Last Thursday night I attended the New Formulas for Success event hosted by Mommy Track'd and Flexperience. The night included an impressive panel of executive working mothers. Driving up to San Francisco with blogging mamas, Stacy and Linsey, the night was feeling like a productive Mom's Night Out.
I attended the event last year and found the key take-away then was there is no single formula for success. The panelists all had customized their careers, child-care situations, and their juggle to find what worked for their family. Last year, I realized that strategies for being a successful employee and a successful mother were not cookie-cutter. YOU have to figure out what is going to work for YOU and then make it work.
With an all executive panel this year, I was hoping for more great take-aways that I could apply in my continuing struggle for work-life balance. With working mothers who are CEO's, VP's in High-Tech, General Counsels, and Producers in the Film Industry... well simply put, I had high expectations. I hoped these women would talk about how they continued to be successful in their careers after having children. I hoped they would discuss the strategies they use to keep their sanity besides hiring a great nanny or having a housekeeper.
This year's take-away was about incorporating discipline in your working life and your professional life. I think these women determined the little things that were important and threw out those that didn't have meaning to them. For example, one of the panelists gave up the idea of having a family dinner. Instead she has the nanny feed her kids before she gets home and then has quality time with them till bedtime. I could see how these women had made trade-offs to have raise children while having an executive career.
However, I got the feeling that not a single one of them was willing to sacrifice their career just because they were mothers. I came to the conclusion that not that much changed, career-wise, when these women became mothers. Sure they now left the office every day at 6pm, but they all admitted to being online for hours after the kids went to bed. As the CEO of BabyCenter said "balance is bunk." It's hard to hear that the way to be successful is to not get much sleep.
I found a lot of what the panel to say a bit on the side of cliche. Each one of the women said that being a working mother was harder than they had imagined. Well, no shit! Being a mother is hard work. Let alone working full-time. We all know it is hard work. I walked away from the evening feeling disappointed that we didn't dive deeper into what these incredibly successful women actually do to be successful.
