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Business Rule #32:
Performance Matters, Not Gender
September 30, 2005
by Caroline Pfouts
“There’s the difference between men and women,” said one of the judges of the Lamborghini challenge this week. “Men say it, and women feel it.”
These kinds of sweeping generalizations about how men and women perform differently in the workplace can be dangerous. Hopefully we’re coming to a day when the nature of the contribution, and not the sex or race of the person making the contribution, will be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
Using anecdotal evidence as a source for business rules, you can arrive at some pretty unfair and sexist inferences. For example, looking at how the Capital Edge and Excel teams performed this week, one could come to the mistaken conclusion that men are just not well suited for business.
Here are just four possible erroneous assumptions as to why:
1) Men Can’t Sell Cars
This task was similar to the one from last season where male vs. female teams were challenged to create a sales pamphlet for a sports car. Back then, the women wiped the floor with the men too.
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Here again, the all-male Excel Corporation was so self-congratulatory for simply being men assigned to create an ad campaign for a high-performance car, they didn’t even bother to question their ideas, approach, or execution.
The Excel men never stopped for a single second to consider who their audience was. Rather, they assumed that they themselves were the target market. As Carolyn Kepcher noted, the men were so overly confident in their approach that they overlooked serious flaws in their project.
In contrast, the Capital Edge women looked past gender, to define the audience for a Lamborghini, to social standing. With a sports car that costs as much as many condos, the women recognized that their market would be a class of wealthy and status-conscious men.
Capital Edge smartly put Alla Wartenberg in charge of directing their TV ad, as she is part of the moneyed elite. Although she was a first-time director, her understanding of how to appeal to wealthy, privileged buyers more than made up for anything she lacked in film experience.
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Using anecdotal evidence as a source for business rules, you can arrive at some unfair and sexist inferences.
