WHEN WE'RE IN CHARGE is out today!!
Plus: Some thoughts on pub day...
It’s here! It’s here! When We’re in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership is now out in the world.
You can order it in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including:
When We’re in Charge is a first-of-its-kind guidebook for millennials and gen Z.
Most leadership books treat millennials and Gen Z like nuisances to manage around, focusing on how leaders from older generations can fit young people into their existing corporate cultures.
Not this one. When We’re In Charge is a no-bullshit guide for the next generation of leaders on how to show up differently, break the cycle of bad boomer leadership, and navigate the changing demands of those in power and the evolving expectations people have of their workplace.
I’m terrified and excited and thrilled for this book to come out.
I’m doing events to celebrate and talk about the book in NYC on 5/15 & DC on 5/21. Both are free but please RSVP!
I’ll have more thoughts on the pre-launch and book publicity stuff later, once all is (mostly) said and done — but for now, three thoughts on pub day, as those in ~the biz~ call it…
First: One of the many interesting things about professionally-built peer groups is that I personally know (relative to the broader population) a lot of people who’ve written books (and FWIW, this is my second book.)
Which means in classic keeping-up-with-the-Joneses shit, I keep mentally undercutting myself whenever someone congratulates me. Whatever, I think to myself. Literally anyone can write a book. It’s how the book does that matters. Does it sell a lot of copies? Does it get reviews? Does it make ~the lists~? Do people like it? Does it change the world?
I know intellectually — and my therapist (plus my exceptionally supportive husband) keep reminding me — that, objectively, that is not true.
Simply writing a book in and of itself is a big deal, and beyond that, putting any item of creation out into the world is an act of bravery and vulnerability.
So if nothing else — if the book doesn’t sell another copy beyond the preorders, or even if it sold zero copies in the first place — that it exists is a win and I should feel proud. I am proud! (But also: I’m ambitious and competitive; so buy it!!)
Second: Pub days are kind of anti-climactic.
I’ve been thinking about this book for 18+ months (plus 8 years) and preparing to sell it for the last 6-8 weeks, and now it’s out into the world.
So yes, today is a big deal for me, but it’s not really a big deal for the book, which exists outside of me now: It’s just the beginning of the book’s life out in the world.
Bookshop.org has been shipping out pre-orders of my book for a few weeks. I already have boomers in my DMs who are telling me they hate it and me (which, thanks for buying and reading; your sales count the same as everyone else!)
For now, I’m celebrating by… doing my job?
I mean, I’m doing a ton of press and interviews this week, and I’ll be doing an event in NYC on Thursday, with some drinks afterwards with friends, but mostly, I’m just doing my job, plus taking care of my kids, plus some book promo on top of it, plus trying to plug the book across all my various social media platforms without being too annoying (but also remembering no one sees everything I post so I should just go hog wild.)
That being said, I remember with my first book, it didn’t hit me that I had really done something until I started hearing a few months after publication from people who’d read the book and decided to run for office because of it.
When We’re in Charge will hopefully have a long tail. I wrote it to last! How it sells in the first few weeks is not indicative of the impact it could and hopefully will have. I’ve got to keep reminding myself of that.
Finally: Much like with politics and winning elections, selling books is mostly out of my control.
For a person who likes being in control, I’ve really made some bananas career choices.
In politics, you can run a great campaign by all objective and subjective metrics — and still lose on election day because of an anti-incumbency wave, or a shitty economy, or a snow storm in a key precinct during early voting, or whatever. (The inverse is also true: You can run a shitty campaign and win.) There’s a lot you can control, but a lot more you cannot.
Book sales are the same. While lots of things sometimes sell books, no one thing always sells books, and the thing you think would sell books almost certainly doesn’t move that many copies.
I’ve been watching this in real time, picking a few books on various topics to track over the last few months as they’ve gotten rave reviews in top outlets, been all over the podcast circuit and newsletters, and more, and then kept an eye on the Amazon ranking (which is an imperfect but useful metric for directionality of a book’s sales.)
NYT review? Mid-tier podcast appearance? Excerpts in big outlets? None of it meaningfully moved that ranking.
And yet, maybe all of it adds up to something big! I don’t know; I don’t have access to exact sales numbers. But seeing that in real time has made me feel better about the press (which I am proud of! and will have more of!) and the marketing and social content that the incredible team at Zando/Crooked Media is pushing out.
I think about how I find books to read: Sometimes from lists, sometimes from reviews, mostly from people I know and trust online recommending them.
So if you want to be helpful today, share anything about the book and tag me on Instagram, X, Bluesky, Threads, TikTok, or LinkedIn — I’ve got posts all on those platforms or you can do your own thing. Word of mouth absolutely helps.
My mantra for this new era: I wrote a good book and I am proud of it.
Finally: If you want to get a sense of what the book is like, there’s an excerpt in Teen Vogue today that asks: What if work didn’t have to suck?
A few paragraphs:
Taking time off, both in short bursts and over longer periods of time, is one of the most prominent ways in which leaders can model good behavior for work-rest integration. So many of us struggle with it, in part because we feel like we got to this point as leaders due to our work ethic. We’ve absorbed #hustleculture and the need to #riseandgrind into our bones—we got here because, we tell ourselves, we were willing to outwork our peers. We’re able to succeed as leaders because we’re willing to do whatever it takes, putting our own personal needs aside if we must.
I’m telling myself this as much as I’m telling you: Our suffering has no greater purpose. Our teams would have every right to be bitter if we tell them to take vacation but don’t take it ourselves because our actions speak louder than words. We’ve got to show them it’s okay to step away from time to time, and we’ve got to build resilient systems that can handle an absence now and again.
Read the full excerpt now & share it widely!