Work Matters

Category: Evidence-based Management

  • Great Piece on Narcissistic CEOs in The New York Times

    Steve Davidoff has a well-researched piece on the antics and impact of narcissistic CEOs in The New York Times.  The allegations of deeply selfish and unlawful actions by chief executive of Delphi Financial, Robert Rosenkranz, appear to have motivated the piece. Here is just one of the vile acts listed by Davidoff:

    Despite restrictions in Delphi Financial’s charter, Mr. Rosenkranz demanded in negotiations that he be paid over $110 million more than other shareholders, a number that a special committee of Delphi Financial’s board negotiated down by about $50 million.

    To me, the piece really gets interesting when Mr. Davidof digs into the research, including:

    1. Henrik Cronqvis and his colleagues found that the more deeply a company was in debt, the more its chief executive was willing to borrow to buy a house!

    2. In another study: "Flying small planes is viewed as thrill-seeking behavior. Professors Cain and McKeon found that chief executives with pilot licenses were more prone to engage in acquisitions, with the theory that takeovers are risky, yet exciting ventures."

    This second study reminds me of a hypothesis that Huggy Rao (my co-author of the scaling project) has proposed:  Male CEOs who have "trophy wives" are more likely to lead companies that make risky investments, as having a trophy wife is indicative that the boss had been fooling around at some point (also a risky behavior).

    The question that always nags at me when it comes to narcissism and related bad behavior displayed by powerful people is how much of it is provoked in a once decent person who is infected with power poisoning (there is plenty of evidence that this happens, much of which I review in my bossholes chapter in Good Boss, Bad Boss) versus the explanation that giving a selfish and narcissistic jerk a powerful position gives them greater opportunity to reveal their greed and self-absorption. In real life, it is probably some of both.  And the way the organization is structured makes a difference too — this is one reason why people who study corporate governance often advocate having "checks" on CEO power.

    In any case, I thought it was a nice article and it raises all osrts of issues about CEO selection and the structure of executive roles.

  • FUBAR, SNAFU, Fast Company, and Good Bosses

    My late father, Lewis Sutton, was a World II veteran.  Like many of his generation, the things he learned and experiences he had — from the terrors of the Battle of the Bulge to the joys of chasing French women — profoundly shaped the course of his life.  Part of what he learned was the language, funny and accurate expressions that — although now falling out of use — still provide lovely compact summaries of life's complexities. 

    I was reminded of two of my favorite sayings today by this excerpt from the  new chapter in the Good Boss, Bad Boss paperback posted today at Fast Company: "When There Is No Simple Solution at Work, Learn to Embrace the Mess."

    Here is part of the piece:

    Good Boss, Bad Boss shows the value of checklists, of instilling predictability during scary times, and offers A.G. Lafley’s philosophy that the best managers make things “Sesame Street simple.” These and other examples demonstrate that simplicity, clarity, and repeatable steps can reduce the burdens on people, promote performance, and save money. We human beings especially love simple stories that communicate clear solutions and actions; when Conrad Hilton was on the Johnny Carson show, he pleaded with millions of Americans, “Please remember to put the shower curtain inside the tub.”

    Yet there is there is a hazard to this quest: People start believing that every challenge has a clear and simple solution. Stories about past triumphs fuel this predilection. They can make life sound orderly and predictable, even though when the events unfolded, people were probably bewildered and overwhelmed much of the time. As singer Jimmy Buffett put it in his song Migration: “Some things are still a mystery to me/While others are much too clear.”

    Bosses have to be prepared to deal with both circumstances. They need to search for clear solutions and simplify things when possible. But it is impossible to be a leader without facing stretches where you and your followers are overwhelmed with the complexity and uncertainty of it all. When this happens, to maintain everyone’s spirits keep them moving forward, and to sustain collective stamina, sometimes it is best to embrace the mess–at least for a while.

    This challenge reminded me of two of the most famous and fun World War II expressions:

    Snafu — situation normal, all fucked-up

    fubar — fucked-up beyond all recognition

    One CEO I know, also the son of a World War II veteran, uses the distinction between the two to help decide whether a "mess" requires intervention, or it is best to leave people alone for awhile to let them work through it. 

    He asks his team, or the group  muddling through mess: "Is it a snafu or fubar situation? " He finds this to be a useful diagnostic question because, if it is just usual normal level confusion, error, and angst that is endemic to uncertain and creative work, then it is best to leave people alone and let hem muddle forward.  But if it is fubar, so fucked-up that real incompetence is doing real damage, the group is completely frozen by fear, good people are leaving or suffering deeply, customers are fleeing, or enduring damage is being done to a company or brand — then it is time to intervene. 

    Its not a bad diagnostic, and dovetails well with another theme from Good Boss, Bad Boss — that the best bosses are "perfectly assertive," they know how to diagnose situations to determine when to watch, evaluate, coach or criticize their followers — versus when it is best to just get out of the way.  

    I would love to hear other ideas about how a boss knows when it is time to intervene versus time to "manage by getting out of the way."

  • The Power of Habit: Quick Review

    Book The Power of Habit 280

    The Power of Habit has been sitting on my desk for a couple months, as the publisher sent me an advance copy.  I didn't start reading it until today — although I was most impressed by this recent piece in The New York Times based on the book.  What a compelling read!  It is evidence-based and great reading — if you want to learn how companies track our habits, try to weave their products into our lives, and how we can understand and change our own habits for the better, it is all there. 

    I confess that I didn't pick it up because I am not wild about the cover design, It is hard to grasp on quick glance and, well, I do not find it especially attractive — but once I started reading the book, I realized it is the rare cover that actually provides a great compact summary of a book's core ideas.  And having struggled with the cover design process myself quite a few times now, I can tell you that it isn't easy getting something as emotionally compelling as Made to Stick or as beautiful as Enchantment.   In any event, The Power of Habit reminded me that the old saw "you can't judge a book by it's cover" is true! 

  • The Rise of a Culture of Contempt and the Demise of UCLA Men’s Basketball

    Work Matters reader and fellow blogger, Chris Yeh, sent me a link to a Sport's Illustrated story about the discouraging downfall of the UCLA basketball program.  And I don't mean the drop off in performance at UCLA in the past few years, I mean the loss of its soul and the rise of a culture of contempt — with rampant lousy leadership, bad role models, asshole poisoning.  Chris summed it all up well:

    It’s terrible.  Thank goodness John Wooden isn’t alive, or this would have killed him.  To trample on his legacy like this is atrocious.

    UCLA's John Wooden, the "Wizard of Westwood" not only won more national championships than any coach of a male college basketball team, he fostered a culture of mutual respect and individual development that turned his players — whether they were superstars like Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Bill Walton or bench-warmers — into more confident, cooperative, and compassionate human beings.

    It appears coach Ben Howland has had the opposite effect.  As you can see in this excerpt from the Good Boss, Bad Boss paperback over at Fast Company on the power of subtraction, there is plenty of evidence that when leaders and peers display bad behavior and don't act swiftly and firmly to stop, the vile actions and attitudes spread like wildfire — and the result isn't just bad performance, it is a culture of contempt that damages everyone involved.

    Here is the upshot of the SI story about what happened the last few years under coach Ben Howland:

    "Over the last two months SI spoke with more than a dozen players and staff members from the past four Bruins teams. They portrayed the program as having drifted from the UCLA way as Howland allowed an influx of talented but immature recruits to undermine team discipline and morale. Fistfights broke out among teammates. Several players routinely used alcohol and drugs, sometimes before practice. One player intentionally injured teammates but received no punishment."

    The story offers many twists and turns, it is long and well-researched.  It provides many old but true lessons about how a bad boss can ruin a good team. If you are a leader of a group or organization of any size, it is worth studying and then taking a long hard look in the mirror and asking yourself — am I doing that too?  Here are a few questions you might ask yourself:

    1.  Are you focusing on strategy, but ignoring your team?

    Strategy matters, but it is not enough.  According to the story this was Howland's general management style. He acted as if the human part of his job was a nuisance. As the article explains:

    Other than during practices and games, he had little contact with his athletes, according to players. He showed up moments before a workout began and was gone before players paired off to shoot free throws at the end. Several team members say that his approach was how they imagined an NBA coach would run a team.

    2. What behavior do you model? 

    The SI story reports numerous examples of abusive and disrespectful behavior on his part:

    Each of the players who spoke to SI said they found Howland socially awkward and disapproved of the verbal abuse they say he directed at his staff, the student managers and the weakest players. One player said if he saw Howland waiting for the elevator he would take the stairs.

    3. Are you so focused on your own needs and wants that you insist that others indulge your little quirks? 

    The inner focus that comes with power poisoning can cause leaders to indulge and bizarre and petty behavior that — even if they are not aware of it — conveys that they are focused on their own self importance and don't give a hoot about others.  For example, SI reports:
    The players were puzzled by some of their coach's idiosyncrasies. Howland seemed obsessed with the temperature in the film room. If it was not exactly 76º a student manager was certain to feel Howland's wrath. The water bottles handed to him had to be just cold enough and not too large.
    4. Do you apply different rules to "stars" than to other team members even when they take reprehensible actions? 

    The story describes how star freshman Reeves Nelson was repeatedly physically abusive to fellow players in practice. Here is one of a string of such incidents:

    Walk-on Tyler Trapani was another Nelson victim. After Trapani took a charge that negated a Nelson dunk, Nelson went out of his way to step on Trapani's chest as he lay on the ground. Trapani is John Wooden's great-grandson.

    There are many other examples, but this one is symbolic as Nelson was literally trampling on a body that contained some of Wooden's DNA.  Here is how Howland was reported to have responded to such bad behavior:

    After each of the incidents, Howland looked the other way. One team member says he asked Howland after a practice why he wasn't punishing Nelson, to which he said Howland responded, "He's producing."

    5. Are you succeeding because the peer culture among your followers is hiding or offsetting your deep flaws? 

    This is one of the interesting parts of the story, and something every leader should think about.  In many cases, teams and organizations succeed DESPITE rather than BECAUSE of their leaders flaws.  In Howland's early years at UCLA, when the team was winning and morale among the players was good despite Howland's quirks and flaws, it was apparently due in large part to the tight bonds among the team members, an unusually mature and low ego group (which began unraveling in about 2008):

     It was a team of prefects, the protectors of the UCLA dynamic, who looked out for each other, making sure that no one got into trouble, that no one threatened what they were trying to accomplish or what UCLA has always been about. They were a tight group. If they went out, to the movies or a party, they were 15 strong. That kind of camaraderie is not unusual on good teams, but Howland's former players say he had very little to do with instilling it.

    6. Is your boss letting YOU get away with toxic and incompetent leadership?

    I was pretty stunned to read this:

    UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero, who through a spokesperson declined SI's interview request, told ESPN.com in January, "I need Ben Howland. Why would I even think about looking at someone else?" He added, "By his own admission, [Howland] made some mistakes. But I'm going to work with him. I'm not going to crucify him for those mistakes. Because Ben Howland is a hell of a coach, and anyone who understands basketball, anyone that's been around him, that knows the game, has the utmost respect for what he does as a coach. … We need to turn it around, and we all get that. But we will."

    The above quote is quite discouraging as it suggests that, well, so long as he goes back to winning, all is forgiven. As far as I am concerned, if the SI story is accurate, Howland suffers too deeply from power poisoning, committed too many selfish sins, and has demonstrated so much incompetence in dealing with people he is hired to look after and motivate to be allowed to continue in any leadership position. 
    The problems I've listed only begin to scratch the surface of the damage done under Howland's apparently flawed leadership. I haven't even got into the partying, the players who came to practice still stoned from the night before, and the bench-warmer who couldn't enter a game during "garbage time" because he didn't bother wearing his jersey under his warm-up jacket (the same player now says he can't believe, in retrospect, that he did it — but bad leadership and bad team dynamics cause people to do weird and dysfunctional things).
    Apparently, there are signs that Howland is doing a bit better this year and is taking steps to deal with bad behavior.  Last year, Howland finally stopped putting up with Reeves Nelson's awful behavior — for example, last season, he finally showed the courage to call fouls on Nelson in practice (in the past, "[Howland] always gave Reeves the benefit of the doubt on foul calls in practice so Reeves wouldn't lose it and be even more disruptive").  Nelson finally was kicked-off the team last November.   And now even Nelson and mother believe Howland should have been nipped the bad behavior in the bud.  As Nelson told SI:
    "I'm not trying to make excuses for what I did, but I got into some weird behavior patterns, and I think my mom was saying that if instead of one big punishment at the end, what if there had been smaller punishments along the way."
    Perhaps Howland will change his ways.  People do get better and perhaps he will learn to be less of a jerk, be in tune with the people he leads, to avoid letting superstar run roughshod over others, and to do the little bits dirty work when necessary.  I am not especially optimistic, especially after smelling the "winning is the only thing" attitude from Howland's boss.  Regardless, I believe this is a useful cautionary tale for any boss, and in particular, I  think of this guideline in Chapter 1 of The No Asshole Rule:
    The difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know. 
    P.S. Note that Reeves Nelson did an interview where he disputes many of the bad things said about him in the article and his law firm is demanding that SI retract the article.

  • Good Boss, Bad Boss is Shipping in Paperback: A Look Back

     

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    Good Boss, Bad Boss is already shipping in paperback at Amazon, today is the official publication date.  It has a new red cover (which I like, I hope it isn't too intense for you) and a new chapter, an Epilogue called "What Great Bosses Do: Lessons I've l Learned Since Writing Good Boss, Bad Boss."  Fast Company already published an excerpt from the new chapter on power poisoning and will be publishing more snippets in the coming weeks. 

    This all got me thinking about Good Boss, Bad Boss, about all the fun I had fretting over and talking with people about ideas in the book, and about lots of others ideas about bosses too, since the book was first published in September, 2010.  In doing so, I looked back on some of the most popular posts and related stories on bosses.  These include:

    1. Being a Good Boss is Pretty Damn Hard — Reflections on Publication Day

    2. Lessons from Nightmare (and Dream) Bosses — INC Interview

    3. How to Be a Good Boss — by Matt May

    4. When the Shit Hits the Fan, Women are Seen as Better Bosses than Men

    5. Drinking at Work — It's not all bad — a piece for Cnn.Com

    6. Is it Sometimes Rationally to Select Leaders Randomly?

    7. Clueless and Comical Bosses: Please Help Me With Examples

    8. A Cool Neurological Explanation for the Power of Small Wins

    9. How a Few Bad Apples Can Ruin Everything — a Wall Street Journal piece I wrote

    10. What are Good Things About Having a Lousy Boss?

    11. Pixar Lore: The Day Our Bossses Saved Our Jobs — at HBR.org

    12. David Kelley on Love and Money

    I could have added a lot more — let me know which ones you like, which ones you don't form the above list, and which ones I should have added from the past six years or so I've been writing Work Matters. Thanks so much for everything

  • The No Asshole Rule in One Company: A Simple Decision-Tree

    I recently posted an updated version  of People and Places that Use The No Asshole Rule.  In that spirit, a group of students in my class Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach did a little case study of how a local start-up (with about 150 people now) is sustaining a civilized workplace.  I liked this simple decision-tree as it captures much of the essence of how to enforce the rule — assuming they actually use this rather than just talk about it!

    Jerk Decision Tree

  • Greetings and Bathrooms: One CEO’s Metrics for Retail Stores

    Yesterday, we had the CEO of a large retail chain as a visitor in the Stanford class we Huggy Rao and I are teaching on scaling-up excellence.  I will refrain from using his name as this a class, not a speech to the public.  But he said something  interesting in response to a question about the challenge of "descaling bad behavior."  When I asked what the "warning signs" he looked for during store visits, signs that management was slipping, he offered two metrics (which he said could be applied to many others retail settings too):

    1.   Am I — and other customers — warmly greeted by employees when they enter the store?  He said this was a general sign that employees were focusing on customers.  He added that the small social connection and associated feeling of obligation makes it a bit harder for people to walk out of the store without buying anything. 

    2. Are the bathrooms clean?  He joked that people in his company must think he has a small bladder because he is always asking to go the bathroom.  He argued that dirty bathroom are a sign that the managers and employees are failing to execute in other ways, and because customers react so negatively to dirty bathrooms, it was especially bad for motivating sales and return visits.

    He said that, when he spots these signs, he immediately has a huddle with the store manager and employees to explain why they are of such concern to him and to persuade them to start changing their behavior right away.  He also emphasized that his firm uses all kinds of quantitative measures to run the stores, but as he pointed out, these simple measures add something that can't be seen just from looking at the numbers.

    Ireally liked the elegance of his two measures and how he tied them to his immediate actions.

    I wonder, what other simple measures do you use — as a customer or manager — to assess if a store is being ran well or badly?

    P.S. I was sitting next to a marketing professor from another university during the talk. He argued that if you look at Wal-Mart's recent financial challenges (which the press seems to attribute to such deep cuts in the merchandise prices), part of the problem may be that they are failing along the lines suggested by this veteran CEO.  As he noted, Wal-Mart is eliminating some greeters and moving others away from the entrance; an article in RetailWire comments on reduced and altered use of greeters: "A lot of changes have taken place at Walmart over the years since Sam Walton's passing, but the latest may have him flipping over in his grave. "  That marketing professor also asserted the cleanliness of Wal-Mart bathrooms have slipped in recent years (This is hearsay as I am not a regular Wal-Mart customer; I did try to look online for evidence to support the claim, and while there were individual complaints, I didn't see any systematic evidence one way or another).

  • Larry Page, My Wife’s Lament, and Reading on Books vs. Screens

    A couple weeks back, my wife Marina and I were talking about the Kindle we share. She made an interesting observation: Although she loves the convenience of the thing and enjoys reading books on it, she doesn't remember what she reads on it nearly as well as a regular book. 

    I thought that was pretty insightful — it rang true to me.   I often buy books — both for pleasure and research — on the Kindle and also find reading on the Kindle to be just fine (although I prefer books because of the the tactile experience). But I've figured out that if I am using the book for my writing and research, especially for a long-term writing project, I need to have a physical copy someplace nearby where I see the cover now and then.  Otherwise, I forget about it. 

    This means that I often buy two copies of a book –one for the Kindle and the other to stack next to my computer.  I often am too impatient to wait for the book to come in the mail or to go to the bookstore, so I buy on the Kindle, and then buy a hard copy if I like it.  I need a copy of the book to remind of what I've learned and might need — something I reinforce it by flipping through each of the 30 or so books I keep in stacks all around me (and the stack of 100 or so articles I've printed out as well) to remind me of stuff I need to remember.

    Perhaps it is just Marina and me, but I started wondering if there was any research on the differences between how well people remember things they read in digital versus paper form.  I did a quick look and didn't find any, but in doing so, I recalled a conversation that Jeff Pfeffer and I had with Google's Larry Page in (I think)  2002  (We did an interview with him and then had lunch; this was before Google was a public company.).   At one point in the conversation, when we asked him about obstacles to Google's success, he said something quite interesting: Research shows that people read considerably slower when they read things on a screen than in paper form. I recall him saying 15% to 20% — a number supported by research done a few years earlier).

    I nosed around the web a bit and found some 2010 research on tablets versus books by Jakob Nielsen that confirmed Larry's point persists in the modern era– although it looks like the difference between screens and books is less than the research Larry was talking about. Here is the report and I reprint the key findings:

    Results: Books Faster Than Tablets

    The iPad measured at 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the Kindle measured at 10.7% slower than print. However, the difference between the two devices was not statistically significant because of the data's fairly high variability.

    Thus, the only fair conclusion is that we can't say for sure which device offers the fastest reading speed. In any case, the difference would be so small that it wouldn't be a reason to buy one over the other.

    But we can say that tablets still haven't beaten the printed book: the difference between Kindle and the book was significant at the p<.01 level, and the difference between iPad and the book was marginally significant at p=.06.

    This research doesn't dig into reading comprehension, let alone longer-term memory. But that nearly 11% difference is quite substantial when you think about how much many of us read.  And, perhaps I am being sentimental, but it is lovely to see that those old-fashioned books still have an evidence-based edge!

    What do you think?  Do you feel like you read slower and recall less when you read on screen versus real paper?  And is this an affliction only suffered by me and perhaps other other old-timers who learned to read on paper alone?

    P.S. If you want to nerd out, I just found a pretty detailed review of this stuff, and it does look like that, as computer screens are getting better (and more people grow up reading on them) that the paper advantage is narrowing and in some cases going away — although as the above study suggests paper still has the upper hand on key tasks.

  • 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

     

    ButtonA 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

    Asm2_img_cecil_balmond1Arup’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.

    6a00d83451b75569e200e54f31943e8834-800wiIan 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.’

  • My Main Focus for 2012: Still Scaling-Up Excellence

    I thought I would provide an update about what I am working on these days, and use it to get some ideas and advice from folks who read this blog.

    2011 was a year of learning and thinking for me, which was necessary because 2010 was simply wild.  I had open heart surgery in April, Good Boss, Bad Boss was published in September, as was the paperback version of The No Asshole Rule — both of which became New York Times bestsellers.   I spent 2011 doing a lot of talking, reading, and thinking about two future projects — they are moving along, but it is always a slow process.  I am lucky to have a job where I don't have to rush to get things out before I am proud of them.

    The first project remains in the early stages.  It follows from my focus on the intersection of humanity and performance in the workplace.  I would tell you more, but it is so ill-formed that I changed my mind about the exact focus several times last year and will likely do so several more times. The one thing I can say at this point is that, when I go back to all the stories people have told me about being a boss, working for bosses, and dealing with assholes, two themes come up over and over: 1. How crucial it is for people to feel as if they are treated with dignity and respect and  2. How important it is for people to be able to stand-up for themselves and others, to create conditions that enable dignity and respect, but to do so without being an asshole.   This first project may take years to reach fruition as my main focus now is on the second project — which fits with my other work on innovation and organizational change.

    My Stanford colleague Huggy Rao and I have been reading about, talking about and studying "scaling" for several years now — the challenge of spreading and sustaining actions and mindsets across organizations and networks of people — of spreading excellence or goodness from the few to the many.  This was my primary focus last year and will continue to be in 2012.  Huggy and I are now making serious progress on a book that digs into the topic.

    Every book has a life of its own. This one took awhile to get moving, but it is now dominating our lives.  We seem to be in constant conversation with managers and executives from all kinds of industries about the topic (e.g., in recent weeks we've talked to executives from high tech firms, banks, and the hotel industry; administrators who run prisons; leaders of a big beer company; and school administrators — this week we are swimming in founders of start-ups), we are teaching a fun and somewhat crazy class with 60 MBA and engineers on scaling-up excellence this term (I will blog more about this in the coming weeks), and the text for the book is now pouring out of our computers slowly but steadily.

    Last year, HBR provided summaries of projects that a host of of business and management leaders would be taking on in 2011 — including me.  The perspective Huggy and I are developing has become more refined and our ideas are now much sharper.  But the  "agenda" piece I wrote about a year ago still captures what we are trying to do pretty well. 

    I said our goal was to finish the book in 2011. That didn't happen, but I am optimistic it will this year as we are moving along at a healthy clip. I repeat that description of our project completely (along with comments from the earlier version of this post, published here last year).  We would love any additional comments, suggestions, examples, or other ideas you have:

    My Stanford Business School colleague Hayagreeva Rao and I are absorbed by why behavior spreads—within and between organizations, across networks of people, and in the marketplace. We've been reviewing academic research and theory on everything from the psychology of influence to social movements to how and why insects and fish swarm.

    We are also doing case studies. We're documenting Mozilla's methods for spreading Firefox (its open-source web browser); the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's "100,000 Lives" campaign (an apparently successful effort to eliminate 100,000 preventable deaths in U.S. hospitals); the spread of microbrewing in the United States; an organizational change and efficiency movement within Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (now part of Pfizer); and the scaling of employee engagement at JetBlue Airways. And we're examining case studies by others, including the failure of the Segway to scale and the challenges faced by Starbucks as a result of scaling too fast and too far.

    Our goal is to write a book in 2011 that provides useful principles for managers, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who wants to scale constructive behavior. Because we are in the messy middle, I can't tell how the story will end. But we believe we're making progress, and we're excited about a few lines of thought.

    The first is the link between beliefs and behavior. A truism of organizational change is that if you change people's minds, their behavior will follow. Psychological research on attitude change shows this is a half-truth (albeit a useful one); there is a lot of evidence that if you get people to change their actions, their hearts and minds will follow.

    The second theme is "hot emotions and cool solutions." As Rao shows in his research on social movements, a hallmark of ideas that scale is that leaders first create "hot" emotions to fire up attention, motivation, and often righteous anger. Then they provide "cool," rational solutions for people to implement. In the 100,000 Lives campaign, for example, hot emotions were stirred up by a heart-wrenching speech at the kickoff conference. The patient-safety activist Sorrel King described how her 18-month-old daughter, Josie, had died at Johns Hopkins Hospital as the result of a series of preventable medical errors. Her speech set the stage for IHI staffers to press hospitals to implement six sets of simple, evidence-based practices that would prevent deaths.

    The third is what we call the ergonomics of scaling—the notion that when behaviors scale, it is partly because they've been made easy, with the bother of engaging in them removed. In developing Firefox in the early days, Mozilla's 15 or so employees were able to compete against monstrous Microsoft (and produce a browser with fewer bugs than Internet Explorer) by dividing up the chores and using a technology that made it easy for more than 10,000 emotionally committed volunteers to do "bug catching" in the code. Mozilla now has more than 500 employees, but it is still minuscule compared with Microsoft, and those bug catchers are still hard at work every night.

    Again, we would love to hear your ideas:  Cases we should dig into, research on scaling and organizational change we should know about, and methods you've used in your organization to scale good behavior and descale bad. We would love to hear it all.