"How do you manage up?" asked a young woman from the audience at the Forté Foundation's MBA Women's Conference.
It was a bold question--and one that Kristin Peck, the fast-rising Pfizer (PFE) executive who was on the panel that I moderated, answered unabashedly.
Peck knows from experience. She is Pfizer's EVP in charge of Worldwide Business Development and Innovation, a perch that she reached only by surviving a slurry of management dysfunction and turnover over the past few years. (My colleagues Peter Elkind and Jennifer Reingold tell the full rich story in Why Pfizer's CEO got the boot.) Peck, who joined Pfizer in 2004 from the Boston Consulting Group, was planning to quit in 2006, out of utter frustration. As she took on the question about "managing up," she explained that she was a senior strategist inside an organization that "didn't want to change."
So she went to her boss and said: "I'd like a new role. And if not, I'll look on the outside."
"They were shocked, I mean dumbfounded," Peck recalled.
In fact, she lined up a new job at Citigroup (C), heading strategy for its private bank. But on the very day she "quit," in July 2006, Jeff Kindler, the lawyer who had joined Pfizer from McDonald's (MCD), was unexpectedly named CEO.
Peck didn't know Kindler well--in fact, she figured she would have been toast with him in charge. But Kindler called her that afternoon with a casual "Hey, how are you doing?" He got to the point quickly: "We really want you to stay. Give us 24 hours."
Peck found the new CEO's words amusing, nothing more. "This is a large corporation. Nothing happens in 24 hours," she said.
But this time was different. Kindler and Co. offered Peck the role of chief of staff to vice-chairman David Shedlarz. This was a big job, with broad oversight of strategy and a great salary, beating Citi's pay package.
She accepted the offer and stayed at Pfizer.
Four years later, when the Pfizer board kicked out Kindler, "I was definitely going to get fired," she figured. But new CEO Ian Read promoted her again.
The lesson Peck learned from this: "No one should ever underestimate you because you could end up anywhere," she says. "And you should never underestimate anybody else."
Even as she discounted herself--as so many high-powered women do--Peck protected herself by building a network inside her company. "It's not just managing up but managing across as well," she says. "Being smart politically, I think, it's critical in large organizations."
Watch this video for more advice from Peck and Uta Werner, chief strategy officer at Xerox (XRX). Werner advises keeping bosses informed about all the things you're doing. That is another thing that women, more than men, tend to be lax about.
Do you toot your own horn? If you don't, do it once today. Practice.
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by Patricia Sellers
The best bosses tend to be those who welcome bad news -- "Hit me with your best shot!" -- and keep hope alive.
That balance is at the heart of the remarkable turnaround at Ford (F). Last week at the Yale CEO Summit, a gathering of corporate chiefs and other influentials led by Yale professor Jeff Sonnenfeld, Ford Americas President Mark Fields told a story that conveys how Ford MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 20, 2010 12:32 PM ET
You never know who your summer intern will turn out to be. In 1980, Ursula Burns was a summer intern in mechanical engineering at Xerox (XRX). Last month, she became CEO there. In 1985, Sallie Krawcheck was a summer intern at Fortune. She later climbed to the top tier of Citigroup (C), where she served as CFO and ran a $13 billion wealth management unit. Last week, Krawcheck moved to MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 13, 2009 1:42 PM ET
"Right now, nothing is more important than a nimble, agile leader, who is comfortable with ambiguity and figuring it out as they go along."
--Avon (AVP) President Liz Smith, in a discussion led by Pattie Sellers at NYU today. The panel, which also included Cece Sutton, Morgan Stanley's (MS) new retail banking president, was hosted by Forte Foundation. (To view video of the dialogue, click here.)
Smith and Sutton, both on Fortune's MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Jun 26, 2009 6:54 PM ET
by Jessica Shambora
We all want flexibility in our workplace. We want to choose the types of projects we take on, and where and when we do our work.
Pattie has written a lot about flexibility on Postcards. Look at all the high-powered women who recently left high-powered jobs: Suhkinder Singh Cassidy, who was president of Asia-Pacific & Latin American operations at Google (GOOG); Dawn Hudson, former chief of Pepsi-Cola (PEP) North MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Apr 16, 2009 4:00 PM ET
I was in California this past week and I'm happy to report that the Golden State did not fall into the Pacific Ocean.
It seemed it might, as inches of rain drenched Silicon Valley and the state government fought off insolvency. What a disaster California is right now, even after the legislature yesterday approved a plan to close a $42 billion budget deficit and end the "fiscal emergency" that the action-hero MORE
Patricia Sellers - Feb 20, 2009 1:51 PM ET
We've been talking about how the incredible shrinking job market is redirecting America's best young talent to volunteer corps, like Teach for America, and to business schools. Demand - measured by numbers of applicants - is surging on both fronts.
So it's an exciting time to be a business school boss. Yet, Linda Livingstone, dean of Pepperdine's Graziadio School of Business and Management since 2002, tells me that this is her MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 11, 2008 11:28 AM ET
As we learn that the U.S. has lost 438,000 jobs since January, we're also hearing about a winner in the downturn: business schools. Linda Livingstone, dean of Pepperdine's Graziadio School of Business and Management, tells me that she's seen a 29% increase in applications for her school's full-time MBA program this year.
The draw is more than the Malibu surf. (Pepperdine's campus, in the Malibu hills, overlooks the Pacific.) Interest in MBA programs MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 7, 2008 2:37 PM ET
Consider this:
In the summer of 1860, there was a persistent, growing unease among Americans about the road the nation had traveled in recent years. All knew that the country was entering a critical moment in its history, that the stakes were somehow very high.
In the middle of that year, a tall, lanky and pragmatic lawyer came out of Illinois to become the nominee for president of a major political party.
A MORE
I was talking about career paths and power with two top women at a lunch Friday: Sharon Allen, an Idaho farmer's daughter who grew up to be chairman of Deloitte USA, and Lisa Weber, the daughter of a New Jersey taxi driver who is now president of MetLife's (MET) so-called individual business -- a hulking enterprise with $19 billion in revenues and some $1.5 billion in operating profits. I knew MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jun 27, 2008 2:52 PM ET
For the latest on the most influential women in business, philanthropy, government, and the arts, like us on Facebook. 
In a funny and candid interview, Google VP Marissa Mayer explains how she got to the top. Watch
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns shares how she once accepted a job with Dell but ended up staying with Xerox. Watch
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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