Lean In

Friday I had the opportunity to see Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg speak at the Harvard Club of Boston. She was in town to promote her new book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Let me preface my comments with a preface: 1. Lean In the book had its roots in Sheryl’s 2010 TED talk. I’ve watched it a few times and shared it with a few important young women and teenagers in my life. I even referenced it in a talk I gave at Digitas once. But I hadn’t followed the more recent discussion around the subsequent book because, well, I’m busy. Much as I liked the original talk, I had encoded Sheryl’s book as the kind of gender-specific discussion that annoys me. As my friend Erika Napoletano wrote last week, “It’s time for the conversation to shift away from gender and to lean towards talent.” Yeah. What […]