Will Krawcheck Unseat Lean-In for Working Women?
A new blockbuster book for women in business rocketed all the way to # 3 in the Wall Street Journal business best-selling list (January 28-29, p. C-10). It may well undercut the popularity of the famous Lean-In best-seller by Sheryl Sandberg.
The book is called Own It: The Power of Women at Work (Crown Books, 2017). authored by Sallie Krawcheck. The book is a certain future selection for us at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas.
Released for sale only on January 17, the book has also found its way into the top 100 of three of the book categories on Amazon.com. She was recently featured in an issue of Fast Company magazine. You can read the feature story about her at this link:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3036587/generation-flux/i-knew-i-would-get-fired-sallie-krawcheck
What is this one about? Here is how it is summarized on Amazon.com:
” [This is] a new kind of career playbook for a new era of feminism, offering women a new set of rules for professional success: one that plays to their strengths and builds on the power they already have.
“Weren’t women supposed to have “arrived”? Perhaps with the nation’s first female President, equal pay on the horizon, true diversity in the workplace to come thereafter? Or, at least the end of “fat-shaming” and “locker room talk”?
“Well, we aren’t quite there yet. But does that mean that progress for women in business has come to a screeching halt? It’s true that the old rules didn’t get us as far as we hoped. But we can go the distance, and we can close the gaps that still exist. We just need a new way.
“In fact, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future, says former Wall Street powerhouse-turned-entrepreneur Sallie Krawcheck. That’s because the business world is changing fast –driven largely by technology – and it’s changing in ways that give us more power and opportunities than ever…and even more than we yet realize.
“Success for professional women will no longer be about trying to compete at the men’s version of the game, she says. And it will no longer be about contorting ourselves to men’s expectations of how powerful people behave. Instead, it’s about embracing and investing in our innate strengths as women – and bringing them proudly and unapologetically, to work.
“When we do, she says, we gain the power to advance in our careers in more natural ways. We gain the power to initiate courageous conversations in the workplace. We gain the power to forge non-traditional career paths; to leave companies that don’t respect our worth, and instead, go start our own. And we gain the power to invest our economic muscle in making our lives, and the world, better.
“Here Krawcheck draws on her experiences at the highest levels of business, both as one of the few women at the top rungs of the biggest boy’s club in the world, and as an entrepreneur, to show women how to seize this seismic shift in power to take their careers to the next level.
“This change is real, and it’s coming fast. It’s time to own it.”
Follow our website to see the exact month that we will present this book at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas. My feeling is that many working women will find this to be a fresh approach to what seems like to have become a perpetual issue.
Finally, who is Sallie Krawcheck? She may be one of the best-kept secrets in business. This is her biography, as published by the newsroom of Bank of America.com.
“Sallie L. Krawcheck is the former president of Global Wealth & Investment Management for Bank of
America, one of the largest wealth management businesses in the world with more than 20,000 financial advisors across the entire wealth spectrum and $2 trillion in total client assets. Global Wealth & Investment Management provides comprehensive wealth management to affluent, mass affluent, high net worth and ultra high net worth clients, individual and institutional retirement plans, philanthropic management and asset management.
“Before joining Bank of America, Krawcheck was the chief executive officer and chairman for Citi Global Wealth Management, responsible for the Citi Private Bank, Citi Smith Barney and Citi Investment Research. During her time as CEO, she was also a member of Citi’s senior leadership committee and executive committee.
“Krawcheck joined Citi in October 2002 as chairman and chief executive officer of Smith Barney, where she oversaw the global management of the Smith Barney and Citi Investment Research businesses. In 2004, Sallie was appointed chief financial officer and head of Strategy for Citigroup Inc. Prior to joining Citi, Krawcheck was chairman and chief executive officer of Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, where she became one of the most influential voices for research quality and integrity.
“For six straight years, from 2002 to 2007, Fortune recognized Krawcheck as one of the “Most Powerful Women” in business. Forbes magazine, in 2006, listed her as #6 in the rank of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.” She was also the recipient of CNBC’s “Business Leader of the Future Award” in 2007. In 2002, she was recognized as one of Time magazine’s “Global Business Influentials” and, in 2003, Fortune magazine named her the “Most Influential Person Under the Age of 40.”
“A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Krawcheck attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the Morehead Scholarship and graduated in 1987 with academic honors and a Bachelor of Arts. In 1992, she received a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University.
“An active participant in the affairs of her alma maters, Krawcheck has endowed her former secondary school, The Porter Gaud School, with the Krawcheck Scholarship, a needs-based scholarship awarding full tuition to students of exceptional aptitude. She is a member of the board of directors of Dell Inc., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Foundations, Inc., and Carnegie Hall; the board of overseers of Columbia Business School; and the board of trustees for The Economic Club of New York.”
As always, we are interested in where this book lands on the New York Times business best-selling list. It is my guess that it will appear and stay on that list for quite some time.
