By: Marilyn D. Jacobson, PH.d

Marilyn Jacobson

When you consult for many Fortune 100+, a few smaller companies, and some not-for-profit organizations, while also teaching MBA students, you have stories to tell.  Stories have always been important to me (I have two degrees in English literature), but mostly because I have gotten to know people intimately from an organization development perspective, and for the last 10 years as an executive coach. Conducting interviews has been a major part of my work, using what is called a 360, involving in-depth interviews with individuals, followed by interviews with their supervisors, subordinates and peers. Reporting what was revealed as strengths and areas for development, followed by coaching, creates a strong bond with each individual.  While I could never repeat names, I had some great stories, which by necessity were only pillow talk.

How did I know it was time to write a book? My daughter, who is also my editor and proofreader, has suggested it for years.  As a woman with children and friends who did not work, my life was bifurcated. Few asked and I did not talk about why I frequently left to travel on business.  I managed to live two separate lives with support from my husband. I rarely talked about what I was doing as a consultant. Also, the work was highly confidential, and it would have been unethical to tell stories. Nevertheless, there were many to tell, and they came piling out, expunged of organization and individual names, in Buenos Aires when a friend and I spent many evenings over glasses of Malbec. Before we returned home, she had convinced me I should write a book.

I knew I had content, but I did not want to write about myself and I couldn’t write about my clients.  Time went by and I read Thomas Friedman’s book That Used To Be Us, and I realized that I had several outstanding clients, but that they were unprepared to enter the global, high tech, hyper connected fast-paced world that was approaching with hurricane force. Each individual had mastered a piece of what was needed, and I believed, collectively, they could provide a profile helpful to other leaders actively confronting this new environment.

The first step was to ask my clients and a small group of other executives if they would participate in a book that I was going to write. Each person I approached did not say maybe, please elaborate, or no thanks.  They said “yes”! What followed was a book concept paper, an agent who also liked stories but helped me to focus.  What do I want my stories to do? Was my message or point of view clear? One day he said “From what you are saying, you want to turn the pyramid upside down” and there it was – my message. The stories were there, and the collective wisdom was there. Next to include was my premise: to be agile in this volatile marketplace, command and control organizations had to disappear.  Employees have to engage fully, so that the complexities of managing a world-wide organization, using appropriate technologies, or indeed inventing them, requires a flatter structure with decision-making dispersed throughout, rather than isolated at the top.

It worked.  I had a willing group of high-level executives, who would participate, and each had a story and lesson to share, and I had the message, strengthened by experience and research.

Turning the Pyramid Upside Down adds to what the executives offer, and makes the case regarding leadership that will make the difference in the future.
Following are the themes drawn from the stories in the book:

• People are number one; they are the only sustainable advantage.
• Innovation happens in an environment that fosters continual cooperation and exchange of ideas.
• Technology requires focus and discovery possible only with total involvement.
• Partnering and collaborating to deal with escalating complexity requires pooling knowledge across the organization.
• Promoting dialogue by asking, not telling.
• Leaders emerge when need arises.  Talent and skills for greater success are already there.
• Engagement is the watchword to achieve strategic outcomes.
• Teams can decide as well as implement.
• Hiring A players draws other A players.
• Wellness and happiness in the work place is more than just balancing work and personal life; it actually reflects that there is an economic and psychological connection between health the workplace.

The essentials of what organizations seeking success in this rapidly approaching new world will require:

A Culture that inspires employees to contribute at a high level and partner with others to make the organization competitive is Goal #1, and the basic element of this new culture is moving away from a hierarchy. The new structure advocated is geared to the breakdown of silos or fiefdoms to flatter organizations where cooperation and collaboration is fostered.

Innovation, creativity, exploration and discovery should take center stage in the contest between numbers and newness.  Without the concerns of power, status and revenue, which inevitably come from top-down organizations, investigation and investment in cutting-edge technologies can occur.

Creating work environments that encourage exchange of ideas eliminates individual cubicles and substitutes a workplace that facilitates team effort instead of isolation.

I now know when to write a book. It is when you have something to say that introduces a new formula for thought and action.

Declaring that it would strengthen both the military and the country, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday lifted a ban on women in combat and said that it was “the responsibility of every citizen to protect the nation.”

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, the secretary vowed that the decision would not compromise military readiness and pledged that the armed forces would not lower standards for service, such as for physical fitness.

“If they can meet the qualifications for the job,” he said, “then they should have the right to serve.”

President Barack Obama said in a statement that the decision would “be another step toward fulfilling our nation’s founding ideals of fairness and equality,” themes that he sounded three days earlier in his second inaugural address.

The deaths of more than 150 American military women in Iraq and Afghanistan, the president said, demonstrate that “valor knows no gender.” Another 1,000 women have been wounded in the nation’s two most recent wars.

The decision replaces a 1994 military policy memo signed by Les Aspin, a defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, that excluded women from assignments to units below the brigade level if the unit would be engaged in direct combat.

The change is expected to open 230,000 front-line positions to women.

Nearing the expected end of his own time as defense secretary, Panetta spoke of visiting Arlington National Cemetery and seeing no distinction between men and women who had given their lives in defense of the country.

“They serve, they’re wounded, and they die right next to each other,” he said. “The time has come to recognize that reality.”

The secretary said that there would be a review period for each of the armed services to see if there are any jobs that should be excluded. He wants recommendations on his desk by May 15.

But Pentagon officials said it might be next year before specifics are worked out and women can begin applying for the newly opened positions.

Asked specifically about special operations units such as the Navy SEALs and Delta Force, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon briefing that he believes there are women who would meet those standards.

For years, women in the military, and outside groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, have argued that women already serve on the front lines but are not recognized for it. Women constitute 15 percent of the active-duty military.

Panetta said repeatedly that he had been impressed by the role of women in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are making our military stronger, and we are making America stronger,” he said.

Critics of Panetta’s decision had expressed concern that allowing women to serve in combat roles could harm unit cohesion and weaken military readiness. Others said they worried about lower standards for physical fitness, leading to a weaker fighting force.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. and a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, said earlier Thursday that lifting the ban was “the right thing to do,” but he stressed that the military should make sure physical standards are met.

Reaction on Capitol Hill appeared mostly positive. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, congratulated Panetta for the decision in an interview on “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC.

“I think this is a very positive step, and it reflects the reality of what’s happening, obviously, in defending our nation,” she said.

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/24/16681072-valor-knows-no-gender-pentagon-lifts-ban-on-women-in-combat?lite

The National Women’s History Museum brought on its newest staff member, Elizabeth Maurer, on Monday as the Museum’s Director of Programs.  The Museum is delighted to have Ms. Maurer join the staff and trusts that her expertise will help to further develop and improve current Museum programs, and create new and enriching programs that will have a positive impact on the public.

Maurer was most recently the Director of Re-Living History in Alexandria, VA. There, she developed and presented public programs matched to K-12 state and national standards for science, history, and civics. She also created comprehensive, educational curriculums in various content areas and developed and lead teacher workshops combining subject matter content and innovative teaching strategies.

From March 2008 to May 2010, she was the  Director of Operations at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington. As Director, she researched, wrote and designed comprehensive educational curriculum in history, civics and science. She supervised the Museum’s Forensic Science programs and established program goals and objectives to meet national curriculum standards while employing object-based learning techniques. She also devised and implemented a strategic plan to market education programs via social networking, educational products &on-/off-site programs to target audiences, resulting in increased visitation.

Maurer has her Master’s in Teaching with an emphasis in Museum Education from George Washington University.

By: Dr. Linda Gordon, New York University, January 9, 2013

Photo Credit: NPR.org

Gerda Lerner, historian, writer, feminist activist and program builder, died January 2, 2013, In Madison, Wisconsin, at age 92.

Born Gerda Hedwig Kronstein to a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna, she was active in anti-Nazi protests while in secondary school.  When her father, Robert Kronstein, came to understand the Nazis’ plans to appropriate Jewish property and arrest Jews, he fled to Lichtenstein to develop a second business.  Gerda and her mother Ilona and sister Nora were arrested and held for six weeks; they were released only after Robert sold his Austrian assets to Gentiles for a pittance.  Gerda believed that her experiences as a Nazi resister and imprisoned teenager were the most formative influences of her life, undergirding her assertive, fighting spirit and her understanding of the virulent force of racism.

Immigrating to the US, she contracted a brief first marriage and divorce, and earned a living in working-class jobs, then in 1941 married Carl Lerner, a theater director and film editor.  They moved to Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and she worked with community social-justice groups.  Both were Communists at the time, and when Carl Lerner’s career was destroyed by the Hollywood blacklists, they returned to New York with their two children.  In the 1960s Gerda became one of the founding members of NOW.

At age 38 Gerda enrolled in college and then graduate school at Columbia. Defying warnings and belittlement from those who believed she should choose a more conventional and “high status” topic, Gerda wrote a PhD dissertation about women—the abolitionist Grimke sisters.   In 1968 she began teaching at Sarah Lawrence College where she developed an MA program in women’s history, the first in the US.  Twelve years later she won a professorship at the University of Wisconsin, over significant opposition, where she developed a PhD program in women’s history.

Two related intellectual and personal understandings marked Gerda Lerner’s career: a visceral grasp of how power worked and a sense of the relatedness of various forms of inequality and oppression—class, race, gender, and global imperialism.   In both her faculty positions she strategized that teaching women’s history would not be enough to build respect for the field, and that she needed to build women’s history programs with visibility and autonomy.  In both places the existence of these programs attracted top-notch students willing to take risks and to pursue graduate work in history not merely as job training but also out of a commitment to making history relevant to movements for social justice.  At Wisconsin she took the job only on the condition that the history department hire a second faculty member in the field, and Linda Gordon came there in 1984.

The Sarah Lawrence and Wisconsin programs combined trained over 40 historians of women and gender, many of them now the leading scholars in the field.  Gerda organized the first ever conference of faculty from graduate programs in women’s history, at which several dozen professors from around the country were able to share syllabi, programmatic developments, teaching methods, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

NWHM was saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Gerda Lerner on Wednesday, Jan. 2nd. Dr. Lerner, who was 92 years old, was a pioneer in establishing the women’s history field and inspired the work that we do to celebrate, educate and pass on the collective history of American women to the public. Dr. Lerner knew that in order to have a fuller understanding of history, and hence ourselves, the standard field of American history must be compelled to be more inclusive of all of its citizens’ historical experiences, contributions and achievements.

“In my courses, the teachers told me about a world in which ostensibly one-half the human race is doing everything significant and the other half doesn’t exist,” Dr. Lerner told the Chicago Tribune in 1993. “I asked myself how this checked against my own life experience. ‘This is garbage; this is not the world in which I have lived,’ I said.”

With the preponderance of women’s history programs at colleges and universities around the country today, it may be difficult for some to imagine a time in our nation’s past when the field of women’s history didn’t really exist. But it was only about three decades ago that discipline began to solidify as an academic field. Dr. Lerner founded the very first graduate program in women’s history in 1972 at Sarah Lawrence College and set out to collect source materials including diaries, letter and speeches, that would help historians to reconstruct the lives of women. But in the decades that preceded, US history for much of its existence ignored and diminished the importance of women’s lives, work and experiences. The brand of history that long was taught focused almost exclusively on white men, usually those in politics and the military; and women historians, as well as women’s history, were relegated to the footnotes of our national story.

Dr. Lerner spent her life challenging the way historians of the day thought about history. In 1963, she earned her B.A. from the New School for Social Research in New York. She then received her Ph.D. in American History from Columbia University in 1966. Dr. Lerner returned to Columbia to pursue women’s history, a field not yet considered a formal area of study. There she began her battle to gain recognition of women’s history as a separate specialized discipline. That same year Lerner joined fellow activists Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, Aileen Hernandez, and others in founding the National Organization for Women (NOW). Upon receiving her doctorate, Lerner began teaching at Long Island University. She is credited with teaching the first post-World War II college course in women’s history.

In 1980, she began teaching at the University of Wisconsin and remained there as Professor of History Emerita. At Wisconsin, she established a Ph.D. program in women’s history and continued to help similar fledgling programs at universities throughout the country. In 1981, she became the first female President in 50 years of the Organization of American Historians.

As NWHM reflects on the historic events of this week—the swearing in of the 113th Congress of the United States, we can see the wheels of history turning and a new history being forged. At no other time in our nation’s past have more women occupied a greater presence in Congress than they do now. Twenty women now preside in the Senate and eighty-one in the House. As women’s history classes, museums, historical societies and other organization discuss the historical importance of this week’s events, they should also consider the legacy of Dr. Lerner’s life-long work in helping to make these types of conversations possible.

NWHM honors Dr. Lerner’s memory, legacy and her life’s work. Without her commitment to ensuring that women’s history be viewed as a central area of scholarship, we would not exist.

“Women’s History is the primary tool for women’s emancipation.”

-Dr. Gerda Lerner

Please click here to view a short clip about the life of Dr. Lerner taken from the Museum’s film: “The Keepers of History.”