Baby or not, I’m happy I chose not to be a boss
There’s more to life than being seen to be 'powerful', writes Sun columnist
WHEN I was a cub reporter on the Solihull News in the early Eighties, it was my burning ambition to eventually become the editor of a national newspaper.
After a decade spent climbing the greasy pole, that dream edged deliciously closer with the offer of a deputy editorship.
But after much deliberation and angst, I turned it down.
Why? Well, by then I’d had my first child and, thanks to the demanding hours of my job as a then full-time newspaper executive, she was already seeing more of Dora the Explorer (she could count to ten in Spanish at the age of two) than she was her own mother.
Something had to give and it turned out to be my “vertical ambition”.
This phrase hit the headlines this week when some poor sap called Kevin Roberts was asked about the ambitions of women in his workplace and made the foolish mistake of answering honestly.
Mr Roberts, chairman of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, said: “We have a bunch of talented, creative females but they reach a certain point in their careers . . . ten years of experience, when we are ready to make them a creative director of a big piece of business, and I think we failed in two out of three of those choices because the executive involved said, ‘I don’t want to manage a piece of business and people, I want to keep doing the work’.”
In other words, the company offers them promotion but they make the choice not to accept it because they like what they’re already doing and it gives them a good work/life balance.
He went on to make the observation that “those Darwinian urges of wealth, power and fame” aren’t as effective in today’s world, where a lot of millennials (of both genders) don’t see managing and leading as the only definition of success.
“So we are trying to impose our antiquated s**t on them, and they are going, ‘Actually guys, you’re missing the point, you don’t understand, I’m way happier than you’.
“Their ambition is not a vertical ambition, it’s this intrinsic, circular ambition to be happy. So they say, ‘We are not judging ourselves by those standards that you idiotic, dinosaur-like men judge yourself by’.”
When I displayed 'vertical ambition' I found myself stuck behind a desk, attending endless and largely pointless meetings
Hear bloody hear. But no, Mr Roberts has been suspended from his job while the board mulls over the “gravity of these statements”. Oh puh-lease.
Meanwhile, Saatchi’s global chief creative officer, Kate Stanners (proving that women can rise to the top there if they so wish) told Radio 4: “A huge amount of employees have been upset by how they have interpreted Kevin’s words.”
Sigh. Or perhaps wilfully interpreted in search of politically correct high dudgeon.
For my interpretation of Mr Roberts’ comments is that he was speaking a refreshing truth.
I went into journalism because I like writing. But when I displayed “vertical ambition” and became an executive, I found myself stuck behind a desk, attending endless and largely pointless meetings, signing paperwork and listening to people whingeing about their lot.
So baby or not, chances are I would have come to the same conclusion that there’s more to life than being seen to be “powerful”.
Consequently, this column comes to you from a laptop on my kitchen table.
It is 7am and I am wearing pyjamas. The dog is snoring in his basket, The Bloke is snoring somewhere else in the house and our youngest is sparko too, enjoying her temporary freedom from the tyranny of school’s early starts.
Lucky old you, many of you are probably thinking. What a luxury to be able to earn a living from the comfort of your own home.
Except that luck didn’t come into it. It was by design. It was by preparation meeting opportunity.
And it was from the luxury of having the choice — something that Kevin Roberts was highlighting and actively supporting.
He should be applauded for it, not punished.
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