MANY OF US HAVE VERTICAL AMBITION

I WROTE THIS SUMMER 2016.

Still stand by it.

Kevin Roberts, Executive Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, who resigned last week, said he did not spend any time on gender issues at his agencies because he believed of those women working in advertising that:

"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.’ I don’t think [the lack of women in leadership roles] is a problem. I can’t talk about sexual discrimination because we’ve never had that problem, thank goodness.”

Well I don't agree. I worked as a TV producer for 15 years, at TV-am and at WestCountry Television and believe me I had bags of ‘vertical ambition’ and would have loved to have reached the top job at those TV stations.

In my novel WOMAN OF THE HOUR, I focus on Liz Lyon who is a respected TV producer and a guilty single mother. She has worked at StoryWorld TV station for 17 years rising from her first role as researcher to be Head of Features. Julius Jones, her boss, has always ranked above her. Liz reflects on this:

‘In all the years I’ve known him, Julius has held a more senior position than me at StoryWorld, and now he is Top Dog. Sometimes I look at him and think, I could do what you do, but I would do it differently. I would try to take the staff with me through praise and encouragement, not through fear. He is a bully, not always, but often enough to generate unease in all his senior managers. He has made me feel afraid in the past. He is also talented and very clever.’

Like me in my career, Liz Lyon does not lack ‘vertical ambition’. She would like to be director of programmes at the station and would do it differently as her management style is collaborative, trying to bring out the strengths of her team members.

Many women make it into middle management but that top slot evades them. I do not think this is due to any lack of talent or lack of desire on their part. Nor do I believe it is due to women wanting ‘an intrinsic, circular ambition to be happy’.

I think your working life actually gets easier when you are at the top because you have a host of people to do jobs for you, from your personal assistant and research teams onwards.

We all want to be happy at work but there is nothing happy about having to keep all the balls up in the air, feeling conflicted about competing demands and feeling pressure from your boss above you barking demands and your team below asking for more resources. And that is often the experience of women working in middle management.

So I say to Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi your analysis is one-eyed and complacent. 

Woman of the Hour is published by Head of Zeus