Earlier this year, I was blessed to have connected with the affable Margaret Heffernan after I found one of her articles on BNET. She is
an author, entrepreneur, CEO and keynote speaker, as well as a wife and mother. She was born in Texas, raised in Holland and educated at Cambridge. Intrigued by her writing style, tech industry experience and thoughts on women in entrepreneurship, I asked Margaret to spend an hour with me one morning via VoIP. In my next few posts, I’ll share our discussion with you to provide you some insights for your business from this author of The Naked Truth and Women on Top.
Stillman: What are the top 3 things you learned from running, buying and selling your Internet business? I think it’s fascinating for a woman to have such a strong presence in that market and that time in the mid-90s.
Heffernan: I’m very skeptical about mergers and acquisitions, partly because I’ve done them. There are some people who are very good at doing them and what those people tell me is for any mergers to work well you need to have limitless time. The main reason most mergers and acquisitions fail is because everybody focuses on getting the deal done and then people take their hands off the steering wheel.M&As are driven by bankers who make a lot of money and CEOs who seem to think that their stature depends on them. I’ve never seen so much destruction in shareholder value as through M&As. I do think it’s possible to build a business that way, but I think it’s much /much/ harder than it looks. And, most people aren’t prepared to put the work in.
Another thing I have learned is that technology companies, in particular, find it very hard to have a rich dialogue with their customers, and I think most technology companies that flounder do so because they have a very arrogant attitude to their users and their customers. One of the hardest things about running these businesses is getting an interface between your customers and your engineers that is creative. A few companies manage it but I think most companies really struggle with it. Engineers can dream of something customers can’t even imagine, and it quickly gets them into the bad habit of not listening to anybody.
I guess the other thing I feel very strongly about is making a conscious effort to produce and sustain diversity in your businesses. If you don’t, the business is much weaker, if not fatally weak. When I think of many of the women-owned businesses that I’ve written about, I see much more diversity there. And, what is really exciting is that not only do the women love working there but the men love working there. And, that’s really what we should all be aiming for.
Stillman: Why do you think women-owned business encourage more diversity?
Heffernan: I believe this is partly because we’ve been on the receiving end often of companies that aren’t diverse, so I think that we’re sympathetic to what it’s like to be the minority. I also think that women are very alert to their own weaknesses. This is sometimes a problem because we tend to put ourselves down and destroy our own confidence by thinking about our weaknesses. However, this can also be a strength. Many of the fine female CEO’s I find know they thought very clearly through, “What are my weaknesses and what kinds of people do I need different from myself to address those?” They think about it almost like casting a play. Whereas a guy might look at it as “I need a marketing guy, a finance guy, a sales guy,” and so on, women tend to think, “Well I’m good at this but not at that so I need someone who is good at that.” Women tend to think much more about work styles and thinking styles, which is important in diversity. And, awareness of their own weaknesses makes them try to protect themselves by hiring people who plug those holes. Men are less likely to do that. Men are less likely to think they have weaknesses and therefore less likely to hire the kind of people who might fix those for them.
Stillman: That’s an interesting perspective. From my experience with where I have been in large corporate America down to the smallest of companies, one of which was run by a female, I think your insights are what I have experienced as well. You have obviously done your research and I’m sure a lot of women tell you the same thing.
Heffernan: Another more specific way to put it would be to say that a woman will think, “I’m not great with numbers so I need to hire somebody who is.” Now a guy might think, “Gee, I’m not great with people,” but it wouldn’t really occur to them that they might need to find somebody who is. I’ve had many very interesting showdowns with a lot of senior male executives on this front because, while women take themselves off to business school, men will rarely take themselves off to “emotion school.” But, like I said, it cuts two ways because being aware of our own weaknesses often really undermines women’s confidence.
Stillman: In terms of your businesses and where you have taken them, were you ever in a situation where you raised startup capital for your venture?
Heffernan: Well I mostly joined businesses with venture capitalists who really started the companies or the technology pretty much together at the same time as we were figuring out where the money was. So, it was less of a sequential process and more of thinking about it all as one piece. I know a lot of women who have raised a lot of venture capital, and I think what’s very striking about their success is two things, one is they approach raising venture capital just as anyone would approach a sales person would prepare for a prospect – they never talk to anyone without having researched them very thoroughly, they ask lots of questions, they work hard to build a relationship and they listen to the answers. The other thing that is true about them is they seem to have a pretty decent track record. Therefore if you go in and can say, I’ve done this that and the other, you will get more attention than if you come in with a sizzling idea and no experience.
My next post will conclude my interview with Margaret Heffernan. To read more about her work and what she’s doing now, visit www.mheffernan.com.
Tags: action, Business and family, Business Planning, confidence, Entrepreneurs, goals, model company, small business, vision, women in business, work life balance
