Become the CEO of You, Inc.: A Pioneering Executive Shares Her Secrets for Career Success

By Susan Bulkeley Butler

How do you turn your dreams into reality? How do you make things happen for you, rather than let things happen to you? Don't be humble about who you are and what you are capable of. Stand tall and stand out. Be known. Be recognized as a leader, and most of all, know you are a leader," is Susan Bulkeley Butler's call to action for her readers to take responsibility for their lives. In this updated second edition of the best-selling Become the CEO of You, Inc., Susan has provided strategies for improving your life and new techniques for advancing your career. The book is focused around her "Make it Happen" model, which is based on three decades of experience working with Fortune 500 companies. The steps include: Develop a clear aspiration for You, Inc.; build your board of directors; develop your plan to make your aspiration happen; and navigate your day-to-day journey. The second edition is completely revised and includes new topics such as: The importance of executive coaching; developing your image in today's world; taking a long-term view of your life and career; new opportunities for balancing career and family; use of social networking techniques… the good, bad and ugly; and preparing for promotion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: May 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781612492148

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Become the CEO of You, Inc.

Susan Bulkeley Butler

PURDUE UNIVERSITY PRESS

West Lafayette, Indiana

Copyright © 2012 Susan Bulkeley Butler

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Published by

Purdue University Press

504 West State Street

West Lafayette, Indiana 47907

www.thepress.purdue.edu

Book Design by Anna Christian

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Butler, Susan Bulkeley.

Become the CEO of You, Inc. : a pioneering executive shares her secrets for career success / Susan Bulkeley Butler.—Rev. and expanded 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-55753-615-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-61249-215-5 (epdf)—SBN 978-1-61249-214-8 (epub) 1. Success in business. 2. Strategic planning. 3. Vocational guidance. I. Title.

HF5386.B9497 2012

658.4’09—dc23

2012004919

DEDICATION

To all of my current and future mentees and your career successes, and to everyone who has always believed in me and helped me to achieve my dreams.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

PART I: LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

Chapter 1: You Are the CEO of You, Inc.

Chapter 2: Create the Vision for You, Inc.

Chapter 3: Build Your Team

Chapter 4: Develop Your Plan

PART II: NAVIGATING THE JOURNEY

Chapter 5: The Process of Navigating

Chapter 6: The Marketability of You, Inc.

Chapter 7: Time: Use It or Lose It

Chapter 8: You Are the Connections You Weave

Chapter 9: Money Matters

Chapter 10: Share the Wealth

Chapter 11: The Legacy of You, Inc.

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

FOREWORD

You are holding in your hands an exceptional book by an exceptional woman. The story of what makes this book exceptional can be told through the story of what makes its author exceptional.

As the first woman professional at a then–Big 8 accounting firm, Susan Bulkeley Butler learned the vital importance of having a mentor, a coach, and advocates and she credits their support for her having made history as the first woman partner of Accenture. Over the course of more than three decades with this now over $21 billion global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company, which she capped off in the Office of the CEO as the right hand to its chairman, she perfected the art of being the CEO of You, Inc.

Susan has impacted the lives of countless of Accenture’s 223,000 employees as her career sent her crisscrossing the globe. Her work included managing the Philadelphia office, and her clients were from the world’s largest organizations. In spite of the demands of her career, she championed hundreds (if not thousands) of associates to become managers and managers to become partners.

Just as importantly, outside the office she took on both a formal and informal mentoring role, impacting as many or more outstanding men and especially women she encountered through her extensive community leadership positions, reflecting her broad interests in everything from government to the Girl Scouts to JA Worldwide (formerly Junior Achievement) and LeaderShape.

Through her tireless efforts, Susan has come to coach more people than perhaps anyone else I’ve ever personally known. I’ve been awed by her selfless desire to give forward by nurturing the next generation of women leaders.

And while others give lip service to being of service, Susan truly walks her talk. Whereas some merely point out the need for more women to enter the ranks of academia in the fields of math, science, and technology, Susan actually stepped up to the plate and endowed the Butler Institute for Leadership Excellence at her alma mater, Purdue University.

Upon her retirement (if you can call it that—I’ve never met a busier retired person!), Susan founded her Institute for the Development of Women Leaders to put into action the ideas she generated over a lifetime of helping women develop leadership skills. I’ve witnessed firsthand the excitement in rooms full of collegiate women who were thrilled that an executive of Susan’s stature was taking the time to address them and answer their questions.

I’ve learned more from Susan than perhaps any other executive I’ve ever encountered. In some ways, we’re very much alike. Although we are a couple of decades apart in age, we both grew up in the Midwest (where people do crazy things like go to church on Sundays and vote on Election Day), and we were both very active in Girl Scouts. Thereafter, we both went on to universities in the Midwest, followed by careers in business. When we first crossed paths in the early 1990s, it was because our shared commitment to the mission of mobilizing capital to women business owners led us both to serve as cofounders of a not-for-profit organization with this objective started by our mutual friend Susan Davis (founder of the Committee of 200) called the Capital Circle.

But in other ways, I have learned the most from our differences. After careers on Wall Street, in strategy consulting, and in media management, I opted to start my own firm and to devote myself to writing books. I respected how Susan, too, constantly tapped different strengths, reinventing herself yet devoting more than thirty years to a single company. She became a driving force behind the change management practice of one of the world’s largest organizations and learned a great deal about how to work with people to accomplish massive change.

I was fascinated to learn several years ago about Susan’s fourpart approach to managing change, which she used with her clients and her career. I immediately started to apply that approach to my own life and work. It is a tool on which I have come to regularly rely, both personally and professionally, when working to bring about any major change. It is the basis for the powerful Make-It-Happen Model described in this book, which equally applies to individuals and organizations, and to both personal and professional aspirations.

Over the years, I’ve encountered Susan in many capacities—as a colleague, as a mentor, and as a friend. In each role, while able to be as tough as necessary to get the job done, she has also proven herself to be among the wisest, most generous, and most bighearted people I have ever known.

This book continues that pattern. Susan doesn’t hold back; she mines her years of experience for every insight and tip and word of advice that might make things a little easier for us than it was for her. And she doesn’t sugarcoat it: she writes of the hard work ahead if we want to achieve our aspirations by taking on the lofty title of CEO of our own company (a.k.a., You, Inc.). She warns us that we can’t do it alone and that we’ll need to galvanize a team and our own personal board of directors. Between the lines, we sense that Susan herself wants to be the self-appointed first member of our team.

Knowing Susan for more than two decades as I have, I can assure you that sentiment is accurate. She has made it her mission to champion others to reach their dreams. And as your virtual mentor, Susan’s sage advice is always only an e-mail or a phone call away.

You’ll find a lifetime of advice in the pages that follow. Savor these hard-earned lessons by one of America’s leading businesswomen. Study them. Take them to heart. Then apply them to your own life’s challenges and opportunities.

I can attest from firsthand experience that they’re sound and that they can help you leapfrog toward your goals. If you work, they work.

When you hit any proverbial (and inevitable!) bumps in the road, you couldn’t have a better colleague, mentor, and friend than Susan Bulkeley Butler to advise you how to move over, through, or around them.

You’ve already taken an invaluable first step by picking up this book, so I’m confident you’re on the right track. I wish you great success as the CEO of You, Inc.!

Karen Page

Award-winning author and Founding Chair, Harvard Business School Network of Women Alumnae

PREFACE

You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

—AMELIA EARHART

Change is inevitable.

In 1965, I impacted the accounting industry. Before then, most women had been relegated to the typing pool or the secretary’s desk in the accounting business and most other industries. That changed when Arthur Andersen & Co. hired me fresh out of Purdue University as their first professional female employee. Fourteen years later, I became the first female partner of Andersen Consulting—now known as Accenture. By the time I retired in 2002, I was managing partner for Accenture’s Office of the CEO.

Of course many other women before me made even more dramatic breakthroughs, like Deborah Sampson in the US Army; Amelia Earhart in aviation; Susan B. Anthony in the women’s suffrage movement; Babe Zaharias in golf, basketball, and track and field; and Gloria Steinem in equality for women, to name a few.

Many more after me will change the world again. Hopefully you’ll be one of them.

Change is constant.

Since the first version of Become the CEO of You, Inc. was published in 2006, we’ve all experienced the rise of social media. We’ve had women run very formidable races for president of the United States. We’ve seen women make even more breakthroughs in athletics, on the NASCAR circuit, on the golf course, and on the football field.

I even wrote a second book since then that’s focused on how women are making a global impact. It’s called Women Count: A Guide to Changing the World.

Change also is necessary.

As a result, I decided an updated version of Become the CEO of You, Inc. was also warranted.

In the pages that follow, you’ll see new additions on how social media and the Internet have changed how we network; how new resources as well as new economic challenges are changing the way we plan our lives; how the rising incomes among women are changing the world of philanthropy. Additionally, I have added a new discussion about the importance of executive presence in today’s environment. I also have now included an index to my book.

And lastly, for the sake of the book’s brevity and clarity, although I began my career with a division of Arthur Andersen & Co., which later became Andersen Consulting and now Accenture, I will refer to the company as Accenture throughout.

Yet despite all the changes around us, some basic tenets remain constant, I’ve found.

It’s still important to plan your future, just as it’s still important to map your way to your destination, whether you use an old-fashioned map or a new-fangled GPS.

It’s still crucial to build a team to help, support, and mentor you—whether in person, over coffee, or online over Facebook or Skype.

It’s still important for you to share your accomplishments with others, whether through mentoring or through monetary contributions.

Most of all, it’s still ever so important to make sure you make things happen for you, not to you.

The four-step process that I call the Make-It-Happen Model remains the foundation of this book. Hopefully, it will also help you build a foundation for your life as you become the CEO of You, Inc.

As Amelia Earhart put it so succinctly so many years before me, you can change and you can control your life. You can do anything you decide to do.

In the pages that follow are the simple steps you can take to do all that and more. They come from a lifetime of lessons learned not just by me, but the numerous other friends, associates, and advisors whose invaluable help made this book and my previous books possible.

They have all found their way to success using these principles—and so can you.

Now, let’s make it happen.

Susan Butler

Tucson, Arizona

May 2012

__________________________

P A R T  I

__________________________

Laying the Groundwork

-1-

YOU ARE THE CEO OF YOU, INC.

Become the change you want to see—those are words I live by.

—OPRAH WINFREY

If you are holding this book in your hands, you are in search of something. It might be a new strategy for improving your life, new techniques for advancing your career, or just new ways to make everything you already have even better. Whatever your goal may be, the lessons I provide in these pages will help give you the tools to let you turn your dream into reality.

How do I know? Because they’re the same strategies that propelled me to be a top executive in the CEO suite of one of the world’s largest companies. Additionally, these strategies aided my authorship of two books and helped me support countless women through my Institute for the Development of Women Leaders.

Like any successful enterprise, your life needs a plan, a framework around which you can make smart decisions that will define your future. Like any business that hopes to succeed, you need someone to oversee the big picture: someone who will identify the unique benefits you offer, as well as develop your package of skills and capabilities and the way you present them to the world.

Who would be the best candidate for the job?

Congratulations! I hereby promote you to CEO of You, Inc.—that is, CEO of your own life and career. Being the CEO of any entity is an important responsibility, but even more so now, as future success starts and stops with you.

This is not a job you can outsource to someone else. Like any CEO position, there’s a 110 percent commitment required to make things happen. The alternative? Letting things happen to You, Inc., such as falling prey to