It seems that women who have taken time off work or have worked part-time for family reasons are penalized when it comes to promotions, even if they have equal qualifications and skills.  There are some estimates that more than 90% of women want to return to work after having children, but only 40% find full-time jobs. 

Facing the reality of either giving up or getting out, is it any wonder that women entrepreneurs start nearly 1,600 businesses daily in the US.

For years, SAP represented multi-million dollar software promises to its customers.  They often delivered on those promises by creating operational efficiencies at  tremendous expense in time and dollars to their customers. However, there were times SAP failed to deliver on its promises.  As Oracle expanded and deepened its expertise through its acquisitions (not without its own missteps), SAP always seemed the follower and today is the bride left at the altar.  Innovation is dead at SAP as its new co-chief executives Bill McDermott and Jim Hagenmann Snabe already recognize.  Or is it?

Over the past couple of years, SAP spent millions (actually billions according to inside sources) on the future of enterprise software - Business byDesign which will be officially launched in the middle of 2010. UberCEO has seen SAP's future and we like what we've seen.  The solution is rock-solid and flexible...just what SAP enterprise customers demand.  And therein lies SAP's dilemma.

Business byDesign doesn't fit the SAP business model.  Like most cloud-computing solutions, the sales and deployment models are different from enterprise software and so is the pricing.  While Business byDesign is targeted at the ever-promising SMB (Small and Medium Sized Business), the solution which was designed and engineered to be scaled to grow with your business may also suit the needs of SAP's larger, existing enterprise customers and leave them scratching their heads asking themselves why they spent millions on SAP over the last decade.

Say what you want about Larry Ellison and Oracle, but Larry actually understood the difference between what the Oracle brand means to its enterprise customers and wisely launched a cloud-computing, enterprise solution for SMBs under separate brand NetSuite.  This is where SAP's strategy needs altering.

SAPs current enterprise business model is about a large sales force, booking millions in software licenses and maintenance and increasing both to stay ahead of inflation while expanding the new customer base which is continuously more difficult to secure. SAP's brand is identified by the large enterprise sale. Business byDesign, on the other hand, is a low-cost-of-sales and deployment model.  The pricing model actually works...the more you eat, the more you pay but it conflicts entirely with SAP's brand perception by its customers.

What SAP needs to do now, is extract the Business byDesign brand from the mothership to get what should be a rapidly growing business out of the jaws of a declining behemoth.  If the new leadership at SAP can execute this critical surgery on the struggling patients, both businesses have a strong chance of developing successful strategies for the future.

Let us know what you think of SAP and it's challenge evolving to a cloud computing company with Business byDesign.

Seventy-five percent of surveyed CEOs reported that leadership and talent development are key to their long-term investment decisions. 

“Talent remains a top priority for CEOs. The crisis taught us a few things—one of which is that organizations that are able to balance people retention and development against cost reduction measures will be well positioned for taking on the upswing. With the Asia-Pacific region poised to be an economic powerhouse, having the right people in place is more urgent than ever," said Frank Lyn, China Markets Leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Eighty-four percent of CEOs, however, indicated that cutting costs is their top priority in the next 12 months

We still say that CEOs need to make their own decisions about their personal and company’s social media strategy.... But at the very least they need to be aware of the Web 2.0 tools their customers are using to communicate and share information.   

One former CEO has already taken the plunge. Founder and former CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates, opened up a Twitter account on January 19, 2010. His first words: "Hello World. Hard at work on my foundation letter–publishing on 1/25.” One day later he announced on Twitter that his blog—The Gates Notes—had gone live.  

Since that big-bang Tuesday, Gates has been regularly posting tweets on his page. They mainly reference the difficult situation in Haiti, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and his hot-off-the-press blog. 

On Twitter he already has 365,862 followers and is following 43 people. In the first eight days, he has mingled with celebrities and exchanged ideas with nonprofits. He retweeted Ryan Seacrest as well as OneCampaign’s tweets about urgently needed aid for Haiti. 

His blog, on the other hand, is a full-fledged Web site. It’s obvious that his intention was to make the site as personable and personal as possible. The navigation tries hard to be and succeeds at being simple, friendly and inviting.  

It seems that Gates is really trying not to be disconnected, disengaged and disinterested—the three Ds we coined to describe last year’s batch of anti-social Fortune 100 CEOs. Maybe we’ll see other CEOs follow Gates’ example as they realize the marketing and brand-building potential in social media.  
 
  

We ask:  Is a $1 million salary for a nonprofit CEO appropriate or outrageous?

We've seen the arguments for both sides and here's where we sit. We believe that CEOs of for-profit companies are no less passionate for their cause or companies than CEOs at non-profits.  The skills required of a CEO at a non-profit are no less than those at for-profits companies.

So yes, we side with Betsy Brill (and her article in Forbes last week) who believes a nonprofit CEO be paid a salary comparable to that of a CEO working the same job in the for-profit world. 

Why? Because, it all comes down to this: Is the CEO getting his or her job done?

No longer are nonprofit employees “ultimate do-gooders” and “angelic advocates who are willing to sacrifice their own financial gain to serve a noble cause.”  They're hard-working, dedicated individuals who have comparable skills and experience to their counterparts in the for-profit world.

I have worked with and met many incredibly dedicated nonprofit chief executives. Nobody could look at Zainab Salbi of Women for Women International and argue that she does not live and breathe her nonprofit’s mission. But she doesn’t just dream big. She has been getting her hands dirty for years, expanding the reach of her organization, making Women for Women a household name, and, as a result, she has helped thousands of women survivors of war. She is a successful chief executive and she deserves every penny she makes.

The moral of the story is that we need to stop judging nonprofits by different standards. Hard work is hard work. Period. Nonprofit staff, from the CEO down to administrative assistants, should get competitive salaries comparable to the salaries of their for-profit counterparts. Otherwise, all top executive talent will continue to be drawn to the for-profit world—a sort of executive brain drain—leaving nonprofits without the quality leadership necessary to realize their noble, "do-gooder" missions.

In a statement to NBC Bay Area, Phillips admitted his affair:

“I had an 8½ year serious relationship with YaVaughnie Wilkins," the statement said. "My divorce proceedings began in 2008. The relationship with Ms. Wilkins has since ended and we both wish each other well."

In the wake of the Tiger Woods sex scandal, cheating UberCEOs and "celeb" executives beware...scorned women are using new and traditional media to get back, get even and get paid.

We're researching more CEOs to uncover sex scandals.

If you know of your CEO's sexcapades, send us a tip.

Last week in an article titled “Meet the Top Three Women CEOs” we mentioned a study by Harvard Business Review that found that women CEOs still have one major obstacle to overcome as leaders: their superiors, peers and subordinates believe that women, compared to men, lack vision.

Anne Dumas, the CEO of a leading services company, whose name was changed by HBR, disagrees.   When asked what, in her opinion, makes her an effective leader and CEO, she said it was attention to detail:

“I think strategy comes naturally from knowing your business and the forces that influence your market, clients, and suppliers—not at a high level but at a detailed level. Intermediaries kill your insight. You obviously can’t monitor everything, but nothing should keep you from knowing in detail the processes on which your company runs—not supervising everything but understanding at a detailed level what is going on. Otherwise, you are hostage to people who will play politics. At best you don’t have full information; at worst you’re vulnerable to hidden agendas. My job is to go to the relevant detail level.”

What do you think? What makes a CEO an ÜberCEO? Is it attention to detail, focus, strong command of the technical elements of their jobs or is it vision? Or is it something else altogether?