Message-ID: <8811189.1075858591872.JavaMail.evans@thyme> Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 16:55:42 -0700 (PDT) From: janette.elbertson@enron.com To: legal <.taylor@enron.com> Subject: Patient but Not Passive Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ANSI_X3.4-1968 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-From: janette.elbertson@enron.com@ENRON X-To: Taylor, Mark E (Legal) X-cc: X-bcc: X-Folder: \MTAYLO1 (Non-Privileged)\Taylor, Mark E (Legal)\Deleted Items X-Origin: Taylor-M X-FileName: MTAYLO1 (Non-Privileged).pst A colleague has sent you this article from Fortune (http://www.fortune.com = ). Reply to your colleague at janette.elbertson@enron.com=20 =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 wor= kplace--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 an= d mother. So women have shunned it. Instead they have felt the need to mak= e bold 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 rev= olution. And any leader who failed to act quickly was supposed to get tram= pled by the capitalist vanguard. =20 Now, in these new, more tempered times, patience may be about to reap its = reward. In FORTUNE's annual survey of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Busine= ss, we see the emergence of women who came to power slowly. We're not talk= ing about women who had the patience to suffer indignities or who sat pass= ively in an out-of-the-way corner. Rather, they stayed with a company, ste= adily building influence there, and rose to power through determination an= d insider knowledge, not promises and self-promotion. These qualities, of = course, serve men as well as women. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, = argues that the most successful corporate turnarounds were led by such col= orless men as Darwin Smith at Kimberly-Clark and William Allen at Boeing. = Through a combination of deep knowledge of the corporation, personal humil= ity, and will, they created enduring greatness. It's too early to say whet= her Anne Mulcahy, No. 6 on our list, can pull off such a feat. But she fit= s the profile. An unpretentious workhorse who never aimed to be CEO, she f= elt 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 st= ill No. 1 on our list, as she has been every year since we began publishin= g the The Power 50 in 1998. She still heads the biggest company ($48.8 bil= lion 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 di= fficult times "people who drive change are the subject of great scrutiny,"= she says. As a woman--and a daring, outspoken one at that--her actions ar= e scrutinized more closely than the most driven of men. Says Fiorina: "I'v= e had a lot 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 tak= e bold action, but she also knows the necessity of holding back. "There is= no question that women who reach the top have to perform at a higher leve= l--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 draining the organization. You're pushing too hard.' " Particularly no= w, as the U.S. prepares for an uncertain kind of war and enters what could= be a sustained economic downturn, power seems to call for pragmatic and c= areful leadership.=20 This year's Power 50 is full of such steady leaders. Mulcahy, Nooyi, and t= he other corporate women who are new to the top ten this year--Mirant's Ma= rce 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= combined tenure at their current companies: 118 years. The six years Andr= ea Jung (No. 4) spent as head of marketing at Avon gave her the knowledge = to revive the troubled company faster than anyone expected when she became= CEO two 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 = was fleeting. Gone from the list this year: "Hurricane Debby" Hopkins, who= pushed her agenda too ambitiously at Lucent and lost her CFO job in May; = Ellen Hancock, who failed at the startup Exodus; and Morgan Stanley's Mary= Meeker, who influenced so many to buy into the Internet fizz. But one Web= warrior looks better than ever: eBay's Meg Whitman, No. 2 on our list. Wh= itman, who at times took heat for not managing aggressively enough, has ne= ver overpromised investors; instead she has diligently delivered above-tar= get profits 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= woman's business in the global economy, her clout inside her company, and= the 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 = society. 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 mil= lion in annual revenues and reaches 26 million viewers in the U.S. each we= ek--plus millions more in 106 international markets. Her show, and now her= magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine (whose subject is personal empowerment), = have immense influence on the popular culture--from what books people read= to what kind 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: Wo= men are taking on bigger businesses than ever. A few years ago responsibil= ity for a $3 billion business almost automatically earned a woman a spot o= n this list. No more. (Unless she wields media power like Martha Stewart, = No. 13.) 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 become so competitive, in fact, that some women moved down even though= their power increased. Example: Shelly Lazarus. She heads a healthy busin= ess, ad giant Ogilvy & Mather (where, by the way, she has worked for 30 ye= ars), whose revenues grew 20% last year. Plus, she added a prestigious boa= rd seat--General Electric--to her resume. But in order to make room for ne= wcomers, Lazarus slides to No. 11, from No. 7 last year.=20 One newcomer is Southwest Airlines President Colleen Barrett (No. 20). Loy= alty and self-knowledge took Barrett to corporate heights she never imagin= ed 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 s= he "would be the best legal secretary in the world," she says. Barrett sta= rted as Herb Kelleher's secretary in 1967, a decade before he quit a Texas= law practice to launch Southwest Airlines. She made an indelible mark as = the startup grew to be America's top-performing airline. In her job as exe= cutive vice president of customers, she helped create Southwest's famously= collegial culture and provided essential structure and discipline to Kell= eher's grand vision. "I've never wanted the CEO job," says Barrett. "I don= 't think I have the talents for it. I'm a great No. 2 person." Now 57, Bar= rett is exactly where she wants to be. =20 Loyalty does not mean kowtowing. The women on our list push their companie= s to change and grow, and they take personal risks. "Women have to take a = lot of risks because there is no natural career progression," says Mirant = CEO Marce Fuller. She should know. Fuller was getting great marks running = international project development for Mirant's former parent, Southern, in= 1994, when her boss asked her to take charge of the company's tiny North = American power plant operations. After looking closely at the business, sh= e told her boss she didn't want the job unless she could do something alto= gether new--build a high-tech risk-management and marketing organization t= o complement the expansion of power plants in the U.S. "I told him, 'If yo= u don't have this piece, you don't have a game plan,' " she says. It wasn'= t an easy sell. Only 35 at the time, Fuller lobbied Southern's board for a= pproval. Once she got it, she built a 600-person energy trading and market= ing unit that is expected to generate $25 billion in revenues this year. S= outhern, a regulated utility, spun off Mirant last spring. So now Fuller i= s her own boss--and, with Mirant sure to be among America's largest compan= ies this year, a FORTUNE 500 CEO.=20 One of the few. The grim news is that there are only six women CEOs of FOR= TUNE 500 companies, including Fuller. And there are fewer women in the pip= eline than anyone would have thought 30 years ago. "When I was 21, I was e= xpecting that by this point we'd be in the fifty-fifty range," says Betsy = Bernard (No. 23), CEO of AT?Consumer. The reality, though disappointing, h= as motivated Bernard to become "a catalyst, making sure that other women g= et opportunities." Bernard, 46, and other women emerging now are not based= on the old model--the shark-like Linda Wachner, whose company, Warnaco, c= rashed into bankruptcy this year. Or the flamboyant Jill Barad, who was bo= oted from Mattel last year. Says PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi: "PepsiCo, which us= ed to be known for hiring 'Pepsi pretty'--blond, blue-eyed males--has made= an Indian woman its president. That says a lot about the future of women.= " Let's hope Nooyi is right. Meantime, if you don't see a new Wonder Woman= in corporate America, it doesn't mean she doesn't exist. She might be qui= etly and diligently doing her job.=20 http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=3Dartcol.jhtml&doc_id=3D204383= =20 Colleague at Fortunehttp://www.fortune.com