Paula Paul has been in the IT community for 25 years. She began her career developing commercial software products for IBM and MapInfo Corporation before entering the world of high-tech consulting. She led various Fortune 500 engagements as an employee of Renaissance Solutions and later her own consulting company, Paul Software. After several years of independent consulting, Paula took on ‘Corporate America’ first as a senior consultant with Microsoft, then as SVP of North American IT at Scottish Re. Paula has written several publications and is involved in several local organizations. She is now on a "personal sabbatical”, working on her MBA at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, taking on independent consulting engagements, and finalizing a business plan for a new venture.
Paula recently spoke with SIG volunteer Donna Shaver about her passion for technology, her vision for how it can be done better, and her view of women in the field.
Tell me about the company you're starting.
It's called Greyshore. I’ve been working with a small group of incredibly bright people to develop a business plan, branding, and service offerings. We’ve also got some great partnerships in the works. The name was one of several we came up with during discussions of why so many technology projects fail, and the ‘grey area’ between business users and their IT teams and vendors. As someone who has delivered and managed technology for a long time it really pains me to see the statistics on IT project failure; depending on the source you can find reports of an 80% failure rate, and that 80% of IT projects that are completed fail to deliver 75% of the originally planned features. Greyshore is taking a different approach – we’re building a better bridge between business people and improved capabilities.
Greyshore’s core service offerings focus on Business Capability road mapping and planning. We’ve seen so many IT projects cut features in order to meet a deadline; if the result is that no new or improved business capabilities are provided, what’s the point? Business Capability mapping is a process of modeling what a business does or needs to do in order to operate successfully, rather than how it does it via technology, people, or process.
We are currently exploring business partnerships and engagements, so please feel free to have your readers contact me at paula.paul@greyshore.com
What do you see in the future for technology?
A typical corporate IT budget allocates 80% to maintain existing systems and equipment and 20% for new IT projects. If we think of the "keep the lights on" team and the new projects team as independent businesses, and 80% of the new projects efforts consistently fail, then the new projects team is not a sustainable business. I think the way we manage technology today has got to shift. There is too much focus, hype, and drama around technology projects. It’s not necessary.
If business sponsors can model their capabilities and shift the focus to Business Capability projects, we can leave some of the technology hype and drama behind and focus on what’s really important. Greyshore is ready to help shift the focus to what’s most important, and at the same time, put the groundwork in place to make business investments and projects succeed.
Can you tell me more about Greyshore's approach?
One of the things I’m most excited about with Greyshore is our plan to make philanthropy and global citizenship part of our mission from the start. In our research, we reviewed the United Nations’ Millennium Project goals and identified with The Hunger Project. The amazing thing is that recent studies have indicated that gender equality is the key to ending world hunger; in fact it is key to achieving all eight of the Millennium goals. So truly, if you can teach a woman to fish, you’ll feed the world.
We also think there is great potential in untapped resources here in the United States, and are exploring ways to outsource to workers in underprivileged or hard hit areas like Tulane University, or tapping into retired professionals and experienced women who have opted out of the corporate work week.
I’m a big fan and supporter of Mom Corps as a channel for professional women who need flexible scheduling for family balance. The issue right now is that flexible scheduling is working well in HR, marketing, accounting, and other fields where there is more balance in male and female management, but the IT and legal fields are still largely male-oriented. Hopefully Greyshore can help shift the culture over time and bring more balance.
How did you get to where you are today? Which opportunities were particularly career advancing?
I’m always open to new and different opportunities. This opened doors for me in unexpected ways and gave me a set of very broad and diverse experiences in technology and business. For instance, MapInfo asked me to move to Europe (The Netherlands) to figure out how to find digital map data for Europe, which involved negotiating contracts and evaluating data sources in foreign countries- it was a crazy adventure but, I did it! I was in Europe for 18 months and learned so much about differences in business negotiations and culture. I ended up dating Bob at that time, as he was working for MapInfo back in the states. I'd say this was my luckiest break, professionally and personally, but if I’d doubted myself and said that “I’m just a product developer, so how can I possibly do business in Europe?” I’d have missed the opportunity. So, have faith in yourself, and take chances!
What is your strongest asset in your technical career? What parts of technology do you enjoy the most?
First, I have always been an engineer at heart, and I have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of engineering as applied to software, teams, or business. Success is often in the fundamentals. Second, I've developed great “context switching” skills – I can very quickly change my focus from a design problem, to a homework problem in Economics, to organizing the shopping and menus for dinners for the week ahead. I enjoy taking on a lot and successfully keeping many balls in the air. Finally, I love to learn!
In technology, the things I enjoy most are hands-on development in C#, and database design. I always love to create a database or a C# application when it provides a real benefit to a business person.
Have you had any challenges in your career in technology that may be specific to being a woman?
I am disappointed that we still have a high degree of pay inequity between men and women. As an IT manager, I saw hundreds of resumes for employees and contractors. The salary expectations for women were usually much lower than for men. And as the technical experience grows, the gap grows wider. I’ve actually wondered lately if we could turn this around somehow and use pay inequity as a competitive advantage. For instance, the next time I’m told that offshoring development will save 30% in operating costs, I’ll be tempted to suggest that a better balance of near-shore female and male employees might offer a higher quality result with similar overall savings.
Now that over 51% of the workforce is female, and over half the current university population is female, I hope to see more balance in my own profession and the associated balance in compensation over time
Who are your role models? Were there mentors along the way?
I had two great mentors at MapInfo while working remotely on the project in Europe; Elizabeth Ireland, who is now the VP of Marketing at nCircle, and Matthew Szulik who is now the CEO of RedHat. While at Microsoft, I worked for my mentor and friend Kimberly Hanson, who oversees all Microsoft consulting engagements in the Carolinas. I’ve been very fortunate to have met and worked with some phenomenal leaders and visionaries.
Where do you find your best networking opportunities?
I enjoy networking and meeting women technology professionals through WISE (Women in Information Sciences and Engineering). WISE has great events, and I’m working with their steering committee this year. It’s a wonderful group of women.
How do you balance your home life with your busy schedule?
My work life balance is that I don't separate work from life, I love what I'm doing, no matter what I’m doing. When I'm working, I have full focus on work. And when I'm with my family, I'm fully focused on them. I was well into my career before I got married in my mid 30’s, and we started our family right around the time I turned 40 – we have two terrific boys, aged 4 and 7. My home life is pretty traditional where I do the grocery shopping and cooking and Robert carries out the trash and plays game cube with the boys. I love it.
How do you like working with your husband?
Bob is my best friend. He is a Windows internals, hard core networking and kernel mode programmer and I love the fact that we can talk about and understand each other’s work; we’re always sending each other interesting links about what’s going on in the industry or the market. I only worked with Bob indirectly at MapInfo, but when I started Paul Software he actually contracted some work to me for his company’s software product. I had to build a windows application to ship with his product and although he wanted it done in Visual Basic he didn’t think VB could handle some of the sophisticated window manipulation he needed. So, he threw down the gauntlet and bet me I couldn’t do it - and he was the toughest boss I ever had! But, I pulled it off, thank goodness. I’m pretty sure that code is still out in the field today.
What inspires you? How do you refresh and regain your energy?
I’ve been doing yoga for about three years now, and really enjoy hot yoga, of all things! They heat the room to about 95 degrees and we practice yoga for 90 minutes. The movements and poses really get your heart rate up and the heat helps to sweat out the toxins and relaxes your muscles for stretching. Yoga is a great meditation and workout at the same time.
I also get a big charge from the classes I’m taking towards an MBA from UNC Charlotte. UNCC is a great school for professionals; the program is very flexible and the faculty is really first rate. I’m thinking of concentrating in Finance or Economics; I was a Math major way back when and I get some strange satisfaction in dusting off my calculus and statistics.
What book are you reading now?
I just read a short book called "Why CEOs Fail." The reasons that the book gives for a CEO’s failure are pretty much the same reasons that many IT projects fail. One reason is aloofness and treating every issue or decision as black and white, right and wrong, win or lose. Another reason is too much focus on keeping sponsors happy and managing perceptions instead of addressing problems.
"The Art of the Start” and “The Goal" are the other books on my nightstand right now. I also enjoy browsing through Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, and the Sunday New York Times. I love to read the Times Magazine on Sunday morning.
What advice would you give women trying to advance in hi-tech?
Please stay with it, and hang in there! I think we really need more women in technology fields, not because women are better than men, but because they are different. Having women on the project adds more balance and different perspectives.
In addition to engineering skills, women also tend to have natural skills in areas that are critical for success: communication skills, expectation management, relationship skills, issue resolution skills. If we had more people who combined engineering skills with these people and communication skills, instead of having 80% of our IT projects fail, we could shift the focus to Business Capability Projects and see over 95% of the projects succeed.
WIT SIG volunteer Donna Shaver is an Oracle (OCP) and SQL Server DBA and developer. She is currently working for AgData in Charlotte, NC, developing web services in VB.Net. Donna has a BS in Mathematics from Winthrop University and a MS in Computer Science from the University of South Carolina