Women leaders can balance it all with the proper infrastructure and network to be successful.

Women learn quickly how to be connectors, communicators and multi-taskers. It must be in the DNA. Just think how many chores a woman had to take care of without a dishwasher, washing machine, iron, oven or BBQ. It’s hard to even think about what women used to do.

Thank goodness I wasn’t born in those days! I’d much rather juggle being an entrepreneur, raising money, hiring people, leading people and networking. Oh, and did I mention raising children?

What I have always found to be very sad is that women are so hesitant to invest in themselves. They take care of everyone around them including their employees and their families. They leave themselves for last. Men, on the other hand, invest in coaches, networking and advisors and think nothing of spending money to get ahead. How can we change that?

I am often called upon to mentor up and coming women leaders. I believe we can do it all – it just takes an infrastructure. Looking back, I wish someone would have told me that in spite of not being the mother who did the science projects or cleaned the paint brushes in school, my kids would still grow up to be functioning adults. What it takes is not work/life balance, but work/life integration.

Want to know more? Ask me, as I have a lot to say on the subject having raised four kids of my own without maternity leave!

Consider your values. Can you really have two sets? If you are responsible in one area of your life, if you have a formal relationship with time, chances are, you have the same behavior everywhere.

Think of these two areas of your life as you would looking through Alice’s “looking glass”. As you stand on one side you will see great clues to how you behave. A client once shared that he always seemed to get into the wrong business relationship. Things looked exciting at first and then realities changed his experience. He was miserable. He happened to be single, so I asked him how his personal relationships developed. Here is his description: “An attractive woman comes up to me in a bar and I am flattered that she is interested in me. Before I know it, we are living together. After about 6 months I realize that I am totally in the wrong place and then it takes me another year to extricate myself from the relationship.” At that point, his expression changed and he slapped his forehead and said “OMG! That’s exactly what I do in business.”

If you are curious about what happened next, we established criteria for getting into both business and personal relationships. That simple discovery changed his life….and his business experiences.

Life and business move in parallel with each other. It is therefore important to align your business values with your personal values to establish a good fit. If you are an employee and your values don’t match that of the business you work for, chances are you will be unhappy and unmotivated. You are you are everywhere you go.

What happens when the CEO does things right and the enterprise succeeds?  The chief humbly stands aside and turns over all credit to the team who made it happen.  After all, positively motivating the team always trumps the CEO’s own emotional needs.  The team’s collective ego demands constant feeding.  Both tasks fall on the CEO’s shoulders.

CEOs live on a high wire, balancing between making their company successful and achieving the profit imperative while deploying scarce assets in the most strategically advantageous ways.  The CEO often has no one to act as a mentor; no sage guru from whom to seek advice.

Therein lies the challenge of being the boss.  This is the truth many CEOs live with.  Many do not have a coach or an all-knowing mentor.  Yet the buck always crashes onto their desk, skidding to a stop right there in their lap.  The crises never go away until something changes – they get help!

With technology and trends moving more quickly all the time, learning the art of the pivot is worthwhile. We occasionally have to stop and question whether we are taking actions for the sake of keeping the momentum going or if in fact we are doing the right things. After all, Silicon Valley’s mantra is “fail often and fail fast.”

A pivot is an intentional shift in direction based on challenging your own thinking and repurposing your business products or services. You will know it’s a necessary choice when what you have been doing no longer works. When your team becomes disillusioned and dysfunctional. When going to the office just plain sucks.

When call centers and answering services became a commodity it was time for owners to sit back and ask what they needed to do with all their “seats” and employees. One such company decided to change their charge per minute to a new business model – calling to set up sales appointments with potential buyers for their clients. Another company that I worked with decided to be the back office for universities. With agents specializing in programs for different universities, they answered the calls for new students applying for financial aid or applying to register for classes.

Do you know when it’s time to slow down so you can speed up again? And do you and your strategic thinking team  have your eye on trends so that you’ll recognize when it’s time to pivot?

A few years ago I met with a CEO of a 75 year old company founded by the CEO’s grandfather. The organization had grown to 13,000 employees and the CEO wondered if it was possible to inspire employees and improve retention by sharing their purpose. After a series of interviews with many members of the Executive Team and the Management Team we sequestered ourselves for two days to discover their “Why” and create initiatives for the next year, chunked down into 90 day segments.

When a company is that large, there can be many products or service offerings and one single purpose seems like a monumental task. In this case, it was a major supermarket chain with a grocery division, housewares, drugstore products etc. Everyone wanted their products in the “Why” statement, which was an impossible task.

The CEO and the entire team were ecstatic when we collaboratively came up with their “Why”. Are you curious? Here it is:  “Infusing Life with Health and Happiness”. It gave us all goose bumps – a sure way to know we’d hit the jackpot.

A good example is Tony Hsieh (pronounced, Shay).  Hsieh was already a wealthy man (having sold his startup, LinkExchange, to Microsoft for $265 million).  Nick Swinmurn asked him to invest in his online shoe store, ShoeSite.com.  Hsieh and his Venture Frogs partner, Alfred Lin, put up $500,000.  They changed the company’s name to a snappier, Zappos.com (a variation on zapatos in Spanish, meaning shoes).  They had just three very simple goals.  One was to bring great customer service—they just happened to sell shoes at an affordable price.  Another was to hit $1 billion in sales by 2010.  The third was to become one of the best places to work in the country.

Hsieh built Zappos completely around customer service, which started with happy, committed employees—that was his purpose.  This purpose required complete control over the customer experience.  They made the stomach-churning decision to stop drop-shipping product, costing them 25 percent of their 2003 sales.  They did it because drop shipments removed their control of the customer experience.  Since their purpose was to provide a great customer experience, this decision was one that they felt compelled to make.

By 2008 Zappos hit Hsieh’s second goal, $1 billion in sales.  The next year, Hsieh hit his third goal, entering Fortune’s list of “Top 100 Companies to Work For”, by debuting all the way up at number 23.  Amazon purchased Zappos in 2009 for $1.2 billion.

The story of Tony Hsieh is rare, but not necessarily unique among ultra-successful, employee/customer-oriented companies.  Facebook is reputed to have such a corporate culture.  The reason these enterprises treat their people and customers so well is because it is a key part of their purpose. How are you communicating your vision and purpose as a leader?