Power: Do Women ReallyWant It?

MOST POWERFUL WOMEN IN BUSINESS
Power: Do Women ReallyWant It?

That's the surprising question more of them are asking when they ponder top jobs in business, academia, and government.

Ann Fudge is a Harvard Business School alum, General Electric board member, wife, mother, grandmother, globetrotter, public service advocate, former star executive at Kraft Foods, and—following a two-year sabbatical during which some surmised that she had killed her career—chairman and CEO of ad conglomerate Young & Rubicam. Inside her makeshift office, currently under renovation, on the 12th floor of Y&R's Madison Avenue headquarters, Fudge announces a mission: "We need to redefine power!" She's not so naive as to believe that her new clout as an imagemaker equips her to recast such a mystifying thing as power. But there's no harm in trying. Fudge wants to ditch the conventional definition of the term. "Do we have to follow the boys' scorecard?" she asks.
No, we don't, say more and more women —and that's just the point. Like Fudge, they say they view power differently from the way that men do: They see it in terms of influence, not rank. And many fast-track women are surprisingly ambivalent about what's next.

Dozens of powerful women we interviewed tell us that they don't want to be Carly Fiorina, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard (and No. 1 on our Most Powerful Women list for the sixth straight year); many don't want to run a huge company. But there's a fundamental disconnect here. Those very same women also tell us that they foresee the day in which there is parity in terms of gender representation at the top of corporate America. It is a goal that they honestly, fervently want to reach. Which makes us wonder: If these educated, accomplished, powerful women don't seek the biggest jobs, who is going to?...

Debby Hopkins: On Losing a Powerful Job Chief operations and technology officer and head of corporate strategy at Citigroup. She was forced out as CFO of Lucent in April 2001.

"The key thing I've learned is that the most powerful thing you can do is listen. You don't have to have the last word. You don't have to get credit for anything. I've always led in groups—you know, get people around the table to discuss an issue. But now I hold back what I think. I say to myself, 'Not now, not now! Wait, wait!' This new approach has changed my life. I avoid publicity like the plague. I'm trying to live in the here and now instead of worrying what the next job will be. That's a very freeing thing."


Condoleezza Rice: On Managing Powerful Men National Security Advisor "I think of myself as a facilitator. It's my responsibility to make the system work for the Cabinet secretaries. I try to be an honest broker. [Pushing my personal opinion on the issues] isn't fair to the President. I always say to him, 'This is what I think, but let me tell you what the others think.'

The key is to not take advantage of the fact that I live a few doors down from the Oval Office. That way, the Cabinet secretaries who aren't a few doors down don't have reason to be distrustful.
"I also try very hard not to micromanage. Colin Powell will tell you that I nudge. 'Oh, stop nudging!' Colin tells me. The President says that I play mother hen."

Hillary Clinton: On Work-Life Balance U.S. Senator, New York "I'm finding power in and of itself isn't very attractive these days. Men and women are trying to find balance in their lives—and to make a difference. I no longer raise an eyebrow when someone tells me, 'I'm getting out of politics.'

And women are stepping off the conventional roads to power because they may not be willing to pay the price for corporate life. I don't think it's a good thing—but I don't want a society where people are turning their backs on the fundamental requirements for personal relationships. The economy is not an end in itself. It's a means to an end—so people can have better lives."