Lessons in Survival: Birth to Boardroom

Half term, a week where working parents embarked on yet another of our finest week-long juggles. A week where we try to be fully present at work and home, you know that old impossible guilt chestnut.

Every day I'm Jugglin'

Let’s face it, this juggle would give Coco the clown a run for his money. If you’re not paying through the nose for child care every day or relying on some amazing, and conveniently local, relatives then you’re probably like me, working from the dining table. Again. The same dining table you’ll be cleaning later, whilst trying to keep your eyes open.??

I don't find it easy any day of the week, half term is just… EXTRA. Many of my colleagues and friends often ask me how I do it all. Well, I like to fill my days with variety, it is the spice of life after all and I’m not good with repetition. If I did the same thing each day my soul would be in complete despair.?

So, listen up guys and gals, the truth is I don't do it ‘all’ and nor do I want to. I am a mum of 3 beautiful, intelligent, highly needy children under 10. I am married to my best friend and we’re a solid team. We tackle each day like we’re playing in a cup final. “I’m in the office today so you take the kids on the left to soft play, use multiple antibacterial wipes, and wear them out. Play non-stop lullabies to the child on the right so he naps, preventing him from napping too late, I’ll be back to help over lunch and I'll get a wash on…”.?

It’s not always been this way. My career in technology began as a newly single, sole parent. I had to live on the breadline for a short time to create some form of stability. I’ve experienced the cold stare of judgement as the dentist learned of the estate I was living on. I've felt the shame of taking my newborn to the local Jobcentre to apply for income support, and I’ve struggled to make ends meet. I moved into technology from media and publishing as a way of rapidly increasing my income to survive. I was in social housing using food vouchers to buy vegetables during year 1 of motherhood, learning to cook from scratch and improvising ingredients has served us incredibly well ever since.??

I started my ERP technology career working from home on a part-time basis, but as many women have done before me, I was called to work in the office on a full-time basis pretty soon into the role. This was 10 years ago and before the work-from-home revolution. A shock to the system, but I didn’t have a choice if I wanted a decent future for my child. I didn’t dare argue my case back then, I was grateful to have a decent-paying job, so I enlisted my mum and a local nursery to help me figure out how to survive. I certainly didn’t thrive and spent 90% of the time as a ball of emotion.?

THIS WAS MY FIRST LESSON IN SURVIVAL: BE RESILIENT?

Fast forward 10 years and I have the stability of my husband, my life companion. My firstborn has siblings but unfortunately, we no longer have regular family support due to my mum suffering from a debilitating stroke 3 years ago and my dad became her sole carer.??

The day my mum had a stroke changed my entire sense of purpose and my whole outlook on life. My mum has always been my rock, she had taken my daughter to school that morning to help us out. Once she had returned home the unthinkable happened. Thankfully my dad was working flexi-time and was home with her that morning so he was fast-acting and got her immediate medical care. She had an awful brain bleed, couldn't move or speak and we didn’t think she’d make it, the medical staff told us to prepare ourselves for the worst. I gave birth to my second child that week, it was incredibly traumatic.??

Mum pulled through and after months upon months of rehabilitation, she learnt to speak, eat, and walk and eventually she came home. With a newly installed wicked sense of humour. She’s an incredible woman, my inspiration and the origin of my strength. She still has a long road of rehabilitation ahead of her, supported by all of us, but no matter how bad things get, if you have that inner fight then there is always a way forward. She’s now a woman who speaks her mind, without fear. As a result, so am i.?

THIS WAS MY SECOND LESSON IN SURVIVAL: HARNESS YOUR INNER STRENGTH?

Putting the ‘SEE’ in CEO?

?Life as a working parent is particularly tough. Life as a female working parent in a male-dominated area of industry is even tougher, particularly when you are the only woman in the room. I’ve battled gender discrimination, lack of support, sexual harassment, bullying and bias. I’ve been undervalued and underestimated so many times I've lost count. I’ve had my Intellectual property taken, without hesitation and actively used in competition against me by former male peers. I’ve learnt many lessons, particularly in the last 12 months in a C-suite role as a woman. The lack of integrity in business these days is phenomenal.?

THIS HAS BEEN MY THIRD LESSON IN SURVIVAL: INTEGRITY IS EVERYTHING?

This is a huge part of the reason I'm developing a community application to support the progression of my peers. Women in ERP? . I work in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) technology sector where it’s a well-known fact now that less than 20% of the IT Industry is female, in ERP it’s significantly less still. According to THIS article in HR review, recent figures suggest that tech boardrooms are seeing a drop in the number of female CEOs, 7% of CEOs on the 2016 fortune 500 list identified as female, dropping to just 4.41% in 2021. A 14% decrease over the last five years. THIS recent study by Fire Tech found that 90% of CEOs in technology are men and that none of the world's top 10 tech firms has a woman at the helm. Only 3% of women in the technology field are developers. Now considering there is a huge developer shortage, educational facilities and organisations like Code First Girls and Stemettes need our support as industry leaders and contributors.?

When I look at the few women in those senior female positions in my industry, their lives and roles seem completely unattainable for the majority of us. Let’s face it, it seems like they are all talking more about their top tips for implementing a new system, how to use your ERP to be more sustainable, and how their vendor of choice is far superior to the others. All valid topics of course, but none are talking about the struggle they have to get into the office for the 9 am team meeting because the little darlings had hidden the shoes in various places around the house and they’d been effectively playing the crystal maze since 5:30 am. Noone at that level is talking about how they are paying upwards of ￡30k for child care now but before they could comfortably afford that they were juggling their free 15 hours of pre-school with Marge the local childminder, grandma and afterschool clubs whilst internally having a mental crisis fuelled by ‘mum guilt’. None of them talk about their struggles working with female peers and how there is this unspoken competition between senior female leaders because of these archaic ideals, that more than one woman in the boardroom is too many. Many senior women don’t even know how to go about supporting other women in their workplaces.?

?Really, none of them are talking about this??

FOURTH LESSON IN SURVIVAL: DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ?

Of course, they are talking about it, it’s just not glossy enough to sell advertising off the back of. Publishers are choosing to omit these gritty facts because they are considered irrelevant to a traditional corporate profile. Standard corporate profiles are traditionally created for men in senior roles. How on earth can we aspire to be at those equal levels if we can't see women like us existing there? It equates to airbrushed photos of Beyonce post the birth of twins, stretch mark free. It’s quite frankly impossible. Women, with thriving families reaching the C-suite through sheer grit and determination, without the scars from breaking that glass ceiling are also impossible. We all have our battles, our suffering, and our own story to tell. And tell we must for we can't be what we cannot see.?

It’s currently in production but we highlight such facts on the next season of the WERP podcast (coming soon!), shameless plug but click below and subscribe!

We have been actively asking female leaders how they juggle work/life and they have been so open with us about these topics, I have to conclude that these career scars just don’t get featured in business profile articles because they are considered irrelevant. I know personally how relevant these scars are to creating a successful career. Facing adversity is a huge catalyst for mastering your field as a woman.?

Perhaps people consider it to be irrelevant to business but I think we need more realism, we need to see those people in aspirational roles who are authentic. We need to support our female peers to reach these roles.??

FIFTH LESSON IN SURVIVAL: KEEP IT REAL?

Hustling for hustle's sake

Over a number of years, it's been a trend to appear as though you are constantly working above and beyond the norms to achieve your career goals. ' Hustle Culture '. Firstly, I've never been a morning person. The 5am club, I respect you but your lifestyle is totally unattainable. I mean, I'm part of the 5 am club but not by choice and I spend 5am-6am in a zombie-like state to the sounds of Children's TV. How other adults have the energy to get to the gym so early I'll never know. I've not been to the gym in years and if I don't start my day with several alarm snoozes and a cup of Tetley then I'm good for nothing.

Secondly, the older I get the more aware I am of physical health and mental well-being so I complete my week in a flexible manner that works for me and my family. Most days I get to the office but other days I sit in the playroom with the kids and paint with my hands.?I never feel bad for taking those days out but I always make the time back up at work. Some days my family eat homegrown, home-cooked, organic goodness. Some days we get the dirtiest of the takeaways (I’m looking at you Kebab).

Some afternoons I make time for my passions, the WERP App and Podcast. I can also spend my afternoons filled with anxiety, just trying to focus on getting through to the end of the day. My work at the moment is incredibly exciting. My team are breaking new ground in the world of ERP, we’re doing amazing work around sustainability and it’s incredibly exciting for me to have this level of backing for my ideas but I still constantly fear failure, classic imposter syndrome rears its head.?Many women in senior roles within technology suffer from imposter syndrome because as women we have been conditioned to think we don't belong in these roles, in this industry.

My evenings at the moment consist of wrestling my teething 1 year old to sleep, tidying up the ‘trashed by 10 am’ house, forcing myself to catch up on work and try and finish some of the pod editings and then there are the house renovations we’re tackling… at some point I retire to my corner sofa with a bar of fruit and nut and the TV for an hour.?At this moment in time, we don’t have a cleaner, a gardener, a regular babysitter or regular childcare.??We do, like many, have a huge utility bill each month and large uncertainty about the economy.?

The eternal negotiation

We’re a family-focused firm, our values place a significant emphasis on working to live and not living to work. The ERP Dynamics team work on a flexible basis so if I need time out I can take it, I can work in the office or from home. I’m trusted, as an adult should be, to manage my schedule and time. This week I've done my best in both regards. That's all I can do. We’ve picked pumpkins at the local patch, taken a late-night light show walk, and gone off-roading at a beautiful country estate. Meanwhile, I’ve attended every customer meeting, I've been present for every partnership discussion and I'm regularly completing courses and knowledge assessments online.?

I don’t believe in a work-life balance anymore. This is just life, when you realise there isn’t a balance to be achieved more of a negotiation, you can tackle things better.?

To all of the working parents, mums and dads alike, I see you. Be kind to yourselves, stress is so detrimental to health and happiness.?

To join a community of like-minded women in ERP, sign up for early access to the WERP platform below.

Kindest regards,

?Abigail?