After making her name at Ford and Chrysler, Julie Roehm (pronounced raim) was lured to taking a senior vice president position at Wal-Mart in 2006 to liven up the place, only to be ousted 10 months later.
A leadership onboarding coach would have worked with her to keep a low profile and spend her first 100 days listening to build productive relationships within the company. However, that's not her default behavioral style. "I get overly excited," she acknowledges. "I wanted to hit the ground running. Go, go, go." Unfortunately, no one told her to back off.
Leaders often fail for a few common reasons: due to unclear or outsized expectations, a failure to build partnerships with key stakeholders, a failure to learn the company, industry or the job itself fast enough, a failure to determine the process for gaining commitments from direct reports and a failure to recognize and manage the impact of change on people.
John G. Self of JohnGSelf Associates, Inc., an executive search firm in Dallas, TX, said, "When I first read L. Kevin Kelley’s comments in the Financial Times – that 40 percent of 20,000 executives that Heidrick & Struggles placed quit, were fired or forced out in 18 months – [I] was astounded. As a recruiter, I have never had that kind of failure rate. But I have since read other studies and apparently, between the poor recruiting processes and the refusal of executives to reach out for help, Heidrick’s experience is apparently an industry average."
Roehm acknowledged mistakes, among them moving too quickly and not adapting to her new workplace. But she also paints a picture of warring fiefdoms and a passive-aggressive culture that was hostile to outsiders. Wal-Mart, she says, "would rather have had a painkiller [than] taken the vitamin of change." What has she learned? "The importance of culture. It can't be underestimated."
Roehm, 40 something, has been patiently rebuilding her career. "You try to hold your head up and go out and do what you know you're good at," she says, "knowing there is nothing to be ashamed of."
She has built a consulting practice with clients like Credit Suisse and ADP and blogs about auto marketing for AOL. She continued to live in the Wal-Mart headquarters town of Bentonville, Ark., with her husband Mike and two kids, but back then they had put the house up for sale and hoped to move to the Northeast as she interviewed for a full-time job. "What I care most about is the culture of the company," she says. "I think it's really important to find a place where you fit in."
FastCompany reports in their April 2012 issue that Julie Roehm is now back in the game.
After five years from losing her executive job at Walmart, she's rejoining the workforce as the senior vice president of marketing for software giant SAP. The spiral that began with her firing in 2006, was due in part, to her acceptance of gifts from Draftfcb, the communications agency she'd just awarded the superchain's $580 million account. But with a new company, she may finally be able to put all that in the past.
Zoe Cruz, as co-president of Morgan Stanley from 2006 to 2007, was regarded as one of the most powerful women on Wall Street and a potential CEO successor. Cruz appeared to be surviving the credit crisis that had roiled Wall Street...but...Ms. Cruz's departure from Morgan Stanley came abruptly.
The 52-year-old executive didn't take personal responsibility for the losses at Morgan Stanley, according to a report in the December 1, 2007 Wall Street Journal. Instead she lashed out at fellow employees in a series of meetings about the losses, raising questions about her management style. She also had pushed some big organizational changes that some executives thought of as arbitrary and ill-informed.
As a result, Morgan Stanley Chief Executive John Mack lost confidence in Ms. Cruz, whom he had repeatedly backed in the face of opposition from senior executives, these people say. Even before the mortgage-trading losses surfaced, Ms. Cruz's leadership style was an issue.
Now: Cruz took the fall after Morgan Stanley sustained a $4 billion trading loss on a bad mortgage bet. "I found it devastating," Cruz told Fortune. "I entertained the idea of going back to school and becoming an architect," she says. But recognizing where her skills lie -- in assessing investment risk around the world -- last year Cruz started her own firm: Voras Capital Management, a hedge fund named after the mountainous region in Greece where she was born.
"We're operating profitably," says Cruz, now 55 and a mother of three. Her outlook on the markets? "Despite extreme volatility, I don't subscribe to the double-dip theory in the U.S. I'm optimistic."
Sources: FORTUNE, November 15, 2010 and FastCompany April 2012
At a time when 50.3% of all managers and professionals are female, women still comprise fewer than 2% of Fortune 1,000 CEOs and just 7.9% of Fortune 500 top earners. The Glass Ceiling remains unbroken. Here are some resources for executive women leaders to reach and flourish in the C-Suite:
Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge.
When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition