Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto For Change

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Don’t be fooled by my read dates - I borrowed this on the Libby app, missed the return date and had to wait to reborrow 🤦🏻‍♀️. I *loved* this book, and would have sped through it if I’d started reading earlier during my first loan period. She did do some television after this, but much, much less than before (today, she still gets four TV offers a month; her agents are always begging her not to turn everything down). Meanwhile, after some deep thought and a lot of scribbling in an orange notebook, she set about rearranging her life and her business. For the agency this meant, among other things, creating a profit share, bringing in a “menu” of options for working parents (the company provides emergency childcare and even night nannies), and encouraging the practice of “radical candour”; the boardroom table would now be round, rather than rectangular. Best for: People looking for a bit of a memoir mixed in with some genuinely good ideas about improving our workplace.

Work Like a Woman - Penguin Books UK

I used to love watching Mary do her Changing Rooms ( except less shit)thing to ailing retail outlets. I love that she has faith in actual retail outlets. I'm Team Mary all the way for people and the planet before profits. Yet for every hard-working, no-nonsense retail saviour are multiple fast fashion online outlets churning out cheap clothes at a Rumplestiltskin rate. I’m tempted to take off my whole outfit and start again as I stand in front of the mirror, dithering. Do the flowery trousers work? Are the rings too much? Do I need to tone the whole thing down? I really need to decide because I’m running late. It could be 1978 all over again.

There are chapters dedicated to childcare. Towards the end of the book there is a statement that if you aren’t a mother by your 30/40’s don’t worry- we all come to these things in time. Or if you want to be successful choose who you spend your life with carefully - as you will need their support etc. Whilst I generally agree with most things she says, I'm more bothered with 80-90% of this book being her own story of a shopwindow decorator on path to business leadership. I did not (really) know Mary Portas before, so it may have startled me more than an English person would have been startled by it?

Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto for Change Book - Oliver Bonas

Worth quoting: “But the irony is that the whole thing is deeply emotional: wanting to smash the competition and be top dog isn’t exactly unfeeling, is it?” Inspired by her weekly ‘Shop!’ column in the Telegraph Magazine, Mary began her television career in 2007 when her efforts to rescue failing independent boutiques were documented by the BBC2 series Mary Queen of Shops. The show was nominated for two Royal Television Society Awards and a BAFTA. It's about calling time on alpha culture and helping every one of us to be happier, more productive and collaborative.A lot of whats in this book is just common sense. But there is something missing - thats the single woman with no children. Why I chose it: I’ve been working from home since moving to the UK for my partner’s job, but just started a new office gig this week. I figured I could both use a refresher on how offices work and thought this one on how they could be improved would be a good place to start. I wasn’t totally wrong, but I wasn’t right, either. Work Like a Woman is a memoir-cum-self-help manual in which Portas aims to show how businesses might become less “alpha” and more woman-friendly, a process she began to put into practice at her own company five years ago, when she stepped down as its CEO, having decided she would be better deployed as its chief creative officer. Henceforth, she and her colleagues would work more meaningfully, with profit no longer the bottom line. Her book is full of advice for working women, some of it practical (she has much to say about improved flexible working and how it might best be achieved) and some of it – as even she admits – just a touch Oprah Winfrey (there’s quite a lot of goofy stuff about taking your “whole self” to work). At its heart, however, lies a personal crisis, one born of fame and success – and it’s this story that will perhaps most pique the interest of the reader, however much you might be looking for advice as to how to secure a hefty pay rise and a seat on the board.

Work Like a Woman by Mary Portas | Waterstones

Mary Portas is one of the UK's most high-profile and innovative businesswomen. After making her name transforming Harvey Nichols into a global fashion destination, Mary launched Portas, her own creative company, with the mission to transform businesses into brands, places and spaces people want in their lives. Today her team work with clients ranging from Mercedes to Sainsbury's. She has been a regular on our TV screens, advised the government on the future of high streets and developed a fashion label. Her proudest achievement to date is the creation of twenty-six Mary's Living & Giving shops for Save the Children. She is the author of Shop Girl and Work Like a Woman. I also enjoyed the fun quotes, colloquial tone and Mary’s proposition and demand for change based on policies which have been implemented in other countries. Alongside her work with the agency, Mary has embarked on a number of personal projects. She has published three books, Windows: The Art of Retail Display, and How to Shop. In February 2015 she released Shopgirl, a memoir of her early years. Portas writes in her typically uncompromising and unapologetic style about the need for a new model of leadership based on the values and whole of life perspective that are largely missing in the upper echelons of today's organisations.

As a self-employed woman it was great to read this. I don't work in an office/board environment but there were definitely parts of the book that I could take away and think about. And regardless of how much you can personally put the advice into practical every-day life it's still a fascinating, empowering read. How do you want to work as a woman? This is the question at the heart of Mary’s business biography as she walks us through her years of navigating alpha dominated workplaces before she decided to set up shop for herself. But we all grapple with questions like these almost every day. Humans are tribal. Even if we’re not a complete fit for the group we’re part of, we like to create social groups with rules we understand and can work to. When she first began working in television, no one knew she was living with a woman, and her then business partner, a gay man, advised her to keep quiet. “Lesbians aren’t that glamorous,” he said. “And you are.” She knew what he meant. “There is this aspirational hierarchy. White straight men are at the top. Gay men come quite high, too. Look how many there are on television. Gay women are right at the bottom. I remember that AA Gill [the late TV critic of the Sunday Times] knew, and he wrote a very hinting piece about me striding around and stuff.” As if she was Radclyffe Hall? “Yes, exactly.” She snorts. “Anyway, in the end, I just decided to be truthful. The truth is all that matters, so tell it.” Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto for Change is more memoir than instruction for any working woman entering the corporate world of work.

Mary Portas: ‘It was a question of how do I want to work as a

But we’re half the workforce and only a third of its managers, directors and senior officials. That’s rubbish by anyone’s standards. The workplace is still working against us and, as much as I respect Sheryl Sandberg, who argued that women need to adapt their behaviour to better suit the status quo, I’m more of a Gloria Steinem fan. ‘It’s not about integrating into a not-so-good system,’ she said. ‘It’s about transforming it and making it better. If women have to acquire all the characteristics of a corporate world, it’s probably not worth it.’ Too right, Gloria. I don’t want to lean into a system that is entrenched in a working world that’s quite frankly dated, limited and controlling. It’s bloody well time it changed. I like that Mary tries not to exclude men from this, and couches terms in such a way that you know she isn't saying they apply only to, and to all, women exclusively. It shows that thought has gone into the presentation of this manifesto, as well as into the beliefs it represents. If you had told Mary Newton at 15 what life she would end up leading, she would not have believed you. I am a completely different person now. I genuinely do think that a person can have more than one life.” Again, she shakes her head; again, every last hair snaps to attention. And, as I watch this happen, I realise she is that rare and marvellous thing: at once both a brilliant invention and yet, somehow, so completely and utterly herself. ‘I don’t want to lean in’ Mary is very experienced which came across in her writing. Some of her anecdotes were interesting and helpful, other times it felt a bit like an autobiography which is not what I signed up for (maybe I’m being a bit harsh). She sounds so confident as she tells me all this, even a little bullish. You would never know how bruised she still is by the press she received after the government asked her to look into the issues affecting Britain’s high streets in 2011 (the Portas Pilot Towns, where her ideas were tested, were widely criticised; shops in many of these places closed rather than opened, and some thought the budgets had been misused). “I was really hurt by it,” she says. “Of course I’m glad I did it. The issues did join the public agenda. I mean look at Margate now. It has totally changed. But… I went in with a touch of hubris when they said they’d call them Portas towns.”In January 2013 she re-launched her agency as Portas with a new offer reflecting today's retail landscape, and how consumers behave today. However. While she condemned Sheryl Sandberg's 'Lean In' for only advising women to navigate the patriarchal business system, and not dismantling the system itself, Portas' book seemed to share a similar tone with Sandberg's. I've always admired Mary Portas, as she has made such an influential name for herself within the retail industry and has had a fascinating life at home and at work. Mary continues to present Channel 4’s annual December documentary, What Britain Bought in which she offers an eye-opening look into the shopping trends of the year.