Susan Butler, First Female Partner, Andersen Consulting (Accenture)
Invisible Mentor: Susan B. Butler
Company Name: The SBB Institute
Website: http://www.sbbinstitute.org
In this interview with Susan Butler, you will hear time and time again, the importance of listening, speaking up for yourself and being the CEO of YOU. You have to clearly articulate where you want your career to go, create and execute your plan.
Part One: Introduction
Avil Beckford: In a couple of sentences, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Susan Butler: First of all I’d love to thank you for inviting me to participate in this interview and to share my experiences with you. My career started as a programmer with what was then called Andersen Consulting, and I retired as a Managing Director in the office of the CEO in Andersen Consulting. Since then, I am retired, and what I do is all about helping women and girls be all that they can be, focused on bringing equality in sight for women by 2020, which in the United States is the 100th anniversary of the right to vote. That's my focus.
Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?
Susan Butler: As you know, days don’t have a real plan sometimes, but I get up and deal with social media kind of things like speaking. I spent the last two weeks getting ready for International Women’s Day because I had some really big opportunities for speaking around that day. I am coaching women all over the world and I am working with organizations getting them focused on changing the world for women particularly with an organization call Vision 2020 and the Thirty Percent Coalition. We are reaching out and I spend lots of time reaching out to people like you and your audiences so you can take what I am doing, and move it into what you are doing. So it's just every day is a little different, but it's focused on equality and fight for women.
Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
Susan Butler: I had actually a couple of big breaks and one of them was in college. One of the big breaks was by a college professor who convinced Arthur Andersen that they should hire me as their first woman in their Consulting Practice. In those days, and this was in the 1960’s, there were very few women out and about in the business world. So this was a real breakthrough to get on board with Arthur Andersen and Company in their consulting division.
The next big break – and this is very interesting – came on an elevator ride. You never know where you are going to meet people, but it was on an elevator ride up about forty floors in Chicago, and the only other person on the elevator was a friend and sponsor of mine. I said, “Dick welcome back to the country!” he had been in Tehran. I said, “What are you doing?” he said, “I am going up to visit with the CEO about a new line of business that he wants us to get into.” And I listened more, and I listened more and got so excited and I said, “Dick I want to be a part of this project”. As a result of that elevator ride, I worked with him to create a minor business called Change Management, which was going to solve business problems for Andersen Consulting and for our clients. That line of business propelled me into the partnership of the firm and ongoing up until I retired. So it was a professor and an elevator ride.
Part Two: Career
Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?
Susan Butler: Mentors are so essential. I think that we don’t use mentors as well as we should. But I found that it’s the best place to get advice and counsel. If I have an idea, a thought, I’d go to someone that I trust and value their feedback and propose this idea and say, “what do you think, give me some thoughts?” As a result of my idea, they might say,” Susan that's not very good” or they might give me some advice that says, “why don’t you do it a little bit differently or add this to it and it becomes even better”.
But I have also found that there are times when somebody just says something to you and it just doesn't sound good. You get it in your gut and it grows constantly and you just have to talk to somebody to get it out of your mind so you aren't thinking about it. When I talk about this in some of my conversations with others I say, “The guys go out and shoot the breeze at night and say ‘you know what just happen to me today’ and they get stuff off their chest and they don’t even remember it tomorrow.” We get something in our gut and we let it grow constantly and we are thinking about it all the time until we say Oh! We have got to get rid of this so that's how I use mentors.
Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you have received from your mentors?
Susan Butler: The biggest one I believe, and I have lived by it a long time, is take responsibility for you; who you want to be. Because otherwise who have you outsourced who you are to? Just make sure that you have a passion for you and you are not letting somebody else guide you where they want you to be. Make things happen for you, rather than let things happen to you.
Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn from by observing them from a distance. In that capacity, what is one piece of advice that you would give to others?
Susan Butler: Take responsibility for you and make sure that you have a strategy in place to take you to where you want to be. In that light, be the CEO of you. Make things happen for you rather than let things happen to you.
Avil Beckford: What big steps did you take to succeed in your field? What is one step or action you have consistently taken that has contributed the most to your success?
Susan Butler: In looking back I did develop a strategy for me. Andersen Consulting now Accenture was changing; they had their own strategy. I had to make sure that I was always relevant to their strategy and that I was always focused on helping them to develop their strategy.
So I found that about every three years, I would say to myself, “Susan where are you in three years? What are you doing?” And I would create a plan to make that happen. I would come up with a team that would be supportive of me and to give me advice and counsel along the way and then I would work that plan. I believe that being the CEO of You and in my case the CEO of me it helped me to become the first woman partner at Andersen Consulting, and now Accenture, and it helped me to become the Managing Partner of the Office of the CEO.
Part Three: Life
Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
Susan Butler: When I started my work, I didn't know the difference between a job and a career. Everybody said, “Oh, you are a career woman”. And one of the things I did for the first four or five years I treated my work as a job, and what I mean by that was there were certain times when you got promoted because you have been there for a certain amount of time.
But then there was the big promotion to Manager, and I didn’t get promoted to Manager when I thought I should have, when my peers were getting promoted and I suddenly realised that the reason I didn’t get promoted was because I didn’t have the skills and capabilities that they were expecting a Manager to have. I learned later from a mentor, who said, “Susan you have to do the job you want before you get it.”
I had not looked out to say, “okay what are the skills and capabilities that a Manager has to have, what are the experiences the company wants me to have had”; and then I would get promoted. But I hadn’t done that, I wasn’t ready, and they said, “Susan we are sorry but we can’t give you that promotion.” It’s really focusing on your career that I started thinking about and saying okay what’s my next step, what are the skills and the capabilities I have to have in order to get that next step, and how am I going to get them before I am going to be up for a promotion because I need to have done that job before I get there. That was a big Aha! From a failure of not getting the initial job, the initial promotion that I thought I deserved.
Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?
Susan Butler: I am not sure that this is one of the toughest decisions because when you are in the consulting business there are tough decisions all the time. But as far as my career was concerned; I remember when I got promoted to Partner, and thinking it back this morning, I got promoted to Partner in a staff position. I didn’t know had I still been in the line organisation if I would have gotten promoted to Partner. So when I got promoted, I decided I wanted to get back out into the line, and I make a big differentiation between staff and line because I have learned recently that 65 percent of the upward mobility in an organization are provided to people that have been into line organisation – they run something in the business. And that's where all the men are. Sixty-five percent of the women are in the staff organisation and there aren’t many higher level positions that are available for staff.
I needed to get back out into the line where the action was since the line hadn’t made me partner, I really had to say, “Now how am I going to make that happen?” Fortunately I had some sponsors in the line that were willing to step up and step out and say, “Susan's been acting as a partner, and we want to bring her into our line of business.” Of course I had to convince the person I was working for who had sponsored me into the partnership, and he said, “Oh that is not the right position for you Susan” and I had to step up to him and say, “I believe that's where I need to be Claude, and I hope you will support me in making that happen.” It was a big risk for me, but it opened up the rest of my career at Andersen Consulting and now Accenture.
Avil Beckford: So What I am hearing is that it is also very important for you to take a risk, and speak up for yourself about your career and about where you want to take it.
Susan Butler: That's absolutely right. I have a phrase that says, “Ask for what you want. But be careful because you might get it.” You have to ask for what you want. If you have this idea of where you want to be in three years, which I stress to people “What are you doing in three years?” I say, “You have to make it happen in the job you have today”. In the job you have today you may have to ask for some of these new responsibilities to give you the experiences so you can get that next promotion. So asking for what you want is absolutely essential. And most of us are a little afraid to do that but we have to step out of our shell sometimes and do it.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Liked this post? Share it and subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more! If you’re new to the blog, visit the Start Here page for my pillar posts.
Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people.
Book links are affiliate links.