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!
Category: The No Asshole Rule
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Please Help Me Update! Places and People That Use The No Asshole Rule
Dear Work Matters readers,
As I am getting toward the end of our long effort to write "Scaling Up Excellence" with Huggy Rao, I am starting to do a bit of blogging and tweeting again. As part of it, I got an interesting email from a guy named Ben about a really awful battle over verbal abuse on something called the Linux kernel mailing list — look here, bad stuff. Ben asked me an interesting question I would like your help with: Which organizations actually have "no asshole" rules? Do they work? How do they implement them. I haven't been thinking about this much lately as I am focused on scaling. I did update the post below in early 2012, but I wonder if folks have any suggestions for places I should add — or subtract. It seems like something worth maintaining. Thanks so much!
Bob
A reporter asked me a couple years back, “The No Asshole Rule is fun to talk about, but does anyone ever actually use it?” It turns out that there is also a lot good news out here, lots of great leaders and many civilized places that people can work.
I wrote an initial list back then, and I update it every now and then. This is the latest, which I offer in celebration of Work Matters passing 2,000,000 pageviews and the impending publication of Good Boss, Bad Boss in paperback.
This list is far from exhaustive, but check out the breadth of places and the different ways that the rule is used. And if you work in a company that has the rule, that uses it well or has tried to implement it, but with limited success, I would love to hear about.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway As Buffett's right-hand man and long-time Berkshire Hathaway Vice-Chairman Charlie Munger puts it in Snowball "We had the no asshole rule very early. Our basic rule is that we don't deal with assholes." Check out this post for more details and thoughts
SPM Communications. Principal Suzanne Miller won a national contest for women-owned business, in part because her company applies the no-jerk rule to both employees and customers. As the Dallas Morning News reported:
“It struck a chord with the judges and audience,” she said. “Everyone has worked somewhere crappy."
Ms. Miller described the contest as “American Idol for businesswomen.” About 900 applicants from around the country were whittled down to 20 finalists who assembled in Phoenix to present their cases before an audience and a panel of judges.
“Part of the competition was to give a three-minute elevator speech on how we’re different and why we’ll reach the mark,” Ms. Miller said. Like the TV talent show, the contestants ran through a rehearsal, got ripped apart by coaches and then performed for real the next day. Ms. Miller basically got her spiel down to nine words: "Life is too short to work with mean people."
2tor: This online education company is serious about the rule; the media toned things down, but the use the A-word in their materials:
The company is proud of its hard-working, but fun culture and hires based on both job qualifications and character. The company handbook says, "when you're hiring someone, don't trade off competence for character — we need people with both." The quotation comes under a heading in the handbook that could be paraphrased as "No Jerks Allowed."
Robert W. Baird. This financial services firm was first #39 on Fortune's 2008 Best Places to Work list. Now, they are up to #11. Fortune asked in 2008 "What makes it so great?" And they answered 'They tout "the no asshole rule" at this financial services firm; candidates are interviewed extensively, even by assistants who will be working for them." Since I first learned about Baird, I have spoken to multiple people from the company, including CEO Paul Purcell, who enforces the rules with zest and humor. Here are some of the details.
Barclays Capital. They don’t use the word “asshole,” because they are, after all, a respectable financial institution! BusinessWeek reports:
“Hotshots who alienate colleagues are told to change or leave. "We have a 'no jerk' rule around here," says Chief Operating Officer Rich Ricci.”
IDEO: The iconic innovation has used the rule for as long as I can remember, from its founding in 1979. And I've seem them use it in all sorts of ways during my 15 year plus involvement with the place. As their Careers FAQ page advises (and note they are kind enough to plug this blog):
Talented and diverse people: We hire talented design thinkers who represent many perspectives, disciplines, nationalities, and points of view. We believe a civilized workplace is a more rigorous and sustainable place to work, so we don’t hire jerks. (Please see The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and IDEO Fellow, or read his blog.) We provide ways to share knowledge and projects among our people, believing that we all work better and learn more when we freely interact and collaborate with other talented people.
The Disbarred Lawyer. The Village Voice tells us that attorney Kenny Heller might be the most obnoxious in New York City and that the powers that be finally had enough of his antics:
‘After 50 years of heaping abuse on everyone within earshot and hurling accusations of conspiracies, "favoritism," and "cronyism" at countless judges and lawyers, the 77-year-old Heller has earned this distinction: No other lawyer in the city but Heller, according to records of his disciplinary hearing, has been ousted for "obstructive and offensive behavior which did not involve fraud or deception."’
‘Heller was disbarred for basically "being an asshole," as one adversary puts it. And in their profession, the rival adds, "that takes some doing."’
Lloyd Gosselink and Perkins Coie. Lawyers may earn their bad reputations at times, but I have been pleasantly surprised by how many firms espouse and enforce “no asshole rules.” Joshua de Koning, is firm Administrator of Lloyd Gosselink Blevins Rochelle & Townsend, which is located in Austin, Texas. He wrote me a few years back:
“I ordered my copy of The No Asshole Rule a couple of weeks ago from Amazon.com and am enjoying it thoroughly. The title caught my attention, not just because it's a great title, but because our firm has had the exact same rule (phrased in exactly the same way) since it's founding in 1984.”
They are not alone. Perkins Coie, a national law firm that with headquarters in Seattle has applied the “no jerk rule” for years, which has helped the firm to be named one of “the Top 100 Best Companies to Work for” five years in a row. See this story at Human Resources Executive Online for more about how the rule works at Perkins Coie (and other nuances of the rule).
Sterling Foundation Management. Sterling helps wealthy individuals establish and management private foundations. CEO and co-founder Roger D. Sterling wrote me, after “stumbling” on The No Asshole Rule that:
‘This is a principle that I was told about early in my career as "Never do business with an Asshole," and which we have since adopted. We've applied it to both clients and employees, to greatly beneficial effect. I would reckon it of equal or greater worth than present value analysis, which I must have been taught a dozen times in the course of getting to a Ph.D. in applied economics.’
Gold’s Gym. Joe Gold was founder of the famous gym that produced multiple body building champions, including a certain future film star and California governor named Arnold. His management philosophy was:
“To keep it simple you run your gym like you run your house. Keep it clean and in good running order. No jerks allowed, members pay on time and if they give you any crap, throw them out. There's peace where there's order."
The Wine Buyer. The belief that the no asshole rule ought to be applied to customers can be seen in many industries. A California wine buyer explained how he applies the rule:
“In my business, we have a rule that says that a customer can either be an arsehole (I'm English originally) or a late pay, but not both. We have reduced stress considerably by excluding some customers on this basis.”
A related concept is “asshole taxes:” I know people in occupations ranging from plumber to management consultant who don’t “fire” asshole customers, but charge them substantially hire fees as “battle pay” for enduring the abuse.
Bible Studies Class. This one still amazes me more than any other experience that I’ve had since publishing the book. I’ve written about it before, but no list of different places where the rule has been discussed and used would be complete without it. Psychology Professor Richard Beck wrote a post called "1 Corinthians and The No Asshole Rule." He starts out:
'Two weeks ago it was my turn to teach my adult Bible class at church. We are going through 1 Corinthians and I was up to teach the famous Chapter 13, "Love is patient, love is kind…"
And I thought to myself, "Richard, what are you possibly going to say in class that hasn't been said before about 1 Corinthians 13?"
Then it hit me. I started the class by doing a book review and reading selections from Dr. Robert Sutton's new book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.
Beck concludes:
'So, we reflected on all this in my Sunday School class. And after reflection on the No Asshole Rule, I read these famous words:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs…"
Basically, don't be an asshole
Arup’s “No Dickhead Rule.” Arup is one of the most renowned construction engineering firms in the world; in fact, they were recently profiled in The New Yorker (Check out this abstract for the ‘The Anti-Gravity Men”). Look at this beautiful Kinas TV building the worked in Beijing. As I wrote here, Robert Care, CEO of the Arup’s Australian and Asian operations recently wrote me that they instituted the “no dickhead rule” in his part of the firm:
"I work for a truly wonderful professional services company that is truly extraordinary and that is doing really well in many many ways. Three years ago I became the CEO of our Australasian operation. It occurred to me that there was an issue (not just in the Australasian part of our operations) that needed to be dealt with. I then heard something in September 2005 that started me thinking, and then talking to my close colleagues. They encouraged me to speak more widely in my organisation and eventually we evolved a 'no dickhead policy'. "
I recently had an email from Care; He reports that he is now heading ARUP's operations in Europe and that he has introduced the "No Jerk Rule" as the word "Dickhead" didn't fit with local sensibilities, but the rule is pretty much the same.
Mozilla (which brings us the Firefox browser): Asa Dotzler a product director, leader of many efforts to spread Firefix, and a stalwart of the company and open source software movement explained to me what it isn't efficient to be an asshole at Mozilla, or in the open source world in general. As Asa explained, the work they do requires so much cooperation with each other and with people from outside the company (many of whom are volunteers, who do the coding or marketing Firefox out love for the product and what it represents about a participative and decentralized approach to the Internet), that acting like an asshole is rare because it is so downright dumb when you need so much mutual respect and trust to get the work done.
Index, a Danish Nonprofit: Their goal is to use "design to improve life." The CEO Kigge Hvid wrote me "One of our few management mottos has from the start been, KEEP OUT THE ASSHOLES. " She went on to explain:
The motto has lucky been used quite seldom. I guess that we for the last 5 years have used the motto 5-6 times – even though we work with thousands of people around the globe every year. When used we simply calls the asshole – meet with the asshole – and tell them to go play somewhere else. I my self have taken great pleasure in making these calls to a few powerful decision makers, on the basis of their brutal treatment of people working with INDEX.
Former Gillette CEO Jim Kilts advises: "Never Hire a Prick" in his book. Kilts argues that one of the practices that fueled Gillette's success during the years he led the company was "Never Hire a Prick, Even a Smart One." And, indeed, Kilts has an impressive track record, having led turnarounds at both Nabisco and Gillette. Kilts talks about how how "pricks" are smug self promoters and are destructive to the organization, and him it is essential to avoid hiring them or to drive them out of a company. As he says, they can get short-term results, but they break down people and organizations over the long haul.
Ian Telfe, CEO of Goldcorp in Canada, reported spending a lot of time enforcing the rule:
There is a bestseller right now called The No Asshole Rule. It is all about: 'Don't hire any assholes.' So I spend a lot of time picking who we're going to hire. You need someone with technical qualifications, but you also have to find someone who can work with other people and respect other people.
Garry Turdeau Womps Donald Trump with the rule in Doonesbury: You can read about it here and get to the whole cartoon.
Michael Minns Human Resources in Australia. The have a "no dickheads policy" too, which is described in quite a bit of detail on the link, along with a metric that shows it is working" "It’s the best place I’ve ever worked at, in fact it is so good that I don’t need an alarm clock to get up in the morning".Crossfit Gym at Virgina Beach. Check of this article on the "The Asshole Barrier." This quote sums things up:
The waiver at CrossFit VB states, “CrossFit Virginia Beach strives to provide a positive and encouraging environment for our clients. Anyone that is disruptive or negatively influences this environment is subject to having their membership revoked. This is at the sole discretion of CrossFit Virginia Beach Management.” The word “asshole” isn’t used, but Gill says she frequently tells clients that “it’s basically an asshole clause.”
The diversity of this list delights me. Sure, there are still too many jerks out there and too many organizations (and apparently cities) where every day feels like a walk down Asshole Avenue. But there are also a lot of smart and civilized people who are fighting back and, better yet, winning. I’d love your comments. In particular, as I said, if you have some new examples of places that talk about and apply the rule, please tell me!
Finally, a warning, I have dealt with a number of companies over the years that espouse an no asshole rule, or want to, but are filled with assholes. In such case, it isn't a good idea to put the no asshole rule in your corporate values, handbooks, or recruiting materials because you risk being seen as both an asshole and a hypocrite.
P.S. These examples focus mostly on “top down changes,” but organizational norms can also change when persistent and influential people work to set the right example and to point out – even in public – when behavior happens that demonstrates the wrong way to behave.
A good example of this comes from a British manager who wrote me that he works in a firm that is infested with assholes, but since he read The No Asshole Rule, he and several colleagues are working to change their norms. He described one of the most effective methods as follows:
‘I now attend a lot of management meetings where I have started to introduce the idea of a civilized work place and that we lose available efficiency and effectiveness due to people being de-motivated. When I am now faced with negativity or an "Asshole" I have started to use a new approach of: “surely you don’t want us to breed that type of feeling in the business or listen to what you just said.” I have found this head on approach very successful.’
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“The No Asshole Rule in Our Zappos Museum”
The title of this post is from the header of an email I just got. Here is the text:
Dear Bob,
Zappos is building a museum and we would like to include a signed framed copy of The no Asshole Rule in our “Library Exhibit.” What is the best address for us to send you a copy of your book to sign?
Doonesbury? A museum? What's next? Who knows. Being the asshole guy has been wonderful and weird.
P.S. I am leaving out the author's name — it wasn't Tony Hsieh or a senior executive.
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Google: “A place where it simply isn’t efficient to act like an asshole.”
I just got off the phone with a reporter who was asking about Google, which topped Fortune's best place to work list for the third time. He wanted to talk about Google's lavish perks and how being a great place to work might be a result of their success rather than a cause. I agreed that money does buy a lot of goodies and massive financial success is such a powerful perfume that it can make everything smell better than is really the case. But I am less cynical about Google than most winners of such awards because of things that have been in place, and from what I can tell, have largely been preserved, from the start that go beyond their famous luxuries, good food, and generous compensation — and put them a cut above many top tech firms that provide similar goodies.
The first reason is that Google does not unduly emphasize status differences among people at different levels or within in the same level. If you watch how people interact there — receptionists and executives, young engineers and senior executives, and people from less prestigious versus more prestigious parts of the company — the more powerful people treat the less powerful people with an unusually large amount of respect, even deference, and the less powerful people don't cower or kiss-up nearly as much as I see in most places. Yes, Googlers are sometimes guilty of being arrogant when it comes to outsiders (although I see signs of modesty creeping in), but I have to give Larry and Serge credit for creating such norms mutual respect from the start and building an organization that appears to have sustained them (in fact, just yesterday, I found an old interview that Jeff Pfeffer and I did with Larry Page in late 2002, and he talked about the importance treating everyone with respect and how often the people Google hires showed him that his initial opinion was wrong).
The second reason, as senior executive Shona Brown told me in 2006 or so (she was #4 in those days, and now heads Google.org), is that Google appears to be a place where it simply isn't efficient to act like an asshole. When The No Asshole Rule first came out, I did a talk at Google and asked the crowd if Shona was telling the truth. The general sentiment was she was right, but more telling was, afterwards, a young woman came up to talk to me. She patiently waited for everyone else to leave. Then she seemed rather nervous as she started talking about Shona's words. This woman admitted that she really wasn't a very nice person. But after a few months at Google, she learned that she had to be nice to everyone, because otherwise, she couldn't get anything done! Now that is a sign that an organizational norm is working.
So, while Google is imperfect, as all human organizations must be, it is nice to see that "don't be evil" still appears to infect the company's soul, that Google seems to demonstrate it is possible to be an effective and civilized organization, and that treating people probably does help bolster and sustain performance in this iconic company.
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Inside Apple: Adam Lashinsky Revealing and Well-Crafted Book
Last week, I opened up my copy of Adam Lashinsky's new book, Inside Apple. It was about 8 at night, and I figured I would read the first chapter and do something else. Well, I looked-up, and it was 1:30 in the morning, and the book was done. Frankly, a business book hasn't grabbed me like that in a long-time. Adam not only writes well, he provides the most complete picture you can find of how Apple actually is organized, how they divide-up the work, the pecking order, the mindset — the kind of stuff that people like me who are interested in organizations want to know.
This is not an authorized book like Isaacson''s blockbuster Steve Jobs. But Adam has been following Apple for many years as a reporter at Fortune, and before that, at the San Jose Mercury. He did many interviews with former Apple employees, and although it is unclear how much access that Apple allowed him (and knowing Apple, he likely isn't allowed to say), I can tell you that I've talked to several journalists over the years who have complained that he gets better access than the rest of them. He also does a great job of capturing the complexity and hypocrisy of the place. I especially loved this paragraph late in the book, on page 175:
Apple is company of paradoxes. Its people and institutional bearing are off-the-charts-arrogant, yet at the same time, they are genuinely fearful of what would happen if their big bets go bad. The creative side of the business that was dominated by Steve Jobs is made up of lifers or near lifers who value only an Apple way of doing things — hardly the typical creative mind-set. The operations side of Apple runs like any company in America, but better, and is led by a cadre of ex-IBMers, the cultural antithesis of Apple. Apple has an entrepreneurial flare yet keeps people in a tightly controlled box, following time-tested procedures. Its public image, at least seen through its advertising, is whimsical and fun, yet its internal demeanor is cheerless and nose-to-the grindstone.
Good stuff, huh? I was interested in Adam's opening arguments that Job's was a productive narcissist, which he linked to Michael Maccoby's Narcissistic Leaders and to The No Asshole Rule a bit too. Many other things about the book were interesting, but three especially stood out for me, and reinforced my beliefs (and now some concerns) that I voiced in my post last year 5 Warning Signs to Watch for at Apple:
1. Apple is nearly the exact opposite of the kind of organization hyped by people like Gary Hamel and even Peter Drucker. It is centralized, secretive, fear-ridden, punitive, and not much fun for most people who work there. But it works because the pieces of the "organizational design" fit together, or at least did fit together when Jobs was there, in an elegant way. The secrecy is so severe that, when products are launched, even senior people are surprised by the final product because people are on a strictly "need to know" basis. But this is offset with a system of roles and responsibilities — and crucial to all of it– is what Apple calls the DRI, the directly responsible individual, a centerpiece of the organization. There is clear responsibility placed on individuals, not so much on groups and committees. Although groups and some committees do exist, the DRI can always be found and is where attention is focused. Which means that that it is clear where to go to provide guidance, to integrate their work with others, and who will be fired, blamed, and replaced — and celebrated too.
Essentially, and you can see this in the organization chart on one of the first pages of the book, Apple is designed so that all major (and many minor) decisions are made by a very small group of people, they are not influenced much by suppliers, customers, 99.9% of employees or anyone else; rather is what my friend John Lilly calls a "genius driven" organization. So, with Jobs gone, the question on the table is if the brilliance of CEO Tim Cook and a few others like Jonathan Ive (head of design) and Scott Forstall (head of IOS software) can sustain the firm's dominance and creativity. These are mighty smart people and they have been slowly weaned from Jobs as he was so sick for so many years. But the design of the organization places more pressure on senior executives doing the right things than any large company I know.
In contrast, other organizations have decentralized systems where numerous semi-autonomous businesses are responsible for their own profits and losses, and top executives are essentially managing a portfolio. HP operated quite successfully this way for decades under Hewlett and Packard. The had numerous divisions (I recall about 45 when I first got to Stanford in 1983), and it was run by what some insiders called the "mafia model:" if your business was sufficiently profitable (around 10% net profit per year as the going rate as I recall), you simply paid that "protection money" to corporate, and you could do whatever you wanted within reason. If your numbers were lower, you would get "help," and if they didn't improve or if senior management lost faith in you, you were removed. Certainly, this kind of structure places pressure on leaders to prune, merge, and start new businesses –and to deal with overlaps and conflicts between businesses — but such a structure spreads the leadership chores — and risk — among multiple teams, each of which acts with great autonomy. (Google is much more decentralized than Apple, for example, but is moving to become more centralized. For example, when Larry Page took over as CEO, they had so many products done by so many different decentralized groups he went to Wikipedia to get a list of them all–and then he and his team started trimming them).
My point here, and this follows an old conceptual perspective called "contingency theory," is that other organizations that want to be like Apple –and that seems like so many now — need to be especially careful about copying individual pieces, because the reason it works is that the multiple elements fit together.
2. I am very impressed with how thoughtful Apple's team is about allowing people to focus on what they are doing, and to not be distracted by so many of the other things that most organizations expect from their people. They don't believe in the concept of general managers. They don't give groups or businesses P&L's… there is only one, that is for the whole company. They focus on saying "no." As Adam quotes Jobs, his "Focus is not saying yes. It is saying no to really great ideas." This "elegance is refusal" philosophy is extended to strategy and organizational design as well. There are simply a lot things that weigh on many managers and employees at other places that aren't present or are less present at Apple. Managers aren't asked to be responsible for a local P&L, they know amazingly little about what is going on in other parts of the company, they aren't asked to go to as many meetings or be on as many committees and are instead expected to do what they do perfectly and as little else as possible.
This focus on simplicity and reduction of load is also seen in the emphasis on keeping teams as small as possible. The tendency to make teams ever bigger is an awful disease, not so much because it costs more money, but because, as Harvard's J.Richard Hackman has shown, it slows teams and undermines their performance as members end-up spending more time dealing with coordination issues and coalitional battles and less time doing the work at hand. Apple gets the importance of small teams at all levels (e.g., Adam reports that a 2 person team "wrote the code for converting Apple's Safari browser for the iPad, a massive undertaking”). They also have an unusually small board of directors — seven members — for a company of that size.
This extension of the elegance philosophy beyond their products has huge advantages as the "signal to noise" ratio appears to be quite impressive at all levels and in all functions — people tend to get good information, the information they need (and no more), and aren't confused or distracted by other things. At senior levels, this means they get the information they need and it means that, although there is discussion and debate at times, when a decision is made, there is less of the usual arguing or undermining. And if there are failures in implementing, you will be forgiven if senior executives believe you acted intelligently enough and hard enough, but you will be shown the door very quickly if they believe you were dumb or lazy.
3. Adam did a great job of describing the company with all its warts and negative side-effects. I was struck by how Apple is a place that is driven by the pride of doing great work, that it was not about having fun. That it is was also not about getting rich for most employees. Apple pays competitive salaries for Silicon Valley, but not at the very top of the market like NetFllix. And only a few employees who were in early made big fortunes from the stock. In fact, Jobs hated talking about money.
My personal reaction, and others no doubt have different motivations and preferences, is that it would be an awful place to work. The extreme secrecy means there is extreme paranoia. It means you often don't even know a lot of co-workers, let alone what they are working on — and if you ask them, you can get in big trouble. Fear is everywhere. Apple seems to take pleasure in pushing around other companies — competitors, suppliers, and those that just get in the way — just because it can. And, let's face it, while Jobs was one of the most effective assholes in history, he was still an asshole (Isaacson reported he went through over 70 nurses before finding 3 he liked). I worry that the bully worship that has emerged in the wake of Jobs death has not only apparently been long institutionalized at Apple, it is now being imitated and gloried by people who lack Jobs' obsessive genius and who are not embedded in an a system that is designed to amplify the best qualities of a obsessive perfectionist and to dampen the worst.
Jobs said the journey is the reward, a nice sentiment, and I like the pride, thirst for excellence, and action orientation that Adam describes, but spending my days deep in fear, paranoia, and secrecy isn't for me. Life is too short.
In any case, if you can't get a job at Apple or don't want to, Inside Apple provides the best — most complete and balanced — coverage of how the place works, the elements you might want to copy, and those that you might avoid — that Apple has apparently succeeded DESPITE rather BECAUSE they are used.
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Why Bosses Who are Civilized and Caring, But Incompetent, can be Really Horrible
I haven't been blogging much the last couple weeks because, in addition to the usual madness that goes with the holiday and start of the term, I have been wrapping up a new chapter for the Good Boss, Bad Boss paperback, which will appears March 15th (but I suspect will be shipping before that, Amazon usually does). Above is the new cover, which I quite like because it stands out and is now more distinct from The No Asshole Rule.
I had planned to write just a few pages for the Epilogue, but once I took the time to think about what I had learned since Good Boss, Bad Boss was published, I became rather obsessed and wrote a lot of text. As my editor Rick Wolff wisely advised, I trimmed back the original draft quite a bit, but it still runs about 8,000 words. The opening looks back on the experience and devotes special attention to Luiz Uruza, the boss of the trapped Chilean miners (who I first wrote about at Psychology Today.) and was interviewed about on CNN International. I then present new nine lessons I've learned or come to believe in more strongly about what it takes to be a great boss.
To give you a taste, I thought you might like to see the fourth lesson (warning, this will be copy-edited, so it may read slightly different when it is published, but the point will remain the same):
4. Bosses who are civilized and caring, but incompetent, can be really horrible.
Perhaps because I am the author of The No Asshole Rule, I kept running into people – journalists, employees, project managers, even a few CEOs – who picked a fight with me: They would argue that good bosses are more than caring human-beings; they make sure the job gets done. I responded by expressing agreement and pointing out this book defines a good boss as one who drives performance and treats people humanely. Yet, as I started digging into the experiences that drove my critics to raise this point – and thought about some lousy bosses – I realized I hadn’t placed enough emphasis on the damage done, as one put it, by “a really incompetent, but really nice, boss.”
As The No Asshole Rule shows, if you are a boss who is a certified jerk, you may be able to maintain your position so long as your charges keep performing at impressive levels. I warned, however, that your enemies are lying in wait, and once you slip-up, you are likely to be pushed aside with stunning speed.
In contrast, one reason that baseball coach Leo Durocher’s famous saying “nice guys finish last” sometimes right is that, when a boss is adored by followers (and peers and superiors too) they often can’t bring themselves to bad-mouth, let alone fire or demote, that lovely person. People may love that crummy boss so much they constantly excuse, or don’t even notice, clear signs of incompetence. For example, there is one senior executive I know who is utterly lacking in the necessary skills or thirst for excellence his job requires. He communicates poorly (he rarely returns even important emails and devotes little attention to developing the network of partners his organization needs), lacks the courage to confront — let alone fire — destructive employees, and there are multiple signs his organization’s reputation is slipping. But he is such a lovely person, so caring and so empathetic, that his superiors can’t bring themselves to fire him.
There are two lessons here. The first is for bosses. If you are well-liked, civilized, and caring, your charms provide protective armor when things go wrong. Your superiors are likely to give you the benefit of the doubt as well as second and third chances – sometimes even if you are incompetent. I would add, however, that if you are a truly crummy boss – but care as much for others as they do for you — stepping aside is the noble thing to do. The second lesson is for those who oversee lovable losers. Doing the dirty work with such bosses is distasteful. But if rehabilitation has failed — or things are falling apart too fast to risk it — the time has come to hit the delete button.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Do you agree? What did I leave out? How do you deal with one? And, following my recent post, are the advantages to working for one of these lovable losers?
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What Are Good Things About Having A Lousy Boss?
I have a weird question for Work Matters readers, one I've been fretting over for a couple weeks.
What are some GOOD things about working for a BAD boss?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this odd question. Here is the story of how it came about.
About two weeks back, I enjoyed a long dinner with a couple good friends of mine — whose names must be kept anonymous given the facts that follow. I generally like to name names, but in this case, I will not out them and will also omit identifying information (and change a couple key descriptions) to protect both the innocent and the guilty.
To get back to our dinner, we were among the first people at the place and the last to leave because we were having so much fun talking many different topics — why incremental innovation is sometimes under appreciated (well, not in China… and look how they are doing) and why breakthrough innovations are overqualified, how the best way to influence your spouse is through your kids rather than directly, and why the 130 proof bourbon that the bartender gave us to try was a cool idea — especially because the ice cubes sink in it — but too much like drinking lighter fluid for our tastes.
But this blog post is about the topic we kept coming back to, the idea that, well, bad bosses aren't all bad. Of course, we all had suffered through bad bosses, and had seen them do all kinds of damage. BUT — and this the thread I thought I would raise here — during the course of the conversation, we all started realizing that a bad boss — especially the kind who doesn't really have the power to hurt you very much — can be a great thing in some ways. The notion that you can learn a lot about what NOT to do from a bad boss has been around for decades . A charming version of this argument is in Robert Towsend's classic Up The Organization, where he asserts that much of what he learned about being a good boss came from working for such awful bosses at American Express early in his career.
The focus of our conversation about bad bosses, however, turned a different direction that I am still fretting over. One of my friends had just ended a long stint working for a lousy boss, one who could be a selfish asshole at times and was a legendary backstabber and narcissist. He talked about how great it was that this selfish jerk had been removed from his management job and was now working a line job again, and how his new boss was thus far amazing — selfless, open, always thinking about was good for his group rather than himself, listening all the time, practicing constant empathy. This guy could be the poster child for Good Boss, Bad Boss.
Then, my other friend chimed in and talked about how he wished he had such a boss because his current boss was so lame. She was inept in many ways, especially committing sins of omission: not going to meetings she should, not answering emails no matter how important, not following through on commitments, not jumping into help his team when she said she would, not having the guts to deal with performance problems, not reaching outside of the organization to develop a stronger network, and perhaps worst of all, constantly spending time planning and talking and brainstorming — but pretty much being unable or unwilling to actually get anything done. This boss could be the poster child for The Knowing-Doing Gap.
Then, however, the conversation took an interesting turn that still gnaws at my mind. The guy with the good boss said to the one with the bad boss "Be careful what you wish for, I got the great boss I want, and it has disadvantages."
He went on to explain that, when he had that inept boss, he felt obligated to take only minimal steps to help his organization. He did everything he could to avoid contact with his boss — and would never lift a finger to help that asshole succeed. He wasn't the only one in his group who reacted that way: Alienation was high and the commitment was low throughout. But he didn't just mess around at work. He devoted his energy to developing a big book of business and for developing a great reputation among clients. In other words, and this is the key point, he was treated sufficiently badly by his boss (as were others), that he felt free to act largely in his self-interest.
BUT with this new and nearly model boss, he and many of his colleagues are spending much more time working to help the organization in all sorts of ways — to recruit new people, to repair broken procedures, to attend every group meeting, to develop business that helps the organization and not necessarily themselves. As a result, he is spending far less time doing things that benefited only him, and as a result, not only is making a bit less money, he is having less fun too. He now feels compelled to do things that he doesn't like to benefit his group and organization — because he respects and admires his boss so much, and didn't want to let him down.
Then, we started quizzing my friend who still had the bad boss. Our friend has become a total star in recent years. The work his team does is bringing in a third of the group's revenue, he has freedom to do what he wants, his boss is rather afraid of him so almost never tells what to do, he is making a lot of money, and — while he is still doing many things to help his group succeed — he is far more respected both inside and outside the organization than his boss. As my friend with the new good boss warned him, if you got your dream boss — or worse yet they gave you your bosses job — you might feel great in some ways. But your life would change for the worse in other ways. You would start doing more things that benefited your organization that were not in your pure self-interest, you would spend more time doing things to help others that you would rather not do, you would go to more meetings with people who are of no interest to you –and even dislike — because doing so was for the greater good.
The conversation went back and forth in this vein for awhile, and although all three of us still believe that bad bosses suck on the whole, we started wondering if a more general, elaborate, and evidence-absed argument might be made about the upsides of working for a loser. In this post, there are some hints:
1. You can learn what NOT to do.
2. If you just have ordinary competence, you look like a genius compared to your boss.
3. You don't feel compelled to waste time doing extra things that help your group and organization. After all, if they aren't doing much for you or are treating you badly (via your boss), why should you do anything to help them?
3. Your boss is so inept at implementation that it isn't worthwhile going to meetings, generating ideas, or suggesting now paths the organization might take. None of it will happen in anyway, so why waste your time?
4. A lousy boss probably needs you more than a good boss — and thus you may have power — because you keep bailing him or her out, bringing in money or clients that he or she is too inept to do, and performing other competent acts that protect the boss and make the boss look better than he or she really deserves.
5. If the boss leaves (perhaps is fired — but in too many organizations lousy bosses get promoted), and you get the job, people will think you are brilliant because of the power of psychological contrast. (I am cheating here, as this is really about an advantage of taking a position last held by a horrible boss).
I am partly having fun here and partly serious. Yet as we talked about the good and bad bosses my friends had, and other bosses we had known and worked for, we realized that there are some perhaps under appreciated advantages to having a bad boss. I am not sure how far to take this, but for now, perhaps we could have some fun. Let's try a little thought exercise and look at the same thing as everyone else, but to try to see it differently.
So, once more, I want to hear from you:
What do you think? What are some other advantages of working for lousy boss?
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The Croatian No Asshole Cover: One of the Most Funny
One of the most fun things about The No Asshole Rule is seeing all the different ways that designers have fun with the cover. There are some wonderful variations.
I love the Italian cover, with its shocking red. The Polish one is charmingly weird (especially the picture of the guy hanging himself from his tie). The Slovenian cover, with the pig is one of my favorites for its silly simplicity. The Russian cover is strange with the stop sign — several native speakers have told me the title is rather obscene. The Portuguese cover is a bit dull. I think the Japanese cover is the most beautiful. I have a hard copy of the Chinese translation, which has all these cute panda bears, but can't find a picture. And then there is another one that is Chinese too that has picture of a fly swatter smacking little people around (sorry the picture on the web is pretty small). I can't find a picture of the Korean cover on the web, but they say it has sold well and I still get inquires from Korean journalists about it.
I also can't complain about the original design and how several countries including Denmark, Germany, Holland, France just used the original delete button. The French version published in Quebec is different and the way they translated is pretty funny, something like "Zero dirty dogs," which similar to the Korean take on it, which I think is "Zero Asshole Rule."
I was reminded of all this last week when I got a few copies of the latest translation — in Croatian. The cover just cracked me up, and everyone else in the family. That exploding head is pretty weird. I probably missed a few countries in my list here, but is was entertaining to go back and look at all the crazy versions.
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Bad is Stronger than Good: Why Eliminating the Negative is More Important than Accentuating the Positive
I had a piece appear today in the Wall Street Journal called "How a Few Bad Apples Can Ruin Everything," a topic I have written on before and her, especially, in Good Boss, Bad Boss. A fun discussion of bad apples can also be found on This American Life; check out the opening interview of this episode with Will Felps, who has done some cool research on how bad apples have a disproportionately negative effect on group performance.
The underlying theory and evidence for my argument that bad apples do so much damage, and more broadly destructive emotions and incompetence undermine performance and well-being so much, that the first order of business for any boss is to eliminate the negative rather than accentuate the positive (I am not discouraging goodness and excellence… but getting rid of the bad is importance for achieving greatness). This perspective is inspired by a masterpiece of an academic article called "Bad is Stronger Than Good," which was published in 2001 by Roy F. Baumeister and three other colleagues. If you want to really dig in, I invite you to download Bad is Stronger Than Good.. it is very detailed but readable.
Essentially, the authors meticulously go through topic after topic — personal relationships, learning, memory, self-image, and numerous others — and show that bad packs a much stronger impact than good. They review a couple hundred diverse studies to make this point, and as they say at the end, the consistency of their findings about the disproportionate impact of bad things (compared to the power of good things)– like negative emotions, hostility, abuse, dysfunctional acts, destructive relationships, serious injuries and accidents, incompetence, and on and on — is depressingly consistent across study after after study.
One implication for managers and numerous other influencers in organizations is that, while bringing and breeding great people, and encouraging civility, competence, effort, and other kinds of goodness is an important part of the job, such efforts will be undermined if you aren't constantly vigilant about eliminating the negative, which includes dealing with people who are bad apples. Baumeister and his colleagues also do suggest that another implication is sheer volume — overwhelming strong bad stuff with lots of weak good stuff. I will discuss that approach at the end of this post.
By coincidence, my doctoral course on leadership is reading and discussing this article today, so I re-read it closely this weekend, and it just knocks my socks off. Here are just a few quotes from the article that got my attention:
This one explains why bad could be so much stronger — we are selected to focus on it:
From our perspective, it is evolutionarily adaptive for bad to be stronger than good. We believe that throughout our evolutionary history, organisms that were better attuned to bad things would have been more likely to survive threats and, consequently, would have increased probability of passing along their genes. (p. 325)
On bad versus events:
A diary study by David, Green, Martin, and Suls (1997) examined the effects of everyday good and bad events, as well as personality traits. Undesirable (bad) events had more pervasive effects on subsequent mood than desirable (good) ones. Although each type of event influenced the relevant mood (i.e., bad events influenced bad mood, and good events predicted good mood) to similar degrees, bad events had an additional effect on the opposite-valence mood that was lacking for good events. In other words, bad events influenced both good and bad moods, whereas good events influenced only good moods. (p. 327)
How long the impact of everyday events lasts was studied by Sheldon, Ryan, and Reis (1996). Bad events had longer lasting effects. In their data, having a good day did not have any noticeable effect on a person's well-being the following day, whereas having a bad day did carry over and influence the next day. (p.327)
On close relationships. Note the implication is that if you do something bad in a close relationship, you've got to do at least five good things (on average) to make up for it:
On the basis of these results, Gottman (1994) has proposed a revealing diagnostic index for evaluating relationships: He proposed that in order for a relationship to succeed, positive and good interactions must outnumber the negative and bad ones by at least five to one. If the ratio falls below that, the relationship is likely to fail and breakup. This index converges well with the thrust of our argument: Bad events are so much stronger than good ones that the good must outnumber the bad in order to prevail. Gottman's index suggests that bad events are on average five times as powerful as good ones, at least with regard to close relationships. (p. 329)
The article goes on and on in this vein, digging into seemingly every possible nuance, and constantly concluding that "bad is stronger than good.: Here are a some excerpts from the wrap-up toward the end:
Let us briefly summarize the evidence. In everyday life, bad events have stronger and more lasting consequences than comparable good events. Close relationships are more deeply and conclusively affected by destructive actions than by constructive ones, by negative communications than positive ones, and by conflict than harmony. Additionally, these effects extend to marital satisfaction and even to the relationship's survival (vs. breakup or divorce). Even outside of close relationships, unfriendly or conflictual interactions are seen as stronger and have bigger effects than friendly,harmonious ones. Bad moods and negative emotions have stronger effects than good ones on cognitive processing, and the bulk of affect regulation efforts is directed at escaping from bad moods (e.g., as opposed to entering or prolonging good moods). That suggests that people's desire to get out of a bad mood is stronger than their desire to get into a good one. (p. 362)
Bad parenting can be stronger than genetic influences; good parenting is not. Research on social support has repeatedly found that negative, conflictual behaviors in one's social network have stronger effects than positive, supportive behaviors. Bad things receive more attention and more thorough cognitive processing than good things. When people first learn about one another, bad information has a significantly stronger impact on the total impression than any comparable good information. (p.362)
Bad stereotypes and reputations are easier to acquire, and harder to shed, than good ones. Bad feedback has stronger effects than good feedback. Bad health has a greater impact on happiness than good health, and health itself is more affected by pessimism (the presence or absence of a negative outlook) than optimism (the presence or absence of a positive outlook). (p.362)
Their closing paragraph, implies — albeit weakly– to one solution to overcoming the power of bad.
Although it may seem pessimistic to conclude that bad is stronger than good, we do not think that such pessimism is warranted. As we have suggested, there are several reasons to think that it may be highly adaptive for human beings to respond more strongly to bad than good. In the final analysis, then, the greater power of bad may itself be a good thing. Moreover, good can still triumph in the end by force of numbers. Even though a bad event may have a stronger impact than a comparable good event, many lives can be happy by virtue of having far more good than bad events.
I think this implied solution of working extra hard to crank up the good to drown out the bad is certainly part of the answer. But, to me, another and probably more effective solution for managers is to work doggedly to screen out and stop bad people and bad behavior at every stage. This means dealing with it via big things like recruiting, selection, training, rewards and punishments, and removing people; and, just as important, paying attention to the little things like giving people feedback when they are destructive. Another implication I emphasize is that self-awareness is important so that we realize when we are being bad and damaging others — and damn well better work on changing our attitudes and actions.
I know this is a long and detailed post. My view is that you can read the lighter and more bouncy piece in the Wall Street Journal, so I thought I would use this post to geek out a bit and dig into the underlying research.
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Hostile and Entertaining Amazon Review for The No Asshole Rule
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:1.0 out of 5 stars Typical attention seeking baby boomer, October 15, 2011This review is from: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't (Paperback)Yet another selfish baby boomer sinks basic civility to get our attention. I think we have heard enough from the generation that thinks behaving like a petulant adolescent is a virtue. If he can't take the time to address us like adults, or articulate exactly what he means by 'a**hole' what's the sense in taking advice from him?
..and now that he has grabbed our attention, what do we get? fluff. Another article padded into a book, which plenty of examples of unpleasant people at work but little substance how to deal with them, or the unpleasant fact that it's often effective form of management- think of the marines for example and toughening up of mama's boys.Of course with the baby boom generation it's all about me me me and my feelings. Spare me.
The above review just appeared on Amazon. Sorry, the screen shot didn't work (at least for me) but so I had to do cut and paste, you can see the original here.
When I first started writing books, I would take every negative Amazon review personally. And I confess that when they are careful, thoughtful, and negative, they still sting. But I have learned to enjoy, even relish, the outrageous ones. This one certainly qualifies. I plead guilty to being a baby boomer and to selecting — really insisting on — The No Asshole Rule title. My favorite line in the review is "toughening up the mama's boys." Great stuff.
P.S. It is a good time to buy this book for mama's boys. Apparently, Amazon bought a bunch from the now-defunct Border's and you can get the No Asshole Rule paperback there for six bucks. These bargain books produce a much lower royalty rate to authors, but are a great deal for readers. I don't know how many they have; there was a bargain version of Good Boss, Bad Boss last week, but it sold out.