Sheryl Sandberg's life seemed ideal--she had a great job, a best-selling book, a loving family. But in the spring of 2015, her husband was felled by a cardiac condition while the couple was vacationing in Mexico. Struggling to regain her footing after his death, she reached out to her friend Adam Grant, a Wharton professor and author, to explore what research tells us about resilience. That led to their collaboration on the newly published book "Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy." In this edited interview with HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius, Sandberg and Grant share what they learned about developing resilience in yourself, your team, and your organization. They discuss how to respond when a colleague suffers a loss ("Acknowledge that there is a ginormous elephant sitting in the room"), how to grow not just in the wake of tragedy but before it, and ways that individuals and organizations can "fail well" and adapt to changing circumstances and unforeseen crises. "The best thing you can do is build routines that might be applicable in an unexpected situation," they say.
At 43, Sheryl Sandberg can look back on an already illustrious career that began with her graduation summa cum laude from Harvard and moved through the World Bank, Harvard Business School, McKinsey, the U.S. Treasury Department, and Google before landing her at Facebook, where she manages the social media giant's complex business operations. Nevertheless, she has faced her own internal barriers to success, which is part of the reason for her parallel career as an outspoken advocate for women aspiring to leadership positions. In this interview with HBR's editor in chief, Sandberg talks about her new book, "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead"; how and why women hold themselves back; understanding gender differences and celebrating them; the "likability" gap, and much more.
In spite of top-notch efforts, many social-change initiatives fail. What goes wrong? How can the initiatives be presented more effectively? Analyzing the costs and benefits of the proposed change from the perspective of the targeted community can help marketers answer those questions. The authors present a framework to facilitate such an analysis and to help form effective marketing plans. When the proposed behavior change involves little cost to the targeted community and provides a significant personal benefit, conventional marketing methods--such as those used for marketing consumer goods--can be effective. When the proposed change involves a high cost, in terms of either money or some other measure (difficulty, for instance, in quitting smoking), the social marketer's job becomes harder. Social marketers face their greatest challenge in cases where the cost is high and the personal benefit is intangible.