am sure the various definitions and comparisons can be attributed
largely to the author but she is generous, although non-specific, in
her acknowledgements of all those who contributed to the book
in its final form.
enough; three is the ideal number. (Pity the poor protégé.) Three is
also the number of serious pitfalls in the sponsor/protégé relationship. The author devotes an entire chapter to each of these: Chapter
10 Sex; Chapter 11 Distrust; Chapter 12 Executive Presence.
Much of this book is in fact autobiographical and herein lies the
fascination for me. The sub-title of the introduction is: My Story.
The first line of the introduction is as follows:
The author rounds out the book with an epilogue subtitled Castles.
This is the continuation of her autobiographical underpinning of
why sponsorship works and why it is necessary. In broad terms
she attributes all her successes (her ability to build her castles)
to sponsorship and her failures to lack of sponsorship. There is a
great irony in one of her statements. “Sponsorship vaulted me from
academia into public policy.” The reality behind this statement is
evident in her original introduction toward the end of which she
states, “Post-Harvard and post-London University (where I earned
my PhD), I landed a sought-after first job as assistant professor of
economics at Barnard College, Columbia University, and began to
forge what should have been a promising career in academe.” We
learn that seven years later she was denied tenure despite being an
acclaimed teacher and having published a book. She attributes the
decision of the Appointments, Promotion and Tenure Committee of
Columbia University to many things including the fact that she had
no-one on the committee pulling for her (lack of a sponsor) rather
than the fact that she had done no research and had no publications
in peer-reviewed journals.
“My understanding of the power of sponsorship is rooted in my
childhood.”
The author then tells us that she grew up as one of six sisters in a
small rather bleak mining town in Wales in the 1960s. Unemployment hovered at 28 percent and as a girl child the future was devoid
of any great opportunity.
“Maybe you could marry an unemployed miner? You could
always do that.”
The author never tells us where she ranked in age relative to
her sisters nor does she tell us which, if any, of her sisters has met
with the kind of success she has. She tells us simply that her father,
“very much the working-class bloke,” had plans for his daughters.
At the age of thirteen Ms. Hewlett and her father boarded the bus
for England; the destination was Cambridge with its “dreaming
spires.” Thus inspired and very likely anxious to please her father she
embarked on a course of study previously unheard of in her local
school and community. Four years later she was indeed accepted
to Cambridge’s Girton College (although rejected by Oxford) and
realized that she owed an enormous debt of gratitude to one of her
teachers in school; a Miss Gwen Jones who had spent all her free
time tutoring the young Ms. Hewlett and reviewing with her the
material related to years and years of prior Oxford/Cambridge Entrance Exams. Only much later, in retrospect, did she also realize the
importance of British politics at the time; specifically the role played
by Barbara Castle, a female member of Parliament and minister in
Harold Wilson’s government, who had advocated relentlessly for
equal opportunity for women in both education and employment.
As the author says, “Oxbridge admissions committees were newly
in the business of leaning over backwards to see potential in candidates like me.”
From this realization was born the conviction that lies at the heart
of Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: that no amount of hard work will
get anyone into the elite C-suite in any organization unless someone
WITH THE POWER pushes for it to happen. The person with the
power is the sponsor and the protégé is the one who sees her/his
opportunity linked with or even dependent upon the actions of the
sponsor. Sponsorship doesn’t come cheap and it demands sacrifice
and loyalty from the protégé. The requirements and responsibilities
of both parties are repeatedly emphasized throughout the book. In
a nutshell the main task of the protégé is to enhance the function of
the sponsor who - ideally- will finally propel said protégé into the
desired orbit. One sees immediately that one’s career could also be
ruined by targeting the wrong sponsor. It is obvious that the sponsor
could simply leave the firm with no provision made for the protégé
or the protégé could be tainted by the sponsor’s malfeasance and
dismissal. Our author therefore proposes that one sponsor is not
Soon to be fired, the author turned to the one person she hoped
would be able to find her another job. His name was Harvey Picker
who at the time was dean of the School of International Affairs at
Columbia University. Harvey Picker had become a friend of the
author and his significance for her was his network of contacts in
the outside world. That network had been largely developed after
1945 when Harvey became president of the Picker X-ray Corporation, the company founded by his father James and to which Harvey
himself contributed significantly during WWII by his development
of the mobile x-ray machine. Harvey knew that the “top slot” at
the Economic Policy Council was open and since he also knew the
chairman of the board of the EPC he wondered if he might have
permission to put the author’s name forward for that position. We
already know the answer to that question and it would be meanspirited to point out that Harvey was not a sponsor as defined by the
author herself in this book. Nor had she fulfilled the obligations of
protégé. She was lucky and perhaps in recognition of this decided to
“pay it forward” and devote her career to improving the workplace
for women and minority groups.
I do not know if her sponsorship protocols can work for a significant number of individuals in the work force. I had hoped to
find a nugget or two in the book that might be applicable to young
women in the medical profession - particularly those in danger of
leaving. I didn’t find that but I did find sincerity - as outrageous
as some of the parag