversity for six years, and she was the first non-psychiatrist and first woman to runtwo mental health facilities. At lunch, she told us that she was the second woman to bean officer at Yale University in its 300-year history.

She taught at Yale Medical School. She has lectured extensively. She has servedon numerous presidential and national commissions. She serves as a trustee of NuveenSelect Portfolios; and on several boards, including the Business Council of New YorkState, National Council for Research on Women, and the Institute for Women's PolicyResearch. She joined Catalyst in 1993.

Just a brief overview of Catalyst: it was founded in 1962 to help women inbusiness and the professions achieve their potential; and to help employers make themost use of women employees' potential. Catalyst gives an annual award to threecompanies that demonstrate outstanding achievement. On March 26th, Catalystpresented awards to the Hoechst Celanese Corporation, Knight-Ridder, and TexasInstruments. So please welcome Sheila Wellington as a panelist this afternoon.

[Applause.]

We had a short discussion at lunch this afternoon, and decided that SheilaWellington will make her presentation first. Sheila?

MS. WELLINGTON: Let me start by thanking Dorothy and Anette for giving methis chance. I am grateful to them, and also to all of you for being here.

Organizational Leadership, Organizational Change 2 March 29, 1996

I am going to talk to you about the most recent study that Catalyst has done, onwomen in corporate leadership. I will focus on it for a number of reasons. One, becauseit is trail-blazing. Two, because it focuses on women at the top of the corporatestructure, and on CEOs, asking their views of barriers and opportunities for women.And three -- undoubtedly the most important -- this study is the freshest in my mind.

About a month ago, Catalyst released the report, which has gotten a fair amount ofattention, and deservedly so. But if it ends with attention rather than change, I will bedisappointed. Our aim is not merely to talk about change, but to work withorganizations to make it happen. So the challenge for an organization like Catalyst is toget out of the pulpit and into the trenches, and this study is particularly illuminating onthat score.

We ideintified the 1,600 women at the vice-president level or above in the Fortune1000 companies and mailed them a survey. From that group we picked a random samplefor in-depth interviews. At the same time, we mailed a similar, not-totally-parallelsurvey to the Fortune 1000 CEOs in America. We then interviewed 20 CEOs in-depthand got their comments.

In the first case (the women executives), we got a 37 percent response rate. Andfor the CEOs of the Fortune 1000 -- you should know that two are women, the rest aremen -- we got a 33 percent response rate.

So it is a reliable study. Catalyst is incredibly reliable.

First, let me tell you some things about these women. Four in ten of them directlyreport to the C2EO or are one level away; eight in ten are within two reporting levels ofthe CEO. Their average age is 45. Their average salary is $248,000 a year. Some ofthese women have broken the glass ceiling in corporate America.

Essentially, we came up with the following findings, which I hope you findilluminating.

We asked these women, what did it take for them to succeed? Seventy-sevenpercent of them told us, consistently exceeding expectations; 61 percent said developinga style with which male managers are comfortable; 50 percent said seeking out difficultassignments; 37 percent said, having an influential mentor. So what they said was:work hard, exceed expectations, just be better.

And we have pages and pages of verbatim quotes in the report, because we alsoasked the women that we surveyed to write in any comments that they wished, inaddition to the 20 in-depth interviews. In our years of doing this kind of research, wehave never gotten this many responses. I think the candor of the responses is directlyrelated to the fact that it was totally confidential; when I read the verbatims, I didn't


know which woman in the personal interview sample said what, except for the few Ispoke to myself.

What these women spoke about was working very hard: getting up at 4 o'clock inthe morning, getting in a couple of hours before their kids got up, eliminating everythingbut family and work. Interestingly, 72 percent of these women are married, and 64percent of them have kids; two-thirds of those have kids under 18. So the myth -- that inorder to make it you can't be married, you can't have kids -- doesn't seem to be true. Andthat was interesting.

We asked them what the barriers were, and we had the customary list of ten whichyou could come up with yourselves. The biggest barriers were male stereotypes andpreconceptions and being excluded from informal networks of comnmunications. Mindyou, these are the women who have made it, the women who don't complain.

On the other hand, when we asked the CEOs what they thought the barriers were,they cited lack of line experience, of bottom-line-related work. The women did cite ittoo, but third, some distance away. And the men said that women had not been in thepipeline long enough.

When the New York Times reported this story, they noted that when I presentedthis finding to a group similar to this one -- preponderantly high-placed corporate women-- a titter went through the audience. So apparently women do not agree that womenhave not been in the pipeline long enough. But there is agreement from both men andwomen that line experience is a critical factor, and it is lacking.

What else did the women say? We asked them why advancing women to seniormanagement was important. They pointed, as CEOs do all the time, to the talent pool,the increasing numbers of women coming out of graduate schools around the world.What head of an organization wouldn't want to double the size of his talent pool like thatif he could do it? So the talent pool was identified as a really critical issue.

They also pointed to the fact that women have a unique perspective andbackground. And also to the fact that the consumer base -- the customer base or theservice-recipient base -- is heavily female.

On affirmative action, 44 percent of these women said that it had had no impact ontheir career success. That surprised us some. About a third said that it had had mostly apositive effect, and the rest, both positive and negative. Only 1 percent said negative.

When we broke down the 44 percent that said affirmative action had had noimpact, it really differed quite a bit in terms of race and age. Older women felt that ithad had a positive impact, and women of color felt that as well; others less so.


We asked about work and family. These women all have kids, but virtually noneof them -- virtually none -- had availed themselves of any of the work-family balanceprograms in their companies. We hypothesized that it's because most of these women,whose average age is 45, had their kids when such programs weren't available. But wealso attribute it to the fact that even where companies have these programs, there's afeeling on the part of the women -- and probably rightly -- that for those who do takeadvantage of these programs, it's considered a signal that you're not really serious aboutyour career. TChat's come up in some of our other studies.

We got some good, optimistic predictions about where things would be in the year2000, but had Rene Redwood been here, I know she would have spoken about the [lessrosy picture in the] Glass Ceiling Report. They identified 5 percent of seniormanagement being female. I know that because they got the number from us.

Forty-nine percent of CEOs and 23 percent of women said that conditions forwomen in management had improved greatly in the last five years. A large majority ofboth women and CEOs said that they had improved somewhat.

So despite the different diagnoses about why there is success or a lack of success,the prescriptions really are very much the same. Both men and women cite as important:identifying high-potential women, developing programs that move them along, givinghigh visibility assignments to women, and offering opportunities for line management.That last point was hit consistently, so let me end with it.

We have lots of other studies. We take the knowledge from those studies and useit to work with companies -- as we have for years -- at making change. It's not so hardto change if you really want to do it.

Thanks a lot.

[Applause.]

MS. BERRY: We decided to have the two presentations first, and then we'll takequestions afterwards. So, Johanne, if you could?

MS. TOTTA: Thank you for inviting me here today. I want to say that one of mydreams has always been to follow Sheila in a presentation. So I'm quite happy to do that.

Bank of Montreal started its initiative about five years ago with changes in theCEO and President. Let me tell you that I've been with the organization for a little bitover 11 years, and prior to the change at the top, I used to say that I worked for a largefinancial institution. Now I'm proud to say I work for Bank of Montreal.

What the new leadership team did was to put the emphasis on employees. Theysaid, "if we're going to be successful in the future, what is going to be our biggest source


of competitive advantage?" There are a lot of banks in Canada and the United States,and we were struggling to be a North American bank. So what would be ourdifferentiating factor? They said, people.

When the CEO and President looked at the organization, they saw that womenmade up 75 percent of the staff, but only 6 percent of the executive ranks. Being smartand intelligent, they asked, "What's wrong with this picture?" And they set out to findout. In 1990, they put together a Task Force to take a look at what the issues really were.

Today, I'd like to talk to you briefly about the issues that emerged from the TaskForce's research, and how we took that really good piece of research and helped it totake root in the organization.

The Task Force surveyed 15,000 employees within the organization, over 250senior people in large organizations, and over 500 of our employees who retired, andfound out what the constraints to the advancement of women really are.

We found that overwhelmingly, outdated attitudes and behaviors were the singlegreatest barrier that women were facing in the organization. They also were facingrestricted access to information about promotional opportunities, and difficulties inbalancing their multiple commitments.

First let me address the outdated, the stereotypical attitudes held by a lot of men --and I might add, by a lot of women in the organization. In our surveys, employees toldus that women weren't advancing because of their age, because of their commitment tothe organization, because of their education, because of performance. And last but notleast, they said just let it go; time will take care of these things. Don't do anything;society is changing. If we just keep hiring the way we are, we won't have a problem.

The approach taken by the Task Force, and its leader, being a financial type, was tosay, let's really take a look at the facts. If people are telling us that women aren't gettingahead because of their age, let's look at the facts. And if that's true, let's address it.

So we looked at the facts.

First, we looked at age. When we interviewed people, we were told, you know,we'd love to hire a woman, but they're just too young. They've just come out ofuniversity, and they don't have the experience. Other people told us, we'd love topromote a woman, but she's just too old. She's about to go into retirement. So what weheard were real excuses on age. No one told us that it wasn't an issue.

We found out that the average age in our organization at all levels, from seniormanagement, mid-management, junior management, was from 36 to 44. So age clearlywas not an issue.


The next thing we heard about was commitment. People said, you know, we'dreally love to promote or hire women, but, they're just not committed; they don't stay onthe job long enough. They have babies, and they quit on us.

In actua]l fact, we looked at average time on job and found out that women were onthe jobs longer than men, except for senior management, and that's because we had veryfew women in, senior management. We hadn't been hiring them, so they hadn't been onthe job for very long.

More irnportantly, we found that 98.9 percent of our women returned aftermaternity leave, and most of them took only three months. So there goes that myth [thatwomen leave after they have babies].

The next one was education. We heard, you know, we'd really love to promote thiswoman, but she's just not educated enough. Well, among management, we had 1,400women with relevant post-university degrees: MBAs, CPAs, et cetera. And we justcouldn't find a pool of educated women. That was another myth that went out thewindow.

Another thing we talked about was performance. We heard, we just don't know ifthey can handle the stress. We don't know if they've got the right stuff to hang in thereand do these tough assignments.

When we looked at performance scores, we found out that women outperformedmen. We hacl to be careful on this one because we really didn't want to male bash, butwhat we did find when we looked at performance scores, is that women performed aswell or better than men on the jobs that they were doing.

These and many more stereotypical attitudes really demonstrated why womenweren't moving ahead in our organization. So we issued a Task Force Report where wetalked about the key issues. First we talked about the stereotypes, and showed that theywere really stereotypical attitudes.

We talked about the lack of role models and support systems, and we addressedthat by implementing a mentoring program.

We also addressed the significant gap between policies and practices. Our policieswere flawless, but did we really walk the talk? No, we didn't.

We talked about the lack of flexible work arrangements in the organization. When I saylack, I think I'm being generous. There were no flexible work arrangements. We addressed thatby implementing a flexible work arrangement policy, and now we have over 5,000 employees onthese arrangements.


Also, our communications did not cultivate an image of diversity or advancement.We always had white males in all our commercials, yet, here we were saying that therewas no diversity problem at the Bank of Montreal.

We circulated our Task Force Report to all our employees. Our President wentacross Canada with its messages -- these are the stereotypical attitudes, these are thefacts, and we're going to remove the myths. That message was fine, and it took hold.

Then the next challenge was, how do you really take this document and reallymake it work?

We addressed that by developing an integrated approach to change. And I reallythink that a single diversity initiative -- a mentoring program, a stand-alone flexible workarrangement, et cetera to help the advancement of women -- is really not what it's goingto take to move us into the future. I'd like to go through this diagram very briefly, toshow what I mean --

AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

MEASUREMENT CUsTM STEK SUPPORTIVE\lumm 5IC \ PNI IENVIRONMENT

'WORKIMAE EQU

I'd like to start with the strategic planning circle. We've integrated theadvancement of women into our strategic plan as part of our vision for the future. But ifthat's all that we were to do, we certainly would have no change. The strategic plan isdone once every five years, and people refer to it off and on.


So we also put it into our annual business plan. Because we're a financialinstitution, financial business plans really are the focus of how we run the organization.As we do our business plans, we take a bottom-up approach. We ask our employees,take a look at your communities, take a look at the number of women that you have inyour part of the organization. Tell us how many women you will hire, how many youwill promote, and how many you'll train and how many you'll retain -- tell us specificallywhat you're going to do. And we'll come back to you on a quarterly basis, just like wecome back to you with your financial plans, and we'll tell you how well you're doing.So we monitor progress.

But if you don't tie planning to performance, people won't react. They'll just thinkit's something you're asking for, and fill in any type of numbers. But the minute you tieit to performance, people start to be more proactive.

But if' you do all that and you don't train people on the issues to really changeattitudes, then you're going to have people doing the right thing but for the wrong reason.

And then you have to communicate about your initiatives. Our President talksabout financial results on a quarterly basis, and at the same time he talks about howwell we're cloing on this initiative.

And last but not least, if you don't see the significant impact that this is going tohave on your customer base, then I don't know that it's worth doing anything.

Let me tell you a little story about something that happened to me this morning. Itdemonstrates how, if you don't have an integrated approach, you can have senior-levelcommitmenit, but your grass-roots-level employees won't really walk the talk.

I flew in this morning from Montreal, traveling in business class. I walked intobusiness class, showed my ticket, went to the first seat and waited for someone to get mycoat. Traveling quite a bit, I know that if you don't get your coat picked up within thefirst minute, you're going to be stuck shoving it into the overhead bin. I like my coat, soI figured, well, let me be proactive and go hang my coat up.

Another flight attendant, not the one I checked in with, looked at me and said,"That's only for first-class passengers." I said, "Well, I am in first class." She asked tosee my ticket.

[Audience murmurs.]

I showed her the ticket and sat down. She proceeded to pass out newspapers,skipping me completely, passing them out to the rest of the group, who were all men.

There were none left when she came back. I asked if I could have one, and shesaid, "Well, you can just ask the guy behind you to share a newspaper"


But it doesn't end there. On comes the in-flight video on security, and there's awoman pilot saying, "Welcome, and thank you for flying with us." You could really seethat they had made an effort to include diversity in their in-flight video with a womanpilot. So, clearly, the top of the house has one message, but has it really filtered down? Idon't think so.

On that note, I'd like to advocate an integrated approach to make these programs work.Thank you.

[Applause.]

MS. BERRY: I can't help myself. I am going to be the first one to ask a question.It is a question I have pondered over the years, and that I often get from women in theworkplace. So I thought I would ask Sheila and Johanne to talk about it.

For me, one of the intriguing points in the Catalyst study was women saying that astyle with which men feel comfortable is critical to success. Now, what do we think thatmeans? I ask myself: Dorothy, does that mean that we have to be like men?

I personally think the answer is no. But having said that, I should add that I thinkthe notion of what is comfortable to men is a pretty complex one. I was going to say Idon't want to put you on the spot, but I do.. .so, Sheila or Johanne, could you comment?

MS. WELLINGTON: That was an interesting comment, and certainly I have tostart off by saying, in regard to the assertion that there is such a thing as a female style ora female management style: one, I donit agree with it; two, every day we discover somenew genetic marker for something. The knowledge base simply is not there at thisjuncture to make those claims.

To say that there is a woman's style which is inclusive and nurturing and team-building, and there's a man's style that's leading and top-down -- any stereotype aboutany group, whether based on gender, race or ethnicity -- ultimately is destructive for thatgroup. So I just have to say for openers that the notion of a female management style issomething which I consider ultimately destructive for women.

I think that women have to find a style that's effective. That means somethingeffective for them and effective for the culture in which they operate. And that'sintrinsic to the response. The group right after my generation thought that access wouldsolve everything -- just give us the job, and in 25 years we'll be running things. Clearlythat didn't work. Then there was that lady in the 70s and 80s generation, wearing thelittle collars with the rosette which was supposed to look like a tie. I never wore those. Ilooked bad in them.

[Laughter.]


That didn't work. What works is to identify the style that is effective within theorganizational culture. Men and women both have to adapt to organizations. Womenhave to retain that which is natural to them, and yet be consonant with the organizationalculture, or it's not going to work in the long run. There's no doubt about that.

I will, .however, say that when we asked the women [in our most recent study]what their leisure-time activity was -- for those who had leisure time; I told you howhard they worked -- overwhelmingly the response was golf. So there's something there...

[Laughter.]

...of which we should be mindful. In one of the verbatims, in fact, one of thewomen said, "To me, golf is work." So...

[Laughter.]

...that gives you both my prescription and a little bit of somebody's home remedy.You can take it from there.

MS. TOTTA: I certainly would echo what Sheila has said. You really have tounderstand the culture, understand the individuals you're dealing with. When our TaskForce did its study, we realized that certain behaviors in organizations weren't tolerated,and were becoming real barriers. For example if a woman would cry, that was totallyunacceptable: if she broke down, then she couldn't handle it; that's it, she's out.

So we put together a program with the support of Harbridge House called "Womenand Men as Colleagues," which all of our executives and most of our senior managershave attended. It's designed to help them really understand the different styles, so thatthey don't become barriers. So if a woman cries in front of a man, she's not justcounseled out of the organization. We're doing some follow-up because, in the course itcame out clearly that men didn't know how to deal with these differences. And somewomen didn't know how to deal with them either. So we're trying to figure our how wecoach people to find that middle ground, to accept that some people just are moreemotional than others.

We're conlstantly identifying new barriers to communication. One that we dealtwith two years ago was that if you wear a skirt, you'll be promoted in the organization.How do you deal with that if you're a woman -- the only woman at a meeting -- and fivepeople are saying that? How do you work with women and with men to prevent thatfrom happening? A program is needed in some organizational cultures to bridge thegender gap.

MS. BERRY: Thank you both.


I would now like to open the floor to questions, and I think we have quite a bit oftime for interaction. You've heard from two very distinguished women, and I invite youto take the microphone.

QUESTION: Hi. I've been at the World Bank for five years. I'm a consultant, andto be a consultant, you have to be independent, entrepreneurial, take initiative. The lasttime I looked, consultants were 30 percent of the Bank's workforce.

Women are sequestered in consultant positions. They do not appear in any of theBank's statistics, in the numbers of women. So while it looks as though therepresentation of women is increasing, it's not, because many women are consultants.

The other thing is that consultants are not considered for any of these newprograms that are coming up, the ones Mr. Wolfensohn has talked about. So you take agroup of talented, entrepreneurial, strong people, and you keep them off to the side,because then no benefit package has to be paid. I think that it's cheaper for the Bank,about a 70 percent savings.

And consultants have no ability to move because they are hired to do one specificjob, and they stay in that job. They become valuable, and their time is extended beyondthe four-year rule, but the women are trapped there. All this talk about giving peopleopportunities and rotating jobs -- it doesn't work for consultants.

Another point: since we teach women in developing countries how to doinvesting, and since there's no pension here for any consultant, I feel that we should alsooffer an investment training program for women who work here as consultants, so wecan learn how to make some money, at least to have a pension.

[Applause.]

MS. BERRY: I think that is definitely a World Bank issue.

[Laughter.]

I'm not sure that that was a question. I think it was more of a statement.

I will say that in the four weeks that I have been here, the issue about thecomposition of the workforce has come to my attention in many different ways. I thinkit's premature for me to give you any conclusions. I do know that: one, the consultantworkforce has grown over the years; two, as you say, there is some market forceworking there because of the way people are paid; and, three, the demographics are verydifferent. I haven't seen the statistics on women versus men. But, for example, I knowthat the consultant workforce is significantly younger than the workforce at large.


So this is an area that we are looking at seriously. I don't think I can say to you it'sgoing to be this or that, because I have to go back to: why is this happening? It's not somuch why do we have so many consultants, or who are they, but, how did we get towhere we are? There must have been some need that the organization was trying toaddress for this trend to have grown. And I do not know yet what that is.

There is a budget incentive. I'm also told there are performance managementissues about people with fixed terms versus people who are permanent and you can'treally manage their performance. So, from what I've heard, I think that it's a variety ofreasons.

The focus for me over the next few months will be to first look at the causes, andthen say, what is the right kind of workforce for the World Bank and what it wants tobecome as an organization?

QUESTION: I want to go back to the same point you raised, because that was oneof the most catching points in the presentation -- the issue of management style.

I do agree that we shouldn't stereotype men or women. But looking at thisorganization, it is culturally diverse. People come from East Asia, South Asia, Africa,the Middle East. These regions all have different cultural traditions and different stylesof management.

If the institution is rewarding only one management style, then it's compromisingall the other styles, and it's not benefiting from the diversity that people with differentmanagement styles can offer. I think that's happening here now, and what has happenedin the past.

This, of course, also includes women, but we should really put it in a more culturalcontext. I think this is one of the important things that we need to focus on.

MS. WELLINGTON: Let me say that I did not go to a business school. I actuallywent to a school of public health. But one of the mantras, apparently, of the Universityof Chicago Business School is a quote from William Wrigley, who founded the chewinggum company. He used to say that, if two people are always in agreement, one of themis superfluous.

[Laughte:r.]

What one can learn from that, I think, is that the more different points of view, themore different styles, the more different perspectives you can bring to bear on any singleproblem that is confronting an organization -- the more likely that there will be a betterdecision at the end. That's a painful lesson that businesses certainly learned in the '80s.The not-for-profit sector learned it. Universities are currently struggling with it.


If you keep getting people who look the same and have the same background, andthose are the ones that you promote, ultimately the organization is going to suffer; itsmission is going to be diminished. That's a point I'm certainly prepared to talk about,even given my remarks that women have to find a style that's comfortable for them andone that works in their organizational culture.

It would be presumptuous for me to comment on the culture of an organizationwith which I have no specific familiarity, and I'm not presumptuous. But in general,different points of view, different kinds of people, produce better outcomes, and ipsofacto, that holds for an organization which itself is representative of diversity.

MS. TOTTA: I agree with that. To go back to our experience, when we startedour initiative, we had some men who came to us and said, in my culture, the womanstays home and doesn't go to work. While you value differences of opinion, you have tomake sure that you're not just getting another stereotypical attitude and another barrier.You have to really understand what the issue is. Because later when we worked withthis individual, we found in actual fact, in his culture women did go to work, and werepresidents of the country and so forth.

[Laughter.]

But such excuses are advanced very quickly to save face; people might just say,well, we value diversity but we just can't do it. So it's really a matter of working withpeople and really understanding cultural differences, so that you have a dialogue butcome to a consensus at the end.

MS. BERRY: Thank you. Any other questions? Yes?

QUESTION: I had heard summaries of the Catalyst report on the radio and readarticles about it in the newspapers. There was one part of it that stood out in my mindmore than anything else, and that was where the women said: we had to get up at fouro'clock in the moming.

The reason that that resonated so powerfully with me was that I felt: well, I'malready getting up at one o'clock in the morning to give my two-year-old son a bottle,and at three o'clock in the morning to take my four-and-a-half-year-old to the bathroom,and now I find out that I've got to get up at four o'clock in the morning.

All this feeds the Superwoman myth out there. We know from all the studies oftwo-career families that, by and large, the women bear more of the brunt of the domesticresponsibilities. Even if, as many people in the Bank do, we have nannies and otherhelpful benefits that many other working women don't have, we still bear the larger shareof domestic responsibilities.


If on top of that, the message that I heard from Catalyst was that you have to workmuch harder and do better, it's reinforcing this Superwoman myth that I for one find verydaunting if, you know, not exhausting. I wondered if you could comment on that.

MS. WELLINGTON: Sure. But let me say one thing. I hope you didn't think thisis the message from Catalyst. This is what the women [we interviewed] said, uniformly,when they noted by a vast majority that the reason for their success was consistentlyexceeding expectations of their performance. When asked to explain that, they reportedthat it was about always doing better than expected, and also about putting in the hours,putting in the time. This was a consistent theme in the verbatims.

On the other side, I have heard that, of course, the men at the top also work thathard. But one has to factor in what you heard about the second shift: that is, womenwork one shift at work and then go home and work a second shift.

It would seem to me that there are a lot of options that can be put into play, andBank of Montreal certainly has done a number of things to help staff balance work andfamily responsibilities that I'm sure Johanne will talk about. But as to this whole issueof overwork and face time, I will only say that the president of that truly exemplaryorganization, Bank of Montreal, once said to me, "When I used to see people hereburning the midnight oil, I used to think that they were dedicated. Now I think they'rejust inefficient."

MS. TOTTA: Let me talk briefly about life before the new management team. Iwaited until I was six-and-a-half months pregnant to tell them I was pregnant, because Iwas scared I wouldn't get a promotion. I worked Saturdays and Sundays, and was ableto share my war stories on Monday morning, because, I was really coming up and that'swhat you needed to succeed in the organization.

Maybe that's the way these women had to work in order to survive. I know I'vebeen there, done that, seen that. But does that mean that's the way it has to be to goforward? I thin]k that it's up to us to change that.

[Bank of Montreal President] Tony Comper, in his cross-country tours and in the"Women and Mlen as Colleagues" course -- which he actually attends for five or tenminutes to tell hlis view of the world -- now says, "If I see you here on the weekend, Ithink you're inefficient, so don't tell me your war stories."

We've implemented flexible work arrangements, and we have 5,000 employeesusing them. That ranges from working five days a week at home, to job sharing, toworking five days [a week] three hours. And we succeeded in implementing thesearrangements by demonstrating that people on flexible work arrangements are asproductive [as people who are not].


We didn't make these arrangements available to Mommy-trackers only; we putthem in for all our employees. And we have a lot of men on flexible work arrangements.So it's really not affecting women's careers because the programs are being used by bothmen and women. When you fulfill productivity targets or initiatives which demonstratethat you're as productive when you're on a flexible work arrangement, then, you know,face time no longer is what counts.

I think it's really up to us to really change as we go forward and to find out whatthe roadblocks are. You know, sometimes I get up at four o'clock in the morning, but Ialso am there when my daughter goes apple picking. I have not missed one of her schoolevents, this year or since I've been working at the bank. So, there will be the fouro'clock mornings and there will be the late nights; and there will be the afternoons thatI'll take off, with no regrets.

You know, our President will ask, "How is Steffie doing? And how was her applepicking?" It's great for the culture to change at the top, but it's also up to us to walk thetalk. Because if Mr. Comper talks about these policies, but I don't use them myself or Idon't encourage my staff to use them, and on down the line, then we really will have towork from four a.m. until twelve o'clock midnight.

MS. WELLINGTON: I want to add one more thing, about attrition, turnover,something which we haven't really hit on yet.

In our experience working with many different kinds of companies andorganizations for many years, we have found that commitment from the top is theabsolute sine qua non of success for any kind of change initiative. It is the middle of theorganization where the barriers exist. If you want to make change, there has to bechange. In general, it is quite surprising to find out how much knowledge is lacking atthe top about what's really going on in the organization.

The management team of a very large corporation with which we'd been workingfor many years came to us and said basically: "We go through our HR records. Womentell us they're leaving because they're going home to take care of their kids. And they'restarting to surface in our competition, and we don't understand that."

We said, they're not going to tell you why they're leaving. Of course they're goingto say they're going to stay home, because they don't want to burn their bridges.

We ran confidential interviews with 300 of the women and a sample of men frommanagement who had left that corporation in the last few years. And they left primarilyfor two reasons. First it was an organization that demanded hours, and the women feltthey could not have any kind of balance between their work life and their personal lives,so they left to seek that balance in another kind of organization. Or second, they leftbecause they felt that there was no recognition of their talent, and they were going tomove and seek opportunity elsewhere.


One thing that happens in organizations where people literally have to workthemselves into the ground is that key women and men -- and there are more and more --are choosing to leave. That's why women are starting their own businesses at six timesthe rate of men, and that's why there's so much mobility for women. They are leavingorganizations l:ike that. They're voting with their feet.

MS. TOT'TA: I just want to say that we're very happy to bring them into our fold.

[Laughter]

MS. WEILLINGTON: And that's the kind of organization they go to.

MS. TOT TA: I want to add something on turnover. I mentioned that we have5,000-and-some employees on flexible work arrangements. These are individuals whowe probably would have lost had we not acted on the issues Sheila just talked about. Wefigure that we're saving money by just providing flexibility. We estimated that it costs$125,000 [Canadian] to recruit and train a new individual, and that's low-balling theestimate. So we figure we're saving 5,000 times the $125,000. These employees are notworking less, and look at what impact the flexibility of their work has on the bottom line.

QUESTION: I wanted to thank all of you, especially Ms. Totta, for yourcomments abou.t hours at work versus the efficiency of the work.

I wanted to cite a couple studies that I've heard about in addition to the Catalyststudy, that might be interesting. The findings have some bearing on this question ofgetting up at four o'clock in the morning. We've all done it occasionally. We've all putin our occasional 80- and 90-hour weeks.

But guess what? They've done some very rigorous studies of people's claims as tohow much time they put in versus the actual verifiable records of how much time they'veput in. And people who claim to work an average of 50 hours a week actually work 41.People who claim to work 60 hours a week actually work 45. It goes on up. People whoclaim to work 90 hours a week are actually working 53.

So there's a lot of exaggeration, first, in all these war stories that people like to tell.And as Ms. Totta has mentioned, there's a big difference between hours at work and theefficiency of people's work.

The other thing has to do with flexibility and having flexible work arrangementsavailable for both men and women. There was another study done at the University ofMichigan, on people in the law professions: which ones took advantage of parentalleave and flexi-time and so on, and the implications in terms of the wages that theyreceived. The researchers were looking for measures of discrimination.


And, you know, men who just went barreling forth with their careers, not takingany of these options of course, got paid the most. Women who worked very hard anddidn't take any of these options got paid second most. And then women who tookadvantage of the options were ranked third on the totem pole, so to speak. But the oneswho really took the hit were the men who took advantage of these options.

This resonated with me and my family. I'm the one who has the full-time career,and my husband is the one who works part-time and is available to help take care of thefamily responsibilities. And I can see it in the pay that he receives when he's working.So as a family, it's hurting us financially to operate this way. We're working at cross-purposes to the usual prejudices of society.

But in the workplace, when I'm competing against a man for a promotion orsomething, there is an expectation that the man is likely to be the breadwinner, so themanagers say, "let's give him the promotion." Or any guy who thinks that he would liketo take advantage of a flexi-time option knows -- or if he doesn't, he'll find out if he readsthis study -- that he's really going to get hammered.

I just wanted to say we've got to keep pushing on these issues. It's not that I'm soterribly concerned about men as victims...

[Laughter.)

...but I am concerned about the overall implications for all of us.

MS. BERRY: I know as moderator I'm just supposed to facilitate, but I can't helpmyself once again. I do want to talk about this a little bit.

A couple of things. I think it's important when you look at something like theCatalyst report to remember, again, that the population being surveyed is talking. So asSheila said, this is the experience of the women who responded, not necessarilysomebody saying this is the way it ought to be. I think that's a very important point.

Two, these were executive women. So we are now talking about probably the topone percent or even less than one percent of the workforce. I would assert strongly thatthese problems don't face just women, because I know that the men in executivepositions are also working very, very hard.

Let me give you an example. I have a four-year-old son. For the past 10 years,I've worked in organizations that had alternative work schedules. I can tell you that inthese organizations, no executive, including me, was ever on an alternative workschedule. And that was because of the sheer demand on each of the executives. Sowhen I felt sorry for myself about having to get up at two o'clock in the morning and alsoget up at five o'clock in the morning, I didn't say to myself, "well, this is really just


because I'm a woman," as much as I thought, "What is it that we expect of people inorganizations, whether it's men or women?" What does it take to succeed?

And I realized that once I buy into the organizational expectations, I'm part of theproblem, because I am part of what perpetuates the behavior.

I hope this is something that is changing, and I would go back to what Johannesaid. The women in my generation are saying, this is what it has taken for us to succeed.I hope it's not necessarily what it's going to take for men or women 20 years youngerthan I to succeed. But I think all of us -- men as well -- have to say, maybe it'sunrealistic for organizations to expect anybody to work 18 hours a day; maybe having abalanced life would be good for productivity.

[Applause.]

So I wou:ld urge all of us to see what we're doing, and also not always think thatwe're victimized. Because every time I decide to work 12 hours, that's clearly a choiceI'm making. Nobody is forcing me to. Sometimes I don't like it, but it's a choice.

I would say to all of you in the World Bank, this is something that we ought towork on. We should say, each of us is responsible somehow because we are the culture.

Unlike Sheila, I am presumptuous. I've only been here for four weeks, but I like tomake comments about this culture. And one thing I've said is, let's not talk about theculture as something outside of us. The culture is each of us. And if we're going tochange it, we heave to say, the change begins with me and my behavior.

So thank you for letting me say that.

MS. TOTTA: I just want to add a comment that relates to work that I have done inanother area, in reference to spending the 24 hours a day at work and the time that weput in. In a recent survey that we did at the Bank of Montreal -- again, not directed towomen, but women and men executives -- we found that the organization was alwaysstriving for the 110 percent solution. If someone asks you for something, you alwaysfelt you had to give the best, the total best, and that meant giving the report typed upfancy with all ihe bells and whistles -- when in actual fact the 95 percent solution,although it's very hard to feel comfortable giving it, is really the one that would work.

And so now we're trying to say, we'll give you the 95 percent solution. We willgive 100 percent of our commitment, but you won't get the Cadillac; you'll get themiddle of the road. And we're finding with the 95 percent solution, people are able tobalance their liie-styles and spend more time with the family. But it is difficult tochange our mind-set because we've all been taught to give your very best, give 110percent. But the 95 percent solution may be the way we have to go in the future.


MS. WELLINGTON: Let me add a cautionary note. Sixty-four percent ofmarried couples with children under 18 in this country are dual-paycheck families. Sothat when you talk about responsibilities for kids, you're talking about the majority ofmarried couples where both husband and wife work, in addition to the vast numbers ofwomen who are responsible for families by themselves. That's a tremendous pressure onworking women.

If behavior isn't modeled by the top of the organization, it's not going to work.The downsizing that we're all now talking about and reading about, to the point whereit's become a cliche, means that there is a tremendous amount of fear in the workforce.People really are afraid of losing their jobs, and when that happens, one can say: gohome, rest; face time isn't what matters, productivity matters.

There is a genuine fear, and it's legitimate, when every day the newspapers showus tens of thousands of people losing jobs. And in this downsizing, let's remember thatmanagers are being laid off, in the '80s, it was mostly production people, blue-collarpeople. People are frightened. If top management can model appropriate behavior aboutwork hours, then it's possible to have culture change.

MS. BERRY: I think you're next.

QUESTION: I have two questions. The first one probably would be addressed toall of you, and that is how you see the concept of a career changing in the currentsituation. In the Bank, traditionally we have seen a career as a lifelong, or at least amidlife-to-retirement, expectation. We know that the Bank needs to be more nimble,and that staff who have been here for some time need to change their expectationsperhaps about the longevity of their careers in the Bank.

However, I do see some possible differences from the investment bank[ing sector],where there are other institutions to which people can migrate quite easily. And I do seesome problems in terms of the recruitment of women into the Bank at all stages of alifetime of careers. So that is one area that I'd like to hear your views on and ask you toshare your knowledge with us.

Related to that, what does commitment mean in the organizations that you'refamiliar with? Does it mean being there for the long haul -- coming up from the ranks,proving yourself in that institution? Or is there sufficient internal and external mobilityto conceive of external recruitment of senior managers, and those managers beingcommitted even if there for only three, four, maximum five years? That's anotherconstellation of issues that I'd like to have some greater perspective on.

The other is, in a sense, more practical. One of you -- I forget who it was, perhapsJohanne -- mentioned the mentor program that was set up. I remember some years agothe Staff Association of the Bank did try a very small-scale experiment with a mentoringprogram, just among interested women in the Bank. It didn't work very well. But there


is an informal mentoring system, however -- and I'm speaking with prejudice here -- it isprobably much stronger for men than for most women. But women who have powerfulmentors in the Bank, to my mind, do benefit. So I would be very interested to hear whatthe experience of other organizations is in regard to mentoring.

Thank you.

MS. WELLINGTON: I can talk a little bit about mentoring programs becauseCatalyst is really quite familiar with them. Your analysis is exactly on target. Theculture that was built by and for another gender is going to generate naturally-occurringphenomena [favoring that gender], and there is going to be mentoring for men, and that'sperfectly understandable.

Mentoring programs are very, very helpful for women. There are programs whereyou have one rmentor with a group of people. You can have geographic mentors. Youdon't only have to have women mentoring women. You can have men mentoringwomen. We find all of these to be very good approaches, as long as those who becomementors, and those who become proteges, are willing and committed. That's the onecentral success criterion for a mentorship program.

Some kind of formal mentoring program for women or a corporate women's groupthat really works is needed to overcome one the key barriers cited by the womenexecutives in our survey, that of exclusion from informal communications networks. If Icould pick fronm the full array of programs, these are the two critical ones to overcomethe informal communications barrier of not being included, not knowing where the nextjob is opening up, not knowing what the hot area is. Those kinds of exclusions really dodamage women's upward mobility; mentoring programs and corporate women's groupsare the way to overcome it.

MS. TOTTA: I'd like to address your first question relating to lifetimeemployment with an organization. That doesn't exist at the Bank of Montreal. It did 10years ago, but no longer. How did we come to grips with this and help our employees?

We developed something called the Possibility Center, which is open to all ouremployees. It provides information on what we see as the competencies, the skills thatare needed to go forward in our organization in the different job families, as well as insociety. We welcome people to go there and take tests, so they can find out where theyare and where thiey need to be.

We have a $40 million Institute for Learning that also provides excellent trainingto help you get the skills that you need. I'm not saying that we're more successful or lesssuccessful, but just that have recognized that lifelong employment does not existanymore, and have provided tools to support people in this era of transitions.


We're also providing people with the tools to develop their own businesses, wherewe find that they do not have the skills to survive in the Bank of Montreal. We provideloans and other types of support, as we move to a sort of shamrock organization.

On your second question, on what does commitment to the organization mean:we've defined commitment by how you've done, what we see at the end of the yearthrough your performance appraisal. So it's not that you've been in the organization 20years -- that doesn't deem you more or less committed.

Another thing that we look at is what you do in the community, not just what youare doing for the organization. So if you spend x amount of time on community service,that is also valued.

On your third point -- mentoring -- I have to say that that was the most difficultprogram we had to design. We spent over two years trying to find a formal mentoringprogram that worked. We definitely saw a need, because we found that most men whowere successful had mentors and most women did not have them. But we saw nothingbut failure out there.

So we did it on a voluntary participation basis, and we did not try to play God. Wedid not pair people we thought should be together. We asked them, who would you liketo be mentored by? Many women took men as mentors and vice versa. And that wasquite critical.

It has been two years now, and we're seeing some successes. We're seeing womenget access to senior men, senior executives in the organization, where they wouldn'thave the opportunity otherwise. And we're seeing development of interpersonal skills.So there are some benefits. But the program is still going through growing painsbecause it is a fomral program.

MS. WELLINGTON: I want to go back, if I may, to Dorothy's earlier point aboutdoing things for yourself and setting an example. I think she really hit a very appropriatebutton. If organizations don't offer the kind of developmental and training opportunitiesthat the Bank of Montreal does -- because that original contract of life-long employmentfor good behavior no longer functions -- then get it yourself. Get it outside. Take chargeof your own career and get the opportunities, the training, the experience, the learningthat you need.

It's fine to look for mentors, but particularly for women, it's good to be a mentor.So let's remember that we have an obligation ourselves to take on proteges, and weshould spend some time doing that.

MS. BERRY: I think we have time for just one question, but there are two handsup, so why don't we do two quick questions? No speeches, but two quick questions.


QUESTION: I would like to shift from retention to recruitment and know fromMs. Totta, what did the Bank of Montreal do to attract and recruit high-potentialwomen? I'm not talking about special facilities that we all can think of, but what specialfocus did you, or do you, have?

MS. TOTTA: Let me give you the example of our operations department, wherewe needed engineers. The conventional wisdom was, we just can't find any women, so,therefore, we'll hire men. So we made a concerted effort to go to campuses where thenumbers of women graduating from engineering were high, and recruited from them.

MS. BERRY: We had one more hand up over here. I think this is going to have tobe the last question.

QUESTION: I'll try to be quick. My question has to do with increasing therepresentation of women in the higher ranks of an organization. Management in theWorld Bank has identified that as an issue that needs to be addressed, and has beenworking on it for a number of years.

I was looking for hints from your prepared remarks as to what the Bank could dothat it isn't doing. I noticed in the cloverleaf slide of the Bank of Montreal strategy, youtalked about targets in terms of performance incentives for managers -- how manywomen hired, how many promoted. I call that the target approach. I saw another leaf fortraining.

I guess in my mind there are changes you can institute with immediate or moreshort-term results, through the target approach; and others that would have a longer-term result, like training women, mentoring and so on.

What do you think works in organizations to get more immediate results? A clueto where I'm coming from is [being interested in] criteria for internal promotion. Werethe criteria wrong? Were they biased? Or are there other things?

MS. TOTTA: The cloverleaf just shows how the programs should be integratedinto the organization; it doesn't cover the actual programs we have.

One systeimic problem we found at the Bank of Montreal is that you had to be acertain level to lbe able to take a certain training program, which you needed to becomean executive. So, how do we get women to that level or into that training program?

I want to address the key issue of targets. We have not gone to our employees andsaid, you should hire x number of women. We have asked them to take a look at theirworkforce, to take a look at the community, and then to tell us what they did, or whatthey should do. Engineering is one example. Five years ago, managers were telling us,I'm sorry, there are no qualified women. Now they are able to hire women. So it's reallya matter of asking our managers to take a look at their work group and have them decide


what they can do, as opposed to the top-down approach of saying, you will hire fivepercent women. I think that is quite key.

The other thing to point out is that these initiatives have been a challenge. As weface downsizing, we face backlash. This is not the kind of program where you can do agreat task force report, put up the cloverleaf, and say, we've done it. We have advisorycouncils: a National Advisory Council on which the President sits, and which meetsquarterly to see how these initiatives are going; and divisional advisory councils thatprovide infornation to the national council to tell us how things are going at the grass-roots level. So you can't issue a brochure and say, that's the way it is; you have to lookat downsizing and other new developments, and keep working on these programs.

For example, flexible work arrangements have been a tremendous challenge for theBank of Montreal in the last year. Encouraging managers to accept that people onflexible work arrangements should be promoted, and overcoming people's reluctance totake flexible work arrangements. I don't want you to think that these programs justhappen, or that only one individual is driving them. There's a large team backed by thePresident and the Chairmnan that continues to make change happen.

We get new ideas from the outside. Our President is on the Board of Catalyst andcomes back [from New York] with the latest ideas, and we try to figure out how we canapply them. And we review progress on a quarterly basis. Without all of these efforts,nothing would happen.

MS. WELLINGTON: Let me add a couple of things. Johanne has presented acomprehensive approach, which she led at the Bank of Montreal, that has been verysuccessful. It's really an exemplar.

It is imperative for an organization to ask, what are the critical experiences that ittakes to get to the top? Most organizations don't really ask that question. What are theconditions precedent, what experiences are necessary? When you figure that out, youthen have to make sure that women get those core experiences through a planned,organized, succession planning program. So that those women are identified early; theyget those experiences; and managers are held accountable for their career development.

If you don't have management accountability, it isn't going to work.

MS. BERRY: I think that was a great note on which to end this discussion.

I have three sets of thank yous. One is for Anette Pedersen: thank you forarranging this. Second, to the audience; you've been great. You've participated, youwere interested, so thank you for your involvement. And finally, thank you so much toour two panelists. Sheila and Johanne, you were terrific. I think you really resonatedwith the audience.


We have a small gift for the two of you. It is very symbolic. Anette, do you wantto come up and give it to them?

MS. PEDERSEN: It is a very symbolic gift. Let's ask these visionary women tounwrap what's in here and let's see.

[Participants unwrap binoculars.]

[Laughter/applause.]

MS. BERRY: Thank you, everybody. All of you have a great weekend.


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