1. Operators, Not Ornaments - Where Diversity Drives Profit
The night the business turned wasn’t the night the numbers changed. It was the night Miriama asked a question no one else ever did.
It was 8:42 p.m., takeaway noodles cooling on the boardroom table. For months, the company - a Kiwi consumer brand you’d recognise in any Countdown aisle, had chased volume with discounts and “just one more promo.” Stock moved, margin didn’t. People were tired.
Miriama had started as COO two weeks earlier. She listened to the promo plan, took a breath, and said, “If we stopped bribing customers tomorrow, which product would they still choose and why?” Silence. Then, slowly, a few truths fell out. One SKU people loved was always out of stock by Thursday. Another “pet” product burned time and cash but had exactly three superfans, all in the office.
By 10 p.m., the plan was different. Kill the pet. Give the hero product priority run-time. Lift price a little, add value a lot (better packaging seal/simpler instructions). Three quarters later, revenue was only modestly higher - but profit was finally real. No rebrand. No epic restructure. Just better Tuesday decisions made by someone who’d changed the questions.
That’s the heart of this piece - women in the cockpit of the company, not on the poster. Operators, not ornaments.
The problem (told straight)
Most firms polish diversity where it’s safest - the board photo. Boards matter, but they mostly watch the business. The executive team runs it - price, product, hiring, which projects live or die. If you diversify the room that observes and ignore the room that decides, the numbers barely twitch.
Here’s the muffled bit we’re going to say out loud - the unique contribution many women bring as operators isn’t about “soft skills.” It’s about choice-making under real constraints - spotting the customer’s real job-to-be-done, killing sacred cows sooner, insisting on value over optics and pulling quiet talent into noisy rooms.
The data (keep it human)
You don’t need a white paper to get the gist - companies with more women on the executive team are more likely to outperform on profit than those that simply add women to the board. Why? Because executives decide what ships, what’s priced, who owns the P&L and what gets binned. Boards can challenge - operators change the Tuesday plan.
If you want a global proof-point, look at AMD under Lisa Su. The turnaround story isn’t “representation for representation’s sake.” It’s a leader who made a few big, brave, correct bets and built a team that executed them. From chips to chutney, the pattern rhymes, when you change who runs the work, you change what work gets done.
The case (two scenes you’ll recognise)
Scene one - the plant at 6 a.m.
Before taking the job, Miriama did a quiet lap of the factory. She asked the line lead, “What slows you down every day that nobody upstairs seems to care about?” The answer wasn’t glamorous - labels that tore, a pallet size that didn’t match the forklift tines, a barcode that misread on damp film. She fixed the label contract in week one, re-spec’d pallets in week two, and watched throughput tick up without a single motivational speech. Unique contribution - see the invisible cost in plain sight.
Scene two - the sales meeting that didn’t end in a discount
When a big-box retailer pushed for a price cut, she asked the commercial lead to bring three options that weren’t “drop the price.” They came back with (a) a bundled trial-size that boosted basket value, (b) a store demo weekend staffed by the production team (“teach, don’t hawk”), and (c) a 48-hour “in full” delivery guarantee on hero SKUs. They picked (b) and (c). Full-price win rate rose. Unique contribution - invent better trades than “cheaper.”
Notice what’s missing? Grandstanding. Spreadsheets-as-theatre. The point isn’t that women are magically wiser. It’s that when you put capable women in charge of money and moments, different questions get asked and better answers show up.
The playbook (how to move women into P&L, and make it stick)
1) Name the cockpit, then open the door.
Write down the five decisions that move your month - price, product mix, hiring, investment, kill list. If women aren’t at least 30–40% of the people making those calls, your diversity is decorative. Fix the invite list this week.
2) Move from “programme” to P&L slice
Stop giving women projects. Give them profit. A region, a product line, a channel -authority over price, mix, spend and the right to say “no.” Announce it, then back the first three tough calls publicly so everyone understands the new gravity.
3) Build two bridges that actually create CEOs.
Staff role → Sales/Commercial (own revenue).
Staff role → Operations/Product (own delivery and cost).
Make each a six-month tour with real targets and a named mentor who opens doors, not just “checks in.”
4) Change the question set in meetings.
Adopt Miriama’s favourite four -
If the discount vanished tomorrow, what would customers still choose and why?
What’s the dumb little thing that slows us down every day? Fix one now.
What could we kill that nobody would miss?
If we had to defend this decision to a customer at 9 a.m., would it sound fair?
Put these on the wall. Use them every Tuesday.
5) Rediscover your quiet talent.
Run a 30-minute “Show us the fix” forum each week where anyone can bring a tiny improvement and try it for a fortnight. Women who’ve been trained to wait for permission will take the mic when the forum is safe and the timebox is short. You’ll find three Miriamas you didn’t know you had.
6) Swap ‘leadership presence’ for receipts.
Talent reviews should read like evidence - outcomes delivered, complexity simplified, team health, integrity moments (“stopped the shipment when the batch felt wrong”). The person with the best receipts gets the bigger slice - no vibe scoring.
7) Celebrate the best “no.”
Every quarter, honour the bravest kill. The product you didn’t build. The partner you walked from. The promo you declined. When you reward judgment, women who’ve been trained to keep the peace will feel licensed to protect the margin.
8) Watch the dials that prove this isn’t theatre.
Full-price win rate
Gross margin without promos
New-product revenue as % of sales
Cycle time from idea to first paid use
Regretted attrition in mission-critical teams
If these aren’t moving after six months, you changed faces, not decisions.
A closing picture to keep
The night the numbers finally turned, nothing “inspirational” happened. Miriama didn’t give a speech. She didn’t launch a programme. She changed three Tuesday decisions: which product gets run-time, who gets the P&L slice, and what question starts the meeting.
That’s what great looks like when women lead as operators. Less noise. More nerve. Not ornaments on a governance brochure - people on the money. Put them there, back their calls, and watch your business start choosing courage over discounts and value over volume. The story that follows isn’t academic. It’s your next quarter.
If you like to discuss how you can adapt your business to benefit from the value women so often bring to the decision-making process, let’s talk.
john.luxton@regenerationhq.co.nz
www.regenerationhq.co.nz/contact
+64 275 665 682