Lean Out Book Review

Marissa Orr wrote her book Lean Out based on a series of lectures she used to do on the side when she was working at Google and Facebook.

She’d heard the company state they wanted to fix the gender gap, and there were a lot of seminars and people choosing to talk about things.

But Marissa was dissatisfied in seeing any true changes made. Instead, she felt like the people who should be leading the charge were more interested in the power of having an important cause.

This book was a fascinating look at women and men in industry and really got my brain thinking.

The book opens with Marissa’s story about how she was terminated from Faceook after eighteen months because of a seemingly innocent email. She had just started at Facebook, and took an opportunity to be bold and reach out to Sheryl Sandberg to meet before a women’s conference.

The meeting went well. Unfortunately, someone that Marissa needed to work with felt threatened by that action, and proceeded to get Marissa terminated. Sadly, she succeeded.

I’ll let you read it for yourself.

I was positively shocked by the whole story. I couldn’t believe that a company could let that happen. And I really was saddened by women treating one another so poorly.

The intro was included to give we readers a true sense of who Marissa is. The rest of the book evaluates her examination of how women are evaluated and some of the stories we’ve heard for years.

What Are the Real Answers to the Big Questions

Have you ever heard that women lack confidence and that’s why we don’t succeed climbing the corporate ladder?

There are many of these “conventional wisdom” tenets that are concluded from poor data gathering.

Are We Lambs Who Should Be Wolves?

There is a belief that women are trained in school to sit quietly and do their work. We’re not to interrupt. We’re not to disagree.

And so we’ve never learned how to speak up in the workplace. And those that do are considered “bossy” or “pushy.”

So therefore, we need to speak up more, right?

Well, maybe not. Maybe women, like men, don’t really care enough about the job. Maybe they’re happier being quiet and just working.

Marissa delved into the fact that most working women actually don’t talk about their struggle with being called bossy.

We were already the CEO’s of our households and often felt unappreciated for our efforts, so we were ambivalent about seeking promotions; it seemed like more responsibility for even less acknowledgement.

Marissa said that this whole belief that there’s something wrong with us for not having ambition is the problem. It makes it sound like we’re inferior when we’re not. And trying to force people to be ambitious when they aren’t is not empowering.

Do We Really Get the Choice?

One part of Lean In that I thought was interesting was the quote by the Rockefeller president Judith Rodin: “My generation fought so hard to give all of you choices. We believe in choices. But choosing to leave the workforce was not the choice we thought so many of you would make.”

So it makes one wonder if we are truly supporting in having a choice?

Sheryl Sandberg has often said that fear is the root of the barriers that women face.

But if we step back and ask the question that Marissa did, not many of us would want to become the CEO of a multinational conglomerate or be on the board of a Wall Street hedge fund.

Most of us are looking for different dreams.

Marissa quoted a McKinsey study Women in the Workplace. What was fascinating was that men and women answered about the same for top reasons in not wanting to be a senior executive.

• I wouldn’t be able to balance family and work commitments (42% women, 42% men)
• Too much politics (39% women, 40% men)
• I am not interested in that type of work (35% women, 37% men)

This fascinated me seeing these numbers. Is it what you expected?

And women today do have a lot of opportunities to start their own business. I’d be interested in learning how many left the corporate world to do that. Wouldn’t you?

Are We Really Less Confident?

Confidence in women is misunderstood.

Marissa quoted a study by Ehrlinger and Dunning (from Cornell University). They asked students if they would be interested in participating in a contest on the topic of scientific reasoning.

While 71% of the men signed up, only 49% of the women signed up.

Their conclusion?

Women were less confident.

Not once did they ask the students why they didn’t want to. Maybe she needed to go study for a test. We’ll never know because of the poor data collection and improper conclusions.

People Are Blaming the System, but Is That the Real Problem?

The most successful people were part of a successful team. And the five key ingredients for a good team are:

• Psychological safety
• Dependability
• Structure and clarity (are we clear on everyone’s goals, roles, and expectations)
• Meaning of work (it it personally important)
• Impact of work (do we believe it’s going to make an impact)

But unfortunately, the current corporate system is set up to promote hard competition (I win, you lose), and poorly defined roles, and expectations. Most people don’t believe their work does make an impact.

And we aren’t rewarded in ways that are meaningful to us.

We need to move the whole system rather than tell women they should lean in and be more aggressive.

Are You Motivated?

Studies have shown that over 80% of people are mentally checked out at work. They’re not motivated to want to do their best work.

Creativity is misunderstood and often quashed.

This cannot be good for anyone.

Marissa looked at the creativity of early startups. They weren’t tied down with all the structure of a standard corporation. Even the greats like Pixar and Google eventually had to become more structured.

Usually people in power are resistant to new ideas because they want to hold on to their power and continue to look good.

Google had a culture that embraced failure but often would make the mistake of embracing the failure without learning the lesson.

My Final Thoughts

This book had me fully engaged. I loved Lean In when it came out. I thought the idea of men taking more of a role in the home was terrific. And that there should be simple rules and guidelines for us to follow to achieve success.

Lean Out gets you thinking from a different perspective.

It’s not that having rules and guidelines are bad or that we’ll never have them because of the systems in place.

I really appreciated her point that competition isn’t right and collaboration isn’t wrong. Imagine a world where both systems were adopted to have a win-win for both the company and the employees.

There’s a lot more in the book than I can discuss here. You can find it online or at your local bookstore. If you’ve read it, let me know what you thought in the comments.