Changethis Manifesto: The Upside of Assholes

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I’ve been working with Sally Haldorson and the gang at 800ceoread.com to develop a new Changethis manifesto. Sally edits and publishes four or five of these high-graphics articles a month. This is my second manifesto; my first was Management Advice: Which 90% is Crap? This month, the other manifestos are Lonely Planet: How Relationships Suffer and Why It Matters by Elizabeth Johnson,
Frontline Leadership: A Cycle of Engagement Manifesto by Mark Graban, 100 Ways to Kill a Concept: Why Most Ideas Get Shot Down by Michael Iva, The Silent Revolution: Peter Drucker’s Voice Still Resonates by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim, and
How Toyota Can Save Your Life…At the Hospital by Mark Graban. As with everything that 1800CEOread does, they are committed to quality and are some of the most delightful people you can work with.

My new Changethis essay, as the picture shows, is about The Upside of Assholes — you can go to the web page where this a link to this pdf document or load it directly. I write about this topic grudgingly in this manifesto, as I do in the book in book at greater length. My co-author, Jeff Pfeffer, seems to be especially enamored of this argument (although he is rarely an asshole). My reply to him, and to others who make arguments about the virtues of assholes, is that, yes, there are times and places when they get ahead, but the damage that they leave behind is often far greater than they and others realize, and most important, if you are a winner and asshole, you are still an asshole and I don’t want to get near you!

Comments

4 responses to “Changethis Manifesto: The Upside of Assholes”

March 8, 2007

Rick Schumacher

Bob – I have really enjoyed your work on assholes. Being employed by a New York-based firm, we see plenty of them.
There has been one undesirable consequence to all of this excellent work you’ve done. I decided to see who was the biggest asshole on the Internet, using Google. While Steve Jobs plus asshole got 128,000 hits, Bob Sutton plus asshole gets a whopping 177,000 hits!!!!
BTW, I was a student of yours many years ago; I graduated with a BS in IE from Stanford in 1985. I’m glad to hear that you’re still at the school and have been so well published over the years.
Best regards,
Rick Schumacher

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March 8, 2007

Greg

I just read “The Upside of Assholes.” Aside from those who succeed in spite of themselves (how much more could they have done if they did not drive talent away), there is a difference between being hard, mean, or vulgar verses being and asshole.
I remember my high school football coaches were not always “nice,” but they were always fair and consistent.

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October 29, 2008

Raoul Duke

Well written. I’ve worked with people who were the moral equivalent of Steve Jobs, if not quite as famous — complete assholes, who pretty much helped me decide not to stick around there, but who 98% of the time I thought were totally right on the money.
Allowing assholes to be successful; I think it must be linked with our overall culture. Are there non-westernized ones where success cannot come with being an asshole?

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August 10, 2011

UGG Australia

There has been one undesirable consequence to all of this excellent work you’ve done. I decided to see who was the biggest asshole on the Internet, using Google. While Steve Jobs plus asshole got 128,000 hits, Bob Sutton plus asshole gets a whopping 177,000 hits!!!!

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