Bob Sutton

The Audi and the Asshole

The ARSE test has provoked a new round of "asshole stories," especially about asshole bosses. Leslie at Burns Auto Parts Consulting  wrote a great post that asks "Are You an Asshole?  Note that Leslie isn't a car parts designer, she is a photographer and consults to people who do creative work... she just uses cars as a metaphor for what she does.

Leslie's story abut the asshole boss and the Audi shows to me -- although surveys and the like are useful -- that there are just some things that assholes do that can only be captured through stories, not by checking boxes that say "true" and "false" or 1 to 5 (although the best of all is to combine stories with quantitative data). Check out her full post, but the themes I see running through reflect the nasty things that happen to people when you give them a little power, like :

I personally had a boss (owner) who told his workers (about 6 of us) that there needed to be “belt-tightening” in the company. We all needed to “pull together” to get through the financial bad times, and vague promises of profit sharing in the future were offered. A few days later he showed up with (and showed off!) his new Audi. Interesting that he lost two key players (including me) not long after that.

I think that is a clear asshole move and this boss qualifies as an asshole -- and it is consistent with that research on power dynamics that shows how, once people get in positions of power, they focus on satisfying their own needs and wants and become insensitive to the the perspective and feelings of others. I would also add, however, that Leslie's boss might have been an asshole, but he was an amateur compared to the salesman who wrote me "Had Lukemia, Bullied by a Bad Manager."

ARSE Statistics: Assholes are on the Upswing

Michael Lehmkuhl from Electric Pulp just mailed-in some stats on the Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE):

Monday, February 5^th:  2432 people completed it with an average score of 5.44860.

Tuesday February 6^th: So far today, 3469 people completed it with an average score of 7.25483.

Michael concludes: “So today more people are assholes than yesterday.”

The Button for the ARSE Test

This button is the perfect companion to the ARSE test.  The purpose of this self-test is to find-out if you are a certified asshole, at risk of becoming one, or a genuinely civilized person. In other words, it can help you come to grips with the fact that you are -- or are fast becoming -- a demeaning jerk and that it just might be time to do something about it!

To be a bit more serious, the best way to use the test is probably not just to take yourself, but to get key people in your social network to complete it about you -- you boss, peers, subordinates, customers, and perhaps your wife, husband, friends, and lovers. 

Are You an ARSE? Take the Test!

I worked with Guy Kawasaki and the folks from Electric Pulp to develop the Asshole Rating Self Exam, or  ARSE test, based on the The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.   Check out Guy's post on the test, his review of book, and take the 24-item ARSE test yourself -- and see if you are a certified asshole. Or perhaps there is that special someone you know who needs to take the test.

"Be Cool" by Jazz Musician Christian McBride

If you want some compelling words that can help you keep your inner jerk in check and perhaps live a longer and happier life, check out the recent "This I Believe" segment on NPR by jazz musician Christian McBride. It is called "Be Cool" and starts out:

I believe people have become tighter, meaner and less tolerant than ever. I never remember people being so uncool. I don't remember people getting the third degree because they decided to wear brown shoes instead of black. If you get too close to someone on the road, they want to get out and shoot you for possibly hitting their car. What's wrong with these people?                         

I believe it pays to be cool. Most people in this day and age are always terribly stressed and hypersensitive to absolutely everything. They will age quickly. Cool people stay young forever.

You can read it or listen to it at this link. I strongly recommend that you take a few minutes to listen, Mr. McBride speaks in a mighty compelling way.

Asshole Revenge Stories: “Oh, He Is Going To LA But His Luggage Is Going To Nairobi”

One of the things that surprised me when I published my initial Harvard Business Review  essay on The No Asshole Rule in 2004 (it was called “More Trouble Than They Are Worth”) was how many revenge stories it provoked. I read dozens in the emails that started pouring-in and heard many more in the conversations that I had with people about their struggles with bosses, co-workers, and clients that robbed them of their dignity and esteem.

I have already blogged about the radio producer who extracted revenge from her food-stealing boss by making some candies out of Ex-Lax and leaving them on her desk, which he promptly ate, as always, without her permission – and then suffered the consequences. I also heard a great story from Jason Zweig, who writes for Money Magazine.  Jason told me about how, some years back, he was standing behind an irate passenger at the the check-in line in  New York. Jason described how the passenger went on and on insulting the airline employee, and how impressed he was at her ability to remain cool, calm, and professional in the face of such abuse.  Jason told me, and confirmed later over e-mail, that although it was years ago, ‘It is her words that have stuck forever in my memory: "Oh, he's going to [L.A.], but his luggage is going to Nairobi" -- and the faint but unmistakable firmness in her smile that made me realize, half with a chill and half with a thrill, that she wasn't kidding.’ Let that be a lesson to the nasty passengers out there, if the airlines keep losing your luggage it may reflect something about you, not about their system!

I have dozens of other revenge stories. I heard one of my favorites years ago from Susan Schurman, who I wrote a research paper with when we were both Ph.D students at The University of Michigan. Sue is now president of the  National  Labor College in Silver Springs Maryland. Sue worked for several years as a bus driver  in Ann  Arbor, Michigan in the 1970s, where she eventually became a union leader. Even in a relatively small city like Ann Arbor, drivers constantly tangle with aggressive and sometimes hostile drivers. Sue told me that, when she took rookie drivers under her wing, one of the first things she taught them was that a skilled driver “never had an accident that is an accident” and instead accidents should be “punishments” that bus drivers intentionally inflict on “crazy drivers.” She went on to say that city bus drivers were permitted three accidents a year without facing disciplinary action, and that she advised new drivers “save one for Christmas time, because that is when all the jerks out, and you will want to get back at one of them.”  Sue won numerous safety awards and had few accidents during the years she was a bus driver, but as she recently wrote me, “the delicious thought that you could punish the assholes was an important psychological safety valve. The thought alone was sufficient to help you manage your anger.

Revenge is a double-edged sword.  It is dangerous because it can escalate conflict. It is dangerous because it can harm people – a bus accident can kill someone. It can get you fired – I suspect that airline employees who routinely and intentionally send luggage to the wrong country can get in big trouble.  And it is dangerous because it can start a vicious circle of asshole poisoning where the warring parties continue to hurl nasty insults and actions back and forth to “get even.”

But there are two intertwined ways that revenge can help people who are victimized by assholes. First, especially if the tormentor is more powerful than the victim, it is a way to fight back.  That producer had the courage to do it directly, and I suspect that her boss never ate anything off her desk again.  In other cases, it is a way to gain a bit of control against a nasty person that can’t be confronted directly –- so although that abused airline employee didn’t feel it was wise to fight back directly, her act of revenge helped her gain a bit of control. And it was a way that she could communicate to Jason Zweig that, although she looked like a doormat, she had both the power to keep her emotions in check and the power to exact revenge against that demeaning passenger.

Second, think of Sue’s comment “the delicious thought that you could punish the assholes was an important psychological safety valve.” That “delicious thought” meant that – although she usually choose not to exercise it – that she had the perception of control over assholes, rather than feeling of helplessness.  As the classic and fantastic research by Martin Seligman shows, the perception that one has control over negative events in our lives is essential for sustaining human well-being, and the feeling of helplessness is devastating to human well-being.  Although abused bus drivers -- or airline employees or any other victim -- may only occasionally exact revenge from the constant parade of jerks that they face, the feeling that they have the power to do it – the almighty perception of control -- is essential for sustaining their mental health.

Again, revenge is a dangerous tactic that can backfire easily. I also want to emphasize that if you are working in a place where you constantly feel abused, the best thing to do for your mental and physical health is to get out as quickly as you can, rather than to devote your time and emotional energy to coping with one asshole after another.  And, in the case of airlines, not all employees are stuck as the powerless victims of asshole customers.  As Ann Rhoades reports about JetBlue – she is founding head of HR and now serves on their board of directors – they maintain an “uninvited to fly list” and something that they call the “yellow” list, which is a less formal list of nasty passengers that may need to be moved to the “uninvited” list if their behavior persists or degenerates further. In such a system, employees can complain about nasty customers and, in cases where passengers have proven to be persistent and flaming assholes, get them banned.

Are You a Certified Asshole? Take the ARSE Test on Monday at Guy's Blog

Guy Kawasaki posted a funny and detailed early review of The No Asshole Rule last Fall.  Now, with the book just a few weeks away, Guy and I been working with the great people at Electric Pulp to develop an online version of the "self-test" that appears in the book. So if you want to answer the question "Are You a Certified Asshole," drop by Guy's rollicking blog How to Change the World on Monday. I just took it myself -- I won't tell how I did, but I well confess that I am not following the principles in The Power of Nice as often as I should.

Update: Guy. my wife, and the folks at Electric Pulp thought it would be fun to come-up with a catchy title for the test. We had a lot of fun barnstorming different titles, including:

Test of Asshole-iness Online (TAO)
Online Asshole Test (OAT)
Sutton's Asshole Test (SAT)
Bob Sutton's Asshole Test (BS-AT)
Robert's Asshole Test (RAT)
'Hole-in-oscopy
The Eclectic Coolaid Asshole Test
RU1?
Asshole Status Survey (ASS)
Asshole Status Self-Test  (ASS-T)
Certified Asshole Test  (CAT
Sutton's Certified  Asshole Test (SCAT)

These all have their charms, but the winner (in a nod to our friends in the UK) was:

Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE)

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.

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.

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.