"Zut! There's a woman in my Boardroom"
By Jackie Pressman
This speech was originally given to the Institute of Directors on the
11th of December 2003.
Good afternoon - I am Jackie Pressman and a former finalist in the Veuve Clicquot/IOD Business Woman of the Year award. My company at that time was the Porchester Group - financial services - and we had built the company into the largest independent life and pensions brokerage in the UK in 3 years. Quite an accomplishment, and built on interesting and unusual business assumptions.
However, my talk to you today is entitled "Zut! There's a woman in my Boardroom" - or maybe, more likely, there isn't!
I have spent the majority of my working life as a woman in the boardroom - and always the only one - needing to protect the image of us business women; the fact that we have the priorities and stamina and vision needed to devote to the development and good of the business on many levels.
Yet, when I first started to attract the attention of the press, it was a great surprise to the journalists in the UK to find a woman at the helm. Believe it or not, I was asked stupid questions like: what underwear do you wear?! What do you do in the boardroom if you can't get your own way?! - and that was from the financial press!!!
As a Managing Director then (now you'd call it the CEO) I had realised that the importance for me in the boardroom was to make a decision - by taking the encouraged optimism of the Sales/Marketing Director, and the encouraged pessimism of the Finance Director - and try to steer a course down the middle!
Also, being the Chairman, I later had the responsibility to guide our company towards becoming a principal, rather than a broker, in the insurance industry.
Our board meetings became less of the casual chat, joke telling, and "how ya doin?" to the formal Agenda and Minutes requirement and the essential need to concentrate on proper governance issues.
Paradoxically the then all-male establishment may have paid more attention to my ideas and me because I was a female Chairman - or Chairperson!
Also, businesswomen should form their own networks - in parallel with the old boys club. Maybe the networks formed by recently graduated female MBAs will be the start of this. If a male director calls another, he may be suspicious. But if a woman chairman or woman director calls a male Captain of Industry, he will always be intrigued - believe me, I know.
Anyway, today women in business are no great surprise - but still so few at true decision-making level. But most consumer decisions are taken or prompted by women.
Whether you like that or not, the woman of the family makes or influences most of the consumer purchase decisions for her family - whether that be the home, and what goes into it, schools, travel, entertainment, food and wine - and more and more the family's investments and savings for the future.
We have even seen an increase in the numbers of women Members of Parliament to reflect the voters' own participation and interests.
We know from recently published statistics that 44% of the UK's workforce is women yet less than 6% of board members are women, including part-time non-executives.
65% of FTSE-listed UK companies have no women yet on the board. When widened to the range of smaller capitalised companies, the figure of women on the board drops to an alarming 4.5%.
Throughout Europe fewer than 6% of all companies have a woman on the board. (France is 6.2% and UK 5.8%)
It is becoming a corporate governance issue. Most boards could use a healthy dose of diversity in their make-up.
This would make them more dynamic and energetic. People of different colours and backgrounds and, specifically, women - who would add substance and perhaps add a much-needed irreverence.
The smart companies are looking at the total needs of the board and seeking assurances that stockholders are properly represented. That means the right representation of board composition and function. A company that can have a board, which mirrors its shareholders and, particularly, its customers, will be a company in tune with all its constituencies.
Great companies know this and are taking the appropriate actions. They are encouraging their senior management women to break through the proverbial glass ceiling- and they are seeking diversely experienced women for their boards through headhunters everywhere.
This new focus on board composition stems from an overall trend in the field of corporate governance that emphasises strong active boards with a majority of independent directors - bringing greater variety of knowledge, experiences, backgrounds and work styles.
Non-executive experienced people in the boardroom also create a mentoring environment - i.e. mature people bring younger people up-to-speed by imparting their accumulated wisdom and they provide to the rising young Manager/Director that most vital element - context. For example, in the dot.com boom, most of these young managers had never seen a bear market before!
I have a bank manager of 23! And I have shoes older than that!
However, I am very encouraged to note that the membership of the IOD Monaco is staggeringly above the European averages - 13% women members. Still not high enough but a wonderful example.
So, let me ask those of you here today - how many of you have a woman on your company board?
How many of you have more than one woman on the board? Now, here are a few questions for you to think about:
Wouldn't diverse board membership send a clear signal to employees throughout the organisation and to the shareholders that their company is committed to the better understanding of consumer decision-making?
The business world is changing - many of our businesses are more regulated than they were in the past. Wouldn't Governmental Agencies look more favourably on companies with diversity in employment, management and direction?
In preparation for a stock market floatation (IPO), wouldn't a closely held private business be well advised to add a woman director to its board?
Wouldn't even the financial press be more favourable to this company's shares?
Also, family businesses have been historically patriarchal. Wouldn't a female director provide a possible role model for female family members who should be retained in the business and motivated?
In conclusion, I believe that all companies should be thinking of putting a woman on their boards NOW- even as a non-executive Director to start. This would be an enormously motivating factor for their female workforce, their stockholders, and specifically their customers.
My previous business talks have been about my companies, their achievements and aims towards their own "big picture". Today I wanted to talk to you on a more general note, but based on my own experiences as being the lone woman in the boardroom. It may surprise you to know that I may have been to more stag nights than many of you!
I hope that I have created a thinking start-point for all of you. How many of your customers are women? What percentage of your company's products or services are purchased, or influenced, by women? Does your board reflect this?
Who is Jackie?
Jackie Pressman was a finalist in the Institute of Directors [I.O.D.] Business Woman of the Year award, for her role as founder-Chairman and Managing Director of the financial services company, The Porchester Group, subsequently M.I. Group, and bought by Cornhill/Allianz. This enterprise was judged by the I.O.D. to be an unprecedented success in that Porchester became the largest independent seller of life savings and pensions in the UK within 3 years. Porchester offered a unique method of in-house advice with over 600 trained personnel in large open offices in main city centres.
Prior to the Porchester Group, she had created and run her own substantial antique and art concession within Selfridges - The St. James's Collection Ltd. This proved to be a very successful and unusual enterprise in its field, uniquely offering full money-back guarantee at any time on fully authenticated and priced items - from jewellery and objets d'art to pictures and furniture.
Jackie is still well remembered for her creation of the Carmen heated roller company which pioneered hot rollers for women around the world. She created a generic global brand with this new product and still gives marketing talks on her successful methods.
She remarried and in 2000 settled happily in Cannes, France.
However, before long she had started a new business. Seeing and learning that Estate Agencies in France did not share listings and were authorised only by sellers, she quickly saw that buyers had no one acting specifically for them. She started French Riviera Property Search - www.FrenchRivieraPropertySearch.com
She advises and guides buyers on many aspects; finding property to clients' specifications; negotiating price on their behalf; advising on the most tax-efficient method of purchase relating to French taxes, inheritance etc; and introducing the client to English-speaking professionals as needed - Notary, French solicitor if needed, Architect, International Tax Specialist if required, Mortgage bank, insurance, etc. etc.
Jackie can be reached at JAKnBURT@aol.com or Jackie@FrenchRivieraPropertySearch.com.