CEO advice and how to grow your business

May 18, 2012

Here are a couple of articles that got me thinking earlier today. The first is from the Wall Street Journal. It was spurred by the small storm caused by former GE CEO Jack Welch and some of the comments he made at the recent WSJ Women in the Economy conference (among other things he equated women employee groups to 'victims' units'). The Journal responded by talking to many of the 18 female CEOs in this country about what they think it takes for women to get ahead. I saw two of these women speak at a Catalyst conference last month - sister CEOs, no less. Both had many interesting things to say (both also have stay-at-home husbands, which has to make being a chief executive and having a family a lot easier then it might be otherwise).

Then I saw this on Forbes Woman - it's about Make Mine A Million, the group that helps women-owned businesses get to the point where they're bringing in more than $1 million in revenue. It has an arresting headline - 'Why Women-Owned Businesses Don't Grow' - and goes on to quote Nell Merlino of Make Mine A Million saying that too many women try to do it all, don't delegate, and therefore don't have time to make more sales. I've never run a business - until now - but I can believe this. As reported in episode 2 of The Broad Experience, women, in general, DO try to do everything ourselves, and when you're juggling absolutely everything single-handedly, there's only so much you can actually achieve.