Category: The No Asshole Rule

We had some lively conversation a few weeks ago about why I call them assholes, and although most folks preferred the use of that mild obscenity to "less offensive language," there are still people who are uncomfortable with the word "asshole,"and even among people who don’t mind using the a-word, let’s fact it, there are times – when kids around, when you are around strangers, at formal occasions, or anytime when you are with people who don’t like dirty talk — that more polite language is in order. The word "jerk" or the phrase "demeaning creep" are decent (if less emotionally compelling) alternatives. And todayI had an interesting exchange with a guy who suggested the acronym TCDP: "A thoroughly contemptible, detestable person," which I think is a nice description of a certified asshole. Although I like the words better than the alphabet soup.

One of the main ideas that
runs through The No Asshole Rule, and
in fact, much of the work that we do at Stanford’s Center for
Work, Technology and Organization, is the importance maintaining dignity in
the workplace. If you think about the kinds of people who are labeled as assholes,
they often earn the label by demeaning people in ways that strip them of their
dignity.  I was reminded of this just the
other day in an email that a management consultant sent me about a nasty
client: “I spent the day with a person who routinely
puts me down, But he’s great at smooching butts of people higher than him. Really frustrating. Yesterday he bumped into me three times,
poked my chest twice with his finger, and made five jokes about me. What an
asshole.” 

If
you take a look at my list of things that assholes do, which is on Guy Kawasaki’s
blog posting, you will see that many of these put down moves are covered. And
you will also see ways that people can battle back against assholes who take away their dignity. Like the radio producer I talk
about in The No Asshole Rule who had
a boss that kept stealing her food: she exacted revenge by making some “treats”
out of Ex-Lax and leaving them out in her desk. As usual, her boss promptly ate without asking her permission. He was not pleased when
she told him the ingredients!

If you want to read the
most comprehensive academic treatment of dignity that I know of, check out Randy Hodson’s 2001
book Dignity
at Work. He reviewed over 300 in-depth ethnographies – these are
academic ethnographies, usually entailing a year or more of intense observation
–and ultimately selected 108 cases from 86 published ethnographies for
intense quantitative and qualitative analysis. His compact definition is
fantastic, “Dignity is the ability to establish a sense of self-worth and
self-respect and to appreciate the respect of others.” 

Hodson presents insightful analysis of major
challenges to dignity at work and “the strategies through which dignity is
attained and defended.” He digs into causes
including mismanagement and abuse, overwork, challenges to autonomy (e.g., undermining
freedom and control at work), and “contradictions of employee involvement,”
where employees are blamed for organizational performance problems, are asked
to work harder and get more involved, but they don’t actually have any control.
Or when employees are asked to work harder to avoid layoffs, be when they do
work harder, layoffs happen because the organization has become more efficient.

Dignity at Work is written for academics, not managers, but it is
far more accessible than most academic books and still impressively rigorous in terms
of theory and evidence. If you are serious about digging into the struggle for workplace
dignity, want to understand why you as manager might be making if difficult for
your people to sustain their self-worth and self-respect, what others are doing
to you to take your dignity away, and why and how people can fight back, this splendid
and well-crafted book is well-worth reading.

 P.S. If you are
interested in other examples of in-depth organizational ethnography, especially
from our Center from Work, Technology and Organization, check out Steve Barley
and Gideon Kunda’s masterpiece Gurus,
Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy,
the most complete and thoughtful book ever written on skilled contract labor. It
also includes lovely examples and analyses of the ways that “permanent”
employees undermine the status of these temporary employees and how contract workers fight
back to gain self-respect and control.

The No Asshole Rule has been getting some nice advanced buzz, in large part, because of the nice things that a number of bloggers have said after reading advanced copies of the book.  But I confess that, although I knew that Guy Kawasaki was an influential blogger (and, long before that, an influential management thinker, venture capitalist, and going back further, Apple evangelist), but I didn’t realize how influential he was until he posted a detailed — and quite funny — review of the book last week.

His review generated over 60,000 hits on his website the first day, over 900 diggs, and 60 comments on his website, it drove about 10,000 hits to my website and pushed the advanced Amazon sales for my book into the top 1000 for most of the week — which is pretty good for a book for doesn’t ship until February.  And — as evidence that blogs, especially Guy’s blog — are affecting traditional media sources, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story on November 2 called "Expletive Deleted" by Daniel Rubin that has a picture of a donkey and starts out by saying: "This is by far the most excellent blog post I’ve come across today, but it needs some care in introduction. It has a language problem."

I loved the way that Daniel Rubin got around using the "A-word."  I’d also like to thank Guy for the nice review.

I was delighted to see that Jack and Suzy Welch’s new column in BusinessWeek, "Send the Jerks Packing," is singing my tune. In response to a reader’s question about what do about bad apples, they advise that such jerks "must go — publicly." And they go on to say:

Look, nothing hurts a
company more than when the bosses ignore, indulge, or otherwise
tolerate a jerk–or two or three–in the house. Such latitude
undermines organizational trust and morale, and without those, the
competitive linchpins of collaboration and speed are just plain harder.
Not to mention the fact that jerks take the fun out of work.

Jack and Suzy take a bit different approach that I do, but I am glad to see that they are adding their support to the no asshole rule, albeit in more polite language

P.S. I worked with Suzy on a couple of articles when she was an editor, and then THE editor of the Harvard Business Review. She was creative, an amazingly fast writer, and fun to work with. And she came up with one my favorite titles, "The Smart Talk Trap," for an article that Jeff Pfeffer and I published in 1999.

David Maister was kind enough to write some nice words about The No Asshole Rule on his blog after reading an advance copy.  As skilled bloggers do, he took the ideas the next step and added his own twists and extensions.  I was especially struck by his thoughts about the situations that turn typically civilized people into temporary assholes. See his post for the complete set of comments, but it is worth repeating his initial list below.  As I went through it, it certainly described the times when my inner jerk has reared its ugly head. Indeed, I think I am going to start using it as a personal checklist to help me decide when to go into hiding!  To quote David:

So, under what circumstances have you found (past tense, of
corse) that you yourself ended up being the asshole?

Here’s the beginnings of my list:

I have been the asshole when:

1. I
   got overexcited and overenthused on a topic (I lose my sense of proportion ,
   just keep trying to make my point and don’t let people finish their sentences)
   
2. I
   got tired
   
3. Three
   things went wrong in a row. Two I can handle, but make it three and I lose it.
   
4. I
   was asked to do more than one thing at a time. I’m not a multitasker, and I get
   shirty when people interrupt my concentration.
   
5. I
   got criticized too directly (I reacted badly)
   
6. I felt like I’m not being treated with respect
   
7. I
   was trying too hard to ‘show off.’
   

A couple of interesting things were published on The No Asshole Rule during the last few days. First, Sig at Forthcoming put up a very thoughtful and self-reflective little essay on the book, talking about the situations that drive him to be less than nice (it happens to everyone .. that is why one of my last points are "assholes are us") and I was especially charmed by his report that "…my 15 year old picked it up and started reading it with great interest! And kids should know all about assholes. Even if their "workplace" is less infested with hierarchies."  I first heard about Sig from Diego at Metacool when I was just thinking about learning to Blog — I remember Diego telling me that he doesn’t do a huge number of posts, but all are very thoughtful.

Second, the folks at Hanser, my German publisher, tell me that Der Arschloch-Faktor got a very nice review in the online magazine ChangeX.  Alas, I don’t read German, But Anna Markgraf at Hanser tells me that it was "really inspired" and they even liked the fact that excerpts from the book had been published in German tabloid Bild (Wikipedia reports it is the best-selling newspaper in Europe), because it is " a sign that you in fact write for everybody."  I will show it to my German-speaking friends. Here is the pdf:

Download ChangeX.pdf

Kent Blumberg not only only was kind enough to write a nice review about The No Asshole Rule, he also suggested that I contact a few other of his favorite bloggers to see if they were intersted in the book.  One suggestion was Scott Adams of Dilbert fame — who has a blog as many as you know. I met Scott briefly a few years back at IDEO right after they had designed "Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle" for him. So I contacted him on whim, but didn’t really expect a response.  To my amazement, Scott wrote back a very nice note, commenting that "I love that
book title. I’m glad you held firm on it. It’s brilliant."  It made my day, as Scott is certainly an expert on workplace assholes.  And Dilbert — actually Scott — appareently agrees with my post on Why I  Call The Assholes.

P.S. Kent’s blog just won the "You Get It Award" from Jibber Jobber for the month. Check it out!

I got this from Snopes.com from a list of New Rules for 2006.  They apparently debunked the claim that is was from George Carlin and instead show (or claim to show) that is from Bill Maher’s HBO show.

New Rule: The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the
asshole. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a "decaf grande
half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread
cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n’-Low and one
NutraSweet," ooh, you’re a huge asshole.

Whatever the source, I think it contains a lot of truth because when people get this picky, it is sign to me that they are oblivious — or worse yet take great glee — at acting like petty tyrants, at imposing difficulty and complexity on someone with less power, at showing everyone in the store how skilled they are at pushing around the poor clerk, and at slowing the flow of the line.

Of course, bad cell phone behavior is worse. I was in a long line at a small Post Office in Menlo Park (October 16th was the final day to pay 2005 taxes in the U.S., so the line was long), and was amazed by a woman who spent a full 30 minutes shouting into her cell phone about her experiences on jury duty. OK, I understand a short quiet conversation, but she was talking very loudly and didn’t seem to notice the TWO large signs that asked customers not to talk on their cell phones.  I suspect that there is an entire book to be written on "Cell Phone Tips for the Complete Asshole."

I have been sent a lot of "workplace asshole" stories lately.  I appreciate the time that people take to send them, learn something new from each one, and continue to be amazed by the varied means that assholes use to demean others (and in doing so, often demean themselves).

I was sent an especially strange, sick, and well-written story tonight about an asshole boss in the advertising industry.  I reprint the email below (with the author’s permission –I always ask), and invite your comments as always:

Hi Bob,

I was hired by an asshole in the advertising industry who was so threatened by the relationships I created within the creative department, that she asked me NOT to leave my office and go visit with these employees. She was such a control freak that one time when I told her I was going to bathroom, she followed me in, because she didn’t trust where I was headed, and actually stood in front of the stall I was in and peered down to check out my footwear.
By this time I was onto her – and lifted my feet.

Asshole, huh!
(insecure and pathetic, but really an asshole!)

Cheers,
Ally

Yes Ally, sounds like an asshole to me.  And one that was clearly driven by deep insecurity. 

My publisher was kind enough — and I believe wise enough — to send out about 35 advance copies of The No Asshole Rule to influential bloggers, and in fact got these copies to bloggers at least a month before anyone from the traditional press.  A couple of early reviews have already appeared, both of which are thoughtful and supportive.  Check out what Brayden King and Kent Blumberg have to say.  I especially like Kent’s comment — I guess it is more of a question — where he wonders whether the book should have been called "The One Asshole Rule" rather than "The No Asshole Rule,"  a good question (if you read the book), but it is too late to change now (Thank goodness!  There is a point where every author has to let a book go, and I am past it… or they never get done.).

Brayden and Kent: Thanks for your thoughtful comments.