Thursday Edition

dispatches from the new world of work

Idiots!

My colleague Dini Coffin (Enterprise Media) faxed me a Cingular ad on September 21st, with a cover note that cryptically said, "What's wrong with this picture?" The ad's tagline was "4 of the top 5 commercial banks use Cingular for wireless email." Below was a pic of 5 folks—4 doing wireless email, 1 obviously not playing. Dini's point: ALL 5 WERE MALES! Her follow-up line, "I guess Cingular doesn't want women buying their services." Go Dini! Hisses & Boos to Cingular! (Idiots!)

Three hours later I was reading my latest issue of BusinessWeek, and came across an ad for "The BusinessWeek 50 Forum," an October 7 event billed as the "one event that can make a difference in your pursuit of high performance." There are 15 "best of the best" speakers listed (including Jack Welch and Starbucks honcho Howard Schultz), plus two BusinessWeek moderators. One of the BW folks is Senior Editor Mary Kuntz, but among the "content providers" ... 15 out of 15 are ... MALES. My reaction: Sick!

Or, rather ... IDIOTS!

NB: Welch was never all that great on putting women in top slots at GE, plus he's retired. But in my opinion Starbucks' Schultz is insulting all the women in his company by speaking—he should opt out. (We'll perhaps do next week's poll on "Should Schultz Speak"? What do you think?)

[Note: We re-dated this entry, originally posted 22 September, to make it move up our page because it's generating such a great discussion. Join in!]

Tom Peters posted this on 09/29/04.

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