Happy International Women’s Day!
(I had planned to publish another blog as a continuation of yesterday’s topic on career change. Forgive me for the change, but I wanted to share a story with you about how you can make a difference for women in honor of International Women’s Day. I will publish the other article out, but it will be coming out on Tuesday now.)
As some of you know when I was at Kraft I led an employee resource group for women called Women@Kraft. This group had existed before in a very different format and only included a subset of women in the organization. When Kraft and Mondelez became two different companies, I knew we had an opportunity to do something even bigger to expand the group and make it all inclusive. I found a great sponsor and began having conversations with the influencers to help me make it happen. I had some great women from a consulting firm come in and help us launch it. It was a great day when I looked around to see such amazing support for what we were building together. I had some of the best women in the organization on my leadership team and steering committee with a common vision!
We were facing a loss of talent at the senior levels in the organization and we wanted to change that for women. Beyond that this group needed to focus on making a difference for women at all levels of the organization if we were going to see the results that we knew were possible. Our goal was to position women for leadership roles and prepare them so they were ready when those opportunities came along. We were very visible with our programs, communications and advocacy for women. Those opportunities did come along and we saw many women get promotions. We also saw women stepping out of their comfort zones and leading in very different ways. They began to speak up and have different conversations about what they wanted in their careers. Their confidence was growing and they learned new ways to promote and advocate for themselves and other women.
It would have been really easy for me to say let’s just include Headquarter locations where there were a majority of women working. But the vision I originally had was for everyone to be included, which meant expanding the reach of the group to every function and location that Kraft had at the time. That is 100+ locations to connect to and ensure that they had a voice. We leveraged technology, communications and built a community of advocates that existed at each location. We hosted monthly events that all women and men could join either in person or via phone. We discussed the issues that they were facing, built strategies and shared resources to help them find new ways to solve those challenges. We hosted large events with speakers and panels that all sites could participate in and ask questions. For some locations where there were very few women, it gave them an opportunity to expand their network, build their confidence and realize that they were not the only ones who were facing these struggles.
Our senior level sponsor was Bob Gorski who was over all of the Supply Chain functions. He was extremely supportive and he went above and beyond to help us. He not only talked about what we were doing, but he showed it in terms of actions. His area was one of the areas where women had been promoted and you could see the opportunities he was creating. He flew my co-chair Angie Christenson and I out to various events to get us exposure on how to help change the conversations at Kraft. One example was the Supply Chain Worldwide conference which was hosting an entire day just focused on how to increase opportunities for women in Supply Chain roles. There is a shortage of people to fill roles in Supply Chain in general, but for women even more so. We met with people and companies from all over the world and heard from speakers where they shared the strategies they were taking to change the conversations. A lot of people were taking it upon themselves at a grassroots level where they could affect change for some high profile roles. Going to events like that helped us learn from other companies and how they were driving these changes. It inspired us to share what we learned with the team and identify additional ways to influence these types of conversations that needed to happen.
We also had a senior leader in the organization come to us with an idea to create a program to increase advocacy for women across the organization. This program was something that we intended to roll out to the entire organization prior to the announcement of the merger with Heinz. We did get the initial groups through the program and received great feedback. I wish we could have seen what the final result of these conversations would have had on the company. The goal was to help both men and women understand each other, build advocacy and educate both sides through conversations. What was an unintended benefit was how the men took the things that they learned to not only support women at work, but also to share with wives, daughters, sisters, etc. They recognized that the changes we make today will have an impact on their daughters and for other friends and family members in the workforce now.
Women@Kraft received a lot of recognition both inside and outside of the company for the work that we did. What we created was one of the things that I was most proud of during my career and it wasn’t even part of my job. You can make things like this happen that will have impacts far beyond what you even think is possible. We had a big vision and we made it happen. You can do this too. Your vision may be very different, but just imagine what you could do to affect change for women. Just take the first step and don’t let any obstacles hold you back. Ask for what you want and get help from other people.
You are seeing a lot of different conversations right now across various industries regarding women. Everyone needs to pull together to make big changes like this happen. Changes like these start with one person saying “let’s change the status quo and create a different outcome for women.” What can you do to make a difference? If you need ideas, just reach out to me for help.
Are you looking to make a change in your career or leadership? The power of a mastermind is there to help you move forward with the help and support of a group. Would you like to hear more about the Powerful Leadership Mastermind group that is just getting started? We have a few spots left for the group which meets every other week on Tuesday mornings.
The group is led by me and my partner (and cousin) Kim who are both ICF Certified Coaches. We are offering an introductory rate to join and we are looking for people who are motivated to make a change in their personal or professional lives. If you would like to learn more about it and join the group you can click on this link: Powerful Leadership Mastermind or reach out to me.