Today’s edition of the New York Post has a long story on The No Asshole Rule by Chris Erikson, called New Jerk City. The main story does a nice job of summarizing the book’s main points, along with the range of reactions that it has generated — as it says, I never thought I would write a book that result in an appearance on a "shock jock" radio show like Mancow, a forthcoming article in the respectable McKinsey Quarterly, and as a reading in a bible studies class. There is also a sidebar on "surviving snakes" which is based on my longer post on "Tips for Surviving Asshole Infested Workplaces."
The best part of the package, however, is the sidebar about HBS Professor Boris Groysberg’s research which shows that, even in investment banking, enforcing the no asshole rules pays dividends. Note Boris’s clever test for assessing if a culture is no-asshole or pro-asshole:
CULLING THE CREEPS
There are industries that put a premium on genteel, courteous behavior. And then there’s investment banking.
"If there was a poster child for an industry where jerks are
tolerated, it would be investment banking," is how Harvard Business
School professor Boris Groysberg puts it.
Which is why during a long-term study of top investment banking
firms, Groysberg and his partner, Ashish Nanda, were somewhat surprised
to find that those who enforced a "no a – – hole rule" reaped clear
dividends.
"Firms that have policies of maintaining a nonhostile work
environment have done much better overall than firms where complete
jerks are tolerated," says Groysberg, who was studying whether the
success of "superstars" crossed over when they moved from one firm to
another. "So what we found was very similar to what Bob [Sutton]
describes in his book."
For starters, Groysberg and Nanda found that such firms have
significantly lower turnover. And employees were willing to work there
for less money.
"To be in a friendly work environment, people would work at a
significant discount from what they could get just by crossing the
street," he says.
Groysberg is too diplomatic to name the worst
offenders, but cites Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs as the most
vigilant about weeding out jerks. Having spent a fair amount of time at
various firms while doing his research, he says the difference in
culture between such firms and those that let jerks run wild can be
clear to see.
"I found that if you just sit quietly in the dining room and
observe how food gets ordered and how people eat and interact, in half
an hour you can tell if this particular culture is more a – –
hole-friendly than others," he says. – C.E
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