The woman who would be CEO of Morgan Stanley

New York Magazine has an interesting story about the fall Zoe Cruz, the woman who came within striking distance of becoming Morgan Stanley's first female CEO--only to be fired last November after 25 years of distinguished service.

It's impossible to tell from the article whether Cruz was penalized for being as abrasive and competitive as her male colleagues. It seems her career plateaued because she was much better at making money for Morgan Stanley than at playing office politics.

As a trader, she gravitated towards foreign exchange where her accomplishments could be measured in dollars and cents. But as Cruz rose further in the ranks, politicking became an increasingly important part of her job. For whatever reason, she wasn't successful at building the alliances she needed.

The central question of the article is whether Cruz was at an unfair disadvantage in the networking game because of her gender.

There's no question that Cruz had an aggressive personal style and a tendency to alienate people--which could itself be a legitimate performance-related reason for not making her the CEO. Management decisions should be based on results. If an executive can't get the people around her to do what she wants-- whether out of love, obligation, fear, or whatever--that person isn't likely to be a good CEO.

The article hints that Cruz was personally vilified and resented for her sharp elbows in a way that her male colleagues weren't.

The article hints at a deeper question that many ambitious women have asked themselves: Do we face a Catch-22 in professions where advancement requires a fair amount of assholish behavior? If you need to be ruthless to be good, are women systematically penalized for having what it takes?

Comments

[greensmile]

I have hundreds of notes to myself that will just never get to be posts because they are full of questions I am not sure I can answer. Interesting coincidence that while considering the lives to two extremely bright, capable women I know, call them S and P for scientist and photojournalist, I jotted this:

Smart women like S or P have well developed feelings and perhaps opinions about materialism or consumerism or the whole business of keeping your life score in dollars...they reject it or resent its pervasive pall over the life options they have open. The considerations of these women seem advanced to me in comparison to the narrower set of values and obligations men speak of balancing as they plod, march or dash toward their futures.

But other women, far from rejecting careerism, have gone on from similar educations to rise to the boards of directors of large corporations. Carly Fiorina or the like. [Leona Helmsley, Donna Karan, Estee Lauder?]

Which is more common? The Fiorina's are kinda rare but the confounding circumstances defy attempts to account for the distribution: Board Rooms are a rarefied and viciously competitive place. The number of well trained males who work in the upper ranks is also a tiny fraction of the numbers that make up the bulk of any company's manpower. Do the rank and file hold themselves back because they too value a higher quality of family life?

The question I would like to answer with statistics, before intuition sends me off into the deep end of eve psych, is what the distributions of ambition are at different life stages, what the distributions of achievement are and whether they differ for the genders. That would be the groundwork for questions about why, assuming the numbers force us to find some explanation, there are differences if any in ambition or sense of goal/purpose. THEN if gender still matters, sort out culturally determined expectations. THEN see if childbearing has any evolutionary explanatory powers of discrepancies not otherwise accounted for.

More questions than answers for both of us Lindsay. But asking them early in life would be better than realizing late that you had inadvertently missed a better answer. Keep asking.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Very interesting points, GS. I guess I'm asking a slightly different question. I'm wondering whether women tend to be penalized for strategies and interpersonal styles that are considered necessary for advancement in certain male-dominated workplaces.

For example, are Bill and Hillary Clinton judged differently for similar (and sometimes joint) political moves?

A lot more people seem to viscerally hate Hillary Clinton for her political decisions. Even the harshest critics of Bill Clinton don't seem to personalize their condemnations quite so much.

My tentative hypothesis is that ruthless behavior in the workplace is more likely to be interpreted as "strictly business" when a man does it. Or because it's all in the game, yo. Or because politics ain't beanbag. Or because we all know that X is a tough business...

Whereas, women who behave the same way are more likely to be seen as bad/nasty/ugly/mean people, rather than players in a game where tough tactics are sometimes necessary.

[Windypundit]

I think that a certain amount of male aggressive personal style is posturing and is understood to be posturing. It's not as serious as it seems, and it's intended as a warning.

Women, being women, can't quite pull that off because their interactions just don't come packaged in the same social context.

For example, I had a male boss who would often urge us to do something well by threatening to break our arms if we didn't. The absurd nature of the threat made it clear he wasn't serious, but it served to emphasize the point he was making.

A similar threat from a woman would seem almost playful, but if she changed the threat to something more realistic---such as firing---it would seem a bit cruel.

Women in male-dominate professions sometimes find their own style that works. Male police officers sent to the scene of a disturbance usually try to aggressively take charge, and as women entered the police force, they usually did the same thing. However, some women officers have found their own approach: They kid around and joke with the offenders and try to defuse the situation. It seems to work pretty well.

I think that as more and more women rise to positions of power, they'll start to establish a culture that will help them do their jobs. I hope that they will change the workplace so that being an asshole is less of an advantage.

[Barbara]

I think these comments are good ones, but it's also worth stepping back and noting that Ms. Cruz had a "distinguished 25 year career." So it's a fair question of to what degree she was held back because she was a woman. I read a previous, in-depth article in the NYT about Ms. Cruz, and there is no doubt that she made enemies, including an extremely important one: the man Morgan Stanley turned to in its hour of need.

The article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/business/30wall.html?scp=1&sq=zoe+cruz&st=nyt

[Barbara]

Didn't mean to post so soon . . . there is a second article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/business/01wall.html?scp=3&sq=zoe+cruz&st=nyt

That goes more into the internal politics and dynamics. I wonder, specifically, about what happens when gender becomes embedded in cross-cultural dynamics.

[greensmile]

I agree you are asking different, and more practical questions Lindsay. The overlap is the miasma of culture around gendered expectations of behavior that cloud any attempt to find answers.

The research on gendered behavior expectations is
fascinating and wildly diverse...there are tons more where I found these:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080429084317.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080421191418.htm

and the biases in what we think of ourselves are as much part of the mess as the biases through which others engage us
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428084235.htm

I have yet to find a theory or a hint that provides simple prescriptions for doping out what is fair assessment and fair treatment in a given circumstance.
The only parties involved all appear to be human, entangled in an identity of their own and operating under the influence of cultures!-)

Basically we are all irrational but have a tentative agreement to pretend we are sane.

[Michael]

Patricia Beard wrote a fine book on Morgan Stanley titled Blue Blood and Mutiny: The Fight for the Soul of Morgan Stanley. Cruz is portrayed as a leiutenant of Phil Purcell, the CEO who took control of Morgan Stanley after its merger with Dean Witter Discover and, by most accounts, almost wrecked the franchise. When he was pushed out and John Mack was brought back in to run the company he evidently surprised a lot of people by keeping Cruz on. She may not be the best example of the glass ceiling.

[greensmile]

Lindsay, I would not be keeping up my end of the conversation if I failed to acknowledge your point.

A lot more people seem to viscerally hate Hillary Clinton for her political decisions. Even the harshest critics of Bill Clinton don't seem to personalize their condemnations quite so much.

...I do encounter that, the b___h word almost a form of punctuation on the tongues that wag that way.
And I also encounter that unreasoned and instant inclination to vilify in a few people's responses to Obama. It seems like a defensive fear at work, madly "othering" a representative of an outgroup who has had a success that threatens the individual. My analysis could be all wet but I have observed that parties who's sense of adequacy or security is powered by something as insubstantial as their sense of belonging to a particular group are the ones who tend to skip over conscious awareness of the strengths of someone they see as being in a different group: they go directly to attacks, even to the extent of misidentifying the group of the object they find threatening. Gender is so obvious a category it needs no misidentifying or justifying as an excuse for whatever flaw can be ascribed to assuage the unvoiced anxiety.

[Andy]

I'm wondering whether women tend to be penalized for strategies and interpersonal styles that are considered necessary for advancement in certain male-dominated workplaces.
Lindsay Beyerstein | April 28, 2008 at 04:13 PM

I tend to think so. At the very top, when there are only few wolfs left in the pack. The interpersonal dynamics becomes very intense.

So previous strategy that works while in the middle managers might not work up top. But this depends on cultural corporations too.

Bottom line, at the very top, achievement is to recognize how the other players think. And the disadvantage of being a woman, not very sure how the guys think.

While the guys knows each other exactly.

So a woman, may think she is doing the right thing. But to the rest of the guys she just screwed everybody grandly. Then backlash.