Category: Dignity at Work

An Evidence-Based Temper Tantrum Topples The Local Asshole

About 15 years ago, UC Berkeley's Barry Staw
and I had a running conversation about the conditions under which
showing anger, even having a temper tantrum, is strategic versus
something that undermines a person's reputation and influence, and for
leaders, the performance of their teams and organizations. In fact,
Barry eventually collected some amazing in-the-locker room half-time
speeches for basketball coaches that he is currently working on writing
and publishing.

I thought of those old conversations when I got
this amazing note the other day (this is the same one that inspired me
to do my last post on the Atilla the Manager cartoon):

I just discovered your work via Tom Fishburne, the Marketoonist. I had an
asshole boss until I got her fired. For 6 years I was abused and I should have
done what you say and got out as soon as I could. But you get comfortable and
used to the abuse. You even think you are successfully managing the abusers
behavior with your behavior. Ridiculous I know. I suffered everything you
mentioned including depression, anxiety and just plain unhappiness. The day I
snapped, I used the "I quit and I'm taking you down with me" tactic.
I did document the abuse even though just like every asshole situation, everyone
knew she was an abuser. In an impassioned meeting I let top management know
exactly why I was quitting, let them know they are culpable for all the mental
anquish and turnover and poor results stemming from the asshole. They probably
thought I was a madman with nothing left to lose and about to sue and defame
the company (they'd have been correct). Two hours later she was walked out. Now
the department is doing great and actually producing instead of trying to
manage the reactions of a lunatic.

I am taken with this note for
numerous reasons. For starters, I am always delighted when the victim
of an asshole finds a successful way to to fight back. I am also
pleased to see that, as happens so often, once this creep was sent
packing, people could stop spending their days trying to deal with her
antics and instead could devote their energies to doing their jobs well.
And in thinking about it in more detail — and thinking back to those
old conversations with Barry — I believe that showing anger was
effective in this situation for at least three reasons.

1. He was right.
This was, as the headline says, an evidence-based temper tantrum.
Although his superiors may have not been overly pleased with how he
delivered the news, he apparently had darn good evidence that this
person was an asshole and doing harm to him and his co-workers. Facts
matter, even when emotions flare.

2. His anger was a reflection of how others felt, not just his particular quirks and flaws.
This outpouring of anger and the ultimatum he gave were seen as giving
voice to how everyone who worked with this "lunatic" felt. It was his
tantrum, but it was on behalf of and gave voice to others. In such
situations, when a person is not seen as out of touch reality or crazy,
even though he may have felt or even acted like a "madman" for the
moment, the anger and refusal to give in can be very powerful. I also
suspect that, in this case, those same bosses who fired him felt he same
way about the local asshole, and his anger propelled them to take an
action they knew was the right thing to do. The notion that emotions are
contagious and propel action is quite well established in a lot of
studies (see research by Elaine Hatfield for example).

3. The was a rare tantrum.
This follows from the last point. If you are always ranting and
yelling and making threats, people aren't likely to take you
seriously. Tantrums are effective when they are seen as a rare and
justified outburst rather than a personal characteristic — as something
that is more easily attributed to the bad situation the person is in
rather than personal weakness or style.

Please, please don't use
this fellow's success as a reason to start yelling and making threats
and all that. That is what a certified asshole would do. But — while
such outbursts are not always the product of rational planning — this
little episode provides instructive guidance about when expressing anger
might produce outcomes for the greater good. It also provides some
interesting hints about when it is best to try to stop outbursts from
those you are close to versus when egging them on is a reasonable thing
to do.

Finally, a big thanks to the anonymous writer of this note. I learned something from it and I hope that other do as well.

P.S. This note and post makes me think that some revision to my list of Tips for Surviving Workplace Assholes might be in order.

November 20, 2012
New Research: Thinking About Your Mortality Makes You A Better Person

A pointer to this from Australian Chris Barry came in my email this morning. Here is what Ken Vail and his co-authors found:

Contemplating death doesn't necessarily lead to morose despondency, fear, aggression or other negative behaviors, as previous research has suggested. Following a review of dozens of studies, University of Missouri researchers found that thoughts of mortality can lead to decreased militaristic attitudes, better health decisions, increased altruism and helpfulness, and reduced divorce rates.

Some of the specific effects were quite interesting — everything from being more peaceful and cooperative to exercising more and quitting smoking. I especially liked this study described in the summary in ScienceDaily:

Even subconscious awareness of death can more influenced behavior. In one experiment, passers-by who had recently overheard conversations mentioning the value of helping were more likely to help strangers if they were walking within sight of cemeteries.

The researchers suggest one reason for such effects (based on something called terror management theory) is that "people deal with their awareness of mortality by upholding cultural beliefs and seeking to become part of something larger and more enduring than themselves, such as nations or religions."

So that is my happy thought for the day: Think about your death, it is good for you and those around you!

P.S. Here is the source: "When Death is Good for Life: Considering the Positive Trajectories of Terror Management," published online on April 5, 2012, in Personality and Social Psychology Review.

May 2, 2012
Final Exam: Design the Ideal Organization. Use Course Concepts to Defend Your Answer

That is the final exam question that I've been using for about a decade in my graduate class "Organizational Behavior:An Evidence-Based Approach" in our Department of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford. Students get 3000 words to answer the question. I put in on the course outline so they can see it the first day of class. I do so because I want propsective students to decide if they can deal with a class with so much ambiguity and pressure to write well and because I want students to start thinking about their paper from the first day of class. I encourage and reward them for being as creative as possible, while at the same time, weaving together concepts related to major themes in the class such as leadership, employee selection and socialization, motivation and rewards, interpersonal influence, group dynamics, organizational change, innovation, and organizational culture.

As I tell the students, this is a really hard question. In fact, so hard, it is difficult for me to answer even after studying the topic for over 30 years. I guess I did answer it in at least one of my books, The No Asshole Rule, although that was a lot longer than 3000 words. After a decade or so, I have read about 1000 answers to this question. Every year, I go through the same process with it. About a week before the papers are due, I start having second thoughts about it as I talk to the students about their struggles with answering such an open-ended question. After all, this is the Stanford Engineering School, and while some our students write beautifully, for many others, this is the first time they have faced such an open-ended writing assignment. Then, the same thing happens every year. The pile of papers come in, I start reading them, and I am delighted with the overall quality and dazzled by the best papers — and pleased by the creativity and even joy the students so many students convey.

The range and quality of the papers was especially striking this year. I believe it was largely because my two course assistants, Belinda Chiang and Isaac Waisberg , did such a great job of giving students feedback during the five writing assignments that led up to the final. I won't list all the titles and themes of the 84 papers we received. Quite a few were variations of web-based start-ups, as there is a lot of that at Stanford, especially in the School of Engineering.

But here are some of the most intriguing ones:

A nationwide professional wrestling company that "empowers its wrestlers to create quality shows and programming."

"The Ministry of Love," a government agency on the imaginary planet of "Natan" that has a population of 3 million people and a declining fertility rate. The mission of the ministry to increase the birth rate via love. The key roles are "Venuses" who develop ideas and "Cupids" who implement those ideas.

An ideal organization for a high school "Queen Bee" who "rules the hallways with a fist full of Prada and enough hairspray to glue flies to the walls."

A non-profit hospice, that nurtures employees "while they deal with the emotions of death on a daily basis."

Heaven. Yes, that heaven — where management has two goals 1. provide people with an afterlife fair to their conduct before death and 2. Encourage people to do good on earth.

"The Ideal NBA Franchise: Transforming the Golden State Warriors into Champions." This is a tough job as our local basketball team is a perennial loser.

Revamping the The National Kidney Foundation of Singapore

"Mystical Weddings," a wedding planning agency located in India.

The ideal organization for a family. This was written by a student who had been a dad for just two weeks. He was suffering sleep deprivation and other stresses and decided to imagine a better solution. It was touching and made lovely use of course concepts — incentives, influence, and group norms, for example.

Finally, the most outrageous and one of the best papers in terms of writing and application of course concepts (written by a female student) was: "Living the dream — would you like to to be the third wife of Tom Brady? A blueprint for the polygynous family." I never heard of the word "polygynous." It means polygamous — one husband, multiple wives, the Big Love thing.

As I said, although I was tempted to abandon this assignment yet again this year, when I read the papers, I was — as usual — struck by how well the best students apply the theory, evidence, and cases from the course in brilliant ways that I could never possibly imagine. Also, the assignment reveals students who can define but not really apply concepts, as well as those rare students who haven't learned much course content.

I am wondering however, if I should open it up next year so that students can produce something other than a paper that uses course concepts to design the ideal organization. Perhaps they could do a film, a presentation, or design a game that answers the question in some compelling way. For the most ambitious students, given the entrepreneurial frenzy at Stanford, perhaps taking steps to start your own ideal organization (and telling me what you've learned) might satisfy the requirement as well. I am not sure if this is a good idea as it is hard to beat good old fashioned writing. But I am toying with it.

April 13, 2012
The Power of the People Around You

I spent the morning trying to organize and make sense of various materials that Huggy Rao and I have been gathering about scaling. I came across a most interesting post on "Learnings from 2011" that was apparently written by Xenios Thrasyvoulou, CEO of European-based start-up called Peopleperhour.com, which enables you to hire people "remotely, for small projects or a few hours a week."

The post was quite interesting, well-crafted and introspective. But the advice at the end stopped me in my tracks:

“Life is too short to waste it with people who don’t get it, whatever “it” may be for you, so make sure you surround yourself with people who do”

This is such good advice because human attitudes and behaviors are so infectious. If you are surrounded with a bunch of smart, graceful, caring, and action-oriented people, all that goodness will rub-off on you; and if you are surrounded with a bunch of people with the opposite attributes, that will infect you too. This is why who you choose to hang out with, hire, fire, spend time with, and avoid has so much influence on everything from acting like an asshole, to building a creative organization, to scaling-ip excellence, to living a happy life.

Yet, implementing this philosophy in real life isn't easy. I would love to hear some ideas about how people make it happen.

March 12, 2012
Please Help Me Update! Places and People That Use The No Asshole Rule

Dear Work Matters readers,

As I am getting toward the end of our long effort to write "Scaling Up Excellence" with Huggy Rao, I am starting to do a bit of blogging and tweeting again. As part of it, I got an interesting email from a guy named Ben about a really awful battle over verbal abuse on something called the Linux kernel mailing list — look here, bad stuff. Ben asked me an interesting question I would like your help with: Which organizations actually have "no asshole" rules? Do they work? How do they implement them. I haven't been thinking about this much lately as I am focused on scaling. I did update the post below in early 2012, but I wonder if folks have any suggestions for places I should add — or subtract. It seems like something worth maintaining. Thanks so much!

Bob

A reporter asked me a couple years back, “The No Asshole Rule is fun to talk about, but does anyone ever actually use it?” It turns out that there is also a lot good news out here, lots of great leaders and many civilized places that people can work.

I wrote an initial list back then, and I update it every now and then. This is the latest, which I offer in celebration of Work Matters passing 2,000,000 pageviews and the impending publication of Good Boss, Bad Boss in paperback.

This list is far from exhaustive, but check out the breadth of places and the different ways that the rule is used. And if you work in a company that has the rule, that uses it well or has tried to implement it, but with limited success, I would love to hear about.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway As Buffett's right-hand man and long-time Berkshire Hathaway Vice-Chairman Charlie Munger puts it in Snowball "We had the no asshole rule very early. Our basic rule is that we don't deal with assholes." Check out this post for more details and thoughts

SPM Communications. Principal Suzanne Miller won a national contest for women-owned business, in part because her company applies the no-jerk rule to both employees and customers. As the Dallas Morning News reported:

“It struck a chord with the judges and audience,” she said. “Everyone has worked somewhere crappy."

Ms. Miller described the contest as “American Idol for businesswomen.” About 900 applicants from around the country were whittled down to 20 finalists who assembled in Phoenix to present their cases before an audience and a panel of judges.

“Part of the competition was to give a three-minute elevator speech on how we’re different and why we’ll reach the mark,” Ms. Miller said. Like the TV talent show, the contestants ran through a rehearsal, got ripped apart by coaches and then performed for real the next day. Ms. Miller basically got her spiel down to nine words: "Life is too short to work with mean people."

2tor: This online education company is serious about the rule; the media toned things down, but the use the A-word in their materials:

The company is proud of its hard-working, but fun culture and hires based on both job qualifications and character. The company handbook says, "when you're hiring someone, don't trade off competence for character — we need people with both." The quotation comes under a heading in the handbook that could be paraphrased as "No Jerks Allowed."

Robert W. Baird. This financial services firm was first #39 on Fortune's 2008 Best Places to Work list. Now, they are up to #11. Fortune asked in 2008 "What makes it so great?" And they answered 'They tout "the no asshole rule" at this financial services firm; candidates are interviewed extensively, even by assistants who will be working for them." Since I first learned about Baird, I have spoken to multiple people from the company, including CEO Paul Purcell, who enforces the rules with zest and humor. Here are some of the details.

Barclays Capital. They don’t use the word “asshole,” because they are, after all, a respectable financial institution! BusinessWeek reports:

“Hotshots who alienate colleagues are told to change or leave. "We have a 'no jerk' rule around here," says Chief Operating Officer Rich Ricci.”

IDEO: The iconic innovation has used the rule for as long as I can remember, from its founding in 1979. And I've seem them use it in all sorts of ways during my 15 year plus involvement with the place. As their Careers FAQ page advises (and note they are kind enough to plug this blog):

Talented and diverse people: We hire talented design thinkers who represent many perspectives, disciplines, nationalities, and points of view. We believe a civilized workplace is a more rigorous and sustainable place to work, so we don’t hire jerks. (Please see The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and IDEO Fellow, or read his blog.) We provide ways to share knowledge and projects among our people, believing that we all work better and learn more when we freely interact and collaborate with other talented people.

The Disbarred Lawyer. The Village Voice tells us that attorney Kenny Heller might be the most obnoxious in New York City and that the powers that be finally had enough of his antics:

‘After 50 years of heaping abuse on everyone within earshot and hurling accusations of conspiracies, "favoritism," and "cronyism" at countless judges and lawyers, the 77-year-old Heller has earned this distinction: No other lawyer in the city but Heller, according to records of his disciplinary hearing, has been ousted for "obstructive and offensive behavior which did not involve fraud or deception."’

‘Heller was disbarred for basically "being an asshole," as one adversary puts it. And in their profession, the rival adds, "that takes some doing."’

Lloyd Gosselink and Perkins Coie. Lawyers may earn their bad reputations at times, but I have been pleasantly surprised by how many firms espouse and enforce “no asshole rules.” Joshua de Koning, is firm Administrator of Lloyd Gosselink Blevins Rochelle & Townsend, which is located in Austin, Texas. He wrote me a few years back:

“I ordered my copy of The No Asshole Rule a couple of weeks ago from Amazon.com and am enjoying it thoroughly. The title caught my attention, not just because it's a great title, but because our firm has had the exact same rule (phrased in exactly the same way) since it's founding in 1984.”

They are not alone. Perkins Coie, a national law firm that with headquarters in Seattle has applied the “no jerk rule” for years, which has helped the firm to be named one of “the Top 100 Best Companies to Work for” five years in a row. See this story at Human Resources Executive Online for more about how the rule works at Perkins Coie (and other nuances of the rule).

Sterling Foundation Management. Sterling helps wealthy individuals establish and management private foundations. CEO and co-founder Roger D. Sterling wrote me, after “stumbling” on The No Asshole Rule that:

‘This is a principle that I was told about early in my career as "Never do business with an Asshole," and which we have since adopted. We've applied it to both clients and employees, to greatly beneficial effect. I would reckon it of equal or greater worth than present value analysis, which I must have been taught a dozen times in the course of getting to a Ph.D. in applied economics.’

Gold’s Gym. Joe Gold was founder of the famous gym that produced multiple body building champions, including a certain future film star and California governor named Arnold. His management philosophy was:

“To keep it simple you run your gym like you run your house. Keep it clean and in good running order. No jerks allowed, members pay on time and if they give you any crap, throw them out. There's peace where there's order."

The Wine Buyer. The belief that the no asshole rule ought to be applied to customers can be seen in many industries. A California wine buyer explained how he applies the rule:

“In my business, we have a rule that says that a customer can either be an arsehole (I'm English originally) or a late pay, but not both. We have reduced stress considerably by excluding some customers on this basis.”

A related concept is “asshole taxes:” I know people in occupations ranging from plumber to management consultant who don’t “fire” asshole customers, but charge them substantially hire fees as “battle pay” for enduring the abuse.

Bible Studies Class. This one still amazes me more than any other experience that I’ve had since publishing the book. I’ve written about it before, but no list of different places where the rule has been discussed and used would be complete without it. Psychology Professor Richard Beck wrote a post called "1 Corinthians and The No Asshole Rule." He starts out:

'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 concludes:

'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

Arup’s “No Dickhead Rule.” Arup is one of the most renowned construction engineering firms in the world; in fact, they were recently profiled in The New Yorker (Check out this abstract for the ‘The Anti-Gravity Men”). Look at this beautiful Kinas TV building the worked in Beijing. As I wrote here, Robert Care, CEO of the Arup’s Australian and Asian operations recently wrote me that they instituted the “no dickhead rule” in his part of the firm:

"I work for a truly wonderful professional services company that is truly extraordinary and that is doing really well in many many ways. Three years ago I became the CEO of our Australasian operation. It occurred to me that there was an issue (not just in the Australasian part of our operations) that needed to be dealt with. I then heard something in September 2005 that started me thinking, and then talking to my close colleagues. They encouraged me to speak more widely in my organisation and eventually we evolved a 'no dickhead policy'. "

I recently had an email from Care; He reports that he is now heading ARUP's operations in Europe and that he has introduced the "No Jerk Rule" as the word "Dickhead" didn't fit with local sensibilities, but the rule is pretty much the same.

Mozilla (which brings us the Firefox browser): Asa Dotzler a product director, leader of many efforts to spread Firefix, and a stalwart of the company and open source software movement explained to me what it isn't efficient to be an asshole at Mozilla, or in the open source world in general. As Asa explained, the work they do requires so much cooperation with each other and with people from outside the company (many of whom are volunteers, who do the coding or marketing Firefox out love for the product and what it represents about a participative and decentralized approach to the Internet), that acting like an asshole is rare because it is so downright dumb when you need so much mutual respect and trust to get the work done.

Index, a Danish Nonprofit: Their goal is to use "design to improve life." The CEO Kigge Hvid wrote me "One of our few management mottos has from the start been, KEEP OUT THE ASSHOLES. " She went on to explain:

The motto has lucky been used quite seldom. I guess that we for the last 5 years have used the motto 5-6 times – even though we work with thousands of people around the globe every year. When used we simply calls the asshole – meet with the asshole – and tell them to go play somewhere else. I my self have taken great pleasure in making these calls to a few powerful decision makers, on the basis of their brutal treatment of people working with INDEX.

Former Gillette CEO Jim Kilts advises: "Never Hire a Prick" in his book. Kilts argues that one of the practices that fueled Gillette's success during the years he led the company was "Never Hire a Prick, Even a Smart One." And, indeed, Kilts has an impressive track record, having led turnarounds at both Nabisco and Gillette. Kilts talks about how how "pricks" are smug self promoters and are destructive to the organization, and him it is essential to avoid hiring them or to drive them out of a company. As he says, they can get short-term results, but they break down people and organizations over the long haul.

Ian Telfe, CEO of Goldcorp in Canada, reported spending a lot of time enforcing the rule:

There is a bestseller right now called The No Asshole Rule. It is all about: 'Don't hire any assholes.' So I spend a lot of time picking who we're going to hire. You need someone with technical qualifications, but you also have to find someone who can work with other people and respect other people.

Garry Turdeau Womps Donald Trump with the rule in Doonesbury: You can read about it here and get to the whole cartoon.

Michael Minns Human Resources in Australia. The have a "no dickheads policy" too, which is described in quite a bit of detail on the link, along with a metric that shows it is working" "It’s the best place I’ve ever worked at, in fact it is so good that I don’t need an alarm clock to get up in the morning".

Crossfit Gym at Virgina Beach. Check of this article on the "The Asshole Barrier." This quote sums things up:

The waiver at CrossFit VB states, “CrossFit Virginia Beach strives to provide a positive and encouraging environment for our clients. Anyone that is disruptive or negatively influences this environment is subject to having their membership revoked. This is at the sole discretion of CrossFit Virginia Beach Management.” The word “asshole” isn’t used, but Gill says she frequently tells clients that “it’s basically an asshole clause.”

The diversity of this list delights me. Sure, there are still too many jerks out there and too many organizations (and apparently cities) where every day feels like a walk down Asshole Avenue. But there are also a lot of smart and civilized people who are fighting back and, better yet, winning. I’d love your comments. In particular, as I said, if you have some new examples of places that talk about and apply the rule, please tell me!

Finally, a warning, I have dealt with a number of companies over the years that espouse an no asshole rule, or want to, but are filled with assholes. In such case, it isn't a good idea to put the no asshole rule in your corporate values, handbooks, or recruiting materials because you risk being seen as both an asshole and a hypocrite.

P.S. These examples focus mostly on “top down changes,” but organizational norms can also change when persistent and influential people work to set the right example and to point out – even in public – when behavior happens that demonstrates the wrong way to behave.

A good example of this comes from a British manager who wrote me that he works in a firm that is infested with assholes, but since he read The No Asshole Rule, he and several colleagues are working to change their norms. He described one of the most effective methods as follows:

‘I now attend a lot of management meetings where I have started to introduce the idea of a civilized work place and that we lose available efficiency and effectiveness due to people being de-motivated. When I am now faced with negativity or an "Asshole" I have started to use a new approach of: “surely you don’t want us to breed that type of feeling in the business or listen to what you just said.” I have found this head on approach very successful.’

February 8, 2012
Wisdom from Stanford’s Jim March on the Numbing Effect of Business Schools

There is a great interview on leadership with Jim March (probably the most prestigious living organizational theorist) by Joel Podolny (current head of HR at Apple, but also a very accomplished academic researcher) in the current edition of the Academy of Management Learning and Eduction journal (Vol. 10, No. 3, 502–506.) The link is here, but someone will likely make you buy it.

March, as always, looks at things differently than the rest of us. For example, he does a lovely job of arguing — using historical figures like Aristotle and Alexander the Great — that the time frames used in most leadership research are often too short to be useful. But what really caught my eye was a line that reminded me of that old Pink Floyd song :

We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control.

March laments on page 503 :

My experience with business school students is that those who possess an instinct for joy, passion, and beauty often learn to suppress their expression by virtue of a sense that such instincts are unwelcome both in business schools and in business, thereby making the sense self-confirming.

I found this depressingly accurate for too many students, who often seem to lose their spark. It doesn't just happen in business schools, to be clear, it is a danger in any school or institution that has strong norms, where people are in close physical proximity, and they have a lot of contact with each other (Indeed, Apple especially needs to guard against this now). I do believe that the d.school — at least at its best — sometimes serves as a countervailing force, as the best teachers and classes there do encourage joy and self-expression. But as much as I love being a professor, I do think that Jim raises an implicit question that every educator needs to keep asking him or herself:

"What am I teaching my students? Am I teaching them to think for themselves and to be themselves? Or am I teaching them to a perfect imitation of each other, or of some other idealized and emotionally cold model of humanity?"

I am not saying that conformity is all bad, but too often we teach it unwittingly. I am curious about your reactions to March's point. Is he (and I guess me) too hard on the educational process? What can be done to educate people without turning them into emotionally repressed and joyless clones?

P.S. BY the way, after I posted it, I realized that March's comment actually is another example of the issue I raised in my last post about how roles can change what do and believe so much.

November 18, 2011
A Great Pixar Story: Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull Serve as Human Shields

Note: I originally posted this at HBR.org. You can see the original and the 13 comments here and can see all my posts at HBR here. I will continue to devote the lion's share of my blogging effort to Work Matters, but plan to post at HBR a couple times a month.

Pixar is one of my favorite companies on the planet. I love its films, its creative and constructive people (The Incredibles director Brad Bird is among the most intriguing people I've ever interviewed), and its relentless drive toward excellence. There's a pride that permeates that place, along with a nagging worry that, if they don't remain vigilant, mediocrity will infect their work. So I was thrilled to be invited to give a couple of talks about Good Boss, Bad Boss at Pixar last Fall. After the first one, Pixar veteran Craig Good (who has been there at least 25 years — I think he said 28 years), came up and told me an astounding story.

The story occurred to Craig because he'd just heard me claim that the best bosses serve as human shields, protecting their people from intrusions, distractions, idiocy from on high, and anything else that undermines their performance or well-being. For him, that brought to mind the year 1985, when the precursor to Pixar, known as the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, was under financial pressure because founder George Lucas (of Star Wars fame) had little faith in the economics of computer animated films. Much of this pressure came down on the heads of the Division's leaders, Ed Catmull (the dreamer who imagined Pixar long before it produced hit films, and the shaper of its culture) and Alvy Ray Smith (the inventor responsible for, among many other things, the Xerox PARC technology that made the rendering of computer animated films possible). The picture to the left shows Ed and Alvy around that period.

Lucas had brought in a guy named Doug Norby as President to bring some discipline to Lucasfilm, and as part of his efforts, Norby was pressing Catmull and Smith to do some fairly deep layoffs. The two couldn't bring themselves to do it. Instead, Catmull tried to make a financial case for keeping his group intact, arguing that layoffs would only reduce the value of a unit that Lucasfilm could profitably sell. (I am relating this story with Craig's permission, and he double-checked its accuracy with Catmull.) But Norby was unmoved. As Craig tells it: "He was pestering Ed and Alvy for a list of names from the Computer Division to lay off, and Ed and Alvy kept blowing him off. Finally came the order: You will be in my office tomorrow morning at 9:00 with a list of names."

So what did these two bosses do? "They showed up in his office at 9:00 and plunked down a list," Craig told me. "It had two names on it: Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith."

As Craig was telling me that story, you could hear the admiration in his voice and his pride in working for a company where managers would put their own jobs on the line for the good of their teams. "We all kept our jobs," he marveled. "Even me, the low man on the totem pole. When word got out, we employees pooled our money to send Ed, Alvy, and their wives on a thank-you night on the town."

Certainly such extreme staff protection is rare and sometimes it might not even be wise. I can't say that every proposed layoff is immoral or unnecessary. But consider the coda: a few months after this incident, Pixar was sold to a guy named Steve Jobs for 5 million bucks and, as they say, the rest is history. And some 25 years later, that brave shielding act still drives and inspires people at Pixar.

P.S. I want to thank Pixar's Craig Good, Elyse Klaidman, and Ed Catmull for telling me this story and letting me use it. If you want to learn more about Pixar's astounding history, I suggest reading David Price's The Pixar Touch. It is well researched and a delight to read. While you're at it, check out Alvy Ray Smith's site and Dealers of Lightning if you want to learn about the impact this quirky genius has had on computer animation and other technical marvels.

January 17, 2011
How Would The Dalai Lama Tell Someone To Fuck-Off?

One of the themes I have been writing about lately is on The Delicate Art of Being Perfectly Assertive. I have been focusing on this skill as a hallmark of great bosses, but I have been noticing lately that it is also a hallmark effective people more generally. I love working with moderately pushy and competent people — be it my research relationships, other colleagues, my clients, the folks who often write me emails and comment on this and other blogs where I post, or friends and acquaintances. I don't like dealing with flakes who never answer or follow-up. But I especially don't like dealing with people who treat everything as an emergency that needs to be done right now. I can think of at least five different types of people who drive me especially nuts in this regard:

1. Friends and colleagues who believe that their concerns are ALWAYS so important that they can interrupt whatever I am doing. I had one colleague who, although she was competent and caring in many ways, believed that whatever concern she had was so important that regardless of who I was meeting with, she had permission to barge into my office, drag me out into the hall (or if it was a student, she often ordered the student in the hall), and then press her (usually) non-urgent issue on me.

2. People who are very flaky about answering my questions and inquiries, but whenever they have a question or concern, they make very clear — using terms like ASAP or those awful exclamation marks in Outlook that their concerns must be answered right now, no matter how trivial.

During the years that my wife was managing partner of a large law firm, she always described the use of those exclamation marks in emails as a personality characteristic. She had some partners who never sent emails about anything without using those things. Recently, I was dealing with a corporate lawyer over the release of a teaching case and — although there were perhaps 15 people involved in the discussion from four different organizations — only one person used those awful exclamation marks and used words like "urgent" and "ASAP," the lawyer. I wrote him a note saying that he was doing a disservice to himself and his profession by using such repeated and claims of urgency, as it reinforced negative stereotypes of lawyers. I also noted that he was the least responsive person in the group to requests from others.

3. People who I have never met, but insist that their questions or
concerns are so important that I must drop whatever I am doing right now
to deal with their concerns. As readers of this blog who email me
or make comments know, I really do try to be responsive to everyone's
emails and questions. But I can only move so fast and must do triage. I
got a phone call from a woman — followed by an email — I have never
met the other day demanding that I stop everything I am doing and help
her with deal with her asshole boss. I feel bad for her and I try to be
responsive to such people, but her request came on a day that my dog
was very sick, and I had to deal with that. She wrote back a couple
more times and I can't bring myself to answer her emails.

4. People who show no respect for the fact I have a personal life and a family, and there are many times when those concerns come first.   Frankly, I am pretty aggressive about pushing back when people do this to me. I really do put my kids and wife first most of the time. But I do have some colleagues who treat this a weakness and press me to change priorities. I have become especially clear on this since having open heart surgery in April.

5. People who won't let a conversation end.   I am a pretty friendly guy, but like everyone else, I have lots of different things to do, and there are some people I deal with who don't seem to get even the most blatant efforts to end the conversation. Saying "I have to go now, I am late" seems to cause some of colleagues to block the door or grab my short so I can't leave!

At this point, I best emphasize that I am not perfect and have committed all of the sins listed above. But I am trying to do such things less and hope I am making progress. In closing, I have two questions for you:

1. What kinds of overbearing people do you find especially distressing?

2. How can you fight back against such intruders without being an overbearing jerk yourself? In my old age, I seem to be using passive aggressive methods more — being especially slow to respond to people who want an instant answer for example.   I still use confrontation but am trying to learn to be more polite about it.

This reminds me, I had a colleague ask a really funny and intriguing question a few weeks back: How would the Dalai Lama tell someone to fuck-off? I am using that as a headline because I think that might be the skill required here — the ability to gently, firmly, and graciously assert yourself. And it is a great question — and it is a great book title too!

July 21, 2010
Lazy Bee, Passhole,Unconscientious Objector, Inverted Cheerleader, Submarine, Seagull, Weenie-whiner, Whampire, or Free-griper?

I am both delighted and overwhelmed by the deluge of smart and often responses to my last post: Let's
Invent a New Word or Phrase: What do you call someone who "opts out of
participating in something but then complains about the outcome. You made 57 comments — by far a record for any Work Matters post and C.V. Harquail put up a related and quite inspiring conversation with Maren, one of her readers that i found very thoughtful. As you may recall, this was all sparked by an email from Mozilla's Asa Doztler, who asked the question. There are about 100 suggestions in the various comments and so many are wonderful, that is isn't easy to pick the best. So how about this. I will pick some I especially liked. Please let me know what your favorite is, or if you prefer another, and we will see what Asa and his colleagues prefer as well. Here are nine and I pasted in text when people offered it.

Lazy Bee.
Instead of being a busy bee who helps everyone out and brings in honey,
this is a bee who doesn't help out the group but reserves the right to
sting you once the work is done.

Passhole. Describes someone who passes on the opportunity to contribute to an
idea, then criticizes what others come up with. Also appropriate for a
driver in the right lane who speeds up and recklessly cuts in front of
you

Unconscientious objector

"Inverted cheerleaders" comes to my mind; goes with the people who suffer from rectal-cranial inversion syndrome.

Submarines: They stay
at depth until the last minute (when you are about to ship a product or
are trying to pass a final milestone) and then pop up and torpedo
(obviously with no constructive criticism either).

Seagull: A
"seagull contributor", like a seagull manager, usually holds themselves
above and beyond the fray, but sporadically swoop down to steal your
french fries and crap on everything.

Weenie-whiner

Whampire: someone who whines while feeding off the energies of the living. Someone who whines while feeding off the energies of the living.

Free-griper: captures both the free-riding and the kvetching…

What is your favorite? Which one did I leave out that you liked even better? Any more suggestions?

February 12, 2010

Civilian Friends vs Police Friends: From Captain Nick Gottuso

I just got
this missive about cops from Captain Nick Gottuso, a Police Department Captain in Hillsborough, California. Nick is also one of the Commanders of a SWAT
team composed of about 50 officers from local police departments on the San
Francisco Peninsula, and heads up their sniper squad. You can see him above, in full uniform beside
the SWAT truck. Nick was the coach on one of my daughter’s soccer teams and I
get to know him as I was an assistant coach — he is a great guy.

Nick is also a great shot. I once asked him why some of the coins on his
key chain had bullet holes in the side rather than middle, and wondered if he
had missed. He answered that he had put the bullet on the side because it made
it easier to get on the key chain. Nick
loves his job as much as anyone I know.
And you can understand why when he tells about the things he
does, like being involved in hostage stand-offs, and the smaller but important
things he does every day. For example, he was
involved in catching a thief who stole something from one of my colleague’s
houses.
Because I
know Nick, and how much he loves and identifies with his job, I was especially
struck by this note he sent around (the origin is unclear, I’d love to give
credit to the person who wrote it, so if you know, please chime-in).

Let me know what you think. Here is Nick’s preface: "For those of you who are Cops, you
will find this very true. For those of you who aren't… this gives you a
little insight as to why we are, the way we are.”

Always a
Cop:

Once the badge goes on, it never comes off,
whether they can see it, or not. It fuses to the soul through adversity, fear
and adrenaline and no one who has ever worn it with pride, integrity and
guts, can ever sleep through the 'call of the wild' that wafts through
bedroom windows in the deep of the night.

When Cops
Retire

When a good cop leaves the 'job' and retires to
a better life, many are jealous, some are pleased and yet others, who may
have already retired, wonder. We wonder if he knows what he is leaving
behind, because we already know. We know, for example, that after a lifetime
of camaraderie that few experience, it will remain as a longing for those
past times. We know in the law enforcement life there is a fellowship which
lasts long after the uniforms are hung up in the back of the closet . We know
even if he throws them away, they will be on him with every step and breath
that remains in his life. We also know how the very bearing of the man speaks
of what he was and in his heart still is.

These are the burdens of the job. You will still
look at people suspiciously, still see what others do not see or choose to
ignore and always will look at the rest of the law enforcement world with a
respect for what they do; only grown in a lifetime of knowing. Never think
for one moment you are escaping from that life. You are only escaping the
'job' and merely being allowed to leave 'active' duty.

So what I wish for you is that whenever you ease
into retirement, in your heart you never forget for one moment that 'Blessed
are the Peacemakers for they shall be called children of God,' and you are
still a member of the greatest fraternity the world has ever known.

Civilian
Friends vs Police Friends

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Get upset if you're
too busy to talk to them for a week.
POLICE FRIENDS: Are glad to see you after years,
and will happily carry on the same conversation you were having the last time
you met.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have never seen you cry.
POLICE FRIENDS: Have cried with you..

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Borrow your stuff for a few
days then give it back.
POLICE FRIENDS: Keep your stuff so long they
forget it's yours.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Know a few things about you..
POLICE FRIENDS: Could write a book with direct
quotes from you.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will leave you behind if
that's what the crowd is doing.
POLICE FRIENDS: Will kick the crowds' ass that
left you behind.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Are for a while.
POLICE FRIENDS: Are for life.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have shared a few experiences.
..
POLICE FRIENDS: Have shared a lifetime of
experiences no citizen could ever dream of…

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will take your drink away when
they think you've had enough.
POLICE FRIENDS: Will look at you stumbling all
over the place and say, 'You better drink the rest of that before you spill
it!!' Then carry you home safely and put you to bed…

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will talk crap to the person
who talks crap about you.
POLICE FRIENDS: Will knock them the hell out for
using your name in vain.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will ignore this.
POLICE FRIENDS: Will forward this.

October 16, 2009

Category: Dignity at Work

The post was quite interesting, well-crafted and introspective. But the advice at the end stopped me in my tracks:

“Life is too short to waste it with people who don’t get it, whatever “it” may be for you, so make sure you surround yourself with people who do”

Yet, implementing this philosophy in real life isn't easy. I would love to hear some ideas about how people make it happen.

Gold’s Gym. Joe Gold was founder of the famous gym that produced multiple body building champions, including a certain future film star and California governor named Arnold. His management philosophy was:

“To keep it simple you run your gym like you run your house. Keep it clean and in good running order. No jerks allowed, members pay on time and if they give you any crap, throw them out. There's peace where there's order."