Bookshelf: The Memo

What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table

The Ars Pandemonium Bookshelf

Thoughts and musings on mainstream business literature through my own prism of managing and leading teams of creative professionals. These are not “book reviews!” See more here.

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The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table

Minda Harts; 2019, Seal Press

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This book comes out swinging. 

The first chapter is titled “The Ugly Truth,” and begins with the author describing her disappointment upon reading Lean In in 2013.

“The fact that Sandberg’s entire book was written from a place of privilege absolutely floored me. Call me cynical, but I would have liked to face some of the problems she wrote about! 

“Let me tell you another part of the struggle: never reading about women in business who look like you or reading statistics that include you. So yes, you have no idea how disappointed I was after reading Lean In. I was hoping this career book would be different from the others, that I would finally feel seen. It was just another career book by a white woman that hit the bestsellers list, talking about white women sh-! I placed this book next to the countless career books written by white women like Girl Boss by Sophia Amoruso and Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office by Lois P. Frankel that ignore my experiences in the workplace, give no thought to race and access, or add little side notes so they don’t forget about the black girls (an afterthought).”

That’s from page three of the book! And shortly thereafter (page five!), this passage sets some tone:

“Now, I know what you’re thinking: sounds like another angry black woman. Well, the National Center for Educational Studies says that I am part of the most educated group in the United States, and yet there seem to be permanent barriers in place to prevent women like me from advancing in our careers. You would be angry too, boo.”

I knew immediately this wouldn’t be like other mainstream business and management books I’d read. And indeed, it wasn’t.

“White people shouldn’t get the privilege of whiteness and the pleasure of setting the definition of bias.”

This is a book by, about, and for women of color in the workplace. I read it because I wanted to learn from it. I wanted to hear a voice and a perspective that I don’t often get access to.

I figured it would make me uncomfortable…mission accomplished!

I feel like any critique I might level toward this book will seem, at best, like mansplaining or defensiveness, and at worst like exactly the kind of gatekeeping and exclusion the book is specifically working against. And, well, maybe it would be, regardless of my intention.

So I won’t do that.

Instead, I’ll just engage with it as it is. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in it, but that’s okay. And if I’m uncomfortable, that’s okay, too.

“Quite frankly, I am tired of the word ‘ally.’ And I think many people are wearing this ally badge without doing anything to earn it.”

The Memo is the title of this book, but it’s also the name Harts has given to the larger project into which the book fits. Her company, The Memo LLC, is a “career development platform for women of color” including a newsletter as well as “career boot camps, a speaker’s series, and an annual awards event.” And, of course, this book.

Right in the Preface, Harts describes the origin of the name:

“On a train ride back from Washington, D.C., to New York City while listening to a Drake song called ‘Trophies,’ through my earbuds came the lyrics ‘Did y’all boys not get the memo?’ And that line hit me like a ton of bricks — the workplace has not gotten The Memo: women of color deserve a seat at the table, and we are coming for those seats!”

But over the course of the book, it becomes clear that “the memo” means more than that (or that anyway it has another meaning), too. 

It’s also referring to the sense that some people enter the workplace having “gotten the memo,” as it were — part of their privilege is that they already understand the customs and mores of the modern workplace. And that others haven’t gotten that memo, and those customs and mores are at best confusing and off-putting, at worst completely exclusionary and impassable. 

“The Memo is the how-to guide I wish I’d had when I entered the workforce.”

“Many of us don’t have relatives who worked in corporate environments who could give us the handbook before we started, so a lot of it is on-the-job training — and it makes understanding the workplace that much more imperative for us.”

And thus the book is intended to be the memo for these folks.

“Office politics is a made-up game with fools’ rules.”

Throughout the book, there is definitely an ethos of: to defeat a thing you must name it and understand it. Fair enough! And so it does spend a lot of its time pointing out institutional and cultural barriers, inequities, and frankly heartbreaking statistics.

Some of this material is familiar, though it’s always startling to see it laid out so bluntly. For example, regarding women of color in senior leadership:

“It’s 2018, and we have no African American women as CEOs of any Fortune 500 companies. And we’ve only had one so far. In 2017 Fortune magazine wrote about twenty-three women CEOs, two of whom were women of color. I went to each of their executive leadership pages and out of all twenty-three women, only three of them have a black woman on their executive leadership team, one on each. Out of the twenty-three female CEOs, five of them have one black woman each on their boards. As of October 2018, there were twenty-five women CEOs, and none of them were black.”

At one point, Harts describes a conversation with a colleague who was discussing a recent Catalyst report regarding women on the boards of companies. To Harts, this was an example (like the Lean In example with which she started the book) of the word “women” simply not being inclusive:

“According to this report, women in the United States hold 27.8 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 Companies. I told her that women of color hold less than 5 percent of those seats…I continued to remind her that she shouldn’t say ‘all women’ when she really meant ‘white women.’”

And she quite straightforwardly talks about why this matters:

“Representation isn’t some charitable act; it’s an intentional action that has the power to shape our mindsets and even the thinking of generations.”

“Being represented and seen has the power to change the way women of color view themselves and the positions we aspire to.”

But I was also struck by some nuance with which I wasn’t really familiar (though which certainly makes sense). For instance, she points out the extra psychic and emotional weight that successful women from disadvantaged backgrounds might be carrying. She notes the fact that earners from Black families (and generally poorer families with fewer opportunities, less generational wealth, etc.) tend to take care of the larger family as well as themselves: 

“Can you imagine the stress of making $70,000 while your family back home is struggling to pay their rent? Black and brown women don’t have the luxury of running off to Bloomingdale’s; we work to try and carve out a piece of living our best life while making sure our families have what they need too.”

Harts also delves into just how impossible it can feel to even speak up about observed racism in the workplace:

“For women of color there is an imaginary line, and if we cross it and label someone racist or prejudiced at work, we might as well kiss our careers good-bye. It’s the kiss of death to air our racial grievances.”

“I believe this is a common line of internal questioning women of color go through in the workplace when we experience racism. We want so desperately for ‘it’ not to be racism, so we start to make up excuses for white people, and it even leads us to question ourselves.”

“If black women held all the keys to cracking the equal pay code and chose not to, I’d point my finger at us, too!”

On the other hand, The Memo is not at all a jeremiad to victimhood or grievance, nor is it just an angry diatribe (I mean, it kind of is an angry diatribe, but it’s not just that). 

Sure, Harts is wary of those forces that lead women of color “to question” themselves — of course — but she is not interested in abdicating necessary self-assessment or the power of ambition and commitment.

“Sitting around blaming your work situation on your pedigree or lack of access doesn’t get you any further along in this game.” 

“We don’t have to play into a narrative that they created about us. It is time we create our own workplace narrative about who we are and who we want to be at work.”

There is also a ton of straightforward, actionable advice in the book, usually presented as actual lessons from the author’s life, which feel very authentic and meaningful.

On utilizing networking events:

“Networking events outside work with your colleagues are not, I repeat, they are not, opportunities to get drunk and turnt up. They are opportunities to advocate for yourself.”

On being visible:

“A wise mentor of mine told me, ‘Make rounds.’ I laugh about it now, but it was one of the best pieces of advice I have received.”

On intentionality:

“I found it quite helpful many years ago to produce a purpose statement for my career. This works in conjunction with your blueprint to help steer your decisions and investments (of time and money). Before you can create your career blueprint, you must start with your purpose!”

On staying relevant over time:

“Ageism is a real thing, but perhaps taking additional professional development training to help underscore that you are still a viable part of the talent pool could be helpful in your next career transition. None of us are exempt from staying on top of the latest trends.”

On being openly ambitious:

“You won’t regret being intentional, strategic, and prepared in articulating to senior management your desire to move up the ladder.”

On speaking up:

“I felt that what I had to say didn’t matter or someone might think it was stupid. What I quickly learned was that those who spoke up seemed to (1) get heard and (2) gain access to the table at some point in time.”

On mental health:

“Toni Morrison said it best, ‘If you want to fly, you have to give up the sh— that weighs you down.’”

She also talks a lot about how important she feels it is for women of color to be helpful to each other, and how important some of these people have been in her own career.

“They don’t subscribe to the ‘only one’ syndrome, this idea that there can’t be more than one of us winning. In my opinion, this syndrome isn’t something we can completely blame white people for; that ideology is very much alive in people of color as well. And this is the part of the book where I tell you to cut that mess out. We should all be helping each other get a leg up. I am not saying don’t be cautious about who you assist, but don’t hoard the goods for yourself.” 

That’s a large part of the project of the book for her, to pay her own success forward into the community.

“It was important for me to write to white women (and white men) from a place of frustration mixed with love.”

I will again note that with the exception of one chapter titled “No More Passes: For My White Readers”, I am explicitly not the intended audience of this book — and even that chapter is specifically aimed at white women (not me).

To be fair, the author does write near the beginning of the book,

“And wouldn’t it be great if white men and women picked up The Memo to gain insight on how to be a better advocate, manager, or leader in the workplace? The Memo does not discriminate!”

So, I’m not suggesting it’s exclusionary. I am just clearly not the primary target audience of most of it.

Anyway, I’m therefore obviously not offended — or surprised! — that I don’t feel “seen” by the book. Not the point! I was glad to have the opportunity to read it and try to understand.

With that said, I did notice a cultural divide not specifically related to gender, ethnicity, or family background. The author’s professional experience seemed largely in business and finance on the East Coast of the US. My experience has been in entertainment and tech on the West Coast.

I’m not suggesting that one is better, or less biased, or somehow more enlightened than the other, but it was definitely interesting to see some of these dynamics from that frame.

Anyway, not a critique or diminution of the book, just an observation. And more to learn!

“The workplace is no different than a romantic relationship. All relationships have moments of functionality and dysfunction.”

The Memo was published in 2019. As I’ve been reading modern biz-lit of this sort, it’s been interesting to see if I can spot specific effects of the Covid pandemic in writing before and after. 

It’s hard, of course, because books take a long time to write, and anyway it’s impossible to know how their publish dates align with their writing dates (sometimes publishers will sit on a book for a while). For books published since 2020, unless the author specifically mentions it, it’s probably just speculation. However, it’s for sure the case that a book published in 2019 does not include the pandemic.

I see that Harts has a newer book that seems to run along similar lines to this one (Right Within, 2021), and I might check that one out too. It could be interesting to see how — or if — she found the culture had changed in the intervening couple of years.