Work Matters

Category: The No Asshole Rule

  • The Asshole Survival Guide: My Latest Book

    Sutton.alkaseltzer

    The No Asshole Rule was published 10 years ago. It focused on building civilized workplaces. Yet the most frequent question that it provoked were variations of "Help. I am dealing with an asshole (or a bunch of them), what do I do?"  

    People asked it in some form or another in the most of the 8000 or so emails that I got about that book and in hundreds of casual conversations.  I've been asked it by numerous of journalists (for both professional and personal reasons) and by critics of The No Asshole Rule who complained that the book devoted just one short chapter to addressing it.  I've heard it from all kinds of people of all kinds including cashiers at Costco, Jewish Cantors and Catholic Priests, executive assistants,  young lawyers who worked for nasty partners, old lawyers who worked with nasty clients, a CEO who felt oppressed by "boardholes" and "douche boards," airline customers and pilots, and on and on. 

    During the past decade, I took care to save the emails and other bits that people sent me about workplace jerks and other kinds of assholes. And I spent a few hours each week reading and cataloging the growing pile of academic research on all things asshole including abusive supervision, rudeness, "mobbing," abusive customers, negative emotions, air rage, and such.  But it took me years to returned to writing about the asshole problem again.

    I got distracted by writing two other books, other adventures such as the Designing Organizational Change Project at Stanford, and life in general.   But the ten year anniversary The No Asshole Rule inspired me to devote much of 2016 to writing a book that gives the best answers I can muster to all those people who keep asking me that question. The Asshole Survival Guide was published in September 2017.  

    I am posting plug for my latest book on this old Work Matters blog, in part, as a kind of goodbye to the active life of this site.  I may still post stuff here occasionally, but I am now using my new All Things Bob Sutton site as the main place where I post things and as the main first "stop" to find my work.

     This post completes a cycle that was started back in in 2006 when Diego Rodriguez of IDEO and Metacool fame convinced me to give this new fangled blogging thing a try.  Diego thought it would be a good way to create buzz for my forthcoming asshole book and he knew that I liked to write about leading and dealing with workplaces.  Over the past few years, I haven't been blogging here much, and most stuff I have written has appeared on my LinkedIn Influencer pages, sometimes at Harvard Business Review and Medium, and at stray places such as INC and the McKinsey Quarterly.  

    Yet when I look at this site, I am amazed by how how many pieces I've posted here (many of which took a day or more to write), by the number, range, and quality of comments people have posted, by the wonderful lessons readers have taught me, and by all the connections I've made with people who reached out to me. My first real post (after deleting a couple of experiments) appeared on june 13th, 2006. It was called "Brainstorming in the Wall Street Journal": I challenged a myth, or a least a severe oversimplification, that research proves brainstorming doesn't work.  My Typepad dashboard shows that there are 1180 posts on this site ( I wrote all but one or two) and 5648 reader comments.  The site has had almost 4 million pageviews (3868829) since it was launched and averages 975 views per day (I am sure many are bots!).  

    I am not shutting down this site. Rather, I am going to pretty it up a little bit over the next couple weeks and keep it as an archive, which will remain at www.bobsutton.org and at bobsutton.typepad.com – and I may update it in small ways now and then.   The new book prompted me to think about how I want to bring together my varied past work, including the stuff on this blog, and to provide one stop shopping for my new stuff as well.  So I just launched a new website called "All Things Bob Sutton" that is at bobsutton.net (which now directs you to the new site instead of this one).  I worked with Liz Mortati,a great web designer who Adam Grant recommended to me. The new site contains links to my various stuff, including this site, and to various other posts and articles, videos, and quizzes like the Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE). And it will be updated with new stuff I've got cooking. 

    I invite you to follow me to the new site. There will be a lot more action there this year than there has been at the Work Matters blog in a long time. And I especially want to thank everyone who has read this blog, made comments, spread the word about various posts, and written in me in recent years to nudge me to start posting here more often.  I hope you like the new place.  

  • Kurt Vonnegut, Joe Heller, and a Great Thanksgiving Message

    Vonnegut Postcard

    It is Thanksgiving morning here in California and I was thinking of all the good things in my life I have to be thankful for, just as I know that so many of you are thinking today.  I thought it would be nice to reprint a story and poem I first posted on this blog over five years ago, on the day The No Asshole Rule was published and it was updated shortly after on the day Vonnegut died.  The key part is Vonnegut's Joe Heller poem, one of the last things he published before he died.  His message that reminding ourselves how much we have (rather than how much we want), that so many of us "have enough," is timeless and especially fitting for the day.  Enjoy and have a happy Thanksgiving.

     I just heard that Kurt Vonnegut died. I loved his books and was touched by his sweet contribution, for creating the best moment I had when writing the book. His death makes me sad to think about, but his life brings me joy. All of us die in the end, it is the living that counts — and Vonnegut touched so many people. Here is my story.

    The process of writing The No Asshole Rule entailed many fun twists and turns.  But the very best thing happened when I wrote for permission to reprint a Kurt Vonnegut poem called "Joe Heller," which was published in The New Yorker.  I was hoping that Vonnegut would give me permission to print it in the book, both because I love the poem (more on that later), and Vonnegut is one my heroes.  His books including Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions had a huge effect on me when I was a teenager– both the ideas and the writing style.

    I wrote some anonymous New Yorker address to ask permission to reprint the poem, and to my amazement, I received this personal reply from Vonnegut about two weeks later. Take a look at the two sides of the postcard, it not only is in Vonnegut's handwriting and gives me permission to use it "however you please without compensation or further notice to me," the entire thing is designed by Vonnegut (and I suspect his wife helped, as she is a designer).  "Life is No Way to Treat an Animal" is one of the famous sayings from his character Kilgore Trout — even the stamp is custom.  It is one of my favorite things.

    The poem fits well in my chapter on how to avoid catching asshole poisoning.  Here is how I set it up in the book:

    'If you read or watch TV programs about
    business or sports, you often see the world framed as place where everyone
    wants “more more more” for “me me me,” every minute in every way.
    The old bumper sticker sums it up: “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.” The
    potent but usually unstated message is that we are all trapped in a life-long
    contest where people can never get enough money, prestige, victories, cool
    stuff, beauty, or sex – and that we do want and should want more goodies than
    everyone else.

    This attitude fuels a quest for constant
    improvement that has a big upside, leading to everything from more beautiful
    athletic and artistic performances, to more elegant and functional products, to
    better surgical procedures and medicines, to more effective and humane
    organizations. Yet when taken too far,
    this blend of constant dissatisfaction, unquenchable desires, and overbearing
    competitiveness can damage your mental health. It can lead you to treat those “below” you as inferior creatures who are
    worthy of your disdain and people "above" you who have more stuff and status as
    objects of envy and jealousy.

    Again, a bit of framing can help. Tell yourself, “I have enough.” Certainly,
    some people need more than they have, as many people on earth still need a safe
    place to live, enough good food to eat, and other necessities. But too many of
    us are never satisfied and feel constantly slighted, even though – by objective
    standards – we have all we need to live a good life. I got this idea from a lovely little poem
    that Kurt Vonnegut published in The New
    Yorker     called “Joe Heller,” which was about the author of the renowned
    World War II novel Catch 22. As you can see, the poem describes a party
    that Heller and Vonnegut attended at a billionaire’s house. Heller remarks to Vonnegut that he has
    something that the billionaire can never have, "The knowledge that I've
    got enough." These wise words
    provide a frame that can help you be at peace with yourself and to treat those
    around you with affection and respect:

    Joe Heller  

    True story, Word of Honor:
    Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
    now dead,
    and I were at a party given by a billionaire
    on Shelter Island.

    I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
    to know that our host only yesterday
    may have made more money
    than your novel 'Catch-22'
    has earned in its entire history?"
    And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
    And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
    And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
    Not bad! Rest in peace!"

    –Kurt Vonnegut

    The New Yorker,
    May 16th, 2005

    (Reprinted with Kurt Vonnegut’s permission — see the above postcard!)

    P.S. I also added another post about Vonnegut after this one that was good fun, which talked about my favorite quote.

    P.P.S. The first version of this post was written on February 22nd, the day The No Asshole Rule was published.  I then updated in mid-April of 2007, after I heard that Vonnegut had died.  This is the third update because it seems like such a  great Thanksgiving message.

  • 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.

  • The Marketoonist on Attila the Manager

    121119.attila marketoonist

    I got a note from a manager about this cartoon and story at the Marketoonist, which is drawn and written by Tim Fishburne — he talks about The No Asshole Rule and the problem of brillant jerks. Check out his site, it is filled with great stuff — like this cartoon and story about my least-favorite U.S. company, United Airlines.

    P.S. I am sorry I have not been blogging much, I am hoping to turn up the volume and have a lot of things to write about, especially Matt May's new book The Laws of Subtraction.  But life keeps getting in the way!

  • William Gibson on Assholes and the Damage Done

    William Gibson on Assholes
    William Gibson is one of the most influential and out there science fiction writers of our time.  Read about him here and here. He is credited with first usign the term "cyberspace" in a 1982 story and Wikipedia claims "He is also credited with predicting the rise of reality television and with establishing the conceptual foundations for the rapid growth of virtual environments such as video games and the World Wide Web."   He is also credited with one of my favorite quotes "The future is already here — it is just not very evenly distrubited.

    P.S. A big thanks to Caroline for sending this to me!

  • Rare Wisdom from Citrix CEO Mark Templeton about Hiearchy and Respect

    I confess that as an avid reader of The New York Times, I have been disappointed in recent years because they devote too much space to interviews with CEOs and other bosses. Notably, it seems to me that they run the same column twice every Sunday: Adam Bryant's "The Corner Office" and another interview column called "The Boss."  I do love many of these interviews anyway, as The Times gets interesting people and their editing makes things better.  And I am a big fan of Adam Bryant's book, The Corner Office, as it did a great job of transcending the column.   What bugs me, however, is that The Times devotes so much of the paper to interviews now, I suspect, because it is simply cheaper than producing hard-hitting investigative journalism.  They do an occasional amazing in-depth story, but there is too much fluff and not enough tough for my tastes.  

    That said, some of the interviews are still striking.  One of the best I have ever read appeared a couple years back, with Citrix CEO Mark Templeton. The whole interview is unusually thoughtful and reminds me that people who don't see themselves as CEOs and don't lust after the position often turn out to be the best candidate for the job (related point: see this study that shows groups tend to pick people with big mouths to lead but that less pushy and extroverted leaders tend to lead more effective teams — at least when the teams were composed of proactive members).   In particular, however, I was taken with this quote from Templeton:

    You have to make sure you never confuse the hierarchy that you need for managing complexity with the respect that people deserve. Because that’s where a lot of organizations go off track, confusing respect and hierarchy, and thinking that low on hierarchy means low respect; high on the hierarchy means high respect. So hierarchy is a necessary evil of managing complexity, but it in no way has anything to do with respect that is owed an individual.

    If you say that to everyone over and over and over, it allows people in the company to send me an e-mail no matter what their title might be or to come up to me at any time and point out something — a great idea or a great problem or to seek advice or whatever.

    There is so much wisdom here, including:

    1. While there are researchers and other idealists running around and urging companies to rip down their hierarchies and to give everyone equal power and decision rights, and this notion that we are all equal in every way may sound like a lovely thought, the fact is that people prefer and need pecking orders and other trappings of constraint such as rules and procedures. As Templeton points out so wisely, organizations need hierarchies to deal with complexity.  Yes, some hierarchies are better than others — some are too flat, some have to many layers, some have bad communication flows, and organizational designers should err on making them as "light" and "simple" as possible — but as he says, they are a necessary evil.

    2.  His second point really hits home and is something that all too many leaders — infected with power poisoning — seem to forget as they sit at the top of the local pecking order "thinking that low on hierarchy means low respect; high on the hierarchy means high respect."  When leaders believe and especially act on this belief, all sorts of good things happen, including your best people stay (even if you can't pay them as much as competitors), they feel obligated to return the respect by giving their all to the organization (and feel obligated to press their colleagues to do as well), and a norm of treating people with dignity and respect emerges and is sustained.  Plus, as Templeton points out, because fear is low and respect is high, people at the top tend to get more truth — and less CYA and ass-kissing behavior.

    No organization is perfect.  But a note for all the bosses out there.  If you read Templeton's quote a few times and think about what it means for running your organization, it can help you take a big step toward excellence in terms of both the performance and well-being among the people you lead.

  • “Ascent of the A-Word” Geoffrey Nunberg’s Great New Book

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    You have probably have heard of  Geoffrey Nunberg — that brilliant and funny linguist on NPR.  He has a brand new asshole book called Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First 60 years.  I first heard about it a few weeks back when I was contacted by George Dobbins from the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.  He asked if I might moderate Nunberg's talk on August 15th, given we are now fellow asshole guys.  I was honored to accept the invitation and I hope you can join us that evening — you are in for a treat.

    The book is a satisfying blend of great scholarship, wit, and splendid logic.  It is a joy from start to finish, and the reviewers agree.  I loved the first sentence of the Booklist review “Only an asshole would say this book is offensive. Sure, it uses the A-word a lot, but this is no cheap attempt to get laughs written by a B-list stand-up comic." 

    Nunberg starts with a magnificent first chapter called The Word, which talks about the battles between "Assholes and  Anti-assholes."   I love this sentence about the current state of public discourse in America "It sometimes seems as if every corner of our public discourse is riddled with people depicting one another as assholes and treating them accordingly, whether or not they actually use the word."  As he states  later in the chapter, he doesn't have a stance for or against the word (although the very existence of the book strikes me as support for it), the aim of the book is to "explore the role that the notion of the asshole has come to play in our lives." 

    He then follows-up with one delightful chapter after another, I especially loved "The Rise of Talking Dirty,"  "The Asshole in the Mirror," and "The Allure of Assholes."  I get piles of books every year about bullies, jerks, toxic workplaces, and on and on. Although this isn't a workplace book, it is the best book I have ever read that is vaguely related to the topic. 

    I admired how deftly he treated "The Politics of Incivility" in the chapter on "The Assholism of Public Life."  Nunberg makes a compelling argument that critics on the right and the left both use the tactic of claiming that an opponent is rude, nasty, or indecent  — that they are acting like assholes and ought to apologize immediately.   Nunberg documents "the surge of patently phony indignation for all sides," be it calling out people for "conservative incivility" or "liberal hate."    He captures much of this weird and destructive game with the little joke "Mind your manners, asshole."

    I am barely scratching the surface, there is so much wisdom here, and it is all so fun.  Read the book.    Read and listen to this  little piece that Nunberg did recently on NPR.  This part is lovely:

    Well, profanity makes hypocrites of us all. But without hypocrisy, how could profanity even exist? To learn what it means to swear, a child has to both hear the words said and be told that it's wrong to say them, ideally by the same people. After all, the basic point of swearing is to demonstrate that your emotions have gotten the better of you and trumped your inhibitions

    We hope to see you at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on August 15th, it should be good fun.

  • Wired Story Wraps With My Argument That Steve Jobs Is Like A Rorschach Test

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    I can't even recall quite when it happened, but several month back a Wired reporter named Ben Austen called me about a piece he was doing on Steve Jobs' legacy.  I confess that kept the conversation short, in large part because I was just getting tired of the story — and I think everyone else is as well.  But this turned into the cover story, which — despite my lack of enthusiasm about the topic — is one of the most balanced and well-researched pieces I have seen.  At least that became my biased opinion after I saw that he plugged my last two books in the final three paragraphs!  Here is the whole piece if you want to read it and here is my argument — you can read the whole excerpt about Jobs as a Rorschach test here, where I put it in earlier post. Here is how Ben Austen ended his piece:

    As he was writing his 2007 book, The No Asshole Rule, Robert Sutton, a professor of management and engineering at Stanford, felt obligated to include a chapter on “the virtues of assholes,” as he puts it, in large part because of Jobs and his reputation even then as a highly effective bully. Sutton granted in this section that intimidation can be used strategically to gain power. But in most situations, the asshole simply does not get the best results. Psychological studies show that abusive bosses reduce productivity, stifle creativity, and cause high rates of absenteeism, company theft, and turnover—25 percent of bullied employees and 20 percent of those who witness the bullying will eventually quit because of it, according to one study.

    When I asked Sutton about the divided response to Jobs’ character, he sent me an excerpt from the epilogue to the new paperback edition of his Good Boss, Bad Boss, written two months after Jobs’ death. In it he describes teaching an innovation seminar to a group of Chinese CEOs who seemed infatuated with Jobs. They began debating in high-volume Mandarin whether copying Jobs’ bad behavior would improve their ability to lead. After a half-hour break, Sutton returned to the classroom to find the CEOs still hollering at one another, many of them emphatic that Jobs succeeded because of—not in spite of—his cruel treatment of those around him.

    Sutton now thinks that Jobs was too contradictory and contentious a man, too singular a figure, to offer many usable lessons. As the tale of those Chinese CEOs demonstrates, Jobs has become a Rorschach test, a screen onto which entrepreneurs and executives can project a justification of their own lives: choices they would have made anyway, difficult traits they already possess. “Everyone has their own private Steve Jobs,” Sutton says. “It usually tells you a lot about them—and little about Jobs.”

    The point at which I really decided that the Jobs obsession was both silly and dangerous came about a month after his death.  Huggy Rao and I were doing an interview on scaling-up excellence with a local CEO who founded a very successful company — you would recognize the name of his company.  After I stopped recording the interview, this guy — who has a reputation as a caring, calm, and wickedly smart CEO — asked Huggy Rao and me if we thought he had to be an asshole like Jobs in order for his company to achieve the next level of success…. he seemed genuinely worried that his inability to be nasty to people was career limiting. 

    Ugh.  I felt rather ill and argued that it was important to be tough and do the dirty work when necessary, but treating people like dirt along way was not the path to success as a leader or a human-being.  Perhaps this is my answer to the Steve Jobs Rorschach test: I believe that Jobs succeeded largely despite rather than because of the abuse he sometimes heaped on people.  Of course, this probably tells you more about me than Jobs!

  • Boring = Good? Inspirational = Bad?

    LeadershipINCSutton20012

    That is the title of weird interview that just came out in INC this month, which I did with Leigh Buchanan.  And the above drawing is by Graham Roumieu. 

    Here is the story on the INC website. The title is different online than in the print version, they call it "Thoroughly Counterintuitive Approach to Leading."  

    Leigh is always fun to talk to, and after having done interviews on both The No Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss, she has emerged as one of my favorite journalists.  For starters, she has such a sense of fun — most of us involved in doing and working with management are entirely too serious — I certainly plead guilty.  Leigh has the rare ability to talk about real ideas while at the same time conveying the absurdity of so much of organizational life .  She is also a great editor. In every interview I have done with her, I've rambled incoherently on for an hour or so, and she somehow put it in a form that made sense.

    This new interview a conglomeration of some of the stranger ideas from the various books I have written, especially Weird Ideas That Work along with some new twists.  As with weird ideas , I offer these ideas to challenge your assumptions (and my own) and to prompt us all to think.  I don't expect you to agree with them (I am not even sure I agree with all of them), but there is actually a fair amount of evidence and theory to support each of these sometimes uncomfortable ideas.

    To give you a taste,here is how the interview kicks-off:

    Leigh: You and I have been e-mailing about leadership traits, and at one point you suggested, “Good leaders know when to be boring, vague, emotionally detached, and authoritarian.” Under what circumstances might such traits be desirable? Start with boring.

    Me: There are two situations in which it’s a good idea to be boring. One is when you’re working on something but, so far, all you’ve got is bad news. Under those circumstances, any outside attention is bad.

    Don Petersen was the CEO of Ford after the Iaccoca era, and he was responsible for turning the company around. He told me a story about being invited to speak at the National Press Club. He didn’t want to do it. At the time, Ford had no good cars at all. But he and his PR chief decided he would go and give a speech about the most boring subject they could think of. At the time, that was safety. He practiced speaking in the most boring way possible, using the passive voice and long sentences. He put up charts that were hard to read, and then turned his back to the audience to talk about the charts. After that, the press lost interest in him for a while, so he could concentrate on doing the work.

    The other situation is when you’re dealing with controversy. Stanford used to have this brilliant provost, James Rosse. When Jim talked about something like the school’s Nobel Prize winners, he would be animated and exciting and charismatic. But when he had to talk about something like the lack of diversity on campus, he would ramble on for 20 minutes while looking at his feet. I thought it was brilliant

    And so it goes.  I hope you enjoy and I think Leigh for being such a delight to work with and for reminding me not to take myself so seriously.

  • A Different Version of the Creation Myth

    

     

    A big thanks to Carol Murchie for sending this my way.