No More Superheroes
It's not easy—especially in today’s business environment. But she leads by example. In the process, she’s helping to create alternative pathways to power for tomorrow’s corporate leaders.
by Shermakaye Bass
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She says one main problem that needs to change is the
way employees and managers communicate with each other.
Historically, conversations have been one-sided: The
boss says, “Here’s what I want you to do, and if you
don’t, I’ll find someone who will.” This means a lot of
highly competent people, particularly women, get passed
over for promotions.
Instead, she believes in cultivating a truly open discourse between employees and their superiors—one in which both parties discuss what is expected of the erstwhile fast-tracker and what is realistic for that employee.
“Corporate America has got to change,” she reiterates. “From where I am, I have to help change happen from within. In addition to doing my job every day and doing good work, I’ve got to step out of my box on occasion and push and probe my colleagues to reexamine their paradigms—both men and women.
“And there’s a part of me that does do double time,” Utter admits. “I take time to fly to Austin for a conference or to go to Stanford because it’s part of sharing the positive stories and challenging the norm. The fact that I’m a corporate female executive—that can’t be my defining characteristic. We have to get past gender expectations.”
A Fresh Approach to Leadership
Utter says her fundamental, above-all-else philosophy has always been “one step at a time.” Very few decisions have to be final and permanent; things always change. That’s her motto.
Still, Ellen Wood says her longtime friend has had to make tougher calls than she might care to admit.
“I think it’s been hard for Lynn to figure all this out,” Wood says. “It’s against the convention of the society and the people she knows for the mother to be the one that works. That’s hard, because as women we tend to feel guilty.”
Yet Utter has refused to succumb to those societal “norms” and expectations. She hasn’t succumbed to the guilt factor— so far.
Jerry Lemieux, MBA ’81, one of Utter’s retired colleagues on the bottling side of brewing, tells a story that illuminates Utter’s fearlessness—her willingness to buck the trends and defy the pat, gender-role assignments, and bring a new perspective and value to the company.
“I was running the glass container operation for [what is now the Rocky Mountain Bottle Co.], and Lynn had come in from a background that was not very typical in our industry,” he says. “We are a heavy manufacturing organization, and she came out of more of a distributing-marketing-consumer position at Frito-Lay. This is an ugly, dirty business. Manufacturing runs these big glass furnaces 24/7 at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, and you can’t shut them down.”
At the time, Utter was in charge of quality control, Lemieux recalls.
Right off the bat, he sensed his colleague’s capabilities. They also had a more personal connection—they were both Longhorns. “If nothing else we had football to talk about from the get-go,” he said.
When Utter arrived on the scene of this new bottling partnership, Lemieux said things weren’t running very well and the company was losing money hand over fist.
Today, he adds, partly as a result of his and Utter’s approach to labor management and communication, the Rocky Mountain Bottle Co. is one of the top bottling outfits in the world.
“Where I come from—the hard-core manufacturing side—basically, we hired you, and if you didn’t like it you quit!” Lemieux says that Utter’s approach taught him a lot about communication with his workers. “She knew a lot about the people on the shop floor. She really took that information and used it as we talked about what we’d do as we planned a furnace rebuild and how we would communicate that to the people. When I came in, I sort of thought we [Coors] overdid it with the ‘touchy-feely approach.’ And after working with Lynn, I ended up thinking we underdid it.”
Perhaps the moral of Lemieux’s story is this: If a self-proclaimed down-and-dirty manufacturing veteran like Lemieux could see the difference in productivity when employers and employees communicated openly, cultivated trust in one another and respected each other’s opinions, then maybe Utter isn’t so idealistic when she talks about paradigm shifts and promotes her progressive work-life philosophy.
One thing is for sure. If there’s a way to nudge and urge and gently push corporate culture into a better understanding of just what that work-life balance is, chances are Lynn Utter will be at the vanguard of that shift.
Instead, she believes in cultivating a truly open discourse between employees and their superiors—one in which both parties discuss what is expected of the erstwhile fast-tracker and what is realistic for that employee.
“Corporate America has got to change,” she reiterates. “From where I am, I have to help change happen from within. In addition to doing my job every day and doing good work, I’ve got to step out of my box on occasion and push and probe my colleagues to reexamine their paradigms—both men and women.
“And there’s a part of me that does do double time,” Utter admits. “I take time to fly to Austin for a conference or to go to Stanford because it’s part of sharing the positive stories and challenging the norm. The fact that I’m a corporate female executive—that can’t be my defining characteristic. We have to get past gender expectations.”
A Fresh Approach to Leadership
Utter says her fundamental, above-all-else philosophy has always been “one step at a time.” Very few decisions have to be final and permanent; things always change. That’s her motto.
Still, Ellen Wood says her longtime friend has had to make tougher calls than she might care to admit.
“I think it’s been hard for Lynn to figure all this out,” Wood says. “It’s against the convention of the society and the people she knows for the mother to be the one that works. That’s hard, because as women we tend to feel guilty.”
Yet Utter has refused to succumb to those societal “norms” and expectations. She hasn’t succumbed to the guilt factor— so far.
Jerry Lemieux, MBA ’81, one of Utter’s retired colleagues on the bottling side of brewing, tells a story that illuminates Utter’s fearlessness—her willingness to buck the trends and defy the pat, gender-role assignments, and bring a new perspective and value to the company.
“I was running the glass container operation for [what is now the Rocky Mountain Bottle Co.], and Lynn had come in from a background that was not very typical in our industry,” he says. “We are a heavy manufacturing organization, and she came out of more of a distributing-marketing-consumer position at Frito-Lay. This is an ugly, dirty business. Manufacturing runs these big glass furnaces 24/7 at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, and you can’t shut them down.”
At the time, Utter was in charge of quality control, Lemieux recalls.
Right off the bat, he sensed his colleague’s capabilities. They also had a more personal connection—they were both Longhorns. “If nothing else we had football to talk about from the get-go,” he said.
When Utter arrived on the scene of this new bottling partnership, Lemieux said things weren’t running very well and the company was losing money hand over fist.
Today, he adds, partly as a result of his and Utter’s approach to labor management and communication, the Rocky Mountain Bottle Co. is one of the top bottling outfits in the world.
“Where I come from—the hard-core manufacturing side—basically, we hired you, and if you didn’t like it you quit!” Lemieux says that Utter’s approach taught him a lot about communication with his workers. “She knew a lot about the people on the shop floor. She really took that information and used it as we talked about what we’d do as we planned a furnace rebuild and how we would communicate that to the people. When I came in, I sort of thought we [Coors] overdid it with the ‘touchy-feely approach.’ And after working with Lynn, I ended up thinking we underdid it.”
Perhaps the moral of Lemieux’s story is this: If a self-proclaimed down-and-dirty manufacturing veteran like Lemieux could see the difference in productivity when employers and employees communicated openly, cultivated trust in one another and respected each other’s opinions, then maybe Utter isn’t so idealistic when she talks about paradigm shifts and promotes her progressive work-life philosophy.
One thing is for sure. If there’s a way to nudge and urge and gently push corporate culture into a better understanding of just what that work-life balance is, chances are Lynn Utter will be at the vanguard of that shift.
