Recently I met with Shellye Archambeau, CEO of MetricStream when Shellye shared how her experiences at companies like IBM, BlockBuster led her to where she is today.
One very fascinating story of our conversation is when Shellye was a summer intern after high school. When she told her supervisor that she wants to go to college and run her own company someday, her supervisor suggested her to take advantage of all the people in the company who run all kind of business. He supervisor suggested her to meet them and talk to them. Shellye was naive enough that she pulled out the directory and called VPs one by one and asked them to have lunch with her. To her surprise most people said “yes” – they were caught off guard by this little girl. She spent rest of her summer having coffee, lunch with people in all different areas at her company.
That incident gave Shellye the confidence to reach out to people – worst that can happen is somebody will say no – you are not any worse than before.
Check out the complete women2.0 video conversation for more advise on mentoring and planning:
