Message-ID: <31576896.1075854934212.JavaMail.evans@thyme> Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 16:56:06 -0700 (PDT) From: janette.elbertson@enron.com To: mark.e.haedicke@enron.com Subject: Patient but Not Passive Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-From: Elbertson, Janette X-To: mark.e.haedicke@enron.com X-cc: X-bcc: X-Folder: \MHAEDIC (Non-Privileged)\Deleted Items X-Origin: Haedicke-M X-FileName: MHAEDIC (Non-Privileged).pst A colleague has sent you this article from Fortune (). Reply to your colleague at janette.elbertson@enron.com =20 =3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D MOST POWERFUL WOMEN IN BUSINESS Patient but Not Passive A new kind of leader emerged in our annual ranking of powerful businesswome= n. She is strong and resolute, but not in a hurry.=20 Patricia Sellers Mon Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2001 For some 30 years--ever since women started jockeying for power in the work= place--patience has gotten a bad rap. After all, the virtue fairly reeks of= a Victorian mission to corset women into the role of submissive wife and m= other. So women have shunned it. Instead they have felt the need to make bo= ld pronouncements and rush to action. That was never truer than during the = season of dot-com mania, when every CEO professed to be leading a revolutio= n. And any leader who failed to act quickly was supposed to get trampled by= the capitalist vanguard.=20 Now, in these new, more tempered times, patience may be about to reap its r= eward. In FORTUNE's annual survey of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business= , we see the emergence of women who came to power slowly. We're not talking= about women who had the patience to suffer indignities or who sat passivel= y in an out-of-the-way corner. Rather, they stayed with a company, steadily= building influence there, and rose to power through determination and insi= der knowledge, not promises and self-promotion. These qualities, of course,= serve men as well as women. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, argues t= hat the most successful corporate turnarounds were led by such colorless me= n as Darwin Smith at Kimberly-Clark and William Allen at Boeing. Through a = combination of deep knowledge of the corporation, personal humility, and wi= ll, they created enduring greatness. It's too early to say whether Anne Mul= cahy, No. 6 on our list, can pull off such a feat. But she fits the profile= . An unpretentious workhorse who never aimed to be CEO, she felt ambivalent= accepting the title at troubled Xerox in July. "I'm not as famous as Carly= --and I want to keep it that way," says Mulcahy, 48.=20 The famous Carly--Hewlett-Packard Chairman and CEO Carleton Fiorina--is sti= ll No. 1 on our list, as she has been every year since we began publishing = the The Power 50 in 1998. She still heads the biggest company ($48.8 billio= n in revenues last year) run by a woman. And she is still as audacious and = impatient as ever. Wall Street practically heckled her latest move--a bold = bet to buy competitor Compaq--but Fiorina, 47, remains defiant. In difficul= t times "people who drive change are the subject of great scrutiny," she sa= ys. As a woman--and a daring, outspoken one at that--her actions are scruti= nized more closely than the most driven of men. Says Fiorina: "I've had a l= ot of male CEOs say to me, 'Thank God they don't rank us.' "=20 PepsiCo President and CFO Indra Nooyi (No. 10) understands the urge to take= bold action, but she also knows the necessity of holding back. "There is n= o question that women who reach the top have to perform at a higher level--= which is why women tend to push themselves harder than men," says Nooyi, 46= . "But we have to have the right people around who can say to us, 'You're d= raining the organization. You're pushing too hard.' " Particularly now, as = the U.S. prepares for an uncertain kind of war and enters what could be a s= ustained economic downturn, power seems to call for pragmatic and careful l= eadership.=20 This year's Power 50 is full of such steady leaders. Mulcahy, Nooyi, and th= e other corporate women who are new to the top ten this year--Mirant's Marc= e Fuller (No. 5), Pfizer's Karen Katen (No. 7), Chevron's Pat Woertz (No. 8= ), and Kraft's Betsy Holden (No. 9)--are all low-profile loyalists. The com= bined tenure at their current companies: 118 years. The six years Andrea Ju= ng (No. 4) spent as head of marketing at Avon gave her the knowledge to rev= ive the troubled company faster than anyone expected when she became CEO tw= o years ago (see It Took a Lady to Save Avon).=20 As always, the list is a snapshot of power at a moment in time. Last year, = power resided in the technology and Internet sectors, but that influence wa= s fleeting. Gone from the list this year: "Hurricane Debby" Hopkins, who pu= shed her agenda too ambitiously at Lucent and lost her CFO job in May; Elle= n Hancock, who failed at the startup Exodus; and Morgan Stanley's Mary Meek= er, who influenced so many to buy into the Internet fizz. But one Web warri= or looks better than ever: eBay's Meg Whitman, No. 2 on our list. Whitman, = who at times took heat for not managing aggressively enough, has never over= promised investors; instead she has diligently delivered above-target profi= ts every single quarter. While the economy and its points of power change, the definition we use to = evaluate power remains the same. We consider the size and importance of a w= oman's business in the global economy, her clout inside her company, and th= e arc of her career--where she has been and where she is likely to go. When= appropriate, we also weigh the woman's influence on mass culture and socie= ty. That factor lifts Oprah Winfrey to No. 3 on this year's list. She owns = a product, The Oprah Winfrey Show, that generates more than $300 million in= annual revenues and reaches 26 million viewers in the U.S. each week--plus= millions more in 106 international markets. Her show, and now her magazine= , O, The Oprah Magazine (whose subject is personal empowerment), have immen= se influence on the popular culture--from what books people read to what ki= nd of lives they lead.=20 The shifts on our list this year are dramatic, with 14 newcomers and three = returnees from previous years. But one trend is especially intriguing: Wome= n are taking on bigger businesses than ever. A few years ago responsibility= for a $3 billion business almost automatically earned a woman a spot on th= is list. No more. (Unless she wields media power like Martha Stewart, No. 1= 3.) This year's FORTUNE 50 includes several women who lead businesses with = annual revenues of $20 billion or more. That's a first. The ranking has bec= ome so competitive, in fact, that some women moved down even though their p= ower increased. Example: Shelly Lazarus. She heads a healthy business, ad g= iant Ogilvy & Mather (where, by the way, she has worked for 30 years), whos= e revenues grew 20% last year. Plus, she added a prestigious board seat--Ge= neral Electric--to her resume. But in order to make room for newcomers, Laz= arus slides to No. 11, from No. 7 last year.=20 One newcomer is Southwest Airlines President Colleen Barrett (No. 20). Loya= lty and self-knowledge took Barrett to corporate heights she never imagined= while growing up in tiny Bellows Falls, Vt. Barrett couldn't afford to go = to a four-year college and had no specific ambition beyond believing she "w= ould be the best legal secretary in the world," she says. Barrett started a= s Herb Kelleher's secretary in 1967, a decade before he quit a Texas law pr= actice to launch Southwest Airlines. She made an indelible mark as the star= tup grew to be America's top-performing airline. In her job as executive vi= ce president of customers, she helped create Southwest's famously collegial= culture and provided essential structure and discipline to Kelleher's gran= d vision. "I've never wanted the CEO job," says Barrett. "I don't think I h= ave the talents for it. I'm a great No. 2 person." Now 57, Barrett is exact= ly where she wants to be.=20 Loyalty does not mean kowtowing. The women on our list push their companies= to change and grow, and they take personal risks. "Women have to take a lo= t of risks because there is no natural career progression," says Mirant CEO= Marce Fuller. She should know. Fuller was getting great marks running inte= rnational project development for Mirant's former parent, Southern, in 1994= , when her boss asked her to take charge of the company's tiny North Americ= an power plant operations. After looking closely at the business, she told = her boss she didn't want the job unless she could do something altogether n= ew--build a high-tech risk-management and marketing organization to complem= ent the expansion of power plants in the U.S. "I told him, 'If you don't ha= ve this piece, you don't have a game plan,' " she says. It wasn't an easy s= ell. Only 35 at the time, Fuller lobbied Southern's board for approval. Onc= e she got it, she built a 600-person energy trading and marketing unit that= is expected to generate $25 billion in revenues this year. Southern, a reg= ulated utility, spun off Mirant last spring. So now Fuller is her own boss-= -and, with Mirant sure to be among America's largest companies this year, a= FORTUNE 500 CEO.=20 One of the few. The grim news is that there are only six women CEOs of FORT= UNE 500 companies, including Fuller. And there are fewer women in the pipel= ine than anyone would have thought 30 years ago. "When I was 21, I was expe= cting that by this point we'd be in the fifty-fifty range," says Betsy Bern= ard (No. 23), CEO of AT&T Consumer. The reality, though disappointing, has = motivated Bernard to become "a catalyst, making sure that other women get o= pportunities." Bernard, 46, and other women emerging now are not based on t= he old model--the shark-like Linda Wachner, whose company, Warnaco, crashed= into bankruptcy this year. Or the flamboyant Jill Barad, who was booted fr= om Mattel last year. Says PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi: "PepsiCo, which used to be= known for hiring 'Pepsi pretty'--blond, blue-eyed males--has made an India= n woman its president. That says a lot about the future of women." Let's ho= pe Nooyi is right. Meantime, if you don't see a new Wonder Woman in corpora= te America, it doesn't mean she doesn't exist. She might be quietly and dil= igently doing her job.=20 =20 Colleague at Fortune