Organizational Design

This just in from Forbes Magazine — yet another article about why “women” don’t get promoted. (hat tip to my friend @ShaunRSmith)

Orit Gadiesh and Julie Coffman, in Why Women Don’t Make It Up The Ladder summarize several of the arguments that are advanced to explain why so few women, relative to men, get promoted up the management hierarchy. They conclude:

The mechanism for getting women into leadership positions is flawed.

The mechanism is flawed. So are the explanations that people give for why the percentage of women in managerial jobs goes from 50% to 3% from entry level manager to CEO.

Explanations or Excuses?

People have great difficulty separating explanations from excuses. Explanations tell us what is happening. Excuses tell us what people want us to believe is happening.

Here’s one “explanation”

“The reality is that in any group of equally competent and talented men and women of the same tenure, women who have taken time off or worked part-time for family reasons lack equal experience, by definition. That matters a lot when they are considered for promotion. Result: Men usually get the job.”

This is ‘explanation’ for women’s absence in top management is, quite frankly, crap.

It’s crap for two reasons–

1. This explanation suggests that employers are basically unable to determine who is better for a promotion based on job-specific criteria. Supposedly, they can’t tell the difference between “equally competent and talented men and women.”

Really? Are they just not paying attention? Or just not looking?

Perhaps organizations are unable to tell the difference simply because they are too lazy, too unskilled, or simply unwilling to make the effort to distinguish carefully between candidates.

If you think I’m crazy to suggest that employers are too lazy to make the effort to distinguish between candidates, consider this:

Study after study shows that interviews are basically useless when it comes to determining whether a person is well-qualified for a particular job. However, employers keep relying on interviews for their primary data about candidates’ ability. Why? Because it takes too much effort to identify exactly what skills are really needed for a job, and too much effort to figure out how to evaluate a person’s grasp of these skills.

This is especially true for middle and upper management jobs, which tend to be idiosyncratic enough that clear “HR” criteria are rarely already available to guide evaluations.

2. This explanation suggests that “dwell time” in a job, or a career, is an appropriate tie breaker between two otherwise “equally competent and talented candidates“. Supposedly, the amount of time you’ve spent in a job or at a company is a direct measure of ‘experience’.

Really? Does more ‘time in rank’ really mean more learning?

Perhaps organizations are just unwilling to examine if time really matters, and if it does, just what amount of time matters.

How does time matter, really?   Does ‘time in full-time job” really equal ‘experience’, and does ‘experience’ really equal ‘learning’?

No.

Especially, all other criteria being equal, a difference in the amount of full time work experience would show us the opposite of how that time difference is currently being used. If two people are equally qualified, and one took 10 years to qualify while the other took 7 years, who then is the ‘better’ candidate?

Does “time” really matter?

If time were an important criterion for promoting one of two otherwise equal candidates, why don’t we use age to decide who should get promoted?

An older candidate would have more experience, right? But would we ever promote one candidate over another similarly qualified candidate because he or she has more time on this earth and thus more ‘experience’?

I don’t think so.

So then, let’s ask: How many years’ difference really makes a difference?

Just how much of a difference in years of experience really makes a difference when it comes to someone’s ability to do the next level of a job?

Is a 2 year difference between two 35 yrs olds enough? Or a 4 year difference between two 40 year olds? Or a 6 year difference between two 50 year olds?

Because, when you think about it, the amount of time the average managerial mom is out of the workforce is not huge.

Just how many years does your average managerial mom ‘take off’ entirely if she has kids? Maybe an average of 6 years? How about those moms who go part-time for a while? What’s the average mommy-track stint? (Maybe, let’s be generous here, it’s all of 8 years? That translates into 4 years less ‘experience’.)

Is that enough to disqualify this mom from being promoted? Or from being considered for higher level work?

We should also ask, how long should this time difference matter? How many times does this time difference get used as decision criteria? Isn’t it possible that, at some point, a candidate demonstrates that regardless of the number of years she’s been a VP, that she has now demonstrated the ability to be promoted to EVP?

I’m thinking that this whole ‘explanation’ of time and ‘experience’ as the tie-breaker is not an ‘explanation’ but rather an excuse.

– Maybe, instead, organizations are unwilling to do the work it takes to distinguish among candidates.

– Maybe organizations are unwilling to put the effort into exploring just what difference 2, 4 or 6 years actually makes in a person’s ability to be promoted, and for how long that difference should matter.

– Maybe organizations should make more of an effort to understand what really matters to doing the next job well.

Perhaps we should stop talking about why ‘women’ don’t move up the ladder, and start focusing on why organizations won’t promote women.

What do you think?

For another view, see:
Pushing Ourselves to the Top of the Corporate Ladder at TheMamaBee.
Photo credits:
Old Ladder by Bahhumbug on Flicker
SwimmingPoolClock by TimmSuess on Flickr

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