I was frustrated for a long time with my colleagues in the business school world and with so many management authors who didn't really see themselves as innovators. They were glorified journalists.

Large organizations don't worship shareholders or customers, they worship the past. If it were otherwise, it wouldn't take a crisis to set a company on a new path.

All too often, legacy management practices reflexively perpetuate the past - by over-weighting the views of long-tenured executives, by valuing conformance more highly than creativity and by turning tired industry nostrums into sacred truths.

Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today.

We live in a democracy, and people are free to sometimes choose the wrong leader.

So I just got on the phone and the engineer just patched me in and I did reports. I'd get a community leader and bring him to the phone, call up the station and do an interview over the phone with the guy.

As more women 'lean in' and we collectively continue to fight sexism, there's another barrier to progress that hasn't been addressed: Many men who would like to see more women leaders are afraid to speak up about it.

I took a gamble to exercise leadership without losing my feminine nature.