I wished I had gone to the Microsoft Women’s Conference in ‘05 to hear Lois Frankel speak about her book Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, and of course to get her autograph.  I would love to ask her, “Do tomboys have a better chance at getting the corner office than nice girls?”  Her book is based on re-wiring some of the lessons learned in girlhood about what it takes to grow up as a nice, young lady.  Whenever you’re presented with such a lesson at an early age, you can either accept the lesson or rebel against it.  Only as you get older do you learn how to ignore such things, if ever.  Her book focuses on the consequences of accepting such lessons.  But what about the lessons that we rebelled against?  There were quite a few action items that involved learning to play chess or take up a sport, but i didn’t see any action items about learning to take ballet or dance classes.

Gretchen attended the presentation in ‘05, so you can read her Women’s Conference / Nice Girls review here on her blog.

About the book

As any self-help book would do, it starts off with a quiz.  The quiz tells you how well you are doing against each category of mistakes.  After the quiz, you’ll be able to tell what areas you are exceeding in and which areas you are failing / making mistakes in.  The idea is to focus on the areas you’re not doing so well in.

The 101 mistakes are divided into categories.   Each Mistake includes

• What the actual mistake is
• Why the mistake is being made
• A real-world example, usually of someone at a VP level, making the mistake, what the consequences were, and how she fixed it
• Action items to avoid making the mistake in the future

Favorites / Highlights

• The best thing about this entire book is the real-world examples.  It really makes the book worth reading (and worth me writing this blog entry about it).
• If you love reading self-help books, this book is not short on any recommendations.  Each mistake has at least one book recommendation to read.
• Quote from Mistake 21 (page 69), “Be the best friend you can be to your employees, but don’t think for a minute they’re your best friend.”  The First Break All the Rules book touches on it, but never really comes out and says it quite like this. 
• The handshake (mistake 28).  Finally, a written rule for handshakes “Keep extending your hand until you hook thumbs.”  I hate it when guys grab my fingers and squeeze.  Ouch. 
• Mistake 59: Asking for Permission.  Once upon the time back in college, i learned that it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.  It’s something i always consider whenever i feel i need to “get permission.” 

Mistakes I Disagree with / Lowlights

And it comes as no surprise that there’s stuff i disagree with in the book…

• Mistake 26:  Decorating Your Office Like Your Living Room:  Decorating my office is a conscious, strategic strategy.  Not only to make it “tall-people safe”, I want it to be inviting for people, although Josh’s sofa is much more comfortable than my futon or lovesac.  It’s interesting that Mistake 27: Feeding Others is okay if it is a part of a conscious strategy, but Mistake 26 makes no mention of strategy.  And yes, i do feed others when
  • i’m a n00b to the team and we attend our first meeting
  • to thank people for coming to a lunch meeting (i have to send the request, sorry)
  • to celebrate the end of a major milestone
• Mistake 37 Skipping Meetings:  The author never worked as a PM at Microsoft.  =)

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