Lean In Isn't Working. Now What?

I'm Sam Grobart and I'm Rebecca Greenfield. Four years ago, the topic of conversation in this nation was a book by Facebook CEO Cheryl Sandberg called Lean In, Yes, So Lean, And it was a huge sensation And the basic message of the book was that women need to understand all the forces working against them in the workplace and then lean up against them. So you don't speak up in meetings, for example, women tend not to do that, but you need to do that because that's how you're going to

get ahead. Or you don't want to ask for the raise, but you need to ask for the raise because that's how you're going to get paid more or equal to what the men are making. And that was the general theme of the book. And like many ideas in this nation and in this world, there was a usual cycle to this. There was an initial excitement and embrace of the idea, and then Yeah, there was a pretty pretty

huge backlash. There were two main criticisms of lean In the first one was that it put a lot of the responsibility on women to do all of the work. It's like the you know you're fat because you don't work out enough now because the food that you eat is made terrible by big companies exactly different, um. And

so that was one criticism. And then the other criticism was that Cheryl Sandberg was elitist, um, and that the book was elitist, and that when it talked about working women, it was only talking about a specific type of working woman, white educated, really educated. Um. One thing that you know, Cheryl Enberg is also a white woman, and she was married, and a lot of women in this country who are working aren't. That that's correct, And she's quite wealthy. Yes,

So that was where the two main criticisms. Still, it was a huge conversation that a lot of people found refreshing and needed to hear. I think, yeah, I definitely raised topics that needed to be discussed. Even if there was disagreement over what the proper remedy was, it wouldn't be a big sensation. I don't think if people it didn't have in a hot moment for a lot of working women, and certainly a lot of people I knew

found the advice very refreshing. Since then, Chellete Sandberg herself has come out with some articles and statements walking back some of the things that she said in lean In. So there's been a lot of research that's come out, specifically as a result of the book, showing that lean in can backfire for women in what kind of ways does that happen? So we talked about this on the meetings episode that we did. But when women speak up in meetings, they are judged more harshly and negatively than men.

Sure there, Yeah, exactly. Another piece of research was found that when women do ask for raises, they're a lot less likely to get them. It seems like a case of the system, which is the mail dominated. And when we talk about this, I mean I say mail dominated because the workplace has been mail dominated since the beginning of time. So it's only very recently that we've begun to sort of poke at it and try to change it. But when the system is challenged, it just it rejects it.

It says no. I mean, so I can get away with it because I am part of that system, but you don't have that privilege as the system views it. Yeah, it's really frustrating to say like, Okay, I'm going to play by your game. I'm going to play by all the rules, and then only to be those aren't your rules. Oh no, actually that's not those are my rules. And as an ambitious person who wants to succeed, you know, you're not trying to knock anybody else down. You just

want to get paid this. You want to get that money. I want to get that money. I'm not trying to keep anybody else from getting their money. But yes, and then on the elitism thing, it was really interesting. Cheryl Sandberg lost her husband. He died suddenly, and she wrote a Facebook post talking about how she didn't realize how hard it was to lean in when you're a single mom. Interesting. Yeah,

so lean in isn't really working right. The idea was proposed, it's been examined, it's not quite the solution perhaps we were all looking for. Now we have another proposal from former Wall Street executive and women's finance advocate Sally Crawcheck, who has a new book out called Own It. Sally, thanks so much for joining us today. Let me jump right in with a question, can you sort of help

plot the journey from lean in to own it? Well, first of all, i'd say len In did, and Cheryl Sandberg you is her purchaed Facebook and the credibility and profile she'd built to start an amazing national conversation about the advancement of women at work. What I would say with own it is that we look at the next chapter, which is hold on a second. We've had lots of conversation. We've had some progress, but we really haven't had as

much progress as I think we might have expected. We can talk about the election, but we're really but even before the election, even before particularly with regards to business, if we actually go to the industry that I grew up in Wall Street financial services, would you believe that gender diversity is less farther forward? That was I don't know if that was grammatically correct, but has actually gone

backwards in the past decade. There were more women in senior roles before the financial crisis than there are today. Pretty unexpected. I think that is also because of all the national conversation about leaning in and just knowing person only so many strong, successful women it's hard to believe that, but the numbers that don't lie like that is the truth. Like the workplace has not involved as much as we wanted to. What do you attribute that that sort of

backwards momentum to. I'd say for that industry, it is not unusual for an industry that goes through crisis to go backwards in terms of gender diversity. And some could say it's circling the wagons. What I observed was, Hey, we'd love to put Susie or Jose or Jamal or anyone else who's different from the majority of us in that role, but you know, we're going through a financial crisis, and you know we can't take that risk. Is going

to have to take a break for a minute. You know, it's just not as important this, of course, despite the research that is clear, and I mean clear, crystal clear, that diversity of all kinds, gender diversity in this case leads to superior performance, leads to higher returns on equity, lower risk, greater innovation, greater client focus, greater employee engagement.

I mean, you name it. Having people of difference, whatever kind of difference in a room, leads to better decision making and ultimately to your point, affects the bottom line in a positive way. This isn't just diversity for diversity, saying absolutely, and you know we are you know, we like to believe this country is want of equal opportunity. We can debate that as well, but it really is in this case a business issue. And you tell me

you're a mail I am. Do you think the financial crisis would have been worse if there were more women on those trading floors? Worse if there's been more people of difference. In fact, there's research in the book that says the homogeneity can lead to miss pricing and markets because we trust each other, right, rather than you know what, I'm gonna really think this through. Nobody's really tricking the

balloon there. Nobody's saying, wait a second, my experience is something different than yours, and I'm going to bring together so I don't know you that well, So I'm going to check those prices right as opposed to hey, come and we both go to the same restricted golf club. So part of the point I try to make of the book is having been one of not very many

women on Wall Street. Really that's an extreme right. That was a very male business very male oriented, and not only do we not get the returns from diversity, but we had a financial crisis, and those things I believe have some relationship. But industries that aren't in crisis also

aren't that accepting of women. Well, have not had as much progress in closing the gender pay gap, which depending on which research study you look at, will take eighty one years, a hundred eighteen years, a hundred eighty eight years, whichever one it is, or getting more women into senior roles or getting more women onto boards. Yeah, it's not great.

I was just looking actually, in preparation for this segment, an older newspiece that Pinterest actually at one point had made a goal to hire of its engineers as women, to hire women for thirty percent of their engineering again grammar, they missed it. They came in at like twenty four, and their solution was that they were going to reset the goal to twenty to change your goal it. Yeah, let's move the goal posts and we'll not do as

much work in the future. And so there's always this sort of starting off with big expectations, lots of rhetoric, and then kind of backtracking hard. It's hard. It is look I'll tell you as as a manager I've been a manager, it is so much easier to manage people who are just like me, And it's so much easier

to tell people to act in a certain way. And in the case of American business, that certain way has been both the advice women have gotten from so many advice books out there and the performance reviews I've gotten over the years, is to be confident, to be strong, to be assertive, to ask for the raise, to raise your hand for the promotion before you are ready. In fact, the much of the advice could be boiled down to

act like a man. Yeah. And so it's just easier to manage people who are like you, and it's just easier to tell people who are not like you to act like you. So to me, your book seems to have kind of two messages. One of the messages to the businesses that feminine qualities and women in the workplace it's going to be good for your business. And we've just talked about that. Well, it already is, according to the research. And then I believe as business is changing

that it's going to become more so. I mean, back in the day when no one had any information right, it was. You know, when I ran Merrill Lynch, I had the clients survey. No one else could afford to do it. Today everyone's got the information. Information is cheap, So all of a sudden, that command and control that Jack Welchian approach to business may not be as valuable as the ability to see things holistically, which women can do.

So the second message that I took away from your book was that for women, working women that they don't have to act like men, that they should act like more like women because that is an asset. Can you talk about that? This is what you know when you actually sit back and look at how much power we have as women today. We direct consumer spending. We control five trillion dollars of investable assets we jointly control with

our spouses and partners an other six trillion. We're going to inherit the forty trillion dollars of wealth transfer over the next few decades. We are half the population, we are more than half the workforce. The qualities we bring to the workplace make them better. So why do I have tack like a man? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, And what I think is really exciting. That's happening now that was very different from ten years ago, even five years ago. Is this power I have I can use now? Before

I was oh, look there's a Tackie Carl Jrs. Hamburger commercial with the woman with you know, I don't think I'm gonna buy a Hamburger. Today, they're actually services where you can go online and see how companies are impacting the environment. You can see you can go to the grocery store and see how the companies from which you buy are advancing women. We can invest in companies their mutual funds now that in which you can invest in

companies that advance women to a greater degree. But the biggie, and I think it's an important one, is that back when I was younger and the company wasn't treating women well, or me well, or people well, I could stay. I could go without much information to another company, you know, talk to a few of my friends. Have a glass of wine. How do they do it over there? What's their maternity policy? I don't know right, I don't know what it is. That Okay, fine, I'll go or I

could go home. Today I can still do those things, but with much more information I can go to websites that will tell me everybody's maternity leaf policy. I can go to websites that crowdsource company called Cultures. Or I can start my own business because the price of starting your business is plummeting. Or I can put together a nonconventional career path. I have so many more options today, so I can use this power. So I really want to get to the part about starting your own business.

But before we get there, are there ways you suggest women should work in the workplace, so you know, like negotiating or asking for the promotion that will be better than acting like a man. Well, I'll tell you. In the irony of so much of this, and in the shame of so much of this, is that when we women do act like men, the research is clear that there's a backlash that you know, she's she's too masculine

and I too aggressive. There's an anecdote in the book when I was running Smith Barney and we were doing the managing director promotions, and we promoted a gentleman because he was aggressive, because he broke eggs. We need that, we need someone to break eggs, And then the woman who was next broke eggs. Such amenity and aggressive. Oh she's aggressive, right, We you know we were collegial. We don't need that, and so we recommended she get a coach.

And it was It wasn't me, I'm embarrassed to tell you, wasn't even ahead of my hr. But it was a gentleman who a few minutes later said, wait, look at what we just did. So what we talk about, what I talk about in the book is a term I really like, which is the courageous conversation. Each of us can have a courageous conversation, some like Cheryl Sandburg, who wrote lean in kind of a big courageous conversation. Others like in that room is a courageous conversation of do

we realize what we just did? Or hey, Joe, you interrupted Susie six different times in that meeting, but you never interrupted Jimmy. Right. So also in that performance review or that when you're asking for the raise, recognizing and saying before we start, I just this is going to sound a little dope, but we all know that women who ask sometimes are viewed as aggressive. But I'm about to ask, And the research shows that by putting that on the table and saying it, you pretty quickly negate it.

You've been talking about issues within a sort of more conventional workplace. But as you've alluded to, as Becca you were referring to earlier, you also talk about starting your own business, going independently. What are some of the strategies that women can use that may be different than what men might do? Similar, how do you see a woman

who is looking to be independent of a corporation proceeding? So, first of all, let's acknowledge the less than positive, which is adventure capitalist Today do not give women the same amount of funding or resources that they give men. And depending on which year and which study, women run businesses get three percent of venture capital funding or six percent

or eight percent or some ridiculously small number. The good news is that as the price of starting businesses has plummeted, the price of technology has plummeted, the price of renting office space has gone from you have to have a long term lease to who we works, business travel, you can do a video conference, full time employees, you can hire some of those freelancers, and so you really able are able today to start businesses, some businesses with a

smaller amount of capital or a small amount of capital, and so what we're seeing, which is terrific, is the infrastructure around starting businesses and particularly women owned businesses, is blossoming, and women are able to are more successful in things like crowdfunding than than mentor and so there are other means of getting capital, but some of it is the

old fashioned bootstrapping. Now, what I've done with l Vest, which is I think a really exciting business is a digital investment platform for women, is I saw what I think is a substantial market opportunity. It's probably no coincidence that Wall streeting the investing industry are mostly male and that women don't invest. Those potential customers and clients don't invest to the same degree that men do. And so what we did was saw the opportunity, did tons of

research with women about why they don't invest. Essentially, it was, hey, they tell them me to act like a man at work. They tell them me to invest like a man over here with my money, and spending the time with them to determine what it is they're looking for, not trying to change the women, but really trying to change the investing offering. And so you know, as I talked to female entrepreneur apter, female entrepreneur, apter female entrepreneur, and there's

so many more of them. Now. What they're saying is, perhaps ironically, perhaps happily, the fact that business is so male means that they're missing some of these female markets, whether it's a rent the runway or a dry bar or the real real you know, business after business are seeing opportunities that are available that the guys are just looking right past. Do you think that the ultimate solution for women to find only succeed. I mean, you climbed so far within the field that you were in on

Wall Street, only to be eventually knocked down. I'm really fine, I'm starting to my own thing. Is that is that kind of the way forward for women? I think it is a way forward because here here's what I think.

I think that if you were a company that historically did not treat women well and there was very little penalty for it, and that today again we can as women see that our company is not treating us well, see that we're not getting the promotion, that our friends are not getting the promotion, that that dope is getting the promotion, and we can start our own businesses. To a greater degree, we can go to other companies with more information. To a greater degree, we can go on

social and share this with our friends. To a greater degree. We can not buy from those companies, and we cannot invest in those companies. So you can see not tomorrow, not the next day, not the third day, but you can see where companies who are going to get it, and there are some who are will be an employer of choice. Women will buy increasingly from them, women will invest increasingly in them. And those that don't, well, all of a sudden, another quarter just wasn't quite as good.

They miss by penny, and the next quarter they missed, buy a couple of pennies, and they missed by you know, a few more, and that they will get hollowed out and won't see some of these big opportunities from these massive markets. Another thing that you really try to hammer home in your book is the importance of women just having their own money. And you say money has power. Can you explain why you find that so important? Can I stand up and jump and scream and such money

is power. We live in a capitalist society. I can't say it enough. Um, Then I will further say that women will not be fully equal with men until we are financially equal with men, that we will not have the full range of choice is in our lives until we have the same amount of money as they do.

I mean, think about it. I call investing because there's a gender investing gap in this country that cost some women as much as the gender pay gap, but costs some women hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars over the course of their lives. Do you feel better? Are you more able to start the business you're dreaming about if you have more money or less? Are you able to leave the relationship with the and our partner

who you're not so crazy about anymore? If you have more money or less, do you even feel better about walking into your boss's office to ask for the promotion, the raise, the overseas assignment to move you to a new department if you have more money or less. The answer for all of this is more and we've identified over at l US. We actually have an e book that we put out called Mind the Gap. We've identified six or seven money gaps. The gender investing gap I

talked about in the book. There's a gender pay gap, there's a gender work achievement gap, there's a gender debt gap, takes us longer pay off our debt, gender expense gap, gender funding gap. They're all of these and these can cost women the group of them millions of dollars, and it changes the texture and the complexion of our lives in the context of a of a domestic partnership of marriage. What have you? I get the feeling you might be more of a separate checking account fan ab so loutly

when not necessarily separate checking account. I'm all for combining the expenses and paying for the expenses on based on the ratio of your earnings, so if one earns more, they pay more for the expenses and the other. But I'm a big fan of keeping investment separate. Behalf of or just under half of marriages in divorce, I went through one. I thought we were going to be married until the end of time. He and my friend did not have that same point of view. And you know,

I honestly never imagine it could happen to me. But when it does, trying to figure out where the money is is a poor time to do it. In addition, we women live, depending on the piece of research, five six, eight years longer than men. I can't tell you how many of my friends I've seen trying to figure out the money in the aftermath of their spouses passing away again another not great time to a great time? Where's the key to the you know to thee, where's where's

the will? And look, these are hard, hard things to talk about, but of women manage their money on their own at some point in their lives, and so having knowledge of it and control over it is important, and having more of it by closing some of these gender gaps is important as well. I have one final question, what is the number one piece of advice you can give for owning it? I think the number one piece of advice is to have the confidence that we we

as women bring great things to the workforce. Um, we as women, the research is clear, make businesses better. We as women today have more options than we've ever had, and to recognize that and act upon it, and recognize that we have degrees of freedom that our mothers and grandmothers didn't have, that we don't have to play the game the men's way all the time, and then in fact, playing the game the men's way can lead to inferior

business results. But more importantly, acting like something you're not. Day after day after day, acting like a man is exhausting and can drive us out of the workforce. And so I think just having that confidence and really having joy in work and recognizing that we can have a positive impact, make a difference. Have some fun, not every day, but have some fun, have an impact, I think are the messages I'd love people to take away. All right, well,

thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for having me. So, Becca, are you ready to own it? I'm ready to own it. I think that practically speaking, she has a lot of good practical advice for someone like me who wants to be successful and make money and rise up in the ranks and all that. That's all happening for you already, Yes, because I've I've been owning it. But I think from a big picture standpoint, owning it, like lean in, is

just going to run up against a wall. Eventually. Maybe owning it will be seen as aggressive or pushy or whatever, and we'll joke about it and it will become a meme and it will be sort of silly. Right, And as long as we're working within this system that is working against certain people, the individual actions just they're not gonna get you that far, which Sally knows from absolutely. Yeah. No, she's not being like utopian about this. But that's why I wanted to push her to say that starting your

own business is a good solution in making your own systems. Yeah. I think that once we see more successful companies that are run by women, that will begin to actually perhaps change the tenor of this conversation, because as it remains, while there are certainly some stand out examples, the majority of businesses are still run by men, and most of

the big ones and so forth. I had a thought about something that she was saying in the conversation when she talked about courageous conversations, and this goes out to all the fellas out there, Hey, dudes, you can own

it to. The truth is that if you are a man and you care about these issues, and you should, then it is incumbent upon you two identify situations or actions that are discriminatory, that are unfair toward women or towards other people if it's another issue, Because the fact remains that as a white male, I have the opportunity to open my fat mouth whenever I want, and people generally will listen to me like on average, I mean, maybe not me personally because they know I'm sort of

a jackass, but demographically, I am in a lot of those rooms. I am in those meetings, I am talking to that leadership, and I can do so unquestioned. So I have to be sure that I am representing those interests and the things I care about, because it's quite possible that somebody might, in a rather cynical way, might hear you Becca say something and be like, whatever, that's just that upity woman who you know is all angry

all the time. But if they hear it from me, they might actually go, oh, I haven't really fun about that.

You know, Sam's a pretty cool dude, and so forth. Yeah, And that seeks to another thing that she was talking about that struck me, where it's like she rattles off all this research that shows that having diversity, gender diversity, all types of diversity is good for workplaces, and she argues that things that women are better at are going to be helpful to business, and that's all great, and that's all been true for a while, but the people who are empowered don't want to change and don't want

to hear it. Well, they don't. I think I'm not speaking to any specific person, but I mean generally, I would assume that, you know, they don't want people who aren't like them. It's just easier. It's just exactly like you know, it's like if we all went to the same kinds of schools and we all came from the same parts of the world, and we all make the same kind of money and all that, you know them, that's just stuff we don't have to think about. It's

I mean, on some level, it's requires more effort. It takes work to hire different kinds of people and to work alongside them and understand where they're coming from, and that is all necessary. But you know, people are lazy and I benefit in this case, it's something that benefits them, So why in the world would they ever change exactly? So that's depressing. It is depressing that. That's why then you have to shift the game and build your own business.

Build your own business, make your own money, and men, if you care what you should own it. Yeah, speak up, and now it's time for half baked takes, fake takes. Becca, Are you ready with a sort of semiformed opinion. I would like to reclaim the Sunday evening from what are known as the Sundays scaries. So Sunday you're dreading Monday. Sunday is half the weekend. It's unfair that it becomes

this horrible thing we don't want. I found recently that in order to feel less upset about impending work day Monday doom, I try to make plans for Sunday evening, much like I would make plans after work on a Tuesday. Sure you got work the next day on Tuesday exactly, but before I would just say like, oh, Sunday, I need to do laundry, cooked, dinner, chill. No, don't do that, Go do something power through, power through so yeah, like get a drink, go see a show, lean, lean in,

own your Sunday Sunday. Yeah. So that's that's what I have been doing, and I think it's great. That's awesome. I wish I could do that with two kids at home. I can't really be like I'm heading out. Yeah checking, sorry, checking my single no kid privilege. There we go. I'll use it, truly, no honestly, to everyone out there, please use it as long as you can. Yeah, what is

your unformed half opinion for this week. Well, Becca, I have discovered a great new place to go and do work if I'm not in the office and I don't want to be at home on It's a I don't know if you've ever heard of them. This is a small furniture retailer there from Sweden. Um Ikea, Yes, I've read ia. Okay, So here's the deal. All Ikeas have a cafeteria, if I may say, a pretty awesome one because you are delicious. They have lots of other things.

But all Ikea is also now have free WiFi so long as you sign up for their like frequent Shopper card, which is free and you may as well do it anyway, and my wife has actually started doing this. She will go to an Ikea with her laptop. There are power outlets everywhere, there's decent coffee to be had. If you're hungry,

you get up, you walk over. If you do this during the week, by the way, remember that an Ikea during the week is a ghost town, so it's nothing like when you go on the weekends, and it's quiet and if you get bored you can kind of like go walk around a little bit and check out, you know, like my beautiful four square foot home or whatever, and it turns out to be a really pleasing and productive time. You have to live close enough to an Ikea to

make it, I think so. I think that if we're talking about a pretty extensive travel time, it might not make it worth it, But otherwise you may want to go check it out. I'm into this. Are like alternative places that have free WiFi where you can sit and

do work. Because Starbucks are your local cool cafe is always going to be crowded, run the table's wobble and they don't have enough plugs right or as I found, like if you go to the library, somewhere along the way, no talking in the library fell by the wayside, and now libraries are like, hey, let's all just hang out and have a really great time at the library. No, I kea got it, love it, check it out all right? And that was some half baked takes. Hath baked takes.

Thank you for listening. If you like what you're hearing, please feel free to rate and review our show on iTunes. We definitely read them. We've been getting some from you recently and we really appreciate it. And you can find me on Twitter. I'm at rs Greenfield and I am at Sam Grosbart. By the way, if you have any half baked takes of your own, please tweet at us. We will be sure to use them on the show.

And this week's show was produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson and the head of Podcasts is Alec McCabe. And we will see you next week. So long. Yeah, she'saw top going with the end and she's like, I'm going to become a weekend the only way out of this date