An Interview with ... Dame Stephanie Shirley

Dame Stephanie is a successful IT entrepreneur turned philanthropist. In 1962, she founded a pioneering all-woman software company in the UK, which was ultimately valued at $3 billion and made millionaires of 70 of her male and female team. Since retiring in 1993, her focus has been increasingly on philanthropy, focused on IT and her late son’s disorder of autism. Dame Stephanie will be speaking at our WorkLife Central event on 23 February 2017.

Q: What values or beliefs have helped you most in progressing your career since setting up your own business in 1962?
A: Part Jewish by birth, I was raised by nominally Christian foster parents, went to a Roman Catholic convent school, and for decades searched for a god or gods. I finished up in the school of Do-as-you-would-be-done-by and struggled to be the sort of boss that I would have liked to work for. I aim to lead rather than manage.

Q: You have achieved so much in your career and philanthropy; what unfulfilled ambitions do you still have?
A: To get my memoir Let IT Go made into an Oscar winning film.

Q: What advice would you offer about 'getting started’ to other professionals who harbour aspirations of setting up their own company or championing a cause?
A: Get started by focussing on something you care about and enjoy doing. (In my case, it was the mathematics that early computing required). Get clued up as much as you can. Whatever your choice, get a basic understanding of marketing and finance; surround yourself with people that you like (not people like you). Think strategically about how you want to spend your life. Then just Go For It!

Q: Many City professionals, male and female, still face limiting attitudes or conventions at work (e.g. attitudes towards flexible working, parenting and caring responsibilities) which make it harder for them to convince others of their commitment and career potential. How can people successfully overcome these kinds of challenges in the work place?
A: The City has several fields with different inequalities. I’m involved in the drive to get 50,000 autistic people into full-time employment in Britain (a million worldwide). Many should never be labelled as disabled, just differently-abled. It’s a struggle for disadvantaged people to be respected and have their ideas heard. To counter this, I tried to keep all my work to the highest quality that I could make. Because I respected myself, others learnt to respect me also.

Q: What advice would you offer to our members who are parents of autistic children (or who have children with other conditions or special needs) who are finding it challenging to combine caring for their children and fulfilling their work commitments?
A: In addition to what I mentioned earlier - the stress of both work and family pressures can be overwhelming. My advice to parents is to grab whatever help might be available (there won’t be much) and develop a healthy selfishness – to maintain your physical and mental health. Get help in the home and exercise regularly to keep your energy levels up.

Q: How do you see the relationship between employer and employee changing in the future, as technologies enabling new working patterns continue to develop?
A: New working patterns, often reliant on technology, blur the distinctions between employer and employee. Many professional and office jobs will change beyond recognition or disappear completely through automation. People’s desire for flexible working means many tasks are outsourced so there are more and more in consultancy roles. An agile workforce maybe but inevitably slippery.

Q: What progress would you most like to see in terms of workplace equality in the next 5 years?
A: I’ve been asked this question for decades – and the answer has not changed. I want rewards for achievement, not time spent and genuine equality in all its variant forms. Gender equality is merely the one heading the economic list.

Q: When you look back on your career, what moments stand out for you as key turning points? And what enabled you to take full advantage of these?
A: A key turning point was a colleague persuading me to go for employee share ownership. It took me 11 years but I am enormously proud to have got a quarter of my company into the hands of the staff at no cost to anyone but me.

Q: 2016 was a year of surprising political and global developments; what will you be following closely in the news in 2017?
A: 2017 scares me. Instead of having things gradually get better, the current quality of leadership is not conducive to world peace.

http://www.steveshirley.com
http://www.let-it-go.co.uk
Watch Dame Stephanie’s TED talk here