“For so many women, myself included, apologies are inexorably linked with our conception of politeness. Somehow, as we grew into adults, ‘sorry’ became an entry point to basic affirmative sentences.

“True, this affliction is not exclusive to our gender. It can be found among men — in particular, British men — but it is far more stereotypical of women. So, in the words of a popular 2014 Pantene ad, why are women always apologizing?

“One commonly posited theory, which informs everything from shampoo commercials to doctoral dissertations, is that being perceived as rude is so abhorrent to women that we need to make ourselves less obtrusive before we speak up. According to a 2010 study in the journal Psychological Science, ‘women have a lower threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior,’ so are more likely to see a need for an apology in everyday situations. We are even apt to shoehorn apologies into instances where being direct is vital — such as when demanding a raise.”
Why Women Apologize and Should Stop, by Sloane Crosley, NY Times, June 23, 2015

“In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we interview Laszlo Bock, head of People Operations at Google, the company’s massive and unique human resources division. In his new book (Work Rules!) Bock explains how and why Google does what it does when it comes to everything internal, from perks and promoting to motivation and productivity. In the interview you’ll hear how the company combats confirmation bias, the halo effect, the Abilene paradox, pluralistic ignorance, survivorship bias, and more – all with a mix of behavioral science and Google’s immense power to test and re-test using its unique resources.”
YANSS 051 – How Google uses behavioral science to make work suck less, by David McRaney, You are not so Smart, June 1, 2015

“The headlines remind us whenever another woman gets the top job. Examples: GM’s Mary Barra, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, IMF head Christine Lagarde. But the fact that a great many of the women on this list are not the pointy head of the pyramid — such as Facebook’s Sandberg, Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala or Gwynne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX and Apple’s Angela Ahrendts — doesn’t dim their enormous clout. They appear on this list because they illustrate a new math– it turns out you don’t need to be No. 1 to be a Most Powerful.”
The World’s Most Powerful Women 2015, by Caroline Howard, Forbes, May 26, 2015

“Only one in three working Americans say they have a female boss. Female managers are more engaged than their male counterparts. Companies should hire and promote more female managers

“When it comes to the topic of women in management, times have changed — and so have attitudes.”
Female Bosses Are More Engaging Than Male Bosses, by Kimberly Fitch and Sangeeta Agrawal, Gallup Business Journal, May 7, 2015

1. Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model by John Mullins and Randy Komisar. This is a terrific book for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial advisers. If you love Lean Startup, you’ll love this. We both find ourselves teaching the analog, antilog, and “leap of faith” framework at least every month or two.

2. Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results by Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg. There is no shortage of creativity books in the world. Almost all of them include quick exercises that are fun to do in the moment. The strength of this book is its more robust and research-informed system for inspiring creativity. Good stuff.

3. The Complete Guide to Writing Questionnaires: How to Get Better Information for Better Decisions by David F. Harris. Again, this is not a general interest book. But if you need to write questionnaires that yield data you can trust, this is a must-read. Who knew questionnaires could go wrong in so many ways? And this book is actually more fun to read than it has any right to be. By the way, this is an expensive book and it should be; it is absurd to expect such specialized knowledge to cost the same as a Jack Reacher novel.

4. Sleeping with Your Smart Phone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work by Leslie Perlow. We are puzzled by the title and cover of this book. Do NOT buy this book because you work late and obsessively check your iPhone at night. Rather, buy this book because you want to read a brilliant case study of how to improve the performance and sustainability of a team in a high-pressure environment. Our #1 takeaway: To have outstanding team performance, the team must build self-awareness—that is, a team must be good at what it does AND be able to have a dialogue about how to get better at what it does.

5. Alpha Project Managers: What the Top 2% Know that Everyone Else Does Not by Andy Crowe. If you want a book that keeps you reading until the wee hours of the night, read Presumed Innocent. If you want a book that draws distinctions between great project managers and mediocre ones—distinctions that may surprise you—read this one. One huge “a-ha!” for us: The alpha project managers are rated much more highly by their peers on communication, even though they don’t spend any more time communicating. Want to know why? Read it.

6. Collaborative Intelligence: Using Teams to Solve Hard Problems by J. Richard Hackman. It’s all too rare to find a book that does a good job blending academic research, practical experience, and concrete examples/stories. For teamwork, this is that book. If your job requires you to assemble high-performing teams and to equip them with the right tools for success, then drop everything and spend a half day reading Hackman’s book.

7. Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. Confession: This is a technical violation of our standards on two grounds: Shafir and Chip shared the same graduate advisor so we do have a conflict of interest. Also, Scarcity does have many practical implications, but it is not a “nuts & bolts” book like the other 6. Nonetheless, rules are made to be broken, and this is a book that we find ourselves thinking about frequently. The concept of “tunneling” was a huge eye-opener for us. If you loved Thinking Fast and Slow, you’ll love this.

“If launching a store that sells only containers is any indication, Kip Tindell has always thought outside the box.

The 61-year-old chairman and CEO of The Container Store founded the quirky retailer in 1978 with two friends and an initial investment of $35,000. Today, it has 6,000 employees, 67 locations in the US, and annual sales of nearly $800 million.

How has a wild idea from Dallas, Texas, achieved such growth? Tindell attributes the company’s success to a few simple-yet-unexpected rules, like women make the best executives, business is personal, and companies have a moral obligation to their employees.”

“YEARS ago, while producing the hit TV series “The Shield,” Glen Mazzara noticed that two young female writers were quiet during story meetings. He pulled them aside and encouraged them to speak up more.

Watch what happens when we do, they replied.

Almost every time they started to speak, they were interrupted or shot down before finishing their pitch. When one had a good idea, a male writer would jump in and run with it before she could complete her thought.

Sadly, their experience is not unusual.”

Speaking While Female, By Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, NY Times, January 12, 2015

“A FATHER and his son are in a car accident. The father is killed and the son is seriously injured. The son is taken to the hospital where the surgeon says, ‘I cannot operate, because this boy is my son.’

“This popular brain teaser dates back many years, but it remains relevant today; 40 to 75 percent of people still can’t figure it out. Those who do solve it usually take a few minutes to fathom that the boy’s mother could be a surgeon. Even when we have the best of intentions, when we hear ‘surgeon’ or ‘boss,’ the image that pops into our minds is often male.

“Our culture’s strong gender stereotypes extend beyond image to performance, leading us to believe that men are more competent than women. Managers — both male and female — continue to favor men over equally qualified women in hiring, compensation, performance evaluation and promotion decisions. This limits opportunities for women and deprives organizations of valuable talent.”
Read more: When Talking About Bias Backfires, by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg, NY Times, December 6, 2014