Author: supermoxie

I received at
least 50 diverse emails about The No
Asshole Rule in the last week, and gave talks about it to three (also diverse)
groups: A group of about 20 Chief Information Officers in Dallas, an audience of
200 lawyers and 300 of their clients in Phoenix, and about 150 or so Stanford
volunteers on the Stanford campus. Along the way, I’ve learned some
fascinating things about how people are using and reacting to the book. I
thought it would be fun to do a round-up.  Here
are seven ways:

1. An anonymous message to an asshole. A distraught San  Francisco police captain both wrote and called
me, as he was given the book anonymously, and it contained an inscription that
said something like "Read this book, you need it." He didn’t seem
very happy. He also seemed to think that I had written it, or perhaps sent it
to him myself. I didn’t.  

2. A protective device against assholes. An attorney reported that
she was going to display a copy of the book on her office because she thought it might cause clients and
colleagues to be nicer to her.

3. A training tool. I have had notes from people from several
organizations (including a law firm and a financial services firm) where HR people
held workshops where they used the book. Also, check out how
C.K. Gunsalus is using it in the MBA classroom.

4. An asshole management
tool. The
head of HR at one university was given the book by his boss (a dean) to help
both of them think about how to deal with the “ speed bumps” they have hit from
“the same bullies, creeps, jerks, tormentors and egomaniacs that you describe
in your book.”

5. Banned by an asshole boss. An office assistant had the book on her
desk; her boss told her to take it off her desk and bring it home, because it
was making people uncomfortable. She suggested that the real reason that her boss wanted
her to get rid of it was that he is an asshole — and didn’t want to face the fact.

6. A source of confusion: Is it hypocrisy, a
confession, or an attempt at a personal and organizational change? An HR executive told me yesterday that her
boss — a total asshole — had three copies of the book on his desk. She couldn’t
figure out if it indicated a complete lack of self-awareness about his effects
on others, an admission of his problem, or even the start of a change effort. Perhaps
he just bought them for the chapter on "The Virtues of Assholes."

7. As affirmation for a firm that already has
(or had) the policy. I got a very nice note from Joshua de Koning, the
Firm Administrator of Lloyd Gosselink Blevins Rochelle & Townsend, who
reports that their firm has used the policy for years. And I also received multiple emails, and had
a charming conversation with Lou Pepper, who when he was CEO of Washington
Mutual in the 1980’s, also applied the policy (they used “A word,” internally, although
they used more polite words for public consumption). he said that they used the policy, in part, because "If
we are nice to each other, we will be nice to customers."  It makes sense to me, and is  also  consistent with what  is done at Southwest and JetBlue Airlines.

The No Asshole Rule has now been released in
quite a few different countries.  I have
written about Der
Arschloch Faktor, and how it was released in Germany in October
of last year. People ask me why it was released in Germany
almost six months before the U.S.
(and they had to take the extra time to translate the book into German, in
fact, it was done twice because my editor Martin Janik was dissatisfied with
first translation). 

The book industry is
so strange that I don’t think that anyone actually understands it, but the reason Der Arschloch Faktor came out so early
was — in part- – so we could link a little book tour to the famous Frankfurt Book Fair
in October.  This is the biggest gathering of people in the publishing business in the world. Der Arschloch Faktor has sold well in Germany. It was
on several of their best-seller lists for several months, and like the U.S.,
the range of places that it has been written about is dizzying, from the
tabloid Bild (one of the stories was
on the same page as a topless woman), which is among the most widely read
papers in Europe.  Another story was
written in the far more respectable German version of the Financial Times, and a recent article was published in Chrismon, a publication of the German Lutheran Church read by 1.5 million Germans (see The
Sacred and the Profane).

The
news this week is that Objectif
Zéro-Sale-Con just came out in France, and the initial reaction looks promising. The book has
just started appearing in shops, but it
has been in the top ten books on Amazon in France much of the time (at #7 as of
this writing) and my publisher sent me a screen shot yesterday as it was
briefly the #1 book overall.  I would be very
curious to hear from any French readers about the apparent appeal of the book
and how distinct  features of the French
culture shape what assholes in your country do, how they are dealt with, and
how French organizations take steps to keep them out  (or perhaps unwittingly encourage them, as so
many U.S. companies do).

Finally,
some of the other countries that the book will be published in during the
coming months include Brazil, China, Denmark, Holland, Korea, Japan, Turkey, Taiwan, and Spain.

I have had a lot of fun lately working with the folks at LinkedIn and Guy Kawasaki on a checklist to help  assesses if a prospective boss is likely to be an asshole.  Guy, the folks from LinkedIn (especially Dave Sanford — who is in the book on page 118 and was one of my favorite Stanford undergrads), and I have iterated this list several times over the last week or so. The list builds on the ideas in the book, can be used in concert with LinkedIn tools, and reflects Guy’s distinct way of saying things (e.g., I would say something long-winded like "Asshole poisoning is a contagious disease," which is a lot easier to forget than calling them "Canker Sores" like Guy did).  See Guy’s post LinkedIn and the Art of Avoiding an Asshole Boss for all the details. I focus here on the ten "reference check"  questions that you can ask people who have worked with and for your prospective boss — or perhaps had him or her as a client — to help determine if you are at risk of going to work for an asshole.

Discovering the answers to these questions before you take a job can save you a lot of heartache. One of the key points in The No Asshole Rule is that one of the most effective ways to avoid being harmed by assholes — and becoming one yourself — is (to steal a phrase from Leonardo da Vinci) "to resist at the beginning," to avoid working for an asshole boss (or joining an asshole invested workplace) in the first place.  Here is our 10 point checklist:

1. Kisses-up and kicks-down:
“How does the prospective boss respond to feedback from people higher
in rank and lower in rank?” “Can you provide examples from experience?”
One characteristic of certified assholes is that they tend to demean
those who are less powerful while brown-nosing their superiors.

2. Can’t take it:
“Does the prospective boss accept criticism or blame when the going
gets tough?” Be wary of people who constantly dish out criticism but
can’t take a healthy dose themselves.
       

3. Short fuse:
“In what situations have you seen the prospective boss lose his
temper?” Sometimes anger is justified or even effective when used
sparingly, but someone who “shoots-the-messenger” too often can breed a
climate of fear in the workplace. Are co-workers scared of getting in
an elevator with this person?
 

4. Bad credit:
“Which style best describes the prospective boss: gives out gratuitous
credit, assigns credit where credit is due, or believes everyone should
be their own champion?” This question opens the door to discuss whether
or not someone tends to take a lot of credit while not recognizing the
work of his or her team.

5. Canker sore:
“What do past collaborators say about working with the prospective
boss?” Assholes usually have a history of infecting teams with nasty
and dysfunctional conflict. The world seems willing to tolerate
talented assholes, but that doesn’t mean you have to.
             

6. Flamer:
What kind of email sender is the prospective boss? Most assholes cannot
contain themselves when it comes to email: flaming people,
carbon-copying the world, blind carbon copying to cover his own
buttocks. Email etiquette is a window into one’s soul.

7. Downer:
“What types of people find it difficult to work with the prospective
boss? What type of people seem to work very well with the prospective
boss?” Pay attention to responses that suggest “strong-willed” or
“self-motivated” people tend to work best with the prospective boss
because assholes tend to leave people around them feeling de-energized
and deflated.

8. Card shark:
“Does the prospective boss share information for everyone’s benefit?” A
tendency to hold cards close to one’s chest—i.e., a reluctance to share
information—is a sign that this person treats co-workers as competitors
who must be defeated so he or she can get ahead.
                   

9. Army of one:
“Would people pick the prospective boss for their team?”
Sometimes there is upside to having an asshole on your team, but that
won’t matter if the coworkers refuse to work with that person. Use this
question to help determine if the benefit of having the prospective
boss on your team outweighs any asshole behaviors.

10. Open architecture: “How would the prospective boss respond if a copy of The No Asshole Rule appeared on her desk?” Be careful if the answer is, “Duck!”

Those are our 10 questions. I would love to hear other tips about what has helped you avoid taking a job with an asshole boss — or warning signs that you wish you would have noticed before going to work for a demeaning creep.   

The McKinsey Quarterly published an online article last week that I wrote, which is based on the No Asshole Rule. It mentions the name of the book, although (out of deference to some of their more sensitive readers) we all agreed that using the word "jerk" most of the time was best. I confess, perhaps the self-censoring was a bit spineless, but I am impressed that a company that is so client-focused published the article.  I was also pleased to publish the article in the Quarterly because they have so many "C-level" readers — people who can influence companies to implement the no asshole rule, or at least, slow or stop the spread of asshole poisoning. 

The article is called Building the Civilized Workplace
and you can read it (with free registration) by clicking on the
link. I just received a note from McKinsey Partner Stuart Flack that "it was #1 in the e-Quarterly last week, with 20,000 readers." The article will also be published in hard copy in a forthcoming
issue of the McKinsey Quarterly.  The article starts by introducing readers to SucccessFactors, especially CEO Lars Dalgaard and how the company espouses and enforces their no assholes rule (and how it is part of what they have done to become so successful). Along these lines, SucccessFactors’ executive Stacey Epstein just sent me a picture of Lars standing next to a sign they just put up at their office in San Mateo.  I thought you might like it. As it suggests, Lars is not your usual dull and cautious CEO — and his speech is refreshingly devoid of mind-numbing jargon monoxide.

I have blogged about and linked to Dennis Leary’s Asshole song , which I think is a wonderful parody.  Today, I got an email from Jason Schneider, who works with a "progressive indie rock band"  in the Boston area called  Jim’s Big Ego.  It turns out that they have a song called "asshole" as well, which is gritty and fun, and also a nice complement to Leary’s because it takes the victim’s perspective (Leary’s main line is "I am an asshole").  Jason tells me that the song is featured on the CD "They’re Everywhere," which is pictured. Here is the URL for their website, where you can listen to their asshole song, and the MP3 file that you can download: Download asshole_edit.mp3

Dieter Prucker over at the Cantankerous Consultant has done a little original artwork with cover of The No Asshole Rule, and proposed that perhaps the reason that Circuit City fired 3400 associates (their highest performers, with the longest tenure — and replaced them with cheaper newbies and part-timers) was that the CEO heard of the book, and misread the title as "The No Associate Rule."   He is joking, but as he shows, it isn’t very funny. This is the kind of thing that happens when someone has a spreadsheet, but no heart — and if you see the research in Jeff Pfeffer’s Human Equation, perhaps no brain either.  I do love the modified cover, however. 

P.S. Even worse than being a "pro-asshole" company is letting assholes rule the roost, but still claiming that you have a no asshole rule.  Then you come across as having an asshole infested company AND being hypocrite. See this post about Holland & Knight as an example.  Circuit City seems to have achieved a similar, or perhaps worse, level of hypocrisy, because — even though they fired them for being too expensive — their corporate propaganda ("Circuit City  values") apparently still claims under the heading of "respect" that ""Our associates are our greatest assets."  If you add the their actions together with this statement, it appears that senior management are both greedy assholes and hypocrites; or perhaps they never read their own values statment.

C. K. Gunsalus is the former Associate Provost at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently a Special Counsel and  Adjunct Professor of Law and Medicine at the university.  C.K., or Tina as she goes by in less formal communication, has published an extremely useful and most very engaging Harvard University Press book called The College Administrator’s Survival Guide, which draws heavily on her years of experience as an academic administrator. It also sports an inspired cover, as you can see. The book has one great chapter after another about the challenges of being a university administrator — on topics ranging from "Embrace your fate," to "negotiation," to "complaints."  Being a university administrator is a tough job because, among other things, these folks get so much responsibility and have so little authority. It is also a tough job because  — at a university  like Illinois or Stanford  — so many of the biggest problems are caused by tenured faculty and staff members who are extremely hard to discipline, let alone to fire for poor performance or outrageous behavior.  I was especially interested in Tina’s chapter on bullies, as managing abusive faculty and staff can be very difficult, both because they have so much job security, and as she points out, they are rarely confronted because universities are accepting of human quirks (which can be a very good thing) and people are afraid to confront them (which can be a very bad thing).   I get a lot of emails from people in education — from elementary school principals to college presidents — that ask about the challenges of asshole management when their people have a huge amount of job security (tenure, union representation, and often both).  And I have received a number of similar questions from people who work in government jobs lately as well. If you face such challenges, I recommend her book highly.

I’ve also been communicating with Tina because she is (I believe) the first person to adopt The No Asshole Rule as a text for a college class — an MBA class on Leadership and Ethics with over 100 students that she is teaching right now.  Tina has sent me several encouraging reports about student reactions to the book (I invite Tina and her students to make some comments, as you should never trust an author who reports that people like his or her book).  I’ve appreciated her reports and would love to hear more. But the email that she sent me yesterday (reproduced in full below) is going to be hard to top.  Her students sound like they have both wit and humor.  I read it to my wife and kids yesterday, and they just cracked-up:

Dear Bob,

We’re three weeks into our MBA class on Leadership and Ethics, in which we’re using your book as one of our texts.

We had a lovely moment in class today you might appreciate.  We had a guest speaker, who had scanned the syllabus upon arriving in the classroom.

The speaker said, at one point, something along the lines of "I see you’re reading a book by Bob Sutton with a word in the title I simply detest."

An unidentified student in the back of the room (there are more than 100 people in this class) yelled out:

"Yeah, I hate the word ‘rule’, too,"

Thought you might enjoy this moment.

Cheers.

Tina

Aaron Mentele of Electric Pulp just gave me the latest numbers for Asshole Rating Self-Exam, or ARSE Test has hit "74,524 completions now with the average score being 5.14 (which is just enough
inside the "borderline asshole" category.)"  There is still a lot self-examination going on out there, and as I’ve written about before, some people have used to assess others, including the guy who took it "for" his VP then quit his job after the VP hit 23 of the 24 asshole moves on the test!

I
have not been surprised that some people have reacted negatively to
the title of The No Asshole Rule. I wrote about a few of these complaints in Why
I Call Them Assholes and in “amusing
poetic vitriol,” about the wonderful nasty letter that a reader sent to the
San Francisco Chronicle. I also am not especially surprised that, in
response to Lisa Cullen’s Time Magazine
column
and blog
about the book (in which she sung the praises of assholes, and used the word in
uncensored form), that at least one person threatened to cancel his 25-year
subscription to Time (although other
people told him to “get over it.”). And I
wasn’t surprised — but was amused — when a woman recently wrote me that her boss asked her to take
the book home because the title might upset her co-workers (She implied that
his overt justification was the title, but the real reason probably was because he is a nasty boss.)

I was
a little more surprised to learn that Josh Quittner, the Editor of Business 2.0, predicted to my friend and
frequent co-author (a 2.0 columnist) Jeff Pfeffer last December that my dirty
title would “severely limit sales.”  I
just learned of this prediction in an “I told you so” e-mail that Jeff sent
Josh recently (Jeff has an excellent memory and is usually right, a dangerous
combination). Of course, we haven’t done
the alternative experiment — trying to sell the same book with a clean title
— but the dirty title does seem to be attracting people more people than it is
repelling.  It is on a number of best
seller lists: Friday’s Wall Street
Journal listed it as the #3 business Book and #14 non-fiction book, and as Guy Kawasaki
discussed on his blog, I wouldn’t accept offers from publishers who wanted the
book, but didn’t want the title, because I believed in it so strongly.

A
bigger surprise, however, is how many positive reactions I have received from
religious people, especially devout Christians, about the book. The first time this happened was in January,
when I got an e-mail from an editor at Chrismon, a magazine published by
the Lutheran Church in Germany (and mailed to 1.5 million Germans). He wanted to interview me for a story about
Der Arschloch-Faktor. I frankly thought, at first,
that either it was a joke, or he was going to write a negative story. But he explained
to me that, in his view, The No Asshole
Rule was really quite closely related to the Golden Rule, and that if you
looked closely at the teachings of Christ, the main points of the book were
quite consistent.  A positive story appeared in
the March issue. 

I have since received at least 20 emails from people who make a
similar point, including several from a woman who suggested that we work together
on a version of the book that contained footnotes to biblical sources
that supported the assertions and advice — and that contained a bible study guide to go
with the book. Finally, a few weeks back, Richard Beck wrote a post on his blog, Experimental Theology, called 1
Corinthians and the No Asshole Rule.  Beck started out by saying:

Two weeks ago it was my turn to
teach my adult bible class at church. We are going through 1 Corinthians and I
was up to teach the famous Chapter 13, "Love is patient, love is
kind…"

And I thought to myself,
"Richard, what are you possibly going to say in class that hasn’t been
said before about 1 Corinthians 13?"

Then it hit me. I started the class by doing a
book review and reading selections from Dr. Robert Sutton’s new book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and
Surviving One That Isn’t.

Beck
went to say argue that my two tests for determining if a person is an asshole
are in direct agreement with 1 Corinthians, and ended the post by saying:

So, we reflected on all this in my Sunday School class. And
after reflection on the No Asshole Rule, I read these famous words:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is
not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it
keeps no record of wrongs…

Basically, don’t be an asshole.

I
confess that I like his logic, but I don’t trust my reaction.  If anyone can help me sort this out, I would
appreciate it – talking dirty in a way that seems to please at least some
religious people is quite a shock!

P.S.
I also should confess that I stole this heading from an InformationWeek
article about the work done by
our d.school students to spread Firefox. They used this title because one team developed a website called Firefoxies.com, where models posted their
sometimes sexy pictures.  In contrast, the "sacred" website, Faithbrowser.com, is a tool for customizing your Firefox browser so that it has Christian graphics and
presents an ever changing set of quotes from the bible.