Category: The No Asshole Rule

Dave Livingston sent me a snippet of a press report, which I paste in below. 

Lehman,
AIG Chiefs Should `Man Up,' Stop `Kissing the Mirror,' Peers Say Executives
passing the buck for failures that sank their companies or pushed them to the
brink win no sympathy from business leaders and management experts. “They need
to man up and take responsibility,'' said Warren
Bennis, founder of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern
California and author of books including “Leaders'' and “On Becoming a
Leader.'' “They kept winning, believing in their own omniscience and thinking
they can get away with anything.'' Chief executive officers summoned to Capitol
Hill this week by the U.S.
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform didn't point fingers at
themselves, drawing criticism from fellow chiefs. “There are three reasons why
companies go out of business and individuals go out of business: No. 1 is
arrogance, No. 2 is arrogance and No. 3 is arrogance,'' said Harvey
Mackay, chairman and CEO of Minneapolis-based MackayMitchell Envelope Co.
and author of “Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive'' and “Beware
the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt.'' “They all have chapped lips from
kissing the mirror too much

As I read this story and thought about what I learned from the recent financial crisis and from the last year or so from writing and talking about The No Asshole Rule with so many people, I realized that I've learned an important lesson about competence.  People who are certified assholes and those who are relentlessly arrogant often justify their behavior — and are forgiven by others — when they are seen as winners.I believe — and the evidence is pretty clear for both assholes and arrogance (e.g., see this and this research CEO hubris) — that although some leaders succeed (at least for awhile) despite these flaws, they are indeed dangerous flaws.  Just like missing other more tangible targets such as making money or winning games, being arrogant or leaving a trail of demeaned and de-energized people ought to be treated as a sign of incompetence. 

In fact, arrogance and acting like an asshole are especially great risks among people who are "winning" for the moment.   Although some people are more prone to such forms of incompetence regardless of performance levels, it is clear that any leader of a high-performing organization (regardless of past modesty and civility) is at great risk of turning into an arrogant and insensitive jerk because these are well-documented side effects of success. Just as patients who take a lot of aspirin need to be closely watched for signs abdominal bleeding, the more successful the company, the more likely that arrogance and asshole poisoning will spread, and these should be treated as known and highly dangerous risks.   Contrary to standard practice, top-performing leaders should be treated as at especially high risk of developing mindsets that will later cause them to run their organizations into the ground. At the first hint a leader has turned arrogant or is acting like a nasty, self-centered jerk, rehabilitation should commence, and if that fails, he or she should quickly be shown the door.

That's my view, as Dave suggested, perhaps my next book should be The No Arrogance Rule.  We would all be better off if those self-proclaimed geniuses on Wall Street had applied the rule a few years back. I guess the Master of the Universe mindset was still seen as a wonderful thing there until very recently.

P.S. I love that line from  "They all have chapped lips from
kissing the mirror too much.''

I have no idea what this means; it is one of those strange things that people send me.  But it is kind of cute.

One of the examples of rude behavior that comes up in The Civility Solution is people who park in obviously selfish ways.  I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she complained about someone we know who prides himself in taking two spaces (just like the above picture) to protect his car from door dings. I think that is a nearly perfect example of someone who is so self-absorbed that they don't even consider the negative effects of their behavior on others. It is also pretty similar to how CEO Paul Purcell defines an asshole at Baird — someone who consistently puts his or her self-interest ahead of others.  I would love to see the correlation between parking behavior and scores on the ARSE (the asshole rating self-exam).

P.S. The above picture comes youparklikeanasshole.com. You can see more pictures there of asshole parking.

I have been writing a fair amount lately (and, as a result,blogging a bit less), including an innovation article for the McKinsey Quarterly on innovation that will appear soon and the BusinessWeek essay discussed in my last post — and most of all — working to get my next book started. For me, the writing process involves reading books from diverse sources.  I thought it would be fun to point to three of the best books I've read lately. The first is P.M. Forni's The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude. Professor Forni is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and, as I have written here, has been leading a cvility movement in Maryland for the last few years.  It is a charming and well-written book. I especially like how Professsor Forni provides such constructive and careful guidance about how to handle the small moments of rudeness that occur so often in life — not only those moments when other people are rude to us, but also when we are rude to them.  As I've emphasized in The No Asshole Rule, the development and enforcement of this, or any other social norms, doesn't happen through broad pronouncement, but rather, in the little moments that either reinforce or undermine the norm.  The other thing I like about the book is that Professor Forni's personal charm and wisdom makes the book a delight to read.  I found that his warm gentle spirit inspired me to want to be more civil, not just the the content of the great advice and stories that he provides in this book.  This is a lovely and very practical book.

The brand new BusinessWeek is on "Trouble at the Office."  As I wrote here a couple months back, much of the content for the issue was created in collaboration with readers, including a series of blogs that BusinessWeek established with the primary aim of developing content for this issue.  The issue is now out online and it has everything from an interview with the Office's Rainn Wilson on jobs from hell to Jim Collins on Good to Great Expectations.  I contributed an essay on forces that will turn you into a jerk and how to overcome them — called "Are You Being a Jerk, Again."   This essay reflects themes that I've talked about in more depth in this blog including power (see here and here) and emotional contagion. It is a fun issue and I have to give BusinessWeek credit for trying something so different.

P.S. The weirdest part for me is that the story contains a huge artists rendering of me, which makes me nervous, in part, because that is the kind of attention that turns people into self-centered assholes.  Please do not hesitate to let me know if you notice that I start acting like a jerk.   

I was just talking to an executive coach and consultant from Colorado, and she told me a funny and instructive story about how she helped a client deal with his emotional outbursts and table pounding at meetings.  She would go to meetings with him and sat next to him.  She brought a roll of tape along with her. When her client got up to speak, she used an "escalating" four-step warning system to control his behavior:

1. At the first sign of excessive anger, she would would take the roll of tape out and put it on the table next to him.

2. If he didn't calm down — or started getting even more irate — she would turn it on edge and roll it around a bit as a stronger reminder.

3. If he still was losing it — perhaps starting to pound the table as he sometimes did — she would start peeling off a piece of tape and made sure that he noticed it was happening.

4. If all else failed, she would stand-up and put a piece of tape on his mouth.

She reported that step 4 was never actually used, but that she got to step 3 quite a few times.  She also reported that — because this client had a sense of humor and because he really wanted to stop his outbursts — this method was quite effective.  Ultimately, along with some other methods that they worked out to help him maintain control, he was able to massively curtail the frequency and intensity of his outbursts at meetings.

Finally, she also emphasized that most of the "constructive coaching" jobs she did with executives over the years weren't this much fun, and unlike this client, were often with executives who were unable or unwilling to change.  But I do like this story and I have to give her a lot credit for inventing the tape method and the client a lot of credit for being willing to have it used on him.

P.S. You can buy the duct tape poster here as well as some related goodies.

 The Onion seems to have discovered the no asshole rule and related work.  I love their little article and confess that they are on target. The notion that workplace assholes do damage is stunningly obvious.  But as I have written here before, the best leaders and organizations are often masters of the obvious. And as Jeff Pfeffer and I wrote in The Knowing-Doing Gap, one of the great puzzles of organizational life is why so many managers know what they and their colleagues ought to do build more effective and more civilized workplaces, but don't do it.

 In any event, I love this little article and thank the Onion folks for their lovely work.

Here is the full Onion article

Study: Not Being An Asshole Boss May Boost Employee Morale

July 30, 2008 | Issue 44•31

WAUKEGAN, IL—In what is being called a breakthrough discovery in worker-administrator relations, a study released Monday in the Journal Of Occupational Science
found that not being a total asshole supervisor may be linked to
improved worker spirit. "In nearly every trial, we found staff morale
runs considerably higher when bosses don't read workers' e-mail over
their shoulders, complain about their superior salaries, or act in any
way like giant, self- centered assholes," said Erica Gorochow, one of
the study's researchers. "Similarly, we found that typical dick manager
phrases like 'I don't disagree' can weaken worker disposition by as
much as 63 percent." Although the study's findings have already sent
shock waves through the business community, Gorochow warned that some
of the results may have been compromised, as the bitch lead researcher
was breathing down her neck the whole time.

P.S. Thanks to Kevin and Scott for telling me about this story.

Alex Smyth, one of my favorite former students and course assistants at Stanford, sent me this picture of The No Asshole Rule from a Beijing Bookstore.  He took the picture in May when he was visiting. 

It appears that a lot of people were getting their hands on it. Alex writes,

"Thought I'd share
with you this picture of a very well-thumbed paperback copy of the No Asshole
Rule I found in the main English-language bookstore in Beijing.  Note the
sheer amount of dirt and grime…- There were a few other much-cleaner copies,
but everyone seemed to be using this one to browse through…"

P.S. The paperback version isn't out yet in the U.S. and won't be out for sometime.  In China, they are selling the trade paperback version that is published in the United Kingdom. Note the spelling of "civilised."

As I wrote a few weeks back, BusinessWeek is trying an experiment where they are using blogs and comments on blogs to produce material for a forthcoming double-issue on the workplace.  So I have been blogging a bit in the section on toxic bosses. My editor there, Michele Conlin, tells me that the blogging part of this experiment is winding down and they are now moving toward selecting and editing the content. She especially liked the story about the “Asshole Boxing” methods used by the salesman with an asshole boss. I also put up a new post over there yesterday on “porcupines with hearts of gold,” which argues that it is wise to be slow to label people as assholes, in part, because some people have rough exteriors but are great people once you get past the initial impression. I am very curious to see how the special issue comes out, and in any event, I have to give BusinessWeek credit for having the courage to experiment with something new.

I’ve written here and in The No Asshole Rule about how physicians are among the worst bullies, and also, about how when people around them (especially nurses) fear that they will be bullied for pointing-out mistakes by doctors, that the lack of psychological safety leads to more mistakes (and also drives good people out of nursing and other medical professions).  I have seen this kind of bullying first hand (see this post about Dr. Gooser) as well. And see this post too about an asshole infested hospital. It appears that with this recent court ruling against a bullying doctor and, more recently, with is new set of guidelines for hospitals for the Joint Commission, which accredits most U.S. hospitals, that the pressure against asshole doctors is mounting. I quote from this AP story:

‘CHICAGO – Bullying doctors can make nurses afraid to question their
performance, resulting in medical errors, according to a hospital group
that announced new requirements for cracking down on intimidating
behavior.

Outbursts and condescending language threaten patient safety and
increase the cost of care, according to a safety alert issued Wednesday
by the Joint Commission, an independent organization that accredits
most of the nation’s hospitals.

Hospitals will be required by next year to have codes of conduct and
processes for dealing with inappropriate behavior by staff, said the
group’s president, Dr. Mark Chassin. Hospitals without such systems
risk losing their accreditation, he said.

Powerful doctors mean money for hospitals because they choose where
to admit their patients, but they “should not be left off the hook,”
said Dr. Peter Angood, vice president of the group, which is based in
suburban Chicago.

Grena Porto, a nurse involved in the group’s efforts, said nurses
need to be “appropriately assertive” and feel safe enough to ask a
doctor, “Are you sure we’re supposed to operate on the right leg,
rather than the left?”

Nurses, pharmacists and hospital administrators also can be
culprits, but it’s the doctors who bully nurses that are the most
significant for patient safety, said Dr. Alan Rosenstein, a researcher
on the topic. He applauded the group’s action.’