Work Matters

The Rule Keeps Chugging Away

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supermoxie

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It has been about 7 months since The No Asshole Rule was released in the U.S., and it seems to still be chugging away. Frankly, I didn’t expect the sales and attention to persist so long.  CNN came down to film me last week, and I understand that the segment will appear sometime this weekend and I seem to still be doing several U.S. media interviews a week. Sometimes for stories directly on the book, and increasingly on stories on different, but related issues, such as the BusinessWeek All Star Professor Story, a most interesting Financial Times story on The Cost of Hidden Bias at Work (reporting some compelling research done by Freada Klein’s Level Playing Field Institute), and the recent Wall Street Journal story on layoffs.

But I still am talking about the book plenty and the wave of emails from people who are oppressed by assholes, are fighting back, or have implemented the rule hasn’t slowed down much.  It is still hanging around the BusinessWeek bestseller list, moving from #13 to #7 on the list that was just released.  Plus I just got an email from the folks at McKinsey that the article based on the book, on Building a Civilized Workplace,has been the most frequently downloaded article on their site this year.

I am starting to move onto some other projects, but the persistent attention is nice, but also bewildering.  And the book did just get released in Italy, in fact today is the official publication date. Its called   Il Metodo Antistronzi there, and I had the weird experience — from midnight to 1AM — of being on an Italian radio show where I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and the questions I was asked and answers I gave were through a translator.  I did gather, however, that there is as much concern about assholes in Italy as anywhere else.  And any of you who read Italian might be amused by this online crusade against an asshole boss.

And on it goes. Thanks to everyone for all the support and please keep the comments and emails coming. I remain delighted and often surprised by the new things that I learn every day.

Comments

4 responses to “The Rule Keeps Chugging Away”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Assholes: Everyones Got One

    I stumbled across a blog for Robert I. Sutton, a professor of management science at Stanford University, who wrote a book called The No Asshole Rule, about the negative impact of bullies in management roles on both productivity as well as office enviro…

    Reply
  2. Fred Avatar
    Fred

    Fight back against assholes. See sendahole.com.

    Reply
  3. 40Hourstogo Avatar
    40Hourstogo

    Congratulations on your continued success. I loved the book!

    Reply
  4. EAMO Avatar
    EAMO

    OK – I appear to be well behind the times, but just became aware of the book from the MC News interview. Couldn’t stop myself from responding.
    I am a consultant of over 30 years, and have enjoyed a wide variety of clients. Usually when presented with demanding, unreasonable, and sometimes abusive clients, we suck it up and proceed.
    Once I was working for a federal agency with a client who was clearly unstable. Work products were rejected with no explanation, but we were expected to produce another version with no guidance.
    Finally – the client so verbally abused one of our support staffers for something she was not even involved in, that they had our employee in tears. I lost it and fired the client. I told them my team would not finish the engagement.
    The partners called me on the carpet to explain, which I did. I stuck to my guns that no one on my team would work for the client. The partnership assigned another team and the engagement was completed (somehow). I’m not sure if that was a career-limiting move on my part or not, but MY rule is “no one gets hurt (physically or emotionally) as a result of working for this company.”
    This makes no difference to anyone. After 20 years – thanks for the forum to finally press the “delete” button on this poisonous episode. Catharsis, finally.

    Reply

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