No short cuts, no substitute for hard work

 Lynne Du Toit, CEO of Eurolab and one of the few women leaders in South Africa’s pharmaceutical industry, shares her story about building her career in the face of the whirlwind of work demands and family responsibilities. 

After qualifying as a Registered Nurse in 1980 and then enrolling for a further year to qualify as a midwife, I worked in a predominantly all-women environment where the trainee doctors and academic professors were mostly men.

I entered the corporate world as a medical rep in the early 1980s, and the situation was much the same – medical reps were mostly women and the management teams primarily men!

I realise that much of this had to do with the added roles and responsibilities that many women take on as wife, housekeeper and mother while growing a family. Men, on the other hand, retain the roles of provider and breadwinner.

40 years on – more women in more senior positions 

How the tables have turned over the four decades that I have worked in the medical industry! More and more women are rising into more senior positions, and I salute every one of them – especially the women I have the privilege of working with at Eurolab every day.

My current position has also afforded me the honour of getting to know like-minded women in both professional and corporate capacities. They keep me humble, and at the same time, they inspire me to be the best that I can be in every sphere of life.

No substitute for hard work, commitment and dedication

For both men and women, there is no substitute for hard work, commitment and dedication. There are very few instant success stories on the same level as winning the lotto! This is simply not reality.

What is reality, however, is that as you enter your career, as a woman, you will most likely still want to get married and have a family. You will still be the one who goes through pregnancy and stays at home weaning a new-born. Then, depending on what drives you, you will either be back at work after four months or you will try something new to give you the flexibility you might want in order to raise your growing family.

The risk here is that when you re-enter the corporate environment, many of the middle-to-top positions will have been taken up by the ambitious and aspirant men in the organisation.

Add this to longer hours, more travel to build relationships with customers and increase your knowledge in your field, conferences and strategy sessions which often go on long into the night and sometimes over weekends. Many women will drop out at this point if they don’t have a stable support network at home or through guilt.

Giving my all in each moment

I have had so many conversations with myself and with God about whether I would make it through this whirlwind of work demands and family responsibilities. Still, most often I would come out of these ongoing debates in my head and heart, without a clear answer, but with an earnest desire to put one foot in front of the other and give my all in the moment I was in, whether that was at work or at home.

Do I have regrets? Plenty! Mostly for the moments that I missed during my children’s growing years. Corporate companies did not see any ‘behind the scenes’ – you were an employee (man or woman), and you were tasked and measured against the results you produced.

And when you are an over-achiever (nowadays referred to as OCD), you cannot rest until the results are in. During the early years of building my career, using early mornings (2am to 4am) to catch up and plan was commonplace. This included studying, strategising sales, completing marketing assignments as well as planning school lifts, meals, uniforms, activities, care givers and camp preparation for my children while I was away.

There is just no short cut or way around it – and then, when the tea was placed on the boardroom table it was sometimes expected that, as the only woman in the room, I would be responsible to ‘serve’.

Words of women for younger women wanting to pursue a career in the medical and pharmaceutical industries

The advice I have for younger women wanting to enter and achieve in the medical industry is:

  • Decide on your motivation – is it to provide the best for your children; money and possessions; power and position; personal achievement?
  • Decide on your goals – is it middle management, senior management, executive level or shareholder level?
  • Know that there will be sacrifices to be made almost every day, mostly of your time and resources, and some will be very difficult.
  • Know that there will be obstacles requiring all of your strength and some of these will be insurmountable.
  • Know that failures will happen along the way and you will make the wrong choices.
  • Know that you will be in a constant battle with male colleagues for the ‘top spot’ and office politics will be rife.
  • Involve your family and children wherever you can in your decisions – especially when it concerns or affects them.
  • Always have a good back-up or support system that you can rely on.
  • Teach your children good values, morals and ethics – in my case Christian values.
  • Find happiness and joy in your work and your achievements – love what you do!
  • Aim to always do things better than yesterday!

Eurolab – encouraging growth at every level

At Eurolab we have created opportunity for those who want to succeed – men or women. We have provided equal opportunities based on a person’s skills, attitude and aptitude for a particular job – and have encouraged growth at every level. We involve as many of our staff in as many areas of the business as possible. Whether it be developing new strategies, marketing campaigns, new business ventures – we believe in teaching what we have learnt over the years to the next generation and empowering them to rise up to take the business to the next new and exciting level. We believe in giving them responsibility and allowing them to make mistakes and learn from them; we encourage them to share new ideas and mostly we encourage our staff to be involved in problem solving and come up with solutions.

The challenges facing women in business are enormous because of our emotional attachments – but stay humble, pray, listen and think before you speak, learn as much as you can about your business, its products, your customers and their needs and the people you work with both above and below you in order to get the best out of them to make your company successful!