Robert I. Sutton

Col Cook directed we all read this book in September 2024 and he put me in charge of 8MCD's friction project. Read parts of the book via hard copy, but accomplished most of it through audio book. Briefed CO on 22 Nov 2024. Brief went well. Enlisted Recruiting Operations focused on DATs and CONDEP/Tier Evals. Focused most of my energy on going through this with each separate staff member. Main struggles were identifying and properly categorizing friction, distinguishing it from problems that they had in their sections and determining whether they were adding good friction or removing bad friction. I used the analogy of Leslie Nope as right easier and Michael Scott as wrong harder. Next challenge was to determine each persons roll in friction fixing using the help pyramid. Then the challenge of focusing on who the friction fix beneficiary was for each problem. The other challenges we faced along the way were avoiding addition sickness, which for many sections was just adding trackers to track things. Lastly, we identified it is harder to add productive friction than to remove bad friction. When broken down to basic form and worked through together, this could be an easy process to replicate in the future.… (more)

This review is based on the Blinkist summary version of the book. I’ve not read the full book and, based on this summary, I will not be going to get the full book. The coverage seems to me to be rather banal and obvious. Though I must say that I was taken aback by the example of a coworker who, after flashing a warm smile, leans in and whispers, “I’m going to take you down.” Wow. I’d have to agree this person sounds like a proper asshole (AH). But, he does make the point that some AH’s are not even aware that they are AH’s and are shocked to find that they are behaving that way. Here are a few extracts from the book that made an impression on me.
To determine if you are the victim of AH behaviour, the first question you can ask yourself is this: Do encounters leave you feeling oppressed or demeaned?..The next question to ask is whether this person is a temporary or a continual asshole...There are excuses for your boss being a temporary asshole, but there’s no excuse for being a permanent one.
Some people get so used to assholes that they don’t even realize how poorly they’re being treated. They suffer from asshole blindness.......This is dangerous since it can lead to gross misconduct being seen as acceptable. Scientists also attribute this acceptance to the sunk cost fallacy. This is when you’ve put so much time, effort or money into an endeavour that you convince yourself it’s worth continuing even when it’s clearly doomed.
In terms of dealing with the AH, t may be possible to keep your job and simply relocate within the organization.
Assholish behavior can be similar to a contagious disease; too much exposure and you might “catch” it. There is plenty of scientific evidence showing that we tend to take on the negative thoughts, behaviours and emotions of others.
The key is to keep a safe distance. Move to a new desk, floor or building, if you can.
In the 1970s, MIT professor Tom Allen found that coworkers who sat in close proximity to each other spent more time talking and corresponding across all mediums of communication. And since we have far more means of communicating now, with texts, social media and e-mail, this presents an even greater danger today.
Reframing is a psychological technique used in cognitive behavioural therapy, and it allows patients to recontextualize their problems in a positive light and, in a way, turn lemons into lemonade. Or, in this case, assholes into allies, since Becky reframed the hazing [she was receiving] as being imaginative and funny, and not threatening in the least.
When confronted with an intelligence test students were resentful. But when the test wasn’t framed as a measurement of intelligence, but rather an interesting and challenging questionnaire, students didn’t focus on this stereotype, and results improved.......There might be a perfectly plausible reason for their actions. For example, perhaps something stressful is going on in their personal life that you’re unaware of. This form of reframing is called reappraisal, and there’s science to back up its effectiveness as well. In a Stanford University study, students had their reactions analyzed after being shown “upsetting” photographs of angry people. After the first batch of photographs, some students were then given reappraisal training, where they were told to consider that maybe the angry people in the pictures had just had a bad day and that the real source of their anger was someone else. These students were significantly less upset by the subsequent photos than those who weren’t given the chance to reappraise. So put reappraisal to use
Starting a war with an asshole is a risky business fraught with pitfall. In any sort of confrontation, first of all, prepare documentation of the person’s past behaviour. Rock-solid evidence of asshole behaviour will prevent you from entering a he-said-she-said situation.
A calm and rational confrontation, which involves taking the asshole aside in a civilized manner and gently voicing your concerns. Is one way of dealing with the situation. This works best with both temporary and clueless assholes who don’t realize the negative effect their behaviour is having.
The other option is aggressive confrontation, which you can think of as fighting fire with fire and giving the asshole a taste of their own medicine...A 2015 study showed these types tend to back off when confronted by a similarly selfish and uncooperative person.
But you need to make sure you aren’t an unwitting asshole yourself. ....If you happen to be rich, self-awareness becomes even more important, because the power that wealth bestows is a risk factor for becoming an asshole.....A study at the University of California in Berkeley found that drivers with the most expensive cars would cut in front of fellow drivers 30 percent of the time and refuse to stop for pedestrians 50 percent of the time....In other words, wealthy drivers tended to behave like assholes.
The key message in this book: An asshole is a person whose behaviour consistently makes you feel demoralized. The best way to deal with them is by not allowing their behaviour to become normal. Remove yourself from environments filled with assholes, but if you’re stuck, there are ways to reduce their influence. Keep as much distance as you can from them and try to positively reframe their negative behaviour. Otherwise, collect evidence of their behaviour and confront them with their misdeeds. And don’t forget to hone your self-awareness to avoid becoming an asshole yourself!
My take on the book: Mediocre really. Not at all impressed. I think they should have included Some tried and tested ways of gently confronting AH’s in a non threatening way such as the formula: “When you do X I feel Y and I’m sure that this is not your intention....can we maybe find some way of dealing with this”. There is also the situation where the AH might be on the autistic spectrum and be totally unaware of their impact on others. This does not seem to be considered and nor are there any suggestions for managing such an individual.
The main way of dealing with AH’s that’s suggested by Robert Sutton seems to be “moving away from them”. And, this, to my way of thinking, is not really managing the situation very well. Two stars from me.… (more)

This book had a lot of good advice. Some of it was common sense, but a lot of it was legitimately useful and perspective changing. Why two stars then? The organization was horrible. Instead of being organized in such a way as to emphasize the key ideas, the book consisted of lists of loosely connected ideas that were too long to be remembered (and yet, at the same time, were annoyingly repetitive). A couple other factors that led to the low rating were that many of the examples felt more like name dropping than deeply integrated with the core lessons (look at all the interesting people we've talked to and worked with!). There were also a couple key points whose phrasing annoyed me despite the underlying good concept they represented[1].

That said, the key lessons that Sutton and Rao share are useful.

Scaling excellence takes time and investment. If a change initiative is treated as something that can take hold with one training or one inspirational talk, then it will fail. It needs to be spread using many techniques over a long time. This includes training. It also includes convincing the right people in the organization who can help efforts spread, building support systems that allow change to happen even when those in charge of the change effort are not available, and figuring out the right processes to support change. Utilizing social bonds is an important part of this; getting people involved who are widely connected and who are connected to densely connected cliques can help spread change more widely in an organization.

Scaling excellence requires a mixture of flexibility and fidelity. First, we need pockets of excellence to spread. These should be concrete, end-to-end solutions that have been achieved in practice, not a list of good ideas hobbled together and then expected to just work. However, once this initial mix has been found, it is important to figure out which parts of it are essential for everyone to follow -- the guardrails -- and which parts can be changed flexibly to fit local needs. Since often it is unclear why certain parts are necessary until they are put into practice, it can often be necessary to ask people to initially follow a process more strictly than they would like and then allow flexibility to increase over time.

Increase feelings of accountability. When people feel accountable for outcomes -- both like they are responsible for outcomes and have the ability to achieve those outcomes -- then they are more likely to successfully push for change. The flip side of accountability is disengagement, and it is one of the most dangerous problems for an organization, especially one trying to change. Disengagement is not merely failing to push for your own preferred end -- sometimes accepting that your choice was not the chosen one is necessary. Rather, disengagement occurs when a person retains responsibility for some outcome but fails to do their best to make that outcome successful. This is closely related to the mantra "disagree and commit" (or if you can't commit, give the responsibility to someone else). Accountability also requires that each person be willing to combat bad behavior wherever they see it; bad behavior spreads more quickly than good.

Add structure when necessary and remove structure that has become unnecessary. As organizations grow, the overhead of maintaining relationship can take up more and more time until the organization is no longer able to be productive. Adding structure, such as organizational divisions, can help, but all structure comes at a cost. The way to balance this tension is to add a minimal amount of structure only when it seems absolutely necessary -- which will be a little bit after the lack of structure becomes uncomfortable. Another way to combat the cost of adding structure is to also subtract structure that has become harmful, neutral, or where the value no longer outweighs the cost. This means sometimes making people uncomfortable because it requires removing processes and rules that are still sometimes useful.

Plumbing is more important than poetry, but both are necessary. Plumbing -- the practical work needed to achieve success -- is more important than poetry -- the inspirational vision about how great it will be when we have achieved success. The poetry is important and necessary, but if it is not backed by visible, practical implementation with some short term wins, then it will become empty platitudes that inspire cynicism.

Think about what success and failure will have looked like. It can be hard to think about all of the ways the future might look. A scaling premortem is a useful tool for understanding risks and opportunities in a scaling exercise. Write out two scenarios: one where the scaling effort was wildly successful and one where it failed miserably. What, concretely, happened in these hypothetical scenarios? It is even better if these are group exercises and the two scenarios are handled by different parts of the group.



[1] In particular, Catholicism vs Buddhism to discuss fidelity to a model vs flexibility in implementation bugged me because it depended on stereotyped visions of the two religions and, even within those stereotypes, the contrasts between the two are broad enough that it is hard to remember what particular contrast was being drawn. "I own the place and the place owns me" bugs me because ownership of a person is generally coercive and involuntary and this negative connotation falls over into the metaphor and tinges it with hints of slavery rather than voluntary alignment with an organizations goals and living up to high standards.… (more)