π Summary: 'The Second Sex', by Simone de Beauvoir
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Hi friend β Rob here. Today in Salmon Theory+: a summary of 'The Second Sex', by Simone de Beauvoir. I had worries about this, because it may trigger some folks. But it's a phenomenally important book with tons of lessons. Specifically, i want you to think about what it means for leadership. And how healthier leadership can make you a more effective strategist. Let's get into it. π TL;DR:
1. Start crews, not tribes"No group ever defines itself as One without immediately setting up the Other opposite itself." This is a topic that fascinates me. How we invariably create tribal definitions. At its worst, this creates division and resentment. At its best, it creates tension and release. Let me explain. When leading a brand, project or team, you want to have a clear view of what the 'enemy' is. It shouldn't be a person, rather a thing. A value you want to challenge. A bad habit you want to break. That enemy now becomes the thing you rebel against. It's the Navy to your pirate ship. And now that you have a shared enemy, you get to form a crew. Remember: people want to feel they belong. And you feel like you belong to one crew once you establish that you're definitely not part of another. Use this carefully, but do use it to get the most out of your teams. 2. Anger is fine, so long as there is reparation'It is much easier to accuse one sex than to excuse the other,β says Montaigne." De Beauvoir calls this out for obvious reasons: how easily we accuse the female (second) sex of things. But it's also applicable when you think about any conflict resolution. Inevitably, there will be conflict in a company or project. Especially if people have competing agendas, or passionate beliefs about what should be done. One possible way out: avoid conflict altogether. But this just leads to conformity. A more effective way: embrace conflict plus resolution. If you have an intense discussion, make reparations shortly after. Explain where you were coming from. I've had arguments with colleagues about the direction of a project, only to feel a bit shitty after. But that doesn't mean the conversation was wrong. It just meant that now the conversation was done, we could make amends about how we'd approached it. Anger is a natural part of our emotional palette. And it's easy to assume the other person's at fault. In reality, often we're as much at fault as they are, and that's ok. Don't repress your anger, after all it is a unit of energy for change (as Emma Reed Turrell says). Do let it out, so long as you know how to make reparations after. 3. Whose views are we missing?"It is impossible to approach any human problem without partiality: even the way of asking the questions, of adopting perspectives, presupposes hierarchies of interests; all characteristics comprise values; every so-called objective description is set against an ethical background." In 2023, i worked on a project involving a famous reality TV show. One of the things that we had to check ourselves on: unconscious bias. At many levels: gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality. As part of it, we signed the entire team up for an equity training session. In that session, we learned useful frameworks to help us navigate diversity, equity and inclusion. One of my favourite notes: "whose views are we missing?" Such a good question. Because it presumes you are definitely missing something, and forces critical thinking. "Who are we including" is a good start, but "who are we missing" is much more powerful. It forced us to look around and acknowledge that we had an ok gender split, but lacked ethnic representation. So we course corrected, re-cast the team, and set ourselves up for having weekly chats with a representative group of consumers. A lot of this was already in our plans, but it was important to have a hard look at ourselves to ensure we weren't missing anything. So when you're leading a team or project, always ask yourself not just who's in the room. But who else should be. 4. Is it time to be a wartime leader, or a peacetime leader?"If one criticises the doctrine to the letter, the psychoanalyst maintains that its spirit has been misunderstood; if one approves of the spirit, he immediately wants to limit you to the letter." You could easily apply this to strategists, but i'm not gonna go there. Instead, i want us to reflect on how there are truly no rigid shortcuts to leadership. Sure, there are cases and frameworks and value-based systems. But deep down, it's all contextual and therefore so should our style. Ben Horowitz talks about peacetime leaders vs wartime leaders. Peacetime leaders excel at growth. Wartime leaders excel at survival. And knowing which situation you're in is extremely important. Otherwise, you become the psychoanalyst who insists on rigid rules around the spirit or the letter of whatever "you should do". But the thing is, whatever you should do is always dependent on the situation you're in. It's the same with strategy: there's no perfect strategy, only one that is contextually less wrong. Bad decisions emerge when we decide that there is only a single way to solve a problem.β 5. Don't let grandiose analysis get in the way of getting started"More than one psychoanalyst has declared that βthe worst enemies of psychoanalysis are psychoanalysts themselvesβ." And, similarly, the worst enemies of strategy might be strategists themselves. Over the years, i've become allergic to over-complication. And, as a related cousin, over-analysis. One leads to the other. If you over-analyse a situation, you may over-complicate its resolution. You should still do the analysis, but remember that synthesis must quickly follow. I feel like we often idolise grand strategy at the expense of just experimenting in market. We want to get it right before we get it started, which is why lots of great ideas never see the light of day. Now, i get it, you want to make sure you're using resources wisely. But if strategy is about action, then the sooner we get to it the more likely we are to be 'right'. Because remember, anything that lives in a presentation is a hypothesis at best. The only thing that isn't hypothetical is what happens when the market responds. 6. Hold space for compassion not just authority"The worst curse on woman is her exclusion from warrior expeditions; it is not in giving life but in risking his life that man raises himself above the animal; this is why throughout humanity, superiority has been granted not to the sex that gives birth, but to the one that kills." It's common to talk about a dog eat dog world. This is precisely why leaders need to step up to create and hold the conditions for their team to flourish. The very best bosses i've ever had took extra effort to protect me, and others, from as much bullshit as they could. They recognised that bullshit is born out of this need to be right, to win, to 'kill'. But they saw their role as instead protecting the team so they could give 'birth'. Birth to what, you might ask? A shared mission, a healthy culture, a sense of connection, a good idea. It's hard to do this when you're worried about whether you might be unprotected from a killer business environment. I love the idea of funnel managers vs umbrella managers on this. Funnel managers accept requests and simply redirect then to their team. Umbrella managers challenge requests until they are worthy of their team. Guess which one i think is healthier. That's right, the one that creates space, instead of just barking orders. The one that leads with compassion, not just brute authority. Bullshit requests will still happen, but knowing you're protected from 90% of them is one of the strongest signs of team culture. 7. Respect the seasons of your people's minds"The farmer is subjected to the vagaries of the soil, of germination and of seasons; he is passive, he beseeches and he waits: this explains why totem spirits peopled the human world; the peasant endured the whims of these forces that took possession of him. On the contrary, the worker fashions a tool according to his own design; he imposes on it the form that fits his project; facing an inert nature that defies him but that he overcomes, he asserts himself as sovereign will; if he quickens his strokes on the anvil, he quickens the completion of the tool, whereas nothing can hasten the ripening of grain." Great leaders, and great strategists, recognise that people have seasons. Some are more morning people, others are more evening people. Some have slow burns and then work in bursts, others prefer a steady pace. This matters because it's how you get the most of each person's individual circumstances. If you're a leader, this is your job towards those you lead. Whether that's a creative team, clients, or client services. Knowing each person's preferred style of working is how you get the most substance out of them. This requires respect, humility, and yes a little bit of patience. Just like you'd need if you were tending to a healthy soil. Like mother nature, we all have seasons too. Knowing this is how you reap delicious fruit. π TL;DR:
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