She Carried The Water: A Piece for Executive Women Hired to Lead Change
In the last several years, I have known multiple women in very senior roles who have been fired for making the aggressive change that they were hired to make.
People talk about “the glass ceiling” and I might argue that the definition is broadening. It is no longer just about making it to “the table.” They (we?) are starting to make it there, but it feels like many are not invited to stay unless they fit a certain arbitrary definition of an appropriately feminine contribution.
What follows is not my personal experience and does not reflect what I have encountered in my career, but I am a friend and supporter to many who have experienced this and who have graciously contributed their thoughts to this piece. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who is watching this show repeat and wondering why. Below is a dramatization/consolidation/anonymized expression of what seems to happen over and over again.
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We want you, he says, because you have a reputation for toughness.
We want you, he says, because we need to make some change around here and you’re the right person to do it. We need a new culture, he says. We need harder metrics. We need to toughen up.
We love that you’ve had international experience that you’re bringing to us, he says. We love that you know what good looks like from your decades of work in big and small companies. We love all of these things about you. You are a powerhouse, and we love it.
I’ll be right by your side, he says. We’ll do this together.
I’ve got your back.
I’ve got you covered.
Make this change for me, he says. For us. For all of us. Our company needs to mature.
Help us move into our next chapter, he says. There is a lot that we need to do differently.
I want your sharp eye, your quick brain, your clear thinking, he says. I like that you’re so direct. I like that you have such high standards.
High standards, he says, like me.
And above all else, he says, be yourself. After all, that’s why we’re hiring you.
The board loves her. They say so many nice things. She feels, somehow, that she has arrived.
She is wired and jumpy because it is all so interesting. It’s the hottest company in the XXXX space, investors are throwing them money, and everyone wants to work there. The founder/CEO is famous and cool and everybody loves him and so does she. It’s where everyone wants to be.
The CEO and the board have a vision. They want change. The CEO wants an executive in the room with force and extreme competence. He wants someone who knows how things work and who can get from here to there.
She knows herself. She says, You know that I’m really straight-forward, that sometimes I rub people the wrong way. Do you really want me to bring it? If you want someone with a softer touch, you should hire someone else.
He says, yes. Bring it.
She believes him.
She is thrilled. She is validated, vindicated, victorious.
She signs on the line.
She jumps in and gets going. She knows how to lead change, because she has done it in the past. She tries to build trust. Create buy-in. Engage the organization. She asks hard questions about past decisions. She considers things that haven’t been considered before. She learns at lightning speed and everybody says so.
As she learns, she’s ready to lead this change. She starts making the hard calls and having the difficult conversations.
We shouldn’t promote that person, she says.
You’re right, he says. Go ahead and tell her. I’ve got your back.
So she does. She agonizes over Thanksgiving after her children go to bed and her parents leave. She delivers the news the next week.
We should shut down that business unit, she says. It’s unlikely to make any money.
You’re right, he says. Go ahead and shut down that office. I’ve got your back.
So she does. On Mother’s Day, calling her kids from Berlin.
I don’t think we need so many layers in the sales force, she says.
Flatten it, he says. I trust you.
So she does. She flies to four different states to tell the regional managers that they don’t have jobs anymore.
Is the board good with this? she asks.
Of course, he says. We trust you. These are the hard calls we hired you to make.
In doing this, she carries the water that he hasn’t yet carried. He gives her the buckets to carry it in. And her decisions are good ones. She knows it. Her boss knows it. The company gets leaner. The right people are let go. The right stuff starts to get done at a faster rate.
Keep going! he cheers. Thank you for carrying all of this water for me! For us!
He stands behind her as she marches forward, the water overflowing in the buckets, her arms aching from the weight, her fingers raw from her grip.
Great! he says. Change the way that this organization functions!
It’s your decision, he says, and I’ll be standing over here.
I’ve got your back.
I’ve got you covered.
Her employee engagement score comes in. She has a 65% satisfaction rating which, in the XXX industry, given all of the change she has been leading, is like being an Olympic gold medalist.
But those not carrying the same kind of water have 90%.
Who cares, she thinks. I’m carrying the water. These buckets are heavy, and sometimes people get wet. You can’t make change and make everyone 100% happy. That’s the game here. That’s reality. And he’s got my back.
While she feels support from the top, she is pulled constantly by the level beneath her, asking, asking, asking.
I want. I want, they say. I want more headcount. I want more budget. I want decision authority. I want a larger title.
No, she says. And here’s why. It’s the right decision.
She carries and carries the water.
And then, (like clockwork) at around eight months into the role, something shifts. A few friends tell her that her boss has asked for feedback on her. Sometimes his questions, they say, seem leading. She knows changes are afoot, because he is no longer meeting her eyes. Canceling meetings. It lasts for about a month and she feels like something is up.
She goes on vacation and sits by the river. She has a tightening in her gut that the current doesn’t wash away. She stares at the river. So much water. Her buckets are so small and it is hard to do so much. Her arms ache from all of the water carrying.
She knows. But she doesn’t know what.
Two weeks later, he comes into her office.
It’s not working out, he says. People don’t agree with your decisions. They think you don’t know our industry. They think your standards are too high for what is appropriate for our company. We don’t work the way that you work.
Nobody trusts you, he says. They don’t like you, he says.
But… she says.
She knew it was something, but she didn’t know it was this. Now she is disoriented. Confused. She wants to throw up.
But you had my back, she wants to say. You had me covered.
You agreed with all of my decisions. You gave me this water to carry. You handed me the buckets. And filled them up.
Of course she doesn’t say these things. Because she is weeping. And in shock.
Don’t get me wrong, he says. The company is way better off because of the work that you’ve done. I think you’re great.
But they don’t. And the board is concerned.
(It is almost like he shrugs. Does he shrug? She doesn’t remember.)
She is floating in the pain of it. It hurts like fire, burning, sharp, blistering, leaving a mark. Frightening. She tries to feel her fingers and her toes so that she can return to the room, to her body right here. It takes everything she has.
He pushes an already-signed settlement agreement to her across the table. She sees that he intends her to feel gratitude, as though he is being generous. She recoils.
— — — — — — — — — — —
She (so many of them) calls me within days of this happening. A sense of deep betrayal has taken hold of her. She realizes she believed something that wasn’t true. She sits and stares, exhausted by the throb of being thrown away. Her head feels heavy and everything seems miles apart from her. There is distance. I hold her hands. I listen to her cry.
You are not alone in this, I say. You carried the water. You did what was being asked of you. You were assured you were covered.
But now you’ve learned.
You now know that you need a keener eye and ear. You’ve learned the difference between what is said and what is really being asked for. You’ve learned why no one has taken these risks in this company before now. You’ve learned that no one really wants your raw, unvarnished self even if they honestly think they do, and that’s OK. Maybe that’s why you needed to go through this. To learn these things.
She, and they, learn. Their eyes get keener. They learn the nuance of the message, they learn the real game, they learn why these changes haven’t happened previously, and why some of them won’t happen now, but some might, and it might take a different person (gender?) who is not her.
What are the other sides of this story? What’s the story of the boss? Maybe:
I haven’t felt equipped to drive hard change in this organization so far, because I hired all of these people myself and I actually like the way we do things today. My board wants change, and this person says she can do it.
But now her directs are complaining to board members and to me and threatening to quit. My board says that I’ve let this get away from me.
Maybe she wasn’t the right fit in the first place. I have to show my board that I can make a strong move here.
What about the direct reports who are complaining? Maybe:
I was employee number seven in the company, and was told that I would someday run this department — that’s why I left my other company!
Then this person comes in and says I don’t deserve a promotion and then fires my friend on the sales team! I had no choice — I had to go to the CEO about this. And then I saw that board member at our kids’ soccer match, and told her, too. Something has to be done.
What about the board member guiding the change? Maybe:
I was just at my kid’s soccer game and one of the employees who I helped bring in told me that this person is shredding the team and that people are starting to think about quitting.
I don’t need this right now — staff conflict shouldn’t be my problem. So I called the CEO and told him: Fix this.
So why does this keep happening? Is it just a lot of bad hires at senior levels in companies? A lot of otherwise good hires that end up being a bad fit for reasons we can’t see on the surface? A frequent lack of management expertise that could have caught the issue earlier?
I wonder, does this happen just as consistently to men, and I’m just not hearing about it because my personal friends experiencing this are predominantly female?
If this doesn’t happen as often to men, is it possible that the entire system is so sensitized to a female with power who steps on toes to get things done that an organization will reject this profile somewhat predictably within a year?
I choose to believe that most people are fundamentally good, so my take is that these are rational actors behaving the same way over and over again in response to some sort of true and consistent set of dynamics.
What do we do about it? Is this a preventable event, even if we can’t fully discern the reason why it occurs?
I have no answers. But I’ll tell you what these women do when they go into their next job if they choose to work for someone new. They apply what they’ve learned about discernment and what is real — and they control only what they can control, which is themselves.
They don’t take massive turn-around roles anymore.
In other words: If the person before you couldn’t get it done, don’t believe that you can somehow do it, unless something has fundamentally changed within the organization or you happen to know something he didn’t know.
They don’t work for CEOs who have a history of avoiding conflict themselves. (See above.)
And if they commit to any change at all, they reduce the scope of change expected of them and lengthen the timelines for deliverables, which de-pressurizes the whole system and their own interactions — and decisions.
Are these learnings the right answer? Do we want highly effective female executives to dial back their willingness to make courageous change? These decisions certainly make for a smoother career, but I worry about what we are losing as a result.
The good news is that some of these women eventually go on to be CEOs themselves. When they do, they are sensitized to these risks with their own hiring and expectation setting around change. They work to build cultures where competence and results matter more than politics (where possible), and they work hard to match their beliefs about what is possible to reality.
What can CEOs and board members learn from this pattern recognition? If you sit in a fairly senior chair and if you’ve seen this happen more than once, think about your role in it. Is this unconscious misogyny? Or is it an inability to think ahead and manage the tides of organizational pain in the face of transition? Or perhaps it’s just sheer unraveling cowardice? Here are some questions we might all ask ourselves.
Have you ever hired someone who you knew was a “tough” woman who you then punished (or fired) for her toughness when the organization expressed some pain?
Have you ever set a bar that was too fast or too rigid for an organization to handle and then encouraged a new hire to run too hard at it?
Have you ever realized after the fact that you may have unintentionally hidden behind someone carrying the water that perhaps you should have been carrying?
All voices in the ecosystem can contribute to a better environment or improved expectation setting so that our teams can benefit from the contributions of women (or men) who drive the aggressive change that our boards and CEOs have requested of them. I challenge the executives in my life (hello, all of you!) to ask a few more tough questions of yourselves before asking a newcomer to do what you haven’t yet done.
How much attrition and just straight-on complaining are you willing to withstand in order to successfully accomplish massive change when necessary?
How closely can you read emerging dynamics in your organization so that you can catch leading indicators of change being made too quickly?
Would you rather lose your job because you weren’t able to make the change you needed to make, or because you made the change that was needed and everybody got angry with you? (Note: There is no right or wrong answer here. The point is — someone is likely to lose a job one way or the other if an enterprise cannot stomach the hard things.)
To anyone who has been through something that looks like this, I have an ask for you:
When a senior female executive is summarily fired within her first year due to political upheaval across the board, please do a post-mortem to understand precisely what went wrong. Look at the survivors. Who participated? What could you have done differently — from the seat of the boss, the person’s direct reports, or even the board? I assure you it won’t be a wasted exercise, no matter which chair you’ve held in this dynamic, because it feels like this happens all of the time. You’ll likely find yourself there again, and maybe you’ll be able to see it coming or, even better, prevent it from happening in the first place.
And please have the courage to share with others what could have gone better. None of us is perfect. If you made mistakes (and we all do), share them with your community so that they can learn from what did or didn’t go well.
And here is my final point. This is for all of us to solve because we want good conflict, hard decision-making, and a real orientation to courage and results in our companies. We want some people on every team who are willing to have the right fight for the common good. And we won’t find a solution if everyone (and I do mean everyone involved) suffers alone. Let’s talk about it.
P.s. My deepest gratitude to the anonymous but actually well-known women who allowed me to tell their stories here. Much courage, my friends.
