Bob Sutton

It Isn't Just a Myth, Power Turns People Into Assholes

We have been talking a lot about leadership in my Stanford class on Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-based Approach.  Last week, we had a pretty detailed discussion about how and why putting people into powerful positions seems to turn them into selfish jerks.  I was also thinking about power earlier today when a German  journalist from Chrimson interviewed me about Der Arschloch-Faktor.  I was initially amazed that I was being interviewed by a religious organization -- but the journalist who interviewed my argued that the no asshole rule was, indeed, quite consistent with the golden rule.  He wrote me that "We are financed by the The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), and therefore very interested in topics that deal with how human-beings interact, since that is what religion is all about."

I will likely blog about religion and the no asshole rule more in a few weeks. But today I am going to focus on the question that reporter asked, "Are assholes born or made?"   

I am sure that there are some people who are genetically pre-disposed to be nasty and there are some people who -- perhaps as a result of emotional and/or physical abuse during childhood -- turn into assholes. But there is also strong evidence that, no matter what our "personality"  is, we all can turn into assholes under the wrong conditions.

Asshole poisoning as a disease that you catch from others, and I talk a lot about that in the book. It is also something that happens -- with shocking speed and intensity -- when people are put in powerful positions. My colleague at the Stanford Business School Deborah Gurenfeld and her colleagues have been studying the effects of power on human beings for over years, and the findings are clear: power turns people into selfish and insensitive jerks, who act as if the the rules that the rest of us have to follow don't apply to them.

Perhaps the  best quick summary of this research is an article San Francisco Chronicle last Fall called on power and its evil effects, The article summarizes this large body of research -- now hundreds of studies -- as follows:

Research documents the following characteristics of people with power: They tend to be more oblivious to what others think, more likely to pursue the satisfaction of their own appetites, poorer judges of other people's reactions, more likely to hold stereotypes, overly optimistic and more likely to take risks.

It quotes one of Gruenfeld's main conclusions:

Disinhibition is the very root of power," said Stanford Professor Deborah Gruenfeld, a social psychologist who focuses on the study of power. "For most people, what we think of as 'power plays' aren't calculated and Machiavellian --  they happen at the subconscious level. Many of those internal regulators that hold most of us back from bold or bad behavior diminish or disappear. When people feel powerful, they stop trying to 'control themselves.'

To illustrate how rapidly such dis inhibition can happen, it describes the lovely little "cookie study" done by Gruenfeld and her colleagues:

One of the simplest and yet most fascinating experiments to test the thesis is the "cookie crumbles" experiment. Researchers placed college students in groups of three and gave them an artificial assignment  --  collaboration on a short policy paper about a social issue. They then randomly assigned one of the students to evaluate the other two for points that would affect their ability to win a cash bonus. Having set up this artificial power hierarchy, researchers then casually brought to working trios plates containing five cookies.

They found that not only did the disinhibited "powerful" students eat more than their share of the cookies, they were more likely to chew with their mouths open and to scatter crumbs over the table.

The story also includes the personal experience that Gruenfeld often uses to start her talks on the effects of power:

Gruenfeld offers a similar example from her career in journalism when she occasionally met with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. She recalls that he routinely would swig vodka from a bottle and eat raw onions  --  without ever offering to share  --  "and it never even occurred to the rest of us, because it was understood that he had the power and we did not."

The cookie study and the Rolling Stone story are just bits of evidence -- this pattern is supported by hundreds of studies.  The upshot off all this research is that power turns people into insensitive and selfish jerks, so any of us who are put in position of power are at risk of asshole poisoning.

There is also an interesting twist, however, that -- if you look at Jim Collins findings about Level 5 leaders in Good to Great as well as less well-known, but more rigorous academic research --  leaders who who are able to avoid the poison, and instead  focus on the needs of the people around them, are apparently more likely to lead more effective organizations.

So there are good reasons to find ways to resist such poison. Some of the best ways are to reduce status differences between people at different levels and to have as few hierarchical levels as possible.  Another way is to learn how to listen more and talk less.

P.S. The main academic article where that summarizes this research is "Power, Approach and Inhibition" and was published in the Psychological Review.  Also check out this study just summarized by U.S. News and World Report on how power makes it harder for people to see the world from the perspective of underlings.

Dead Fish on a Keyboard

I was interviewed by a journalist from a German magazine called Emotion about Der Arscloch-Faktor.  The interviewer was fun and explained to me that it was a widely read magazine that was similar to Psychology Today in the U.S. The story just came out and is  reprinted above. Unfortunately, I can't read German, but I think the picture that goes with the story is hysterical.  I would appreciate any information the folks who speak German can give me about the meaning of the picture. I am guessing that Stinkfisch means stinky fish, but even if I am right, there is probably some cultural implication of the word I don't quite get.  Thanks!

Translating "The No Asshole Rule" Into French

Last month I ran a little contest to help get some suggestions about what to call my book in Spanish, and I got a lot of suggestions.  In fact, the one from Diego Rodriguez and his uncle Valentin was so detailed and fascinating that I turned it into another post. I haven't heard back from my Spanish publisher on what they ultimately decided to pick, but I did hear from Geoff Staines and Marie-Pierre Vaslet at my French publisher, Vuibert, which will be publishing the book in April.

They decided to call it "Objectif Zéro-Sale-Con." I love the clean cover and think they did a great job with the button.  And just as with the Spanish edition, the conversation about how the title evolved was fascinating and funny. Geoff Staines explains:

The literal translation of asshole is "trou du cul", a form of endearment generously employed throughout the French-speaking world, but during an impromptu Vuibert seminar on the subject its meaning was felt to be halfway between sneak and jerk, besides which it is not used in relation to women. The very commonly used "con", in many ways the natural choice, usually means plain stupid and lacks the disruptive/destructive/mean-minded nuance. The more selective expression "sale con", however, does it all because the qualifier "sale" (dirty) emphasises the intentional nature of the con-ness. And as for "zéro" instead of "règle" (rule) or "facteur" (which means factor but also postman), we went for it because it harks back, amongst other things, to "zéro défaut" (from the quality circles'  elimination of faults).

And Marie-Pierre Vaslet echoed a similar argument, and added some interesting tidbits:

I was very interested by what you say in your blog about the Spanish translation. We had the same problem but I hope we found a solution. In French, the exact word for "asshole" is "trou du cul," but it is rather less usual than in English, and quite rare to say about a woman. So we choose "sale con," which is very very usual, and we think it has quite the same meaning as "asshole" in English......

To translate the other part of the title (the no…rule), we choose "Objectif zéro-sale-con." The expression "objectif zéro…" (defet, stock, etc.) was employed in French business books titles a few years ago (and even now) and we found amusing to make this reference when talking about "sales cons."

Unlike the Spanish version, the title is set, but I still am most interested to hear from people who speak French, especially anyone in France, about their reactions to the title.  I don't necessarily expect agreement and approval, and I always love the arguments about what to call the book.

P.S. These arguments aren't just about the translation from English to other languages, it seems that there are also arguments about the right translation from American to English. See this posting by Richard Donkin on Let Call the Whole Thing Orf.

A Stanford Student on Why the d.school Works

Min Liu just graduated from Stanford at the end of the winter term.  Those of us at the Stanford d.school were lucky to have her as a student in our "Clicks-n-Bricks" class during her last term at Stanford, which among other things, did a project for Wal-Mart focused on fueling their sustainability efforts. I wrote a couple of posts about the class, including one describing the great group dynamics on our teaching team (which included Debra Dunn, Liz Gerber, Michael Dearing, Alex  Ko, and Perry Klebahn), but Min just put-up a post that has more information about what it is like to take a d.school class than any other place I know.  Check out her new post on Why the d.school Works.  Check it out, it not only has opinions, it has a couple videos from our class field trip to Wal-Mart.com.  Our students were invited to present their work to a big group of Wal-mart.com employees after presenting their projects -- and having them evaluated -- by 7 or 8 Wal-Mart executives plus our teaching team the prior week.  The first video is of Carter Cast (CEO of  Wal-Mart.com) and I setting the stage for the presentations and the second is of Min's group doing their presentation on how to get Wal-Mart.com employees more engaged in their sustainability efforts. 

Min was kind enough not to talk about all the mistakes we made as a teaching team, as we worked under massive uncertainty and time pressure. Things came out well in the end, but the creative process is usually pretty bumpy, and this class was no different. Here are some of the nice things Min said:

The class gave me the breadth to do hard out-of-the-academic element projects. For example, designing a sustainability project within a large organization can't solely rely on theoretical foundations of organizational behavior. My team and I interviewed the Walmart.com folks, talked to various individuals outside Target and Whole Foods who were passionate or apathetic about green, developed a point of view for our subjects, and came up with a cool solution based on our observations and prototypes. And like no other department I've experienced, we got access to the d.school 24-7 and free food and drinks all the time......

Personally, my last quarter at Stanford was the best because I learned that the process of doing what I love (finally!) is so much better than living up to some abstract expectation even though it is, by convention, the best. Sure, the realization was a good part done by myself outside of the d.school, but it was d.school's welcoming, innovative, and incubative environment that helped me realize that the riskier and gutsy-er a path is, the better.

Of course, Min's comments warm our hearts.  It is the kind of thing that keeps us going when all seems dark and messed-up, and why we are lucky to work at place like Stanford that allows us to do such crazy things, to take risks in our teaching and research, just as we press our students to do in their projects.

Maureen Rogers on the Virtues of Dirty Words

Maureen Rogers over at Pink Slip has an inspired post on why, at times, there is not substitute for a well-placed obscene word.  I've talked about Why I Call Them Assholes here, but Maureen makes the best argument I've seen about the emotional wallop factor.  Don't miss the complete post Sugar-Honey-Ice-Tea for gems like this (Maureen is someone who can REALLY write):

The thing is, when it comes to the sheer brilliant pungency of using the impolite words, the substitutes just won't do.

He's acting like an anus? No way.

She's full of excrement. Yawn.

Go have intercourse with yourself. Not quite there.

As for asshole? To quote my dear cousin Barbara who once and only once used the word in front of her exceedingly polite, proper, and genuinely kind mother, my beloved Aunt Margaret, "sometimes you just have to call an asshole an asshole."

Accept no substitutes: jerk don't work.

Good stuff, huh?  I suspect that there will be media outlets that will insist that I use the words jerks (although I was impressed to see that the Today Show labeled me as the author of "THE NO AHOLE  RULE"), and yes, we have had a few media outlets turn us down because of the dirty title.  But offending a certain percentage of people can be a good thing.  I once heard Chris Bangle -- the head of design of BMW -- say that if you don't offend about 20% of your customers and potential customers with what you do, you aren't doing something that is interesting or creative enough. And change of any kind does not happen without making a lot of people squirm.

Asshole Eraser

My publisher, Warner Books, had this clever idea of making-up these erasers to help promote the book.  They sent me about 2000, and I have given just about all of them away -- 150 to HR managers at Yahoo!, members of my d.school class, several hundred to people the AlwaysOn conference, 50 or so McKinsey partners,  150 people at IDEO, perhaps 500 to various participants in Stanford executive education programs, and to all sorts of random people.

The other side asks: Are you part of the solution, or part if the problem? People love getting these things  -- and a good sign of their popularity is that quite a few recipients have come back later to ask for a second one because "some one stole mine."

Today Show Segment: A Professional Jerk-Buster?

The Today Show segment is bouncy, short, and fun, as is there style.  It did run later than planned -- which is standard.   I was listed as author of the "NO A-HOLE RULE," that is progress as I figured it would be the NO A******  rule.  Unfortunately, they didn't mention SuccessFactors -- even though there is a great shot of all 400 people shouting "No More Jerks."  And my publisher seems to be especially happy that I have called a "professional jerk-buster" on national TV.  You can see the segment at this link. Look for "surrounded by jerks" under Wednesday.

It was fun to work with the camera crew and producer, and as Chip Heath warned me, I can't believe how much film they shot -- I'd guess three hours between SuccessFactors and me -- and used perhaps 2 minutes total of that. A weird business.

Most of you have probably heard that great song by the Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime, which has that great line: And you may ask yourself-Well...How did I get here? It sums up the way I feel today. Am I really a Professional Jerk-Buster?  How did that happen?  How did I get here?  I am having fun, but it is strange. 

I am on the Today Show Tommorow at 8:32 AM!

It was a wild morning.  I was scheduled to give a speech at SuccessFactors about The No Asshole Rule because, after all, they are still the only company I know that not only has a "no assholes rule" (although they now say  "no jerks" on their website) and have all new employees agree to 14 rules of engagement before joining company, which include agreeing not to act like an asshole (and, yes, that is the word they still use).

I was already excited enough about giving the speech to all 420 or so people this morning, who were gathered in San Francisco for a company-wide meeting. And I was delighted that my publisher and 1800CEORead had worked together to overcome challenges in the supply chain, and deliver a special advance shipment of The No Asshole Rule -- so that everyone in the company could have their very own copy though it won't be available otherwise for nearly a month. Indeed, I saw the final version  of the book for the very first time this morning.

Max Goldman at the SuccessFactors blog already put-up a nice post about the talk -- thanks Max!

BUT then, yesterday, the folks from The Today Show decided that they wanted to do a little segment about how to deal with jerks -- not just in the workplace but in other aspects of life as well.  Those TV people move very fast, so they had a camera at the hotel where SuccessFactors is meeting, and they videotaped my speech, footage of conversations as I met Lars and signed books, and a good 45 minutes of interview footage with me about "jerks." They also interviewed Lars for the spot and I understand that they got footage yesterday of all 400+ people in the company (shot from the roof of the hotel) shouting "no more assholes" and (the censored version) "no more jerks" -- I hope that gets on the air.

Of course, this being national TV, they will cut 3 or 4 hours down to 3 or 4 minutes, so I am very curious to see which bits make it on the air.  The producer did say that she would list me as the "author of The No A****** Rule."  So that should be good fun.  They shot the cover of the book too ... but I bet that never makes it on the air.  I am delighted to be following in the Heath brothers footsteps -- they were interviewed a few weeks ago on the Today Show about Made it Stick.

In any event, I am curious to see what they do. Again, it is NBC's Today Show at 8:32 Wednesday, January 24th -- tomorrow!

P.S. The people at  SuccessFactors  are fantastic , warm and performance oriented.  And Lars is one of the most  energetic, smart, and downright fun CE0's I've ever met. And Lars tells me that they are fastest growing software company over 30 million dollars, so it looks like their blend of intense concern about both humanity and performance is working.

The No Asshole Rule is #2 on Amazon Pre-Orders

It is exactly a month before The No Asshole Rule will be officially available, but there are some promising early signs. Amazon publishes a list of Popular Pre-Orders:Business and Investing and the book is currently ranked #2.  I am not sure how this translates into sales, but I am nearly sure that the nice reviews on blogs are one of the main drivers of these early sales, plus my editor believes that the Publisher's Weekly review is helping too.  This is my fourth book and the only thing I am sure of is that publishing business is so weird that predicting and influencing what happens is just about impossible.  But these early signs do have me enjoying at least temporary state of upbeat delusion about the prospects for spreading the word about bullies and creeps in the workplace -- and yes, I confess, for selling some books.

There are some other interesting things on the horizon that I will be writing about, including a speech I will be giving tomorrow to the people at SuccessFactors, all 400 or so of them, who are gathered in San Francisco for company-wide meeting.  As I've written about before, SuccessFactors requires all new employees to sign "rules on engagement," which include a pledge that "I will be a good person to work with -- I will not be be an asshole." 

The Trouble With Effective Gatekeepers

I’ve been thinking a bit more about my last post about the volatile CEO of Mesa Air Group, Jonathon Ornstein. Recall that, according to The New York Times, his executive assistant reported that people would call to see if he was in a good mood, and if he wasn’t – which she said was at least 60% of the time – they would avoid him until he cheered-up.

Ornstein’s assistant was clearly competent and thoughtful of her colleagues. Her competence, however, got me to thinking about some of the unintended negative consequences of such gate keeping – which is a hallmark of effective executive assistants. First, by keeping other people away from the boss when he or she is in a raging mood – although it protects others from damage – it also creates a protective bubble around the boss. Sparing underlings from the full force of Ornstein’s wrath likely reduces their motivation to leave the company, press him to change, press for his firing, or for Ornstein himself to realize that he needs to change. In other words, she unwittingly reduces the pressure on him to stop acting like a flaming asshole.

Second, I don’t know about Ornstein’s assistant, but I've seen this in other companies: Smart executive assistants who work for volatile bosses learn to screen visitors. They realize that people who bring the boss bad news will spark a nasty rage; but people who bring good news will help keep the boss’s mood under control. So they learn to make it difficult for naysayers and truth-tellers to see the boss and to make it easy for optimists and ass-kissers to get in the door. After all, it makes their jobs a lot easier. The result is that – because it helps keep their boss kinder and calmer – the boss is “protected’ from hearing bad news. So, without realizing it, many assholes bosses create and live in a fool’s paradise – where they never learn about bad things because their underlings don’t want to be the target their rage.

Social psychologists have documented this “shoot the messenger problem,” that people who deliver bad news (even if it is not their fault) often are blamed for it. Asshole bosses seem especially prone to this problem. Effective executives overcome this problem by encouraging and supporting people who bring them bad news.  And this isn’t just challenge for gatekeepers and executives – learning from setbacks and bad news can’t happen unless people feel safe enough to discuss problems with their bosses and peers. I’ve written about Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety here before, and it is especially relevant to overcoming the “shoot the messenger” problem. Her fascinating study of eight nursing units found that when nurses worked in units with demeaning and critical co-workers and supervisors, they were less likely (as much as 10 times less likely) to report drug treatment errors.  Edmondson’s research suggests to me that, when asshole poisoning runs rampant in a nursing unit, the fear of being demeaned and belittled can increase the chances that patients will get sicker and die, because people are so afraid to admit and talk about mistakes.

To return to gatekeepers, I want to close by emphasizing that even a nice boss may end-up living in a fool’s paradise because their executive secretaries and other subordinates want to keep the boss in a good mood – and even nice bosses can fall prey to the “shoot the messenger” problem. I once had an executive assistant to a nice boss tell me that, the better mood her boss was in, the easier and more fun her job was – so she made it easy for people who left him in a good mood to get appointments, and made it very hard for people who left him in a bad mood to get in the door.  This assistant was adept at “helping” her nice boss stay in a good mood, but in the process, was probably unwittingly protecting him from bad news that he needed to hear. So this isn’t just a problem created by the gatekeepers of asshole bosses, although I suspect that it is worse with them because of the climate of fear that they create.

P.S. One of the most interesting books I’ve ever read on the auto industry is by former GM executive John De Lorean (famously busted for getting involved in a cocaine deal to support his auto company – he was later acquitted) called On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors.  It has been out of print for years. But it shows how GM executives unwittingly created a world that led them to be out of touch with reality. I fear that De Lorean’s description of GM in the 1970’s is still true today: “"The system quickly shut top management off from the real world because it surrounded itself in many cases with 'yes' men. There soon became no real vehicle for input."

 

Would You Want To Work For This Guy?

There was an article called Approach Boss With Caution in The New York Times yesterday.  It is about the CEO of Mesa Airlines.  Check out the whole thing, but these things make me wonder.  How do people get away with this kind of thing?  Even if he is effective at running the airline, I have no idea why people put up with such abuse.  The article suggests that he does have other charms -- but in my book, being around people like this not only isn't worth the trouble, people who put-up with his nonsense are enabling -- even encouraging -- his abusive behavior to persist.

Here is just one quote little part -- Check out Frank's comment on my last post and of course the article:

Stacy Heath, employee relations and events manager at Mesa, was until recently Mr. Ornstein’s administrative assistant. Her tasks included tracking his mood and warning executives away from a meeting with the boss. “They would call and say, ‘Is he in a good mood?’ I used to laugh, but I do it now, too.”

Mr. Ornstein, who grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. , said the high-decibel communication style he learned from his family was a healthy way to deal with conflict. “Being upset comes and goes in 10 minutes,” he said.

But upset seems to come more than it goes with Mr. Ornstein. Ms. Heath, who spent nearly six years as his gatekeeper, said: “Maybe 60 percent — maybe even higher than that — he was not in a good mood. Sometimes he would come in to the office in a bad mood in the morning and it would set the tone for the whole office.”

P.S. Frank, thanks for pointing this out!

You Can't S**t on Your Employees: Home Despot Part II

Jason Yip directed me to a fantastic post about Bob Nardelli -- the deposed CEO of Home Depot that I blogged about last week-- over at Lean Blog, called "You Can't S**t on Your Employees"

Here is the quote from an employee that inspired the post title:

""You can't s--t on your employees and deliver" results."

This one is also revealing:

"It's amazing the reaction of people on my floor. People are openly ecstatic. High-fiving," said an Atlanta store operations manager only hours after the Jan. 3 announcement. "There's a group talking about going to happy hour at noon."

Unfortunately, if you look at examples like Hollywood's Scott Rudin and Disney's Michael Eisner, I fear that there are too many places where the lesson seems to be "you can shit on your employees so long as you deliver results." There are also other reasons that Bob Nardelli  got fired, indeed, one of the  main lessons might be that that you can't shit on shareholders and keep your job.  But Nardelli's firing does appear to be a solid blow for The No Asshole Rule, as it suggests that dumping on employees can get your company in trouble with shareholders too. Nardelli's style clearly put off some of the analysts, as you can see from this post. 

This excerpt from The No Asshole Rule provides another example of how dumping on employees can drive down the stock price, although the CEO kept his job and seemed to learn something from the experience:

Neal Patterson, CEO of the Cerner Corporation, learned this lesson in 2001 when he sent out a “belligerent” email that was intended for just the top 400 people in this health care software firm. According the The New York Times, Patterson complained that few employees were working full 40 hour weeks, and “As managers -- you either do not know what your EMPLOYEES are doing; or you do not CARE.” Patterson said that he wanted to see the employee parking lot ''substantially full'' between 7:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. weekdays and “half full on Saturdays, and that if it didn’t happen, he would take harsh measures, perhaps even layoffs and hiring freezes.  Patterson warned, ''You have two weeks,'' he said. ''Tick, tock.'' 

Patterson’s e-mail was leaked on the internet, provoking harsh criticism from management experts including my Stanford colleague Jeff Pfeffer who described in it The New York Times as “the corporate equivalent of whips and ropes and chains.” Pfeffer went a bit overboard for my tastes.  But investors weren’t pleased either, as the value of the stock plummeted 22% in three days. Patterson handled the aftermath well.  He sent an apology to his employees, admitted that he wished he had never sent the e-mail, and the share price did bounce back.  Patterson learned the hard way that, when CEO’s who come across as bullies, they can scare their investors, not just their underlings.

Jeff Pfeffer Comments on Time is Money

Jeff Pfeffer added an interesting comment the post I did on The Billable Hour Turns People Into Workaholics that I think is most interesting. I repeat:

DeVoe and I started this research to understand how organizational practices "spill over" into other domains.  We have found, using nationally representative survey data, that people paid by the hour (and these are not all, or even most, technical contractors, lawyers, etc., but instead are manufacturing and service workers), are, controlling for many other things, more willing to trade more time for more money and less likely to spend time volunteering.  The research we have done cites an article by Steve Barley (a colleague of Bob's) and two co-authors who found a paradox:  people who went into contracting to presumably increase their freedom actually acted like they didn't have any.  This sort of paradox--acting in ways that are inconsistent with our preferences--is something that we continue to pursue in this research project.

So, two points--this is not just about professional or technical contractors or lawyers or accountants--the evidence is that the phenomenon is widespread.  And second, there are other ways to get the same results--namely, priming people (using a sentence descramble task) to think about money or economics terms, or to have people calculate their own hourly wage (regardless of how they are paid).  There is evidence that having people think about money causes them to act in a more independent (not wanting to ask for or give help, not wanting to associate with others) way. 

In light of the pervasive use of economic language in our society, and in light of the prominence of "money," it does sort of make one wonder.  The article on money is in Science and Vohs is one of the co-authors--it is both short and interesting.

P.S.Here is the link to the abstract of the Science article on The Psychological Consequences of Money that Jeff mentions.

The Billable Hour Turns People into Workaholics

My last post on Jeff Pfeffer’s next book, What Were They Thinking? reminded me of Jeff’s recent research on how people in jobs where “time is money” fall into a trap: They start devoting more time to their jobs, and less time to “unpaid” activities like family, friends, and leisure. There is a splendid summary of this research on the Stanford Business School website, Time is Money When You are Paid by the Hour, “In a series of recent studies, Pfeffer and doctoral student Sanford E. DeVoe found that people who are used to being paid by the hour start thinking of time as a commodity almost equal to cash. And given the choice as to whether they’ll take time or green bills, they’ll usually take the latter—meaning they’re nearly always willing to put in more hours to get the pay.”

Writer Marguerite Rigoglioso quotes Pfeffer further: “Being paid by the hour causes people to endorse the idea that they’d rather make more money and spend more time at work,” says Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior. “This shows how a commodified view of time spills over into how people view their personal and leisure time.”

“Once you’re paid by the hour,” he says, “you start placing a monetary value on that hour. The opportunity costs of not working become clearer. People gravitate toward things that are easier to evaluate, and it’s easier to figure out the value of a paid hour than it is, say, the value of an hour spent in a leisure activity. So they chose work over play.”

Pfeffer and DeVoe also review related research, including one study that found “lawyers watching their kids play soccer admitted to mentally ticking away lost income for each minute they stood on the sidelines.”

Ouch… I feel sorry for both the kids and the parents.

Unfortunately, many professional service firms – especially those like law firms that bill by the hour – systematically weed out people who don’t think and act this way, as they are less “profitable.”  This is the kind of research that gives me chills and makes me wonder if a little less “productivity” might be a good thing at times.

Jeff Pfeffer's New Book: What Were They Thinking?

My co-author Jeff Pfeffer has a great new book coming out in July of this year, called "What Were They Thinking: Unconventional Wisdom About Management."   After writing two books with Jeff -- and spending a lot of time in other ways as we are good friends -- I love this book because it is so much like sitting down and talking with him.  It contains a series of "rational rants" -- that is how I think of Pfeffer, an emotional and persuasive person, but one whose passions are driven by evidence and logic. Indeed, Jeff is one of the most prestigious and influential organizational theorists who has ever lived, and I suspect the most productive who has ever lived. So although his opinions on everything from stock options, to incentive pay, to leadership, to the suspect monetary value of most MBA degrees, to the sometimes questionable ethics of Stanford MBAs are filled with stories and passion, Jeff's grasp of evidence and logic is always present. So, to me, although his ideas may strike some people as unconventional, what Pfeffer is doing is toppling the dangerous half-truths and total nonsense that so many people believe with facts -- which are wrapped in  vivid examples so you can remember them and figure out how to use them (Just as the Heath brothers suggest in Made to Stick).  I don't agree with every essay in the book -- for example Jeff is more accepting of the virtues of assholes than I am -- but that is why we look to work together. Indeed, two of our motto's are "when two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary" and  "the more we fight the better write."

Jeff's other books (about 15 of them) are all "novels" that weave together disparate ideas into coherent themes. I think of this book as a collection of short stories glued together by the strength of  Pfeffer's voice, values, and commitment to what is true rather than what makes people comfortable.  I have read every book that Pfeffer has ever written and many of his articles (indeed, people in our field joke that he has written so much that no one has read it all -- including Jeff). I think that this is the most fun to read and is filled with ideas to help managers who strive to be humane and effective, to build organizations profit through their people and that develop rather than demean and destroy their "human resources."

Steve Jobs as the Poster Child for the Upside of Assholes

Michael Malone has a great opinion column in today's Wall Street Journal called iGenius, which digs into the question of why Apple under Steve Jobs continues to produce such great new designs, now the iPhone that -- at first blush -- will change what it means to carry a portable device. I too am constantly impressed with parade of products that have come out of Apple since Jobs returned, but also, let's face it, Jobs has a track-record of demeaning others and taking credit for their work. 

Malone -- who once wrote a book about Jobs and his company -- points out "there will always be things about him that are unforgivable -- cruelties and manipulations (especially to Steve Wozniak), early crimes (illegal telephones, ironically), megalomania, and an unquenchable need to take credit from others (Do you know who led the original Mac team? Invented the iPod? Devised the new iPhone? I don't think so) -- and that no achievement will ever erase." And, as Malone concludes, despite all the smart people out there, competitors seem incapable mimicking Jobs' ability to pull one rabbit after another out of the hat, and so, "For all his demons, thank God for him in this age of cookie-cutter CEOs. For a decade now (and for another decade at the beginning of the PC age) he has run the most enthralling and rewarding show in high-tech."

I agree with Malone and, in fact, when I was writing The No Asshole Rule, one Silicon Valley insider after another after another argued to me "What about Steve Jobs, doesn't he show how being an asshole make leaders and their companies more effective at times?  Doesn't he show that assholes are worth the trouble" which led me to write a chapter on "The Virtues of Assholes" that starts out with the curious case of Steve Jobs, and goes onto make an empirical case for the upsides of assholes. BUT I also make clear that I still don't want to work with assholes -- there are plenty of other successful companies that aren't led by assholes. Jobs is famous for saying the "the journey is the reward," and for my tastes, even if the journey ends well, it still sucks when you have to travel with an asshole, or worse yet, a pack of them.  If you are successful asshole, you are still an asshole and I don't want to be around you.

Der Arschloch-Faktor

Der Arshloch-Faktor is still hot in Germany.   It is currently the top business book and #22 overall on Amazon.  I am also getting a fairly constant stream of VERY emotional e-mails from German readers. Most contain troubling stories about acts of oppression and how people are fighting back. A couple are from people who worry that they are assholes -- one asked me how he can go about finding out if he is an asshole. Most are supportive of the book, but I've received a couple from people (who I don't think read the book based on the content, but I could be wrong) that just blasted me and argued that the book was going to make the problem worse  ather than better in German organziations.  I confess to be a bit overwhelmed by so many emotional emails. If German readers have any insights into both why they book seems to have struck a chord in your country and why the German's who are writing me are even more vehment in their reactions than elewhere, I would be most grateful.

Thanks and I thank all of you who bought Der Arshloch-Faktor.

Bob Nardelli at Home Despot: Style vs. Six Sigma

Bruce Nussbaum has a wonderful post on the recently fired Bob Nardelli at Home Depot (or "Home Despot" as some employees started calling it), on why command and control is so bad.  Bruce argues that "Autocratic top-down, command and control works great when you focus on process--cost and quality. Six Sigma measures all that stuff wonderfully. Nardelli couldn't see beyond this. He hired dozens of command-and-control military guys to manage. He shifted Home Depot away from retail to a new contracting business that could more easily be controlled and measured." 

I think Bruce is on to something, that if you want creativity and learning, command and control is bad. BUT I think his argument is right, but incomplete.  The fact is that close managerial oversight and constant criticism and feedback aren't the only ways to drive down cost and increase quality.  In fact, these systems work best when employees have lots of data about cost and quality AND they police themselves rather than are policed by some boss.  That is part of the secret sauce of the Toyota Production system and of places like Southwest Airlines, Men's Wearhouse, and DaVita -- which runs hundreds of kidney dialysis centers at low cost while delivering the best quality in the business. It is also what I saw when I visited SuccessFactors a few weeks ago -- not close supervision but people who worked to please and impress their co-workers and because they took pride in doing a good job -- in fact these norms were so strong that rank and file employees felt safe about pressuring senior management to do their jobs better and senior management felt obligated to respond! 

My message is that a numbers-based and quality focused organization need not be top down, where bosses use numbers to lord over and push around their underlings. In fact, to the extent that there is a peer culture that presses people to do the right thing and that has the right information, you don't need to waste money on managers who watch people do the work -- rather than doing it themselves.(I would love to see the numbers about the cost of management and supervision under Nardelli's leadership -- his salary alone drove these numbers way-up and paying all those people to do command and control must cost a lot of money).

So I agree with Bruce for the most part, but want to emphasize that command and control does not equal lower cost and higher quality. Systems that run on peer control and great measures will be more efficient than those that depend on close managerial oversight-- and in fact have higher quality, because it is one thing to fool a boss who comes by once in awhile, but fooling your peers every minute of the day is a lot harder.

Finally, I don't think that Nardelli's reputation for arrogance helped him keep his job and -- although I have no inside information to confirm this-- I hope that another reason he was shown the door so abruptly was that the board decided to enforce the no asshole rule. Perhaps that is just my little dream, but I do think that when leaders are known as assholes AND their organization has performance problems, people lose their jobs a lot more quickly than when they are warm and well-liked leaders.

Publisher's Weekly Interview

Publisher's Weekly is the leading magazine written for the "Book Publishing and Selling."  They wrote a nice review of The No Asshole Rule. This week, they published a short interview with me about the book called Assholes Beware!

Pam Slim on Bob Knight

Pam Slim over at Escape from Cubicle Nation has a very thoughtful post on Bob Knight: The Perfect Mascot for "The No Asshole." As you probably already know, Knight becoming the "winningest college basketball coach of all time" this week. Pam uses ideas from The No Asshole Rule -- and a lot of her own ideas too -- to take on Knight's accomplishments.  Her conclusion is:

I think Bob Knight should have been stopped in his tracks a long time ago by his management and held accountable for his behavior.  His incredible talent and skill is overshadowed by juvenile behavior that is embarrassing to him and his family.  What a waste of a tremendous gift.  And what a disservice to the many young men he mentored as a coach.

Pam has a lot more interesting stuff to say than that, and as always, writes with fire and creativity. And I agree with her assessment completely.

P.S. If you want to get the in-depth story about Knight's demeaning and egotistical antics, read John Feinstein's compelling book A Season on the Brink.  Amazon suggests that it might be the best sports book ever written.