No Asshole Round-Up: The Rule at Baird, The Japanese Title, A$$hole Hits the Stores, and Other News

 I've got a lot of news about assholes in the workplace, so I thought I would do a quick round-up of events over the past few weeks.

1. I wrote earlier about the no asshole rule at Baird, a Midwestern financial services firm that is led by Paul Purcell, and that is #39 on Fortune Best Places to Work list. A had a lovely telephone conversation with Mr. Purcell, who is a charming and smart guy. I will use some of the material for a new chapter I am writing for the paperback version of the book (which won’t be out for at least a year), but there is one thing Paul said that I found intriguing. I asked him how he defines as an asshole. And he said something like, it is someone who does three things:

1. Persistently puts his or her interests ahead of co-workers
2. Persistently puts his or her interests ahead of the company’s interest
3. Engages in ethically suspect actions 

Paul noted that people who do the first two things are especially prone to unethical action, a good point. Now, this isn’t how I define an asshole, as I think of them as people who leave a trail of demeaned and de-energized victims in their wake, but definitional issues aside, I agree completely with what Paul is trying to accomplish. And the key of course is that Baird isn’t just trying to select “good” people, they work very hard to create a culture and systems that support such unselfish and ethical action.  

2. I love all the comments on the Japanese title of the book. I am glad to hear that people generally think it is an accurate and culturally appropriate one. As one example, here is a great one from Christine Yokoi:

I'm Japanese/American & lived in Japan 20 years & have done lots of translation (but with a lot of struggle ;-)).

In Japanese, there are not really swear words ("dirty" words) that are used in everyday situations. So you often see/hear the word "baka" being used as a translation for the many colorful variations of swear words we have in English, in movies & TV.

I'd say this whole title translates quite closely to "the jerk in your workplace," and comes at least closer than using "baka" which literally means stupid and can but doesn't always mean jerk. I don't think there is a Japanese word that means or has the same connotation as "asshole." (So you need to insult people in other ways if you're speaking in Japanese ;-) )

There are other interesting considerations that have seemingly gone into this translation, which involve the selection of the characters used for the words (it is possible to write the same phrase using different sets of characters, such as Chinese characters, or different versions of the Japanese phonetic alphabet) -- which will nuance the impact (visual interpretation by readers) of the phrase.

For example, the selection of katakana (phonetic Japanese often used to represent foreign words) for the Japanese word 'iya' (translated by others here as 'nasty') tends to emphasize it within the title.

3. There is a new column out on law.com called No Jerks Allowed: How and Why GCs Can Stop Angry, Rude and Demeaning Workplace Behavior, by Michael Maslanka. He talks about The No Asshole Rul and discusses some new research that I find especially interesting:

“Having practiced employment law for nearly 27 years, I can say with absolute clarity and total conviction that abrupt e-mails, rude comments and angry directives fail -- always have, always will. Confirmation of my subjective feelings comes from two business professors, Christine Porath and Amir Erez, whose revealing study of rudeness and its toxic effects is illuminating. They subjected two groups of study participants to varying degrees of rudeness, and they asked a third group to only imagine they were the object of the rudeness. All groups were then asked to perform tasks requiring cognitive functions. The result? In all three groups the ability of the participants to think was severely impaired. Why? They were unable to use their cognitive processing power to perform the tasks, wasting their brain wattage on mulling over and ruminating upon the rudeness, or parsing the comments and figuring out how they should have responded. This included the bystander group, asked only to empathize. Talk about collateral damage.”

4. I had a lovely time as a guest on the local NPR station in Washington D.C. talking about the civility movement in Maryland. I was especially impressed with the good humor and wisdom from Valerie Gross, CEO of the Howard County Library -- one of the leaders of the civility movement in Howard County. You can listen to the broadcast at here the WAMU 88.5 website.

5. I worked with Guy Kawasaki and Linked-in awhile back to develop a checklist to help determine if you are about to go to work for an asshole boss. In that spirit, check out this useful article on How to Spot Bad Employers. I love this list of red flags:

· Your interviewer is more than a little late and doesn't feel it necessary to apologize.

· It's clear that your interviewer has never looked at your resume or application.

· Your interviewer is constantly called from the meeting to handle an office crisis.

· Your interviewer takes phone calls during your meeting, rarely makes eye contact, and shows little interest in you or what you bring to the table.

· Other workers enter the screening room with pained expressions.

· Your potential boss talks only about his/her accomplishments, and discusses the shortcomings of other staffers.

· The interviewer never focuses on direct skills, but your potential boss says you'll receive specific directives once you're on the job.

· Your interviewer is rude to you and brusque to existing employees. Or, worse, stress sizzles off of subordinates on the interview committee.

· Your interviewer insists on asking personal questions that are not job related about your home or family life, your age, your health or potential disabilities, your race or national origin, or your court and financial records.

 
6. Finally, Marty Kihn’s funny and somewhat scary book A$$hole: How I Got Rich & Happy By Not Giving a Damn About Anyone And You Can Too is out. It is an intriguing book because, one hand, it isn’t just funny to read, it is actually a pretty useful guide for anyone who wants to become an effective asshole at work. On the other hand, it shows many of the downsides, and in fact, that is part of the joke. Check out Marty’s blogging on the book, which is find funny and often rather touching. He has a blog on his Amazon page (I tried to post something but the censorship there killed it… I didn’t even use the world asshole, but I Ahole seems to forbidden even though I noticed they were saying that on CNBC the other day.) I especially love this post from yesterday, as it betrays what a nice guy that Marty is despite the title of the book and the experiences he describes:

[T]he A$$hole appears today on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto.” Not content with just one beat-down, my new best friend Neil also had me on his Fox Business Channel show two hours later. Sparks flew. Love was made and lost. In all, a tremendous eruption for the A$$hole! The Neil-ster (new b.f.f.) betrayed an uncanny grasp of the True when he said: “People who know you say you don’t believe a word of it.”

7. Finally, the picture to the left came from a post on  Australia-based Management Blog.   I had not seen it before, but I think it summarizes that feeling I get after I've had a run-in with a certified asshole or a pack of them.

I know this post is long, but a lot has happened recently! I love the asshole stuff, of course, but I am looking forward to focusing my posts, and my writing, on other topics in the coming months including leadership, turning knowledge into action, and innovation.

Comments

[dblwyo]

An interesting summary & overview that helped something gel for me - this is all about respect for the other person. Seeing them as a somebody and not a nobody. You don't treat people badly if you see them as worthy of respect nor do you see them as someone to take advantage of. Respect is not maudlin either but sets and expects high standards of performance, as a matter of respect. Which brings us full circle to who's interests you act in. A respectful and high-performance workplace is one where we recognize and support our common interests in the prosperity of the company.And again that's a two-way street. If workers are selected because they balance their own interests with those of the company and co-workers the counter-point is that the company should balance its' interests with those of the workers.
Virtuous vs vicious circle, which you may recall my arguing is fundamentally related to l.t. performance of the enterprise or organization. And has a quantifiable impact on that performance. :)

[Lilly Evans]

Well Marty's book is here in UK too! The Sunday Times ran a piece on April 6, 2008 with title "No more Mr Nice Guy" and tagline
Marty Kihn was getting nowhere in life, so he changed his tactics. He tells Style why acting an asshole is the only way to make it big

Rest is at
http://tinyurl.com/5fgbsl