Linda Babcock - The No Club: Putting a Stop to Womens Dead-End Work

The No Club

Putting a Stop to Womens Dead-End Work

Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart

Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2022 by Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie R. Weingart

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2022

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Carly Loman

Jacket design by Alison Forner

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-9821-5233-8

ISBN 978-1-9821-5235-2 (ebook)

For MJ Tocci

Five women sat around the table at a local restaurant with two bottles of wine. We wondered who would be the first to admit her life was out of control. We didnt know one another well, but we all had one thing in commonwe were drowning in our jobs and were suffering both personally and professionally.

Brenda filled our glasses as Linda dove in: I asked you all here because I need help and I think you might too. I am completely overwhelmed with work. Ive lost control of my time. I cant keep up with everything, and more stuff just keeps coming at me. Every time someone asks me to do something, I want to say no, but I feel like I cant. Im a mess. Is it just me? The rest of us simultaneously answered, No! We looked at one another and let that sink in. This became the first of many meetings of The No Club.

It all had started two weeks earlier, the day Linda realized that she just couldnt keep up with her work load. Heres how she remembers it:

I finally had it. My calendar was filled with back-to-back meetings that left me almost no time for research. Im a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, so research is not only a key part of my job, it is the primary factor in my performance evaluation. That means the amount of time I spend on research really matters, so it is critical that I schedule non-teaching days to focus on my research.

On one of my non-teaching days, the morning started with a rush as I ran to and from meetings. I noticed my across-the-hall colleague, George, sitting at his desk every time I passed by. He didnt move all day. I couldnt understand how he managed to spend so much time in his office, and when he joked about how much running around I did, I asked what his schedule for the day was like. He showed me his calendar, and as I compared it to mine, I was shocked.

Out of the entire day, I had one hour devoted to research, while George had seven. He had only two non-research commitments, where I had seven! How was his schedule so focused on researcha critical part of both of our jobswhen mine wasnt? I looked at all the things on my calendar and realized that I had agreed to every single one of them. How did this happen? I needed an intervention, so I reached out to four of my friends for help.

February 12, 2010 1:15 PM

Hi Brenda, Lise, Laurie, and MJ:

This email is to invite you to the inaugural meeting of the I Just Cant Say No Club. Ive decided to start this club so that a group of smart women can have a few drinks and talk about the difficulties we all have in saying no to things that we ought to. This is one of the hardest things I face and I think we can all help each other out a lot on this. Since I know that none of you can say no to my invitation, please fill out the form at the following link that will let me know what days you can come to the inaugural meeting. I thought wed meet at 5 p.m., say at the Union Grill, but Im always willing to start drinking early.

I think this will be really helpful and at the very least, all you cool women will get to meet each other.

Thanks!

Linda

Then I got nervous: I was the only one who knew everyone, and I was having second thoughts about whether this could work. I had chosen each woman for a reason: Brenda and I were close, having worked together for years. An associate dean in the public policy school at Carnegie Mellon (CMU), Brenda was always the first person to offer to help, which was great for everyone but her. I noticed she was doing a lot of work that no one else would do, and she wasnt getting credit for it. I had also asked Lise, a fellow economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, because we bonded on a plane ride home from a gender conference at Harvard. During that flight, I was surprised to learn how much stress she had managing her workload, since she is a prolific scholar and seemed to have it all together. Laurie, a professor in Carnegie Mellons business school, and I shared an interest in negotiation research, and wed taught a course together. Laurie was another person who seemed to have everything under controlbut I suspected that she might not. MJ and I had met doing a project with the Women and Girls Foundation. She was a major contributor to womens organizations in our region, and people always wanted her expertise for free. Because she ran her own consulting business, she relied on opportunities for visibility, but was spread too thin. Everyone agreed to join.

Brenda was excited. When she told her husband about the club, he laughed. He said, Perfect group for you. Do you know that any time anyone asks you anything, you say happy to before they even put the question mark on the end of the sentence? She hadnt realized that she did this and was surprised, because she thought of herself as decisive and, frankly, no pushover. She had spent decades in executive-level positions in the private sector and higher education. She had consulted with Fortune 100 companies, founded Carnegie Mellons campus in Australia (the first foreign university in the country), and overseen the creation and growth of a number of masters programs. With all that experience, youd think shed be able to prioritize and manage her workload, but she was overwhelmed with work, and her plate never got emptier. An early riser by nature, she was getting up even earlier, sending emails at four thirty a.m., just to keep from getting even further backlogged. She figured she had nothing to lose by joining the club, and for the next week, paid attention to how she responded to requests. Her husband was right; she said yes immediately and often.