The 2010 Women Leaders in Consulting: Sandy Moose's Acceptance Speech

In my era, Harvard Business School would not admit women to the full two-year MBA. You could go to Radcliffe and get a one-year associate MBA degree. I decided to go to Harvard, to the other side of the river, and go for a PhD in economics. I was lucky—I managed to get in, though they had a not-to-exceed-10-percent quota on women.

My recruitment process at BCG was also not auspicious. I completed my doctoral dissertation in the middle of an academic year, which is a poor time to secure an academic appointment. By this point, I had decided academia was going to be my career choice. In any case, I needed money, so I couldn't wait for the start of another academic year.

A friend of mine suggested, "Why not management consulting?" There you'd learn about the real world and how businessmen made those real investment decisions, as opposed to the theoretical world which I was steeped in. Moreover, consulting would give me a perspective across a number of different industries and it might just give me some great anecdotes to spice up my lectures when I went back to academia. This friend suggested that I contact Bruce Henderson, the founder and CEO of The Boston Consulting Group.

Well, I knew absolutely nothing about writing a resume. So I called The Boston Consulting Group. Never in my life did I expect to be connected directly through to the CEO. In two minutes, I think I blurted out everything I knew about myself and I'm sure that he felt as though he was at the receiving end of a fire hose. But in any case, it was sufficient to get me into there.

So I show up for my interview, and…it was two-hour interview. It was a two-hour raging argument. Inside of about 10 minutes, I am in this biggest argument with Bruce, who is working on the experience curve. I think all of you are aware of the experience curve. He's telling me, costs go down forever. And with my newly minted PhD in economics, I said, "No they don't, Bruce. There's something called the long-run average cost curve, and it ultimately turns up." I'm drawing graphs on the blackboard. He erases them. He gets up and he draws his graphs. I erase them. We're going back and forth like this for two hours.

Bruce was a tall southern gentleman, who didn't have much hair on his head. He had a little fringe of white around his ears, so to speak… So he finally looks at me after two hours and he shakes his head. And he's going like this [pulls at hair on both sides of her head]. I didn't realize until I joined the firm that this was his signal for ultimate frustration.

As he's shaking his head and pulling out his hair, he says, "Lady, you got a job if you want one, but I never heard of a woman in management consulting." Then he said, "You know, I've got a few guys here in the Boston office. You could call them flakes for one reason or another." And he said, "I guess it really doesn't matter if I add one more flake to that mix." So on that auspicious note, on being called a flake, I accepted the offer for what I thought was going to be a two-year stint, which turned out to be a lifetime career.

A lot of things have changed in business and in consulting. And I think mostly for the better since I joined those worlds back in 1968. Clearly, women are succeeding. Look at all the women in this room. They are succeeding. You have already accomplished much, and you're on track to achieve even more success. I think this came through in all the speeches.

Good news number one: the environment is somewhat easier. Women no longer have to be extraordinary, truly exceptional, at the very tip-top of their cohort in order to get hired and promoted.

Good news number two: I see a lot of younger gentlemen here. There is a younger generation of men in management positions today who went to college and graduate school with women and have as a result the expectation to see women in business, in positions of leadership. I think that's terrific.
So, what does it take to succeed these days?

Obviously, you need to be an excellent performer and to show the potential for further growth. The particular lessons that I learned at BCG were recognizing three things: One was, the importance of being insightful. As a consultant, you certainly want to be insightful. Number two, having influence and impact; that is, being able to translate those insights into actions and results. And the third is, engendering trust with your peers, with your teams, with your clients, more broadly in the firm and in the community.
These fundamental factors for success are not really different for men and women. So why does it still seem to be hard for women?

In reaching the top, I have observed that there's not necessarily a glass ceiling that suddenly appears at the moment of ultimate elevation. But rather, it is a series of obstacles along the way. Let me cite just three obstacles that I found to be critical and focus on some of the ways women constrain themselves in confronting these issues, thereby limiting their success.

One: The need to influence and to be impactful. Part of this is storytelling, which I learned in a very painful way. As a young consultant, I was focused on insights and I thought of writing the presentation of results as secondary. I wrote them typically at the very last moment. Given my academic training, I had a very linear style of describing the problem, how the problem came about, the analysis I did that led to conclusions and recommendations.

Now, part of this style coincided with my women's desire to build a relationship and to get some buy-in along the way before I came to the punch line, which was invariably something that the client did not want to hear.

An early client did me an immense favor by interrupting me with some rather direct and blunt comments, saying, "You are a bright young woman who has worked very hard. But when a guy's got his head up a buffalo's ass, he doesn't want to know how he got it in there. He wants to know how to get it out and get it out fast!"

Needless to say, this was an epiphany.