think it’s actually harder to be a female exec over other women, than it is for

http://clarissasblog.com/2014/05/14/i-dont-want-to-hire-women/I think it’s actually harder to be a female exec over other women, than it is for men. I mean. Not only are we oblivious, but we just don’t care, and women don’t expect us to care. We just do our thing. And go on obliviously.

I have had very bad luck with women in senior exec positions. In fact, it’s been almost fruitless. I suppose in other industries it’d be different. But in my generation the combination of feminism and craziness has just been impossible.

But in middle management, it’s been just the opposite. In middle management you’re trying to facilitate – herding cats. In executive management you’re trying to discriminate – apply scarce resources to the best return whether people like it or not. And women are much better at herding cats, and processing multiple lines of communication than men and that’s just how it is. I don’t argue with it. I just accept it. I have found male middle managers to be free riders, and female middle managers to be more effective. I think it’s genetic. I have been on a career long quest to reduce middle management, indeed all management, to the bare minimum wherever possible and to empower the talent whenever and wherever possible. This tends to lead to a project-based company that is often reorganized, rather than a department based company structure, that is rarely reorganized.

The gossip mill that women create is almost always destructive and the only cure is over-communication. I’ve tried to manage anti-gossip campaigns whenever possible. But the gossip thing is just insanely painful to deal with.

(My favorite example is the accusation that I was sleeping with my young female assistant, and I simply could not silence it, despite the fact that she was actually sleeping with one of my married business partners from the east coast. )

Good gossip lifts people up. Bad gossip cuts people down. It’s hysterical how effective this technique is. (I tell people, “if you want to gossip and conspire to make me a more successful person then please do.”) So there are positive ways to channeling negative behavior if you understand the incentives. (As strange as chick-incentives are to us men.)

It’s really good if you can get all the admin chicks in your company on a gossip containment committee. This turns the problem into an effective means of control because the girls at the lowest level who have the greatest access to gossip become empowered by policing gossip. You try to get them to tell you anything that’s negative. Then you tell the the TRUTH about what you’re doing and let them do the work. The problem is you can never lie to them. And if you screw up you have to tell them.

What bothers me still, and something I would like to find a way to solve, is the degree of self destruction women practice upon one another. The hen pecking thing is just impossible. And yes (straight) women are much higher maintenance. I hope to improve some of this over the next decade with Oversing. But I suspect that stopping women from trying to social climb their chick-status-ladder by gossip and undermining is freaking impossible.