New Business Book, "The Hour Glass Effect" - Leveraging Female Leadership for Competitive Advantage

Oct. 7, 2008 - PRLog -- New Business Book, ”The Hour Glass Effect” Provides Compelling Guide to Leveraging Female Leadership for Maximum Competitive Advantage

October 7, 2008 (Irvine, CA) - While 2008 news events cracked open the political glass ceiling, a new book, “The Hour Glass Effect” by leadership innovation expert, Dr. Tammy Wong, CEO of Fostering Executive Leadership Inc., finds that executive female leaders in the corporate workforce remain alarmingly untapped and under-represented.  

“Companies that fail to understand or develop womens initiatives to re-shape traditional “MANagement” cultures are experiencing a high level of turnover to more progressive competitors, as well as entrepreneurial endeavors,” Dr. Wong reports.

Symbolized by sand through an hour glass, Dr. Wong advises this re-distribution is rapidly transforming today’s corporate landscape causing costly leadership gaps and putting companies at a competitive disadvantage for talent.

“The Hour Glass Effect” provides a succinct roadmap to develop female-friendly programs that help executives more effectively recruit, retain, mentor, and optimize talent. It is the essential catalyst for accelerating positive organizational change and provides compelling insight why one business succeeds while another barely holds on. Often the difference lies deeper than the obvious customer service, price, or quality standards. The difference comes from the people in the organization – especially the women in leadership positions.

Dr. Wong’s research reveals that companies with the highest percentage of women in top leadership positions had a 35.1 percent higher return on equity and reported a 34 percent higher total return to shareholders.

Dr. Wong has a PhD in Organization and Management and more than 25 years of strategy, sales, and leadership experience at Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Xerox Corporation and Sun Microsystems. She is a speaker, author, and has her own leadership-coaching firm with a strong emphasis in leadership, strategy, and talent development.

“My purpose in writing this book was to show how a company can attain dynamic growth through initiatives that foster executive leadership in females. Despite all of the media attention, there remains a lack of understanding of the overall organizational benefits and practical guidelines, attributes, and proven tips that create effective women-friendly work environments,” said Dr. Wong.

Currently, women account for 50% of the total US labor force. Since 2000, the number of women in executive management positions has grown less than 1% annually. Women make up less than 15% of executives in corporations. Statistically, at the current rate of growth, women will not equal the number of men CEO’s in Fortune 500 companies until 2064.

Dr. Wong’s book is a timely topic of high interest to the millions of executives - both men and women- who want to develop and optimize women leaders, the under-utilized secret weapon in the war for talent.  

Fostering Executive Leadership is based in Irvine, California where Dr. Wong lives with her husband and five children. She has served on the boards of several not-for-profit organizations and is a member of a select group of executive women who meet regularly to discuss leadership and business issues.

“The Hour Glass Effect” (October 2008) will be available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and  at www.hourglasseffect.com.

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Our team, led by leadership innovation expert Dr. Tammy Wong, help companies implement proven initiatives and best practices to better leverage female leadership talent which significantly strengthens the organization's overall competitive advantage.