Category: The No Asshole Rule

Things
have been busy lately, but rewarding, as many of the doctoral students I work
with at Stanford are wrapping-up their dissertations, I’ve been talking to lots
of diverse organizations lately on different topics (from two law firms and one manufacturing
company on the no asshole rule to a pharmaceutical company on innovation), and
I am about to do a workshop in Abu Dhabi with Michael Dearing and Perry Klebahn
on innovation, which should be fascinating (and a lot of fun). Before we take off, I thought I would do a
quick round-up of what has been happening, especially around the no asshole
rule:

1. I know, I’ve been talking about the Flying ARSE –- the self-test to see if you are driving other
   airline passengers crazy — for months now.  But it is pretty much done and we should go live in about a week. Meanwhile, the original ARSE (Asshole Rating Self-Exam) is getting close to 85,000 completions.
2. I was interviewed on CNN’s In the Money  for 6 or 7 minutes today (May 5^th) at about 1:30 PM EST on The No Asshole Rule and it will run again on Sunday, May 6^th at about 3:30 EST. The interviewers Ali Velshi and Christine Romans were really fun, and they had a lot of fun showing a censored version of the cover and telling the viewers the book was about jerks, but if they wanted to find the book, to search with a letter that starts with  an “A.” I will try to find a video link.

3. The No Asshole Rule debuted on the BusinessWeek business bestseller list in the May 7^th issue, at number #2, just behind Suze Orman’s book. I was delighted to join Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick, which has been on the list for three months.

4. I’ve had a lot of reaction to my post on the Harvard Business blog and here on “The War for Talent is Back,” where I argue among other things, that great people are overrated and great systems are under-rated. I have also since had a very interesting set of conversations with high-technology executives who argue that the no asshole rule is of special interest to their companies, because they are trying to compete for talent with Google, where the “don’t be evil” policy means, as I say in the book (and talked about in detail with a group at Google recently), that “it isn’t efficient to be an asshole at Google.”  So –- although I don’t like the motivation –- it seems that at least some executives are starting believe that having the rule is imperative, as otherwise, they can’t competing with Google for people.

5. I was invited by Stanford Business School Professor George Foster to talk about The No Asshole Rule at a “custom” executive program that he runs for executives from the National Football League this coming June. Check out the story about the program. Now that sounds fun!

6. The Huffington Post, one of the leading political blogs, is going to launch a group business blog in a few weeks. I will do an occasional post there as well. Stay tuned for details.

7. A publication called Style Weekly in Richmond, Virginia  published an interesting article on their (apparently) intimidating and demeaning mayor Doug Wilder called Methodical Tyrants. I don’t know if the facts about the mayor are inaccurate, but I was struck by the inaccuracies in fact and
   emphasis in the article about The No Asshole Rule.  It says I am a Harvard Professor (wrong, I am from Stanford) and also seems to imply that the book is an argument against tough managers and executives. It is an argument against demeaning managers, not against toughness, as I make
        clear in Chapter 1. I guess it is nice that people are writing about the book without reading it, but I think that accuracy is important!

8. Finally, look for some coming posts where I dig further into the “caution” in the book that it is
   important to be slow about labeling people as assholes.  After all, some people that have gruff exteriors, but once you get to know them, they are great people, which I sometimes call “Porcupines with Hearts of Gold.”  I received a couple of fantastic emails about people who fit this description, and was giving a talk to a group of engineers a few weeks back, and one audience member had a wonderful line, “Those are the kind of guys with a bad user interface and a great operating system.” Now that is a nerd line !

 I
will provide a trip report about our trip to Abu Dhabi and other updates
(especially about the last point) in future posts.

I have finally — after a lot of distractions — turned back to developing the Flying ARSE (see this post), which helps you answer the question: "Do you make air travel miserable for the rest us."  And, like the original ARSE Test (Asshole Rating-Self Exam), it will be 24 yes-no items, and you can fill it out with yourself in mind, or perhaps with someone (e.g., I think of a guy on my recent flight who constantly pushed the button for the flight attendant because they weren’t serving him fast enough and who raced ahead to be first off the plane even though the flight attendants asked us to stay in our seats for two children who were traveling alone and trying to make a tight connection).

The folks from Electric Pulp should have the test up and running a couple weeks.  In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy this story about how an airline employee engaged in "asshole management." This story comes second hand, from an Australian reader.  Frankly, it sounds like an urban myth to me, but is funny enough that — although it is best treated as fiction for now — it is worth repeating.  It all seems possible, although perhaps a bit too funny to be quite true:

An award should go to the Virgin Airlines gate attendant in Sydney some weeks ago for
being smart and funny, while making her point, when confronted with a passenger
who probably deserved to fly as cargo. A crowded Virgin flight was canceled
after Virgin’s 767s had been withdrawn from service. A single attendant was
re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly an angry
passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter
and said, "I HAVE to be on this flight and it HAS to be FIRST
CLASS".  

The attendant replied, "I’m sorry, sir. I’ll be happy to try to help you,
but I’ve got to help these people first, and I’m sure we’ll be able to work
something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that
the passengers behind him could hear, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I
AM?" Without hesitating, the attendant smiled and grabbed her public
address microphone: "May I have your attention please, may I have your
attention please," she began – her voice heard clearly throughout the
terminal. "We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE
IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14."
With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the
Virgin attendant, gritted his teeth and said, "F… You!" Without flinching,
she smiled and said, "I’m sorry sir, but you’ll have to fly
QANTAS for that service."

P.S.  An update on the original ARSE.  The folks at Electric Pulp report that
over 83,000 people have completed the ARSE since we put online in
February.  The mean score is 5.34.  I suggest that a score under 5
means that a person is not an asshole, 5 to 15 indicates a borderline asshole,
and over 15 indicates a certified asshole (24 is a “perfect” score, a person
who is a complete jerk on every dimension). Aaron Mentele just gave me a
breakdown among all test-takers, based on 83,644 completions:

6,142 Certified Assholes
(15+)

29,270 Borderline Assholes
(5-15)

48,232 Not Assholes (0-4)

These aren’t my
words, this is what the Village
Voice says about attorney Kenneth Heller (pictured to the left):

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." 

Check
it out! Here is a little preview of how Heller reacted to a judge he disagreed with: When Judge Howard Silver walked by Heller in the courtroom, he bellowed "Kiss my tuchis!" and then spat at him!

I just was sent an MP3 file of an interview I did a few weeks ago for the Wall Street Journal Radio show.  I thought the interviewer did a great job — and they were more comfortable with the A word than The New York Times or NPR! The bleeps are also clever.

Here is the link

Download WSJAhole.mp3

As I wrote last week,The No Asshole Rule was just released in France on April 1, and seems to be doing well. The book is called  Objectif Zéro-Sale-Con in French.  My editor tells me that they are already in the third printing.    I also have been receiving quite a few emails from French readers, including one yesterday who complained about the nasty people in the French television business and another who complained in the heading that "The Purchase Departments in large companies in France are full of assholes."  Another French reader sent me a link to an article that just appeared in what he called "a famous newspaper," Libération.  The title of the article in French is L’entreprise, pépinière de cons..., which he translates as "Companies, Tree Nursery for Assholes."  The translation is not only charming, unfortunately, it is true too often in the companies that I know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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