Handbook for Corporate Diversity.

One of the focal problems every CEO faces today is how to structure a program that will encourage top-quality women to work at a company in fair and equal competition with male executives.

Dozens of books and thousands of articles have been written on the subject and hundreds of CEOs have tried to work out a system--seemingly to little avail. According to a survey by research firm Catalyst Inc., only 6.2 percent of the top 2,662 executive jobs in the country are held by women, and you can count the number of female CEOs of large corporations on one hand. Yet women are pouring into the work force; they're getting their MBAs, they're working smarter and more aggressively. What's the problem?

Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst, and writer Dr. Betty Spence make the best and most practical analysis of the female corporate executive situation that I've yet seen, in the new book, Be Your own Mentor. Drawing from the experience of 31 successful female executives, including notables such as Carly Fiorina, Ellen Hancock, and Andrea Jung, they lay it on the line as to what the aspiring female executive must do if she wants to get into the top executive echelons of Fortune 1000 companies.

At the heart of the book is advice from women who've succeeded in jobs previously held by men. Start planning your career path early and keep re-appraising it, they advise. Work as hard or harder than your peers. From Patricia Barron, formerly of Xerox: "You're always under a microscope as a woman. Your challenge is to communicate how you're up to the task."

Get into a line position as soon as possible. Take some calculated risks on career shifts, inside and outside the company. Learn how to get tangible results and get recognized for them. From Marie Knowles of Atlantic Richfield: "A broad base of activities means they can't put you in a cubbyhole, which happens more with women than men."

Seek out and use mentors carefully as you go along. Volunteer for hard jobs and never give up. Be competitive, but don't alienate your colleagues. From Nancy Karch, formerly of McKinsey & Co.: "Early in my career I spoke out without getting input and didn't realize I was insulting people. I would have been more influential faster if I hadn't been so feisty."

All of this is superior advice. It's what I tried to tell my students--men and women--at Columbia Business School. It's what Jack Welch tells his young GE managers at Crotonville. It's what progressive, development-minded CEOs are saying to their "up and comers."

The only difference is that Wellington and Spence--with good justification--recommend women choose to work for companies where the glass ceiling has already been cracked. From Ellen Hancock of Exodus Communications: "You can't change a whole company. You want to be working on your own style and skills, not fighting the culture." Some male bastions are simply not worth the effort--at this time.

They also grant that some highly talented women don't want to be CEOs badly enough, don't want to transfer to different cities and countries, and would really prefer staff jobs. (They didn't press the point, but this is true of a great many men as well.)

Several of the chapters were particularly well done. The authors' advice on networking was right on the nose and their level-headed approach to mentoring, the book's theme, was logical and sound. The chapter on the differences between working for a corporation and a "firm" was most enlightening. I enjoyed reading the backgrounds of the women interviewed for the book and seeing how they varied their careers as the situations changed.

From a CEO's standpoint, this book brings home the need to have a clearly articulated and fully understood policy as to how women (not to mention minorities) are recruited, developed, reviewed, mentored, and made an integral part of the organizational team. It's a thoughtful, well-written effort that will help CEOs of any gender fine-tune executive development programming and benefit from the increasing number of topflight female executives now on the rise in America's corporations.

Formerly CEO of F.&M. Schaefer (1972- 1977), Robert W. Lear is chairman of CE's advisory board. He taught at Columbia Business School, where he was executive-in-residence until June 1999. He has been a director of many companies and is on the advisory boards of five small firms. He is a partner of Lear, Yavitz and Associates corporate governance consultants.