The impact of bias in women’s lives

October 23, 2022 Melanie Hawken

“The pen has been in their hands…” - Jane Austen.

We have recently been drawn to the brilliant book by the award-winning author, Caroline Criado Perez, entitled INVISIBLE WOMEN: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men’, ‘IW’ (here). We assumed it would contain many of the statistics we have seen in the world of finance (such as only 2% of VC funding going to US Start ups in 2021 and 82% to all-male founding teams here and not much better in Africa where there is a far greater ratio of women entrepreneurs to male). Therefore, we were pleasantly surprised to note that this book deals very much with the mundane, our day-to-day lives and how bias, indeed any bias (unconscious or otherwise), makes a huge difference in the long run (as any Casino knows too well). However, as we shall show through her investigations and other studies, this is far from mundane, instead deadly serious and is something we all must take very seriously indeed for our businesses and most importantly, our employees.

‘Partnering’

October 15, 2022 Melanie Hawken

“What is more important - the journey or the destination?”

To which there is only one answer - “The Company”.

Steve Jobs famously encouraged people to pick up the phone and call people from whom they wanted help (you can see his interview here). He says that he never found anyone who did not want to help him when he asked. Indeed we are often encouraging this, simply asking what is the worst that could happen? Pointing out that if you don’t ask it is an automatic “No!”, but if you do ask, the worst is that they say “No!” and they might say “Yes!” and from our experience and certainly it seems from Steve Job’s experience, this is very rare. For those who are thinking that no one would have turned down Steve Jobs (fair point), his story starts as a 12 year old when he called up the owner of Hewlett-Packard, a Mr Bill Hewlett at his home, to ask him to help him build a ‘frequency counter’. Mr Hewlett said yes and sent over all the necessary bits and pieces, following which he offered a job on a production line to the young Steve.

Stop this uncritical acceptance of 'what is’ as ‘natural’!

October 2, 2022 Melanie Hawken

Just over 50 years ago, a throw-away comment that there were no great women painters sparked the famous reply from Linda Nochlin in her 1971 essay: “Why have there been no great women artists?” (here). Today in 2022, we seem no nearer to a level playing field in Art, as a recent exposé of art prices by Doctor Helen Gorrill, shows (here). Dr Gorrill was driven to research pricing in the Art world following comments made by the painter Georg Baselitz who claimed "women couldn't paint!”, using as his proof the lower price their artwork commanded in comparison to that of men (here). That is not to say he doesn’t appreciate any women painters, being a self proclaimed fan of artist Artemisia Gentileschi (17th Century), although as we show later it would indeed be a brave man to say she couldn’t paint…

‘Respond with intention rather than regret.’

September 25, 2022 Melanie Hawken

We have often warned in the past of cold winds rushing across from the West towards Africa. With one foot in the UK/EU and one foot firmly in Africa we have been lucky enough to see early the impact of various events in both regions and have been able to react quickly to warn our membership. Just in the last few years we have had articles at the early stages of Covid when we saw the tragic events unfolding first in China and then in Italy; and then when businesses rushed to go online, when home deliveries became the only answer, when the supply chains started to clog up, when the US yield curve inverted, when the war started in Ukraine and when inflation started to rear its ugly head. How we respond to such events define our lives and our businesses for many years, but (and this is why we send out these warnings) to respond early or to plan for such events gives us a massive advantage.

The Struggle is where greatness comes from

September 4, 2022 Melanie Hawken

We have been reading far too much bad news from the global economy recently. So in an attempt to lighten our load, we reached deep into our collection of reading material thinking there must be something brighter. Sadly it seemed as if fate was working against us as nothing light and entertaining appeared, rather an article by the legendary investor and co-founder of the massive tech investing firm ‘a16z’ Ben Horowitz appeared. This was guaranteed to be serious stuff from a business guru who never lets a fear of telling it straight get in the way of any positive mood he might have at the time - so much for our wish for a bit of light reading! He is the author of one of our favourite business books - ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’ (here) which is described as follows: “There are lots of people talking about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.” Note the ‘brutally honest’ - you have been warned!

The Problem with ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance)

August 26, 2022 Melanie Hawken

We were in London this week, the global centre for Insurance, in discussions with a seriously senior insurance guru in charge of major Financial and Professional Lines. What that means is that he insures major financial and corporate customers (the Fortune 500/FTSE100 types) for (amongst other things), securities lawsuits (those bought by shareholders) and external class action suits. Heavy duty stuff.

It’s in the Nurture, not the genes!

August 20, 2022 Melanie Hawken

We have been looking back at the incredible Lionesses who have previously graced the cover of our Lioness Weekender Magazine recently, and amongst the many fascinating questions posed to these inspirational leaders by Melanie in their interviews, there is always one asking how they got the entrepreneurial bug. More often than not the answer includes the fact that one or both of their parents were an entrepreneur. This got us wondering - is there any correlation to this or was it just luck (some who enjoy the 9-5 stability and simply do not understand the drive of a late night entrepreneur struggling with cash flow and supply bottlenecks, might argue ‘bad luck’ of course), that creates the entrepreneurial drive.

Let’s Collaborate - what’s the worst that could happen?

August 14, 2022 Melanie Hawken

Totally shocked at the news that we won’t see the incredible, inspirational, the one, the only Serena at Wimbledon again, let alone in other Tennis Tournaments around the globe after the US Open, given her announcement of her impending retirement, or as she says (here): “Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me.”. What a career, what an inspiration - 23 major singles titles; four Olympic gold medals; 319 weeks at No 1 in the world rankings; to say nothing of the drive to follow their dreams she gave to millions off the court, that they too could break glass ceilings and follow their passions - no matter the obstacles.

‘Me time’ is NOT a waste of time…

July 22, 2022 Melanie Hawken

“You notice a lot of small things when sitting having an early morning coffee, watching the world go by…” and as so often is the case as we open our emails at the start of yet another busy day, we are greeted by Melanie beginning her essential guides to business, life and the Universe in her Good Morning Lioness daily blog, with a serious hint.

Think not ‘Après nous, le deluge’ …but the Spaceship Economy

July 10, 2022 Melanie Hawken

The date was March 8th 1966 and one Kenneth Ewart Boulding stepped forward to present his paper at the 6th Resources for the Future Forum on Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy in Washington, D.C. (here).

Let’s talk Debt!

July 3, 2022 Melanie Hawken

We saw a fascinating statistic recently regarding job applications and the differing actions of women vs men. In job applications according to an original study by Hewlett Packard and discussed by the Harvard Business Review (‘HBR’) back in 2014 (here) and continually confirmed in more recent studies such as from LinkedIn here, men will apply to jobs if they feel they match 60% of the requirements on the job application. Women? They will apparently agonize for ages over the last 5% on the way to 100% certainty.

Embrace Meaning

June 26, 2022 Melanie Hawken

Last weekend we asked you to reach for your inner Steve or Elon a.k.a. ‘war leaders’ (ok, we did say ‘not too much Steve or Elon’ - as these are 100% ’power, drive and complete belief’ that would completely exhaust many of us mere mortals on the best of our days), to keep ourselves and our decision making focused and processes nimble for what looks like difficult times ahead. As troubles rush towards Africa in the form of inflation; lack of staple foods, cooking oils and fertilizers (see here); ongoing droughts in East Africa; western Central Banks raising interest rates and cutting off at the kneecaps the fix of cheap money that has kept the globe hooked (and a rush to higher yielding investments - such as in Africa), it could create recessions, civil unrests, and so on.

Are you tough enough to make the difficult decisions AND show you care?

June 18, 2022 Melanie Hawken

“People want to know that the person leading their [company] is tough enough to bring them through, but they also want to see that the leader gets it, understands how anxious, confused and worried about the future they are.”

…from the great book ‘Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons’ by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Head of the WTO, and exactly captures what we as leaders need to show in the coming months (possibly year) as events across the globe, inflation, possible Stagflation as we discussed (here) and especially the war in Ukraine and supply chain disruptions, continue to impact our countries and communities.

Are you part of something big and important? (Part 2)

June 12, 2022 Melanie Hawken

Last week we painted the background to Mission Statements. A Mission Statement is far more important than many realize as it gives you, your employees, your customers, and your suppliers something to focus on and believe in when they come into work or when they deal with you. It is a concrete manifestation of why they work for you and why they deal with you. It is the ‘Why’, not the ‘What’ or ‘How’ that makes the difference.

Are you and your employees part of something big and important?

May 28, 2022 Melanie Hawken

Last week we perhaps seemed a bit dismissive of some of the great male business leaders of our time. We pleaded with Business Schools to think outside the box and recognize that if we put these leaders on a pedestal then it is no surprise if business and investment decisions are made with a ‘strong pale male’ benchmark in mind.

Redefine Genius!

May 22, 2022 Melanie Hawken

We were recently watching a TED Talk (here) by the brilliant leader and Lioness, Temie Giwa-Tubosun of LifeBank where she wrote as an introduction “…while genius is evenly distributed, investment isn’t.” This fundamental truth (both the genius bit and sadly, the investment side as well) got us thinking.

Why a safe and healthy workplace matters

May 13, 2022 Melanie Hawken

“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.”

This quote was used by President Obama in his eulogy for Senator John McCain and was written by Ernest Hemmingway in his book, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’. Although the book was based in the Spanish Civil War, the title of this incredible book was taken from John Donne's series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness (written after a near fatal illness). If one accepts the spelling that was used at the time (and as usual the use of the gender-specific pronoun to describe all humans, common throughout history), this is one of the most powerful thoughts on our place in this world. Written in 1624, it will be forever true:

Do you eat your own Dog-Food?

May 7, 2022 Melanie Hawken

The year was 1988 and a manager at Microsoft called Paul Maritz was fed up at the glitches being found by software customers of theirs purely because although being tested before release, the software simply wasn’t being used in the real world under real life conditions by themselves. He wrote a memo about the need to trial new networking software internally - not just test, but really use in a day-to-day environment. In the subject line he wrote “Eating our own dog-food” and this was picked up by a testing manager who named a test server ‘Dog-food’ and from there the phrase grew through Microsoft and then on into the industry (see here).

Saving the Earth - one game at a time!

May 1, 2022 Melanie Hawken

With so much going on in the world in the form of Covid shutdowns in China; continued Supply Chain issues; higher prices pushed even higher thanks to a war in what is clearly the world’s and if the massive import needs are anything to go by - Africa’s largest bread-basket otherwise known as The Ukraine; and of course the push-pull within Central Banks over raising interest rates to counter inflation or keeping low to keep recessions at bay (see our warnings on Stagflation here and here); one could be forgiven in our rush to lower electricity pricing by firing up coal fired power stations, for forgetting that the Globe is still suffering.

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