Don't miss your amazon moment! | Shemin Nurmohamed | TEDxAix

As an executive female in tech, I'm in a tiny minority, and this really bothers me. Earlier this year, I was at a conference with about 6,000 delegates, and only a handful of them were women. How is it possible that four years after 'Lean In,' we still haven't changed these dynamics? A few friends of mine and myself created 'Carbon Leadership' for this specific purpose. Why carbon, you ask? It always amazed me, as a chemistry major, that carbon could come in two forms: graphite and diamonds. And although alchemists could never change lead into gold, Mother Nature showed us that with the right environment, she could change graphite into diamonds. All she needed was pressure, time, and heat. We are all diamonds in the making. All we need is the right environment in which to transform. I would like to talk to you about two elements that will help this transformation: confidence and change.

Many young women ask me when they first meet me how it was possible, where I got the confidence to move careers so many times in my life. I went from chemistry to investment banking, to teaching, to finance, to sales, to coaching. And as I reflected on this, I realized I certainly was not born with it, because my family always said I was very shy and timid. It wasn't a gift that came to me in my youth, because I am still terrified every time I move. I found the secret to confidence through a failure. When I was in grade nine, my mother decided, because I was shy and reserved and because my English was atrocious since I came from Tanzania, that I should learn how to debate. I had seven other extracurricular activities, no time to debate, so I tried to convince my mom that this was really not a good idea. But you know, she gave me one of those looks, the look that freezes your blood over, and the conversation was over. My school decided that the best way to learn was to throw me into the deep end and see if I sink or swim. So they threw me into the first debate. The problem was, I didn't even understand the question of the debate. And because fate has a funny sense of humor, they put another challenge in my way: my first competition was against the Canadian national champion. Needless to say, it did not go well. In those days, they used to put the rankings of all the competitors up on the board. So at 6:09, the pages went up. We all rushed to the first page. I don't know why I was rushing to the first page, but we all rushed to the first page. And we looked down. There were 473 competitors. So we look down. By the third page, I'm going, 'Well, there must be something wrong.' By the fifth page, my heart is sinking. By the seventh page, I can feel the lump in my throat. And by the ninth page, when I saw my name next to number 473, the tears just started flowing. I was humiliated. When my mom came to pick me up and she asked me how it went, I started crying. I said I was never ever going to put myself in this kind of position again. I had no talent for it, it was obvious. And she calmly said, 'It just takes practice.' I was like, 'Are you blind? I didn't come in second last, which has a little bit of hope. I came in last. It's like a sign from God saying stop doing this.' And she wouldn't hear anything of it. So the next day, she stormed into my school. Yes, every teenager's dream. She went directly to my German teacher, who happened to be my debating coach. I don't know what she said to him, but when he came out, he was shaking, and he said, 'You know what? We're going to double our efforts here.' And I was like, 'Oh my God.' But it was slow and painful progress. In fact, I felt like a snail climbing a mountain. But fast forward four years later, and we are at the same venue having a competition for a worldwide championship position. But this time, the results were quite different, and I got the first position. Now, this is a great story. It gives me 15 minutes of fame in the local paper, but more importantly, it was the tipping point of my subconscious. It told me that the secret to success was practice, somewhat similar to what Malcolm Gladwell said about the 10,000 hours to make an expert. But practice itself is not enough. You need to surround yourself with CEOs, as Kevin Carroll coined it. CEOs are Chief Encouragement Officers. In those days, my CEOs were my cousins, and they were great. Today, surprisingly, my CEO is my daughter. Every time I have a small doubt or small insecurity, she is there to stamp it out until she's replaced it with a positive thought. We all need our CEOs.

Now, my confidence really took a little bit of a challenge when Deline asked me to present the TED talk. I got a little nervous, but I said yes. It's on my bucket list, I want to cross it off. It's great. But as we approached the timing of this TEDx, I started getting a little nervous. You know, writing the actual talk, practicing it, having the sweaty palms and the knobby knees and the heart that goes a thousand miles a minute, that I wasn't so keen on. So I decided to try and convince my family to perhaps do the talk next year. I know, I'm ashamed to admit it. But I said, 'Maybe, you know, with my long list of to-dos and all of this, and the fact that I might fail like I did in my debate...' And my son says to me, 'Mom, you can either quit. You can choose to quit, or you can choose to try.' And I had a moment of reflection, or as they would say in French, solitude. Because I can tell you that he quoted me to me. Now, as a teenager, my son Kir, I think that things I tell him go in one ear and out the other. But don't you mistake it, they hear every word we say. So don't ever give advice that you aren't willing to take yourself. So obviously, I was not going to be a quitter to my children, and so here I am.

Now that we've established that confidence is really the first pillar of success, let's talk a little bit about change. When I meet young women, one of the first questions I ask them is, 'Are you comfortable in the job you have?' And about 80% of them say yes. I would like you to reflect on that idea yourself. Are you comfortable in the jobs you have? Do you kind of have a rhythm that you know? Do you have your network that you feel quite connected to? Are there no real surprises at work anymore? Now, you don't have to raise your hands, but I would like you to think about what Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM, says: that when you're comfortable, you've stopped growing. When you're comfortable, you've stopped growing. I mean, this is a nightmare scenario, a suicide scenario for anyone who's trying to get work-life balance. But she has a point, because even a Forbes study showed that individuals who move careers every two years or less earn 50% more than those who move less frequently. So the question is, is this the reason why the statistics around women in the workplace have not changed? According to McKinsey in a 2016 study, they showed that women, when they enter the workforce, represent about 46% of the workforce, but at C-suite levels, they only represent 19%. So was it this fixation on staying comfortable that was stopping us? But then I saw an incredible study done by Hewlett-Packard. They took men and women of the same caliber and asked them to apply for a promotion and gave them a list of criteria. Now, this was the surprising part: when men achieved 60% of the criteria, they applied. But women would only apply when they achieved 100% of the criteria. Now, this is incredible. This means that we aren't even expected to grow in the new jobs. But it gives you a moment of reflection.

When I worked with a woman quite a long time ago, her name was Claire. She was a secretary, and she was brilliant. She was hardworking, she was great at teamwork, a great communicator, very organized. But she had been a secretary or an assistant for about eight years. And the only thing I could think of keeping her there was the fact that she was a single mother. So after working with her for about six months, I saw this opportunity in marketing, and I said, 'Claire, you really should apply. It's phenomenal, and it's exactly what you were meant to do.' And she looked at me with this face of horror, saying, 'Are you kidding? I've never studied this. I have no experience in it. Thank you, but no thanks.' So I was a little shocked. I thought, 'Well, there's an increase in salary,' but she had nothing to do with it. So we continued interviewing other people, but it was very clear that she was the right person for the job. So finally, I convinced HR and my management to feed her the job piecemeal. So we did that, and three months later, she was doing the job completely. So I called her into the office and I said, 'Claire, do you remember that job that you were offered three months ago? Do you regret not taking it?' And she said, 'Oh my God, no. I love what I'm doing now.' And I said, 'But you're doing that job right now.' And she said, 'No, no, it can't be.' And I finally said, 'Look, now you really have to sign the contract because I need a secretary. I'm dying.' But she still didn't want to. And I said, 'Look, we've kept your 70% of salary aside. You sign this contract, you get it. You don't sign it, you become a secretary again. Is that really what you want?' And so she did sign in. But do you see how much encouragement, how much of a push was needed? Now, I know many of you are saying, 'Well, if that ever happened to me, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't have this problem.' But is that true? Think of the amount of times someone has told you, 'You should apply for that position,' or 'You would be great at that,' and we've kind of smiled and dismissed it.

So what I would like to leave you with today is really a story that still haunts me, and hopefully this will give you the encouragement to change course when necessary. When I graduated from university, I went on to Wall Street. I worked for a company called DE Shaw, a hedge fund that was quite famous. And I thought, 'This is good. I'm going from chemistry to investment banking.' I was pretty proud of it. The first week there was quite an emotional week because the superstar of the company was leaving to start a startup, and he was looking for young, cheap talent. And there's no one cheaper than a young graduate. So I asked, 'Well, what is this startup going to do?' And now I know you guys are going to judge me, but I want you to remember this was 1994, okay? So he says, 'Well, it's going to sell books on the internet.' And I just laughed. I was like, 'That's never going to work. You need to go to a bookstore. You need to smell the book. You need to read the first few pages, right?' So, thanks but no thanks. Needless to say, you've guessed it, the company was Amazon. The individual was Jeff Bezos. And my kids still say to this day, 'This is my billion-dollar mistake.' I say it's my billion-dollar lesson, which I'm sharing with all of you today. So there are opportunities all around us if we're just willing to be open and receptive to them. Now, I find women are much less receptive to them because in their heads, they over-dramatize, they over-exemplify all of the negative things that could go wrong, and so they just feel like the risk is too high. But the question I want you to think about is really, is it too high to move, or is it more dangerous to stay in a place of comfort in such a dynamic environment? So my takeaway to you is this: the next time opportunity comes knocking, don't miss your Amazon moment. Thank you.