Thanks to Mike Urbonas for sharing this “… my ass!” moment…
Mike Stankus, sales guru over at STM360, did an informal survey asking, Does work need to be your top priority? It seems Jack Welch thinks it does, and lazy-ass women who don’t give it all up for the corporation deserve what they get.
Stankus quotes Welch: “There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” (Jack Welch’s stock is lookin’ more like GE’s…) Then Stankus comments: “He [Welch] was referring to women who take time off to have/raise a family, basically saying that you can’t get to the top if work is not your top priority.”
But the juice in Stankus’s post is a tasty little informal survey he did. Read the results for yourself. The question he posed: “Would you hire someone for a critical sales/sales management position if they told you work was NOT their first priority?”
Yeses outnumbered nos 5 to 1. Are there just a lotta politically correct managers out there who — unlike Welch — would kill off their companies just to be nice to employees?
Shucks, no. I think there are just lots of managers who realize that 20 hour days don’t translate into more success. Cave men worked longer and harder rather than smarter. They still do. Give it all up for Jack, my ass!
We covered a related topic a few years ago in the Ask The Headhunter Newsletter: Maverick Women Fire Back! (One of my favorite oldies but goodies.) The best I can offer Jack’s acolytes is this: Those lazy-ass women are the canaries of the corporate coal mine… they know when it’s starting to get stinky around the old cave-man clubhouse. But these canaries know enough to leave for better company. (There’s consequences!)
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I used to work at GE, it wasn’t just women it was everyone. God forbid you leave the building to have lunch. Nope, eat at your desk and answer email, burn yourself out so they can lay you off to meet street estimates. Same at a lot of places, work smarter? Would be nice if more companies knew what that meant, that often still translates to work longer, go home and get on your laptop and work. Hey, enjoy your work but don’t live to work. I used to, now I have hobbies, life is good when you have something to live for other than the next report or presentation.