International Women’s Day 2016: Paving the way for career disruption

On 8 March, PwC Technology Consulting hosted an International Women’s Day breakfast in Melbourne, entitled ‘Celebrating the Entrepreneurial Woman’.

Featuring three guest speakers from the world of technology – Jane Huxley, Liza Boston and Debra Ward – the event invited audience and panel to discuss the inspirations and challenges for women in business.

“I made a career out of disruption,” said Jane Huxley, introducing herself to the audience. The managing director of Pandora Radio in Australia and former CEO of Fairfax Digital, Huxley was one of three speakers invited to join the International Women’s Day breakfast hosted by PwC Technology Consulting this week in Melbourne.

Centred on a theme of ‘Celebrating the Entrepreneurial Woman’, both speakers and audience questions tended towards how we can rethink traditional working patterns and structures to support women in the workplace – with the overriding call to arms that careers themselves must be disrupted.

Enabling women to be successful in the world of technology or beyond comes back to lifestyle balance, a key driver for all the panel in their career decisions.

For Debra Ward, this meant setting up her own cloud-based aged care business after a seven-month break from her role as an executive manager in corporate services. Returning to work after a hiatus made her reassess her choice to remain in that environment. “Your boss expects you just to slot straight back in again,” she said, adding that leaving one role for another while retaining the same expectations of commitment isn’t an option. It spurred her to break out on her own entirely.

Having launched seven companies in five countries, the ultimate aim for Liza Boston now is to play out her role as CEO of Boston Digital by tempering office work with dedicated time for health and wellbeing. Of her previous schedule she says: “I was a connected person all the time. It wasn’t sustainable,” admitting that the shower was the only time she felt ‘safe’ from the intrusions of work and that the aggressive pursuit of results meant “you don’t get time to focus on feminine qualities.”

Huxley’s ultimate lesson was that in a world where technology moves spectacularly fast, behaviours trump functional skills so development should be focused on cultivating winning behaviours for your career. “Employers hold you accountable for a) what you do, and b) how you do it. Particularly as you progress into more senior roles though, the focus is on the ‘how’.”

Assets in the workplace: behaviours vs. skills

Huxley explained how the joint decision to be more present as her family grows has led her to start establishing a ‘portfolio’ career. Diversifying her achievements outside of her current role (including joining a not-for-profit board and gaining further academic qualifications) has allowed Huxley to get on the front foot, ready for a time when she decides to regain greater flexibility over how she dedicates her energy. “I started with the end in mind and built the behaviours around that.”

Those organisations that can tap into this new way of working and appropriately reward the behaviours of success, rather than the immediate pursuit of ROIs, will set the bar. “Companies must make the leap to measuring the ‘how’ not the ‘what’. They will be the true disruptors,” she said.

This notion of ‘how’ we work as opposed to an aggressively results-driven environment continued with an enquiry into the ‘authentic’ female self. “Be normal,” was the panel’s response and, as their own stories told, women increasingly have the options to play by their own rules and negotiate their own terms for success.

Retaining entrepreneurial women in corporates

A poignant discussion focused around the entrepreneurial spirit of women. With $13 million invested by the government’s innovation agenda to improve diversity in tech and startups, an increasing number of women becoming business owners in Australia and over 90% of these owning small businesses, the question was raised about the reasons why corporates struggle to retain these entrepreneurial people within their organisations.

The call to arms was a challenge to current workplace structure – not just for women, the difficulties of the current model of working apply to us all. “We talk about having children as the great de-railer of careers,” said Huxley. But the issue stretches far beyond this. “We need to bring the sabbatical back into conversation; to bring carers’ leave into the conversation,” particularly in light of an ageing population and greater demands to look after elderly parents. “We must see portfolio careers as normal.”

Boston rallied the audience to “create our own structures instead of fighting for the old ones. Why do we have the structures that we have? With all the technologies available, everyone should be working remotely.”

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