Inside The Mind Of Sheryl Sandberg

Facebook's COO is arguably the most influential woman in business. Now, even after personal tragedy, she wants to spread that influence to small businesses - and get women into seats of power everywhere.

- Jeff Bercovici

When you walk into Facebook's Menlo Park, California, offices, the posters bombard you: “Let’s Kick the Shit Out of Option B.” It has the ring of a corporate mantra, à la “Move fast and break things,” Mark Zuckerberg’s famous exhortation to his colleagues. But it’s something far more personal—a quote used by Facebook’s second-in-command, Sheryl Sandberg. Already one of the most admired executives in America, thanks to Lean In, her 2013 female-ambition manifesto, Sandberg became a different kind of symbol in May after the sudden death of her husband, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg. Facebook’s COO had often credited her professional success, in part, to her supportive partnership with Goldberg. Together they were the model Silicon Valley power couple. It turns out Sandberg’s “Option B” line is from a raw, public Facebook post she wrote a month after her husband died, about coping with grief after the loss of “Option A,” the life she had expected to share with Goldberg. The post has been shared almost 400,000 times. On a steamy August afternoon, Sandberg is dealing with the tragedy the best way she knows how—by throwing herself back into her work. She’s in a conference room at the center of Facebook’s new 430,000 square-foot Building 20. Like her boss, Sandberg has an open-plan desk. But it’s clear by the pool of personal effects at the head of this conference table - lip balm, hand weights, a jumbo Diet Coke, and a rubber physical therapy rod that she uses to treat the wrist pain she developed while writing