Work Matters

Category: The No Asshole Rule

  • The CEO, The Last Cookie, and the “Bad Christian”

    As my last post suggests, I am working today to get my in-box in some semblance of order (I am under 200 emails to deal with in my in-box, down from 400 a few hours ago).  I just ran into an email I got about five weeks ago about a CEO who was a certified asshole.  As regular readers of this blog know, one of the studies I love is the  "Cookie Experiment" reported by Dacher Keltner and Deb Gruenfeld.  It showed that giving people a little power over others led them to eat more than their share of cookies, eat with their mouths open, and leave more crumbs. 

    In this vein, here a reader's a story about the hissy fit her CEO had because one of his colleagues had eaten the last cookie.

    The "Bad Christian" Attack.

    2010-02-24-2009_04_02Samoa This person professed to be an avowed Christian, and was on the board of directors of a major Christian publication.  At times he even resorted to holding prayer meetings in the board room.  One day he went to the executive kitchen to fetch a cookie, only to find out his favorite box of cookies was no longer to be found.  After relentless quizzing of the administrative staff one person indicated they had seen a particular person go into the kitchen.  This person, also an avowed Christian, but one who walked the talk, was singled out for persecution.  He was called into the board room and accused of being a "bad Christian" for eating the last cookie.  Up until that point the executive staff in the "front office" all had rights to use the executive kitchen at their discretion.  Following the cookie incident the executive kitchen was for the exclusive use of the CEO, COO, and vice presidents.

    I find this both sad and funny.  If you have any stories about how bosses or other people in power exhibited selfish, pigish, or otherwise weird behavior around food, please share them us.

    P.S. Yes, that is a Girl Scout Samoa.  If you are in Northern California, remember that booth sales for Girl Scouts Cookies start today.  See Marina's post.

  • A Darn Good One Page Summary of Good Boss, Bad Boss in Southwest Airlines Spirit

    The February edition of Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine has a an article on Good Boss, Bad Boss called Lead the Way. I was both delighted and a bit distrubed to see what a great job they did of capturing the central themes in the book with so few words, and few key pictures.  I wrote all those words and the simple page below captures so much it! Below is a somewhat blurry and small jpeg; click here to see the full pdf, which is more clear.

    Good Boss, Bad Boss in Southwest Spirit

  • David Kelley on Love and Money: Dan Pink’s Kind of Guy

    This is a post I out up a few months back.  But as I am a guest on Dan Pink's new show "Office Hours" today at 2 Eastern, I thought I would bring to the top of my blog because David's perspective reminds me of Dan's philosophy and evidence in his bestseller "Drive."  Here goes:

    Yesterday, a couple hundred of us gathered at the Stanford d.school to celebrate David Kelley's 60th birthday.  The outpouring of love and affection was something — the guests included old friends he grew-up with, his family, Stanford colleagues (David is a professor and the main founder of the Stanford d.school), IDEO colleagues (David is co-founder of IDEO, was the first CEO, and the driving force behind the culture), dozens of former students, many of his friends from Silicon Valley businesses, and his friends from the car world (David loves old cars and has a pretty cool collection of old American cars and other cool things like a well-restored and "chopped" Mini and some classic Porsches).  The outpouring of affection was even stronger than it might have been because several years back David was diagnosed with cancer, and he seems to have beat it (his doctor was there, who David thanked for saving his life).

    David is one of the inspiring and wise people I've ever met (I once tried to write a book about him and IDEO called The Attitude of Wisdom… I have written about wisdom in subsequent books, but I still regret not finishing that book.)  One key to David's success is that, before he starts talking to the person in front of him, he actually listens carefully and takes in their body language before offering a comment or opinion — it is a rare talent, and one of many signs of his magnificent empathy. (Here is a recent Fast Company article that covers David and some of his latest accomplishments.)

    Document Kelley Lovemoney

    I could tell a a hundred stories about David, and as part of celebrating his 60th, perhaps I will write out a few more.  But one that has been top of mind lately is his "Love and Money" drawing (he did the one above for Good Boss, Bad Boss, but it remains unchanged over the years).  One of the first times I talked to David in depth, at some point in the early 1990s, as I was asking him about his management philosophy, he drew-out the graphic above and explained that, to run a business, you need to make money, but you also need to retain the talents and motivation of great people.  Yes, he said there are times when love and money go together, but there are always stretches of time when a boss needs to ask people to do things they don't want to do and don't love to make the necessary money required to keep the doors open.  But the smart boss realizes that he or she damn well build up some love points in advance to burn when some unpleasant money tasks are required.  

    This simple idea is strikingly similar to one of the main ideas in Good Boss, Bad Boss — albeit one derived from research and theory on leaders rather than David's pencil.  As I argue in the book, the best bosses realize that one of the balancing acts that they walk is between pressing people to perform well for the collective good and treating them with respect, dignity, and injecting joy into their days at work.   This is why I came close to calling Good Boss, Bad Boss "Top Dog on a Tightrope" as the best bosses carry-off this daily balancing act in a masterful way. 

    This is developed on Good Boss, Bad Boss in some detail.  Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 that focuses on my conversation with David about love and money (the same one where he drew the above picture; the original is in my Stanford office):

    David sees his job, or the job of any boss, as enabling people to experience dignity and joy as they travel through their work days (the love part, what I call humanity) AND to do work that keeps the lights on and provides them with fair pay, health care, and other necessities (the money part, what I call performance).  David says that, although sometimes you can accomplish both at once, there are always stretches when people must do things they don’t love to bring in money.  David explains that great bosses work to strike a balance between love and money over time, for example, by making sure that a designer who has worked on a dull, frustrating, and lucrative project gets to choose an inspiring if less profitable project the next time.

    Managers at IDEO don’t accomplish this balancing act just through bigger moves like project assignments.  They do it in little ways too: When designers have been working like dogs and are tired, grumpy, and starting to bicker, managers find little ways to slow things down, have some fun, and promote civility and mutual respect.  This might happen by making sure that a designer who has been grinding away designing a medical device can get a refreshing break by going to a brainstorming session, for example, on how to improve the airport security experience, get doctors to wash their hands, or design new playing pieces for the Monopoly board game. Managers at IDEO also provide breaks by shooting darts from Nerf guns or launching rubber darts called Finger Blasters at their people – which often degenerate into a full-scale 15 minute battles.  Such adolescent antics won’t work in every workplace.  But when the performance pressure starts heating-up and things are on the verge of turning ugly, skilled bosses everywhere find ways to give people a break, or tell a joke, or just make a warm gesture to place more weight on the “humanity” side of the scale.  As David put it, “foam darts aren’t for everybody, but there is always some form of play in every culture that allows people to let off steam.”

    Happy Birthday David.  As the  Neil Young song about his old car goes,  "Long May You Run."

  • The “Rotten Apple” Effect Happens in Herds of Cows Too

     

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    Thanks to Jason, I learned of some weird but unsurprising research that brings together the bad apple studies described in Good Boss, Bad Boss and work on emotional contagion in The No Asshole Rule.  A five-year study led by Mississippi State University Associate Professor Rhonda Vann found that cows that were "very aggressive, excitable, and out of control" not only got sick more often, weighed less, and wrecked farm equipment, these bad things "rub-off" on the rest of the herd.   Here is the story from Delta Farm Press, called "Calm Cattle More Valuable."  Of course, human groups are different from farm animals in many ways, but the parallel between this and Will Felps' research on bad apples, and related work on "bad is stronger than good"  is striking (See this HBR post).

  • My First Time Attending the World Economic Forum at Davos

    I am in the final throes of getting ready for the World Economic Forum, which takes place this week in Switzerland.  I have never attended before and some of the famous people on the list are rather daunting.  There will be sessions involving world leaders like David Cameron from the UK, Angela Merkel of Germany, Bill Clinton from the U.S., lots of CEOs including Google's Larry Page to Heinken's Jean-François van Boxmeer, and a session by "miracle on the Hudson" pilot Sulley Sullenberg.  You can read about it here in the The New York Times, which has a wonderfully cynical opening paragraph.  

    I am among the many academics invited and will be participating in three sessions. First, I am moderating a session on design thinking and business, which should be interesting as it is becoming ingrained in the positions and practices of so many organizations now.  Second, I am participating in a session on what leaders of the present can learn from leaders of the past.  Third, I give a talk on "the no jerk rule."  The WEF is sufficiently respectable that the organizers thought it was best to refrain from using the world "asshole" in the title.  But I plan to use it a few times in the talk, although perhaps fewer times than usual.   In addition to the sessions I am part of, I am going to focus on learning about scaling, my current primary project, as several sessions focus on the topic and there will be a lot of people there who have a lot of experience with this challenge.

    The place is just buzzing with interesting people and sessions, but I have been warned by the people who run the event and by experienced participants like IDEO CEO  Tim Brown to pace myself as it can get overwhelming.  They also have warned me to bring warm clothes and good snow boots as it is a ski resort.

    I will do some tweeting and blogging.  I don't know quite how much, as I expect I will be busy and distracted. But let me know if there is anything you are especially interested in hearing about, and I will try to address it.

  • A Great Pixar Story: Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull Serve as Human Shields

    Note: I originally posted this at HBR.org. You can see the original and the 13 comments here and can see all my posts at HBR here.  I will continue to devote the lion's share of my blogging effort to Work Matters, but plan to post at HBR a couple times a month.

    Pixar is one of my favorite companies on the planet. I love its films, its creative and constructive people (The Incredibles director Brad Bird is among the most intriguing people I've ever interviewed), and its relentless drive toward excellence. There's a pride that permeates that place, along with a nagging worry that, if they don't remain vigilant, mediocrity will infect their work. So I was thrilled to be invited to give a couple of talks about Good Boss, Bad Boss at Pixar last Fall. After the first one, Pixar veteran Craig Good (who has been there at least 25 years — I think he said 28 years), came up and told me an astounding story.

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    The story occurred to Craig because he'd just heard me claim that the best bosses serve as human shields, protecting their people from intrusions, distractions, idiocy from on high, and anything else that undermines their performance or well-being. For him, that brought to mind the year 1985, when the precursor to Pixar, known as the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, was under financial pressure because founder George Lucas (of Star Wars fame) had little faith in the economics of computer animated films. Much of this pressure came down on the heads of the Division's leaders, Ed Catmull (the dreamer who imagined Pixar long before it produced hit films, and the shaper of its culture) and Alvy Ray Smith (the inventor responsible for, among many other things, the Xerox PARC technology that made the rendering of computer animated films possible). The picture to the left shows Ed and Alvy around that period.

    Lucas had brought in a guy named Doug Norby as President to bring some discipline to Lucasfilm, and as part of his efforts, Norby was pressing Catmull and Smith to do some fairly deep layoffs. The two couldn't bring themselves to do it. Instead, Catmull tried to make a financial case for keeping his group intact, arguing that layoffs would only reduce the value of a unit that Lucasfilm could profitably sell. (I am relating this story with Craig's permission, and he double-checked its accuracy with Catmull.) But Norby was unmoved. As Craig tells it: "He was pestering Ed and Alvy for a list of names from the Computer Division to lay off, and Ed and Alvy kept blowing him off. Finally came the order: You will be in my office tomorrow morning at 9:00 with a list of names."

    So what did these two bosses do? "They showed up in his office at 9:00 and plunked down a list," Craig told me. "It had two names on it: Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith."

    As Craig was telling me that story, you could hear the admiration in his voice and his pride in working for a company where managers would put their own jobs on the line for the good of their teams. "We all kept our jobs," he marveled. "Even me, the low man on the totem pole. When word got out, we employees pooled our money to send Ed, Alvy, and their wives on a thank-you night on the town."

    Certainly such extreme staff protection is rare and sometimes it might not even be wise. I can't say that every proposed layoff is immoral or unnecessary. But consider the coda: a few months after this incident, Pixar was sold to a guy named Steve Jobs for 5 million bucks and, as they say, the rest is history. And some 25 years later, that brave shielding act still drives and inspires people at Pixar.

    P.S. I want to thank Pixar's Craig Good, Elyse Klaidman, and Ed Catmull for telling me this story and letting me use it. If you want to learn more about Pixar's astounding history, I suggest reading David Price's The Pixar Touch. It is well researched and a delight to read. While you're at it, check out Alvy Ray Smith's site and Dealers of Lightning if you want to learn about the impact this quirky genius has had on computer animation and other technical marvels.

  • Good Boss, Bad Boss on Five “Best Business Book” Lists for 2010

    Good Boss, Bad Boss has been selected as among the best business books of the year on five lists I've heard about.  These are:

    1. INC Magazine's list of "Best Books for Business Owners."

    2. One of the Globe & Mail's Top 10 Ten Business Reads of 2010.

    3. One of the four "best of the rest" selections by 1-800-CEO-Read in the leadership category, behind the winner Bury My Heart at Conference Room B. (I love that title, just brilliant).

    4. The New York Post's Round-Up of Notable Career Books for 2010.

    5. The Strategy & Business list of the four best Best Business Books in the leadership category.  See the excerpt below from, Walter Kiechel III's story here, which I found to be generally fun, thoughtful, and well-written (you have to register, but it is free). Here is Walter's rollicking review:

    Better Bossiness

    Finally, for a head-clearing blast of sauciness, pick up a copy of Robert I. Sutton’s Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best…and Learn from the Worst. In a year when too many leadership books combined solemn with vapid, Sutton’s decision to focus on the figure of “the boss” comes across as thoroughly refreshing. Even after decades of study, we may not agree on what constitutes a leader or all the proper functions of a manager, but everybody knows who the boss is.

    If it’s you, however long you’ve been at it, you can probably benefit from Sutton’s breezy tour of the wisdom he has distilled from scholarly studies, his own experience, and the thousands of responses he received to his last book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (Business Plus, 2007). To say that Sutton, a Stanford professor, wears his learning lightly is to understate the case. At times he wears it like a vaudeville comedian’s gonzo-striped blazer with accompanying plastic boutonniere shooting water. This is a weirdly merry book, perfect for a down year — but not an unserious book.

    Consider, for example, Sutton on the imperative to take control. Yes, you as a leader have to, he counsels, in the sense that “you have to convince people that your words and deeds pack a punch.” And he offers up a series of fairly familiar gambits to that end: “Talk more than others — but not too much.” “Interrupt people occasionally — and don’t let them interrupt you much.” “Try a little flash of anger now and then.” What redeems this from being mere Machiavellian gamesmanship is Sutton’s admission that any control you pretend to is probably largely an illusion — there’s a lot of play-acting in any executive role, he wants us to know. He makes the case that pushing too hard in the wrong way is a lot more dangerous than not pushing hard enough. Given the danger of the “toxic tandem” — your people are always scrutinizing you, at the same time that power invites you to become self-absorbed — leaders are always on the edge of becoming bad bosses, or even worse, bossholes. So he also advises you to blame yourself for the big mistakes, serves you up a seven-part recipe for an effective executive apology, reminds you to ask the troops what they need, and finishes with the injunction, “Give away some power or status, but make sure everyone knows it was your choice.”

    Another chapter title captures the overall aspiration Sutton advocates: “Strive to Be Wise.” His is a street-smart, been-around-the-block-but-still-a-happy-warrior brand of wisdom, rooted in a boss’s understanding of himself or herself coupled with an appreciation that bosses have to take action and make decisions, including doing lots of what Sutton labels “dirty work.” As a boss “it is your job to issue reprimands, fire people, deny budget requests, transfer employees to jobs they don’t want, and implement mergers, layoffs, and shutdowns.” Wise bosses understand that although they may not be able to avoid such unpleasantness, how they go about the dirty work makes an enormous difference. Empathy and compassion are good places to start, says Sutton. Layer on constant communication with the affected, including feedback from them you really listen to, however painful it is. Finally, you’ll probably need to cultivate a measure of emotional detachment, beginning with forgiveness for the people who lash out at you. And maybe reserving some forgiveness for yourself.

    Indeed, Good Boss, Bad Boss is in its entirety a page-by-page guide to better bossly self-awareness. The variety of sources cited can be dizzying. On one page you may get a summary of two academic studies, a quote from Dodgers coach Tommy Lasorda, a recollection of Sutton’s parents, and three examples of bad bosses sent in to Sutton’s website. (At times, the book seems almost crowdsourced and puts one in mind of Charlene Li on the power of social technology to expose behavior.) What gives all this consistency and makes for an enjoyable read is Sutton’s voice throughout — at times yammering, on rare occasions bordering on the bumptious, but in general so “can you believe this?” ready to laugh at the author’s own pratfalls, and so eager to help, that the net effect is sneakily endearing. Rather a comfort in a low, mean year.

    That guy can write, huh?

    As a closing comment, I am tickled with the recognition this book received and certainly that it appeared on The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.  But perhaps the most important thing to me is that, when I talk to bosses of all levels — from management trainees, to project managers, to chefs, to film directors and producers, to CEOs and top management teams, the core themes in the book sometimes surprise them a bit, but nh early always strike them as pertinent and central to the challenges they face.   I have talked to some 50 different groups about the ideas in Good Boss, Bad Boss since June and — although I enjoy talking about all my stuff with engaged audiences — there is something about this book that engages people more deeply than any book I've written since Jeff Pfeffer and I came out with The Knowing-Doing Gap in 1999.

    Finally, I want to thank all of you who read my blog for your support and encouragement. Your suggestions, stories, and disagreements (with me me and each other) played a huge role in shaping the content and tone of Good Boss, Bad Boss, and I am most grateful for all the ways you helped.

  • Asshole Bosses and You: A Cartoon By Team Synchronicity at North Carolina State


     

    I just got an email from Scott Bolin, an MBA student at North Carolina State, who worked with his team of fellow MBA's,  James Wall, My Le, and Bikram Jit Singh, create a funny and well-crafted cartoon called Asshole Bosses and You.  It not only is quite funny, "Team  Synchronicity," as they call themselves, did a great job of summarizing the main ideas in The No Asshole Rule.   I love the creativity, and while it may not be my place, I would call it "A" work if their teacher, Professor Roger Mayer, asked for my advice!  I especially love the way the evil boss looks and sounds.

  • Snakes Graphic from New York Times Bad Apples Story, Plus Workplace Asshole Resources

     
    28pre-articleInline Snakes My Sunday New York Times piece on How Bad Apples Infect the Tree was printed with this graphic, which portrays the vile workplace that the star of the story, "Ruth," coped with successfully — and then escaped.  I like it, as it conveys the way it feels to be in a workplace where assholes are everywhere.  Here are some key posts related to challenge of dealing with vile bosses and workplaces:

    1. Check out my tips for dealing with asshole infected workplaces

    2. If you want to help determine if you are a certified asshole or not (or someone you work with is or is not), take the ARSE, a 24-item self-exam.  About 250,000 people have completed it.

    4. Here is my honor roll of places that have no asshole rules.

    5. If you want to determine if you work for a great boss, or a "brasshole," complete the BRASS (Boss Reality Assessment System).

    6. Here are two videos of me talking about The No Asshole Rule, the first is a 50Lessons interview and the other is a CNBC Story called The Jerk at Work.

    7. Here are two videos about my new book Good Boss, Bad Boss.  The first is a CNN appearance and the other is a speech I gave that summer at an AlwaysOn conference at Stanford.

    8. Check-out my post on "Bad is Stronger Than Good" to see more detail about the damage that rotten apples do, and ways that good bosses deal with them.

    Please let Work Matters readers know of other resources that you find to be helpful.

     

     

  • The Power of Escaping a Vile Workplace: His ARSE Score Dropped from 12 to 2

    One of the main themes in The No Asshole Rule is that, if you work with a bunch of mean-spirited creeps, it is difficult to avoid catching these "adult cooties."  There are at least two reasons this happens.  The first is that a pile of studies show that emotions and behavior patterns are remarkably contagious — that without realizing it, we mimic the way that people around us act.  The second reason is self-preservation: If you work with a bunch of nasty creeps who put you down all the time, treat you as if you are invisible, bad-mouth you, and tease you in hostile ways, sometimes the only way to protect yourself (for better or worse) is to return fire.   These points are supported by academic research, especially on emotional contagion.

    Yet it is always fascinating to see how this stuff plays out in the real world. I got an intriguing email the other day from a fellow (who had written me a second time) to report a big drop in his ARSE (Asshole Rating Self-Exam) score after leaving an asshole-infested workplace and moving to a civilized one.  Here is his email, with names of companies and people removed:

    Hi Bob, I sent you an email several years back (I believe around March 2008) when I left a horribly poisonous company after less than 3 months of employment.

    Since then I have started with [an energy company].  Very different environment. It's not Shangri-la but it's definitely a more positive workplace.

    When I was working for [the horribly poisonous company ] I had taken the ARSE exam and scored a 12 (after answering honestly). Today, I retook the test (answering honestly again) and scored a 2. I've sent the test to others in my work group and asked them to give me their test scores. The highest score was a 6.

    I also find myself much more productive and spend most of my time working on how to achieve the group's goals instead of how to protect myself.

    This story also reinforces a point I make over and over again on this blog and  other places that I write and speak: If you are in an asshole-infested work group or organization, the best thing you can do is to get out as fast as you can.  Yes, there are ways to limit the damage, fight back, and to make changes — but they don't always work, and even when they do, you can suffer a lot of damage in the process.

    Note, for readers who may not know, the ARSE, or Asshole Rating Self-Exam, is a 24 item self-test that you can take to determine if you are a certified asshole, a "borderline" case, or not an asshole at all.  Many people also complete with someone else in mind, such as a boss or co-worker.  At last count, it had been completed by just 250,000 people.

    P.S. This is a revised version of a post that first appeared here early this year.  I thought it was a good time to reprint it as it is related to the "bad apple" story that was published in Sunday's New York Times.  In particular, this post reinforces  the importance of escaping from a vile workplace.