Sally Garratt - Women Managing for the Millennium

‘After I qualified, I soon realized that there were too many barristers on the market and, anyway, I knew I wanted the chance to apply my legal knowledge on a practical level and decided to remain in industry. The opportunity arose to apply for the job of Personnel Officer at the company’s research centre and later as the Training Officer for the whole site, comprising 2000 people. I now had to put into practice what I had learned in theory and I found myself in one of the most satisfying jobs I have ever had. I consolidated my own life, bought my own flat and became financially independent. Simultaneously, my relationship with an ex-colleague had become particularly special and in 1984 we decided to make it official. We had both been through divorces and the stress of this had opened up for me a sideline interest in complementary medicine, starting with reflexology.

‘“Where next?” As a lawyer, my obvious choice should have been the legal department. I enquired about the possibility of getting a commercial pupillage, but that didn’t materialize and I took the commercial lawyer’s post. Experience quickly showed that, while I was capable of doing the job, I did not fit in with the stereotype. When I tried to make changes, I was totally ignored and concluded that this job was not for me when one of my previous managers asked me directly why I was there – and I couldn’t answer. He asked me to join him in management training.

‘The two years had not been fulfilling as a job, but we had a lot to sort out on the personal side. My husband, David, moved first to Hampshire and then to Kent, so I was commuting long distance and managing three homes! By now I was expecting our first child and suddenly, in 1986, everything was starting to come together. A group of us devised the Integrated MBA and teamed up with Warwick Business School as our academic partner. We also formed a Business School Network with British Airways and offered back critique to the business schools.

‘I was beginning to experience problems with a boss who was finding my innovative approach both disconcerting and a threat. I realized that I had found the glass ceiling in this organization and decided to move on. The choice was either to take up a senior post with my local county council, or to go out on my own. I decided I needed more experience before I became a consultant, so I applied for the education job. I knew that financially it could be a major problem, but also that I would never be given the same level of responsibility in the old job. It would mean a huge drop in salary, loss of an interest-free loan, car and so on. Coincidentally, the Economist had been writing reports on MBAs and asked me to be their adviser. They also required an author for their report, Guide to Executive Programmes in Europe and the USA and I offered to do it. The payment was exactly the sum I needed to make up the shortfall in salary so I resigned – BP was stunned that I should leave after seventeen years. They made a counter offer, but I knew I had to go to the new job where I would be in charge of many more people and have greater responsibility. I also felt that BP’s professional standards had declined and that, if I did not act, they would compromise my own standards.

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