The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk
by Kathleen Reardon
Harvard Business Review
Reprint 93209
This document is authorized for use only in POWER AND INFLUENCE by Leda Abarca at INCAE Business School from January 2014 to July 2014.
The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk
by Kathleen Reardon
What kind of advice was I going to give Liz Ames, my pal from the good old days when we worked together in market development at Vision Software? Liz and I had been through a lot together, from working for an egomaniac who was finally fired to laying the groundwork for the biggest product launch in the company’s history. We always seemed to understand each other’s thoughts, and those Friday nights unwinding at the tavern made it possible for both of us to face work again Monday morning. We both had come a long way at Vision, and we were genuinely glad to see the other succeed. When I got the marketing director position in Germany, Liz was the first to congratulate me. When we met for dinner the first night of the annual marketing retreat, I was ready to tell Liz all about my first six months on the new job, but she made it clear from the start that she had something urgent to discuss. She needed me to help her out of a dilemma, and she said my perspective as a man would be helpful. She had written a memo to John
Clark, Vision’s CEO, complaining about sexism at the company. Now she was agonizing over whether to send it. Liz seldom raised the subject of sexism, but she had written the memo because she thought it was time that someone at the top knew what was really going on at the company – in the trenches, as she put it. She had no doubt that the message was important. But she did have doubts about how it would be received and about the fate of the messenger. She wanted me, her most trusted friend at Vision and a man, to help her decide what to do. “In an ideal world,” she said, “I wouldn’t have any second thoughts about sending it. But you know what can...
