The Paula Principle

Author: peterprinciple

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More

The Lonely Crowd and validation

One of my recent interviewees, Margaret, told me how she had just gone for a job interview at a prestigious university.  At the end of the interview she had effectively withdrawn her candidature, in spite of all the advantages and status that the job offered.  She felt intuitively that it would not have allowed her to maintain her identity, or authenticity as a researcher.  Yet the process had been an encouraging one for her, because she felt that it had validated her competences.  I don't think this was just because she had come close to getting the job.  It was also because it had helped her clarify what she felt…
Read More

Valuing Talent

Here's an interesting initiative, Valuing Your Talent, launched by a consortium including the RSA, the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and several major personnel/management bodies such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development. It's interesting in part because of the crowdsourcing approach, aiming to amass a host of ideas and opinions but also offering something back in the way of a £10K prize to help develop the best idea.  An Insights phase has just started, to be followed by an Innovations phase which will explore how the ideas might be put into practice. Substantively it's a challenge to all those who say 'people are our biggest asset' to come forward…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

Careers and progression

I've been doing a few interviews for the putative PP book, and they've prompted some thoughts about how different kinds of organisation do or don't foster careers and progression.  In particular, is working in a large bureaucracy more likely to help or to hinder a woman making her way up, at whatever level? I caught some of Lucy Kellaway's radio series, broadcast last year, on A History of Office Life.  One episode dealt with the invention of the career ladder (it's from that that I pinched the Dickensian illustration below), another with nepotism vs meritocracy.  A third covered the arrival of women in the office.  She slily sketches in the way office…
Read More

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

Autumn Sonata

We're working our way through a box set of Bergman films, and came last night to Autumn Sonata. It stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, as mother and daughter. There's a lot of quite heavy duty digging-down as LU reproaches her mother, a high-flying classical pianist, for neglecting her and, especially, her handicapped sister. In this film at least, Bergman doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as psychological exploration is concerned. At the time, this very explicit examining of parent-child relationships must have been revelatory. It still packs a punch, due especially to Ullman's extraordinarily expressive performance.     There's a scene in which LU, or rather her…
Read More

Why it’s men that should be discussing the PP

I went on Friday to talk about the PP with the sixth form at South Hampstead High School, a single-sex school.  The 60 or so girls engaged with the issues in lively fashion (or so it seemed to me), and I learnt much from the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion one girl observed that I shouldn't really be talking to them, but to boys - and men - instead. How right she is, for two reasons. First, here are the latest UCAS figures on university applications. In England, in 2014, 39.9 per cent of 18 year old women have applied compared with 30.0 per cent of men, making…
Read More

all round competences

I'm normally a bit sceptical about international business survey results.  but Business Insider recently produced a set of findings which I found really interesting. They come from pulling together the results of an enormous number of '360o ' appraisals. These are where you as the appraised person get the views of all those you work with - above, alongside and below.  So as well as your boss, you get the views of your colleagues who operate at the same level - and those who work to you. BI pulled together results of 360o appraisals of 16000 'leaders', about one third of whom were women and two thirds men.  The average number of…
Read More

MBAs, fingers and legs

  3 adverts from the same page in a recent Economist. See next blog for Business Insider results on leadership competences!!                                                  
Read More

How big is the gender pay gap?

I'm taking part tomorrow in a Women's Hour discussion on part-time work, so I thought I'd use this post as a way of clarifying for myself what the position is on the gender pay gap, using the recent ONS report on earnings.  For the mathematically challenged such as myself some of the figures need a bit of puzzling out, but don't switch off - I think it's worth persevering. First, the 'headline' figure which has attracted attention is the increase from 9.5% to 10% of the median hourly earnings of full-time employees.  It's right, of course, that we should be emphatically reminded that progress towards equality is by no means guaranteed.…
Read More