"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
Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ) Sheri McCoy has been rocketing up Fortune's Most Powerful Women list. This year, she is No. 12, vs. No. 44 in 2008.
The giant leap was the result of her promotion to worldwide chairman of J&J's pharmaceuticals group, a $22.5 billion-a year business. And Fortune has been predicting for a while that McCoy has a good shot to be J&J's next CEO.
Sure enough, McCoy is MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 16, 2010 12:33 PM ET
by Jessica Shambora
We keep hearing how the economy is improving, but with U.S. unemployment at 9.8% and rising, the job market gives us nothing but anxiety. Today Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) added to the pain by announcing layoffs of 6-7% of its workforce. That's about 7,000 employees.
While J&J faces lots of industry-specific challenges--patent expirations, increasingly complex regulation, healthcare reform--the news is stunning. Particularly because J&J is known for its MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Nov 3, 2009 7:46 PM ET
By Jessica Shambora
We struck a nerve yesterday. Our post about a study on consumer perceptions and use of generic drugs ignited a firestorm of comments.
That firestorm came from all directions. Some readers attacked Big Pharma. Others blasted the generic manufacturers. Some commenters hit both.
Dan from Hiram, Maine said, "After drug companies obscenely cranked up drug prices over the past 5 years, a generic drug at 30-50% price reduction is still vastly MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Jun 25, 2009 5:38 PM ET
By Jessica Shambora
Health care reform is front and center -- and an insanely complicated issue. When someone talks about simple solutions, it's time to listen. So we were all ears when Jacqueline Kosecoff, CEO of Prescription Solutions, came by Fortune last week and sat down with us to talk about generic drugs.
Up in New York City after a day on Capitol Hill, Kosecoff was eager to talk about how her MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Jun 24, 2009 1:51 PM ET
Another Fortune Most Powerful Woman -- a longtime member of our annual Power 50 list -- is leaving the corporate world. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, who was Genentech's (DNA) president of product development, is heading to the University of California San Francisco as chancellor.
Desmond-Hellmann's departure from business's upper echelons (She ranked No. 13 on Fortune's 2008 Power 50 list) adds to the trend of top women execs leaving corporations and deciding not MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 1, 2009 3:41 PM ET
by Jessica Shambora
For this year's Fortune 500 issue, senior writer Geoff Colvin and I had the chance to look inside one of the list's most enduring performers: Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). The New Brunswick, N.J.-based health care giant is notoriously media shy, but in the midst of the economic doom and gloom, the company decided it was time to tell its 123-year story of success. What a story that is. MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Apr 27, 2009 2:25 PM ET
"I'm one of these who believes you have so much gray matter in your head. And if you take all your gray matter and you worry about what you can't control, you're wasting an awful lot of good gray matter, right?"
--Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) CEO Bill Weldon, in a recent interview with Fortune. The New Jersey-based maker of Band-Aids, knee replacements, and prescription drugs--and a bellwether for the health-care industry--announced MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Apr 14, 2009 6:52 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
Fortune's No. 1 Most Powerful Woman, PepsiCo (PEP) Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi, delivered disappointing quarterly earnings this morning and said that the company will close up to six plants and cut 3,300 jobs. PepsiCo stock is down 9% to $56 in midday trading.
Meanwhile, another Most Powerful Woman--a newcomer to the 2008 rankings released two weeks ago--is on a roll. Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ) Sheri McCoy, No. 44 on our MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 14, 2008 1:11 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
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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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