Category: The No Asshole Rule

I got an email for a friend who sent me the AP story below and asked ‘Is "enfant terrible" what we call assholes in creative positions?’  See the last paragraph of the story.

NEW YORK (AP) –O.J. Simpson’s would-be publisher, Judith Regan, was fired Friday, her sensational, scandalous tenure at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. ending with the tersest of announcements.

"Judith Regan’s employment with HarperCollins has been terminated effective immediately," HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman said in a statement. "The Regan publishing program and staff will continue as part of the HarperCollins General Books Group."

Regan’s firing comes less than a month after Murdoch’s cancellation of Simpson’s hypothetical murder confession, "If I Did It," a planned book and Fox television interview that was greeted with instant and near-universal disgust when announced.

An industry force since the 1980s, when she produced best-sellers by Drew Barrymore and Kathie Lee Gifford for Simon & Schuster, Regan has been labeled a "foul-mouthed tyrant" and the "enfant terrible of American publishing." She is also widely envied — if not admired — for her gift of attracting attention to her books and to herself.

I think my friend is right, "enfant terrible" is loaded
with the implication that such nastiness is not only more acceptable in
creative work, it also seems to imply that having a hot temper can be more effective as well — or
at least that such nastiness is something you often have tolerate if you want to work
with creative people. I am not sure that being a demeaning tyrant
enhances creativity, but I am pretty sure that it is part of our
stereotype of a creative person — so it probably helped Judith Regan’s
reputation in some ways, as I believe it has helped Steve Job’s
reputation over the years to be seen as a demanding perfectionist who is obsessed with design and user experience. In addition, there is some research —
especially some fantastic studies from Iceland — that suggest there is
a higher incident of mental illness among the most creative people,
especially in music, literature, and the arts. So there is some evidence (although not in the sciences) of some truth in the stereotype.

As for me, I don’t care how creative they are, I won’t want work with — or for — any crazy assholes.

P.S. Someone asked about the research from Iceland.  Check out Dean Keith Simonton’s astounding book Origins of Genius.  You can search inside of Amazon to get to the research, which is summarized on pages 104 and 105.

P.P.S. Also check out The New York Times story, apparently Ms. Regan had quite a tirade.

One of the most entertaining parts of working on The No Asshole Rule is the challenge of translating the title into other languages.  The trick is to find the phrase or term that may not be a literal translation, but that is the best "cultural" translation.   For example, most Germans I know seem to think that Der
Arschloch-Faktor  is the right translation, although I did get one comment that the implications were a bit too strong, that asshole is a nastier word in German than in English.

I also had an incredibly fun dinner at the Frankfurt book fair in October with a group of book buyers from Asia. The folks from Amazon Japan had great fun talking about the right term to use in Japanese, and although they considered other words, they agreed that something with the word baka was perfect.  A translator wrote me that it means "horse-deer", and is "the ultimate and
all-purpose insult for stupidity." She also suggested hirame (flatfish/turbot/flounder who’s eyes
rotate to the top side so it can only see above itself, not below), "slang for
someone who sees only up the hierarchy."  I know there is interest in Japan, and the English version will be sold widely there, but I don’t know if the title will include "baka."  In addition, the French translation rights were just sold, and my charming editor there Geoff
Staines tells me that the translation is done, the book will appear in March,  and he will be sending me a cover
picture soon (and then I will get to find out what they call it too). The trick here, as you can see, is to come up with a word that translates culturally, not literally, like baka.  This brings us to the Spanish translation.  I got word from my literary agents that:

“Your
Spanish publisher is struggling a bit with how to translate the title and has
asked how it’s been translated in other languages. I’m going to send them the other title
translations, and ask our Spanish agent for her thoughts, but if you or Don [she
means Don Lamm, my main agent along with Christy Fletcher] have particular
thoughts about the Spanish use of "asshole" please do let me know.”  

Don
Lamm checked around (he is an amazing guy with about 50 years in the business;
Don has only been an agent for a few years and was CEO of W.W. Norton before
that), and wrote back “The
best street linguist I know in  Santa Fe  came up with this:  Qulone.  It
may, however, not carry over from Mexican to Iberian Spanish.”

So that is where we are at
right now: Clearly, we need some help. Calling all Spanish speakers! What is
the right cultural translation for “The No Asshole Rule?”

I’ll offer an incentive: a free copy of both
the English and Spanish versions of the book to the first five people who make
suggestions (post the suggestion as a comment on my blog, to get conversation
started, but email me your address so I can pre-order your books).

We look forward to your ideas.

A professor from Denmark sent me this troubling story about a worker who — after relentless abuse for
years — was no longer able to work. In this case, TCA (total cost of assholes)
was mighty high, in both financial and human terms. I quote his summary and
translation

Asshole compensation

A 39 old man from Denmark was recently declared unfit for work by the national workers compensation
board. When he started work as a supermarket employee he was functioning
normally, he was reliable and was well regarded by colleagues. Eight years
later he left his job with a mental breakdown so severe that he has no
prospects of ever returning to the labour market.

Basing it’s decision on a regulatory change that included Post
Traumatic Stress as an occupational disease, the Workers Compensation Board
writes “Your unspecified stress reaction is caused by your employment as a
sales clerk, during which you have been exposed to highly stressful
psychological harassment over a prolonged period, including accusations of
theft put forward by your immediate supervisor” (my translation from a local
news report).

Behind the official language lies a story of a new supervisor who
would verbally abuse, complain, assault and accuse the sales clerk of theft.
The supervisor had other targets too but the treatment of the sales clerk
accelerated when he became union representative. His vacation time was moved
repeatedly, he was told that his co-workers had complained about him, the
supervisor would greet anyone but the victim. When the supervisor became angry
he would throw chairs around and tell the victim to find another job. If the
victim complained to upper store management, he was told not to weep in the
boss’s office. He was accused of theft and sent home, but no evidence was offered
and the claim was not prosecuted. Finally he was called to a meeting where he
was told that he had used his position as union representative to threaten
colleagues while at the same time siding with staff too much.

As a result of the serious mental
disability, the victim of job-related abuse has now been awarded a permanent
disability pension. When his mental condition is determined to have stabilized
he may receive further compensation from the workers compensation board (a
mandatory insurance system), the amount depending on how severe his loss of
employability is assessed to be.

Maureen Rogers over at Pink Slip has a detailed, scary, and inspired post on charismatic assholes. She identified four different kinds of assholes in an earlier post:

• Occasional Offenders 
• Credit Grabbers (inverse: Blame Gamers) 
• Weaklings 
• Charismatic Assholes (CA’s)

Maureen makes a compelling case that "CA’s" are the worst.  I agree that people who have the power to attract and persuade others, but are selfish and mean-spirited beneath the veneer, are extremely dangerous. In fact, although charismatic leaders are generally described in positive terms by management theorists, other behavioral scientists often portray them in darker terms — especially when they write about political and religious leaders. The best book I’ve ever read on the dark side is by  anthropologist Charles Lindholm, which is simply called Charisma. Unfortunately, it is out of print, but it looks like you can pick up a used copy on Amazon. Lindholm shows how leaders including Hitler, Charles Manson, and Jim Jones used their charisma to do vile things to their followers and enemies.

Check out Maureen’s inspired post. There are no murderers, but some damn scary people!

During the last week or so, I’ve had discussions with several colleagues who have argued that assholes come in two basic flavors:

1. "Intentional" assholes who want to leave others feeling demeaned and de-energized.

2. "Clueless" assholes who damage people without realizing how much harm they are doing.

I am not sure which one is worse, but clueless assholes can be pretty bad, as these two stories sent to me by a marketing consultant show (I am not naming him, for obvious reasons):

Here are
two stories from the same company.

1. After we
acquired a new company, the head of HR went out to one of the regional offices
to do the inevitable layoffs. He did them in a glass walled conference room in
the middle of the office, so that for hours every time someone went to the
bathroom or got a cup of coffee, they walked by a big glass box containing
someone getting canned, often crying, etc.

2. A VP at
the same company fired someone by calling him on his cell phone while the guy
was sitting at a neonatal ICU with his wife and newborn premature child. After
firing him on the phone in the midst of that, he was overhead by a number of
people saying, "That one was fun!" A bit later he confided to several
of us that he was trying to bring people in the company together and boost
morale, because "I’m a healer."

Also, the only upside of such blatant idiocy is that these examples imply such clear guidance about how to avoid being a flaming asshole.

I
wrote a post a couple weeks back about a column that Jack and Suzy Welch
published in BusinessWeek called Send
the Jerks Packing. Now you can read
it online or listen
to the related podcast.  Jack and
Suzy described what I call an asshole, and they would call a “Type 4 managers,”
as follows:

Then there’s a fourth kind of employee,
the one who delivers the numbers but doesn’t live the values. You know the
type–who doesn’t? They exist at every level in almost every organization.
These high performers can be mean, secretive, or arrogant. Very often they kiss
up and kick down. Some are stone-cold loners, while others are moody, keeping
those around them in a kind of terrorized thrall.

As
I said my earlier post, I know Suzy from her years as editor of the Harvard Business Review, so I dropped
her a note about her column and shared some of the reactions I have received to
The No Asshole Rule. Indeed, they seemed to have tapped into the
same pool of pain. The responses that Jack and Suzy got their “jerks” column were much like the deluge I got from my 2004 Harvard Business Review on the rule, called Not Worth the Trouble. Suzy wrote me, “Well, if the response to our column is any indication, your
new book will get a ton of attention. We received hundreds of emails after it
ran — mostly from people who said they were working for "Type 4"
managers. (We even got a letter from a person who identified himself as a Type
4 — but claimed the company made him do it!).”

Suzy
also added that several lawyers wrote them to warn that it was unwise to fire a
jerk in public for acting like a “Type 4” manager; indeed, more broadly, the
lawyers I know (and have read) warn that public firing for any kind of offense –
including racial and sexual harassment – can backfire because the humiliation
can open a company up to counter-claims. 

Suzy’s
comment brings up the legal challenges of driving bullies out of
the workplace. Check out this interesting article by lawyer Paul Buchanan that
addresses the question “Is
it Against the Law to be a Jerk?” His answer seems to be that it isn’t against the law to be what I would
call an equal opportunity asshole, but being a jerk does increase risk for the
demeaning employee (and his or her company) if there is any hint of racism, sexism, or
sexual harassment. As Buchanan points out, U.S. law here is evolving and may
change in the future, plus laws in some states may provide recourse for
employees who can demonstrate that they are in a “hostile work environment.”  The UK appears to be different. Companies there that condone “bullies” have suffered some major loses in court lately. Check out
this 2006 UK
settlement where a bullied worker was awarded 800,000 pounds.  Also, the Wikipedia entry on Workplace
Bullying has a useful overview of pertinent laws in several countries.

My
view on all this is that if you have to check with a lawyer to make sure you or your company are dishing out the "right" kind of abuse to employees, you are probably an asshole, or are at least knee-deep in a swarm of assholes.  The best recourse for companies (and people who pick
places to work in) isn’t to rely on laws against psychological abuse, but to state and enforce workplace policies against being a
workplace jerk – to make it a standard for hiring, paying, promoting, and
firing people. Examples include Southwest Airlines, IDEO, and the software firm SuccessFactors.

In
fact, if you run or work in an organization that enforces some variation of the
no asshole rule (this is usually done in more polite language), I’d love to
hear from you. I am always looking for more examples — and nuances — of how  the rule is applied.

P.S.
Polly LaBarre, co-author of
Mavericks, put up a nice post called Bob
Sutton’s Weird Ideas, where she shows links between The No Asshole Rule and my earlier book on Weird Ideas That Work.  The
notion that there are any similarities between the two books – except that they
are evidence-based and reflect my background as an organizational psychologist –
never occurred to me until I read Polly’s post! 

I
confess that it is fun to write about things like the Asshole
song  and The
Pecking Order. And I guess I can
justify this fun because it makes it easier to talk about a difficult subject
(one of the classic benefits of humor). But whenever I start having too much fun
with the subject, I am brought back Earth with reminders about how much damage
that workplace assholes do to victims, co-workers, and families. As I show in The No Asshole Rule, multiple surveys from the  U.S. and the United Kingdom suggest that between
15% and 25% of employees report being the victims of persistent psychological
abuse at work (and the percentages are much higher in some occupations, like
nursing).  The negative effects of such
abuse on mental and physical health of both victims and bystanders are
well-documented, along with evidence that demeaning jerks drive people out of
organizations and undermine the commitment of those who won’t or can’t leave. But
statistics don’t quite capture the bad feelings and other nasty effects
generated by workplace assholes.

I have
been getting some mighty grim emails lately about the damage done by demeaning
and abusive peers and bosses, which remind that the no asshole rule is
something that organizations – and assholes themselves – need to take
seriously, both to protect the esteem of their people and to develop a
productive and creative workforce. These emails also remind me that the policies
that firms like SuccessFactors
or Southwest have against hiring (or tolerating) nasty people could stop a lot
of destruction if they were adopted in more workplaces.

Consider
one manager who was clearly working in a place dominated by the  “pro-asshole” rather than the “no asshole”
rule.  He wrote me that, when he
expressed disagreement with his boss about a merger (after being asked for his opinion
during a meeting), his boss shot back, “I know what
your saying and if anyone comes up to me and is a naysayer about this project I
going to tell them that they are a idiot!”  Ouch! That will teach employees that the only right
answers are “yes boss,” “you are right,” and “I agree completely.”

Even
worse, a distraught woman who was promoted to supervisory position under an
abusive boss wrote:

I was promoted to supervisor 9 months
ago and only lasted in the position for 6 months because I couldn’t work
with the same boss I worked with before!! I hate to admit I knew
she could be an asshole before I accepted the position. What
was I thinking? I heard the yelling sessions behind closed doors
with her superiors. I heard the nasty things she would say about anyone
who ‘got her in trouble’.

Once I was supervisor, there was no
‘mentoring’ or ‘coaching’ as I had expected from her. If I made one
mistake in judgment or on a function I was performing, I was pulled into
the office for an hour long discussion which usually ended with "do
you want to step down?" This happened about every two
weeks.  I started to lose sleep, stop eating, hiding
mistakes for the fear of being pulled in the office and trying to
find ways to deal with the negativity or avoid meeting with her. I sought counseling
from a coworker, begged her and her boss to send me to training seminars;
they said they’d send me to seminars—broken promises. … Finally, after
she flat out told me she just didn’t have the time to train me, I went over her
head to personnel. 

Unfortunately,
although the personnel department tried to intervene, they had no luck
reforming this abusive boss, and so this employee just gave-up. But even that
doesn’t seem to be working. She added,  “I went back to my
old job and kept part of my raise…but she just has not backed down.
If I make one mistake however minor it is to everyone else who has
made it as well—I’m pulled in the office and yelled at.” And she went on to
say,  “Right now, …I
can’t sleep or eat very well. I have to take anti-anxiety pills in
order to sleep.”

The statistics about prevalence and
effects of workplace are important to remember, but stories like this one make
the millions of painful experiences behind such numbers come alive.  Such stories also remind us of other key
lessons about how to survive the wrath of uncivilized and demeaning people.  This employee, as she says, knew her new boss
would be an asshole before she took the job – after all, she had overheard all
that screaming. It also is a reminder that enforcing the no asshole rule is
something that is best done as part of an organization everyday routines– and I
mean not what is routinely said, but what is routinely done.  This woman complained to personnel, but they
were unable or unwilling to actually enforce the rule. Perhaps they will do something eventually,
but there seemed to be no effort to reel in this nasty boss, who apparently blamed
her underlings for mistakes they made as a result of her own impatience and incompetence.

I advised this poor
woman to get out of that workplace if she possibly could and, in the meantime,
to carefully document every incident in the event that she needed to
demonstrate the pattern of abuse to HR or an attorney.  If anyone else has any other advice, please
chime

When I was writing The No Asshole Rule, one of the things I would do to entertain myself was to go to iTunes and listen to clips of various songs on the subject.  I just did a search of iTunes, it returned 150 items, so there are a lot of asshole songs. My favorite is Dennis Leary’s "Asshole,"  which is a weird combination of wit, sarcasm, and spot-on examples.   I got an email this week that pointed me to the YouTube video of Leary’s minor masterpiece— check it out, it is pretty funny.

P.S. My second favorite song on the subject is Kinky Friedman’s "Proud to be Asshole from El Paso," a parody of "Proud to be an Okie of Muskogee."

A thoughtful creativity professor sent me this image, and added ‘e.e.cummings wrote a poem called“the song of olaf”…in which he provides wonderful advice for dealing with the assholes of the world: “…there is some shit i will not eat…”’   I think the poem and the picture go together well, although those birds at the bottom of heap need to find some way to fly away if they want to avoid spending their days eating the crap dropped from above — not unlike the predicament that some abused underlings are caught in, as in the above post and associated comments on the damage done.

Adrian Savage over at Slow Leadership has a an insightful new post based on his reading of advanced copy of The No Asshole Rule.  I first encountered Adrian as the author of a lovely new book  (I will talk about it in more detail in the future) called Slow Leadership: Civilizing the Organization, which I endorsed with much enthusiasm after seeing a pre-publication version. As I wrote him after reading his book, we are both singing the same tune (albeit with different words, and in my case, somewhat more nasty words). Adrian’s comments on the book were not only kind, they were detailed and insightful, I especially like his point about "Jerkfests."  I quote:

So there ought to be a name you could use to identify such foul
organizations—those rank, jerk-infested swamps where even the rats hold
their noses. How about “JerkFests”—places where assholes proliferate
and only another long-time, gold-plated, doctoral-level jerk could
enjoy him or herself and find a home? In a JerkFest, Hamburger Management
is normal and assholes rule. Perhaps there should be a symbol people
could apply to the door posts to warn anyone entering what will be
found inside; or major magazines could list the “100 Greatest JerkFests
of 2006" in the way that they list the 100 richest people or most
successful organizations.