Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto For Change

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But let’s be clear here: women don’t get a free pass on all this. Alpha culture might have been put in place by men, but we’re also working alongside them and, in many cases, perpetuating the status quo. This is half-memoir and half-advice, which actually worked really well for me. Each chapter starts with Mary Portas telling part of her story and it seamlessly changes into advice that links to what she as talking about at the start of the chapter. It makes for both easy reading and it shows how Mary knows what she is talking about and has experienced the advice she is giving. She has had a fascinating life and career where she had to work incredibly hard to get where she is now. Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto for Change is more memoir than instruction for any working woman entering the corporate world of work. Can the high street be saved? “It completely can, but we need politicians to understand its role, and we need to create destinations people love. Don’t start with the shop. Start with the crèche that’s perhaps attached to a shop. The council could give it a tax break. Then a coffee shop will grow up beside it. When we opened Harvey Nichols in Leeds we were paying no rent at all, we were so wanted. I looked out of the window and thought: ‘What have I done?’ But of course the others soon came in their droves.” I have never resented anything. I was trying to survive. I was petrified 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.

Work Like a Woman by Mary Portas | Goodreads

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.” This book written by Mary Portas about her life is a memoir to feminism and all women who are fighting against alpha culture in the workplace✨ 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.

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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.

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

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). 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.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 - Penguin Books UK

We don’t need suits to be part of the tribe, says Mary Portas in this extract from Work Like a Woman 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. It's about calling time on alpha culture and helping every one of us to be happier, more productive and collaborative.

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. Portas reflects on her career progression starting in the early '80s outlining the alpha culture that was apparent and the decisions that she made on the way to create a career where she felt she had more control. The creation of her own organisation allowed her to shape a culture of compassion, her decision to change her role in the same organisation again giving her the freedom to do the kind of work that she wanted. 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. The main premise is that the the Lean In concept is kind of bullshit — that instead of changing ourselves to fit into office culture, office culture needs to change to meet the skills and needs of women. Ms. Portas is clear in saying that she doesn’t believe all women act in certain ways though; instead, she points out that both men and women can benefit if our offices are less focused on things like competition and the bottom line and more on collaboration and balance. Widely recognized as the UK’s foremost authority on retail and brand communication, Mary Portas has a multitude of expertise; business woman, advertising executive, retail expert, Government adviser, broadcaster and consumer champion. The British media crowned her “Queen of Shops”.

Work Like a Woman by Mary Portas | Waterstones

I listened to the audio book and enjoyed it. I'm glad Mary Portas narrated it herself as she did so with vigour. I was entertained by the book, and enjoyed learning about her career journey. At first, Portas had relished her television career, which began in 2007 with Mary Queen of Shops for the BBC, in which she helped to turn around struggling fashion boutiques (she was discovered by the late Pat Llewellyn, who brought us Jamie Oliver). She knew she was good at it. She was also, at 46, old enough for it not to turn her head (she still had her business, then called Yellow Door). Once again, I feel as though I’ve just read a book that could have been great with the right editor. Or a better outline. The book is part memoir, part instruction manual, part argument for policy changes. In the beginning, it seemed as though each chapter would start with a bit of Ms. Portas’s life, following it with what can be learned from this vignette. But life isn’t neat and tidy, so about halfway through she seems to drop this layout, and the book suffers for it, I think. 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?” A force for good, for change. This book will make you change the way you think. Mary is my hero.' Scarlett Curtis, author of Feminists Don't Wear PinkMary 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. The couple lives in Primrose Hill, north London, and have recently bought a second home in the Slad Valley in Gloucestershire. In her book, she refers several times to her Catholic working-class roots – her mother was so devout she once genuflected in the aisle of a cinema by mistake – but she isn’t one of those people who likes to insist that, no, she has not really changed at all. In fact, she can hardly recognise the girl she once was. 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.