by Patricia Sellers
The takeaway was pretty discouraging this week when Fortune and recruiting giant Heidrick & Struggles (HSII) co-hosted a discussion on women and boards.
The participants -- members of the Fortune Most Powerful Women community convening in Washington, D.C. -- came up with lots of reasons that "corporate boards get a D for diversity" (the title of my Postcard on Monday). Such as: the club-like culture of boards, the white male profile of hedge-fund activists, and the sense that women "clawed our way up to 15%," as one prominent attorney said, and then settled in to advance no further.
Well, here's one encouraging instance of board diversity done right: Procter & Gamble (PG). I wasn't aware of that company's progress until Martha McGarry, a top lawyer at Skadden Arps, emailed me yesterday to say that she continued the conversation about boards with a couple of P&G women. Chief Legal Officer Deborah Platt Majoras and Maggie Wilderotter, a P&G director who is also CEO of Frontier Communications (FTR), pointed out to McGarry that five of Procter's 11 directors are female.
And the company's chief executives have been on a mission.
Former CEO A.G. Lafley named three women to the board before he retired just over a year ago: WellPoint (WLP) CEO Angela Braly, ADM (ADM) Chief Pat Woertz, and Wilderotter.
Bob McDonald, Lafley's successor, picked up on the trend and appointed two female directors. Former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman rejoined the board after losing the contest for governor of California last November. McDonald's other addition is Susan Desmond-Hellmann, a doctor who left her post as president of product development at Genentech to become chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco.
No tokenism in this mighty lineup. Every one of these directors has been on Fortune's annual Most Powerful Women list.
And for what it's worth in the diversity mission, Lafley installed one black male director who has a pristine reputation: American Express (AXP) CEO Ken Chenault.
P.S. It's worth noting that in the wake of the women new to P&G's board, one male director stepped down amid scandal: Rajat Gupta. He's the former McKinsey executive who, according to the SEC's allegations, passed on information illegally to hedge fund boss Raj Rajaratnam in the Galleon Group insider trading case. While denying the SEC charges, Gupta voluntarily resigned from the P&G board effective March 1.
by Patricia Sellers
There aren't many hero CEOs anymore. So it's remarkable that two of the most admired chiefs have announced their retirement within the past three weeks.
First came Anne Mulcahy, who saved Xerox (XRX) from near-bankruptcy.
Now comes the news that Procter & Gamble (PG) CEO A. G. Lafley is stepping down after reviving that consumer giant and doubling its size to $83.5 billion in less than a decade. Like Mulcahy, MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jun 9, 2009 12:02 PM ET
"One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it...In a period of upheavals, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm. To be sure, it is painful and risky, and above all it requires a great deal of very hard work. But unless it is seen as the task of the organization to lead change, the organization...will not survive."
-- Legendary management guru Peter Drucker MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Mar 24, 2009 6:36 PM ET
"The hardest thing about the job is staying focused," President Obama told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes Sunday night.
Are you feeling like the President these days? Unfocused? Maybe fatally so? We're living in an age of "global A.D.D.," as David Brooks, the New York Times op-ed writer said in his column last Friday. Brooks criticizes President Obama for attempting to tackle the "four most complicated problems facing the nation--health care, MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 24, 2009 1:55 PM ET
by Patricia Sellers
Procter & Gamble (PG) lost its president today: Susan Arnold, a 29-year veteran who drove the company's high-margin beauty business to $20 billion in sales and went on to oversee all of P&G's brands, stepped down one day after her 55th birthday.
"My dad retired at 62," Arnold said, phoning this afternoon on her way to a Walt Disney (DIS) board meeting. "Then he got really sick. You know MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 9, 2009 2:57 PM ET
Are you keeping the faith? Your answer probably depends on whether you have the right leader to look up to.
I've been thinking about leadership a lot lately. For one thing, I read on the front page of today's New York Times that a remarkable portion of America believes in our new president. Sixty-three percent of Americans approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his job, according to a new MORE
Patricia Sellers - Feb 24, 2009 1:30 PM ET
by Nancy Koehn, Professor, Harvard Business School
Are you in the center of the storm?
I teach business history and leadership at Harvard Business School and have been fascinated lately by the notion of powerful people getting a grip by stepping back and letting go.
The idea is counter-intuitive. But it works, particularly in today's environment of great turmoil and uncertainty. Seeing the forest for the trees is critical. Consider these lessons in MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jan 15, 2009 12:29 PM ET
Is the role of the Fortune 500 CEO changing? I think it is. Of course, we've never seen so many corporate chiefs gain fame by testifying in the halls of Congress -- and then get skewered on Saturday Night Live. Any leader's nightmare, indeed. But as the world spins out of control, even the admired CEOs (a rare breed!) are feeling a need to step up and broaden their traditional MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 12, 2008 4:42 PM ET
Everybody's talking about how to find opportunity in the current economic chaos, but here's an angle that I think is being overlooked: Times of crisis present genuinely great opportunities to develop leadership. Now I didn't say to demonstrate leadership; that opportunity is obvious. I'm talking about building leadership capabilities beyond what you or others in your organization possess now. I realize it's difficult to be happy about tough times, but MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 20, 2008 12:05 PM ET
"Organic growth is more valuable because it comes from your core competencies. Organic growth exercises your innovation muscle. It is a muscle. If you use it, it gets stronger."
- A.G. Lafley, chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble (PG), which is due to report quarterly earnings tomorrow morning. By driving innovation in age-old brands like Tide and Crest and Olay, P&G has beaten rivals in organic volume growth and profits MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 4, 2008 4:40 PM ET
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Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). Since its launch in 1998, Pattie has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women" cover package.
A specialist at dissecting larger-than-life personalities, she has also profiled former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack, and countless CEOs.
Pattie co-chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big brand companies.
In Pattie's blog, Postcards, she provides insight into the lives of super-achievers through commentary, career advice, and Guest Posts by CEOs and other leaders.
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Fortune Most Powerful Women
Sheryl Sandberg:
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