Turns out, surviving the workplace often comes down to one simple rule: don’t be an asshole. Kim Scott and Amy Sandler sit down with Stanford’s Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule and The Friction Project, to talk about how real leadership means treating people like people, not just cogs in a machine.
Listen to the episode:
Episode at a Glance: Surviving Assholes
Radical Candor Podcast Resources: Surviving Assholes
- Radical Friction: The Editor/Author Relationship
- Books | Bob Sutton
- Work Matters | Bob Sutton
- How To Get A Radically Candid Boss | Radical Candor Podcast 3 | 12
- Don’t Let A Bad Boss Derail You | Radical Candor Podcast 6 | 18
- Are Assholes More Effective? Bob Sutton Weighs In
The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Kim Scott: Hello everybody. Welcome to the Radical Candor Podcast. I’m Kim Scott.
[00:00:07] Amy Sandler: I’m Amy Sandler. And today we are so excited to welcome Stanford Professor Emeritus Bob Sutton to discuss how to lead and build effective organizations that don’t sacrifice people for profit. Bob is an organizational psychologist and bestselling author of eight books. Is that right, Bob? Eight books.
[00:00:28] Bob Sutton: Yes. Yes. Eight books. I’m an old academic, so we have a lot of time to write.
[00:00:35] Amy Sandler: These, these, these books include The No Asshole Rule, and I think that’s one of Kim’s favorite, uh, words and books, and the, The Friction Project. Bob studies, leadership, innovation, organizational change, and workplace dynamics. We’re gonna dig into all of it. His main focus over the past decade is on scaling and leading at scale. So how can you grow organizations, spread good things, remove bad things in teams and organizations, and enhance performance, innovation, and wellbeing? Welcome to the show, Bob Sutton.
[00:01:09] Bob Sutton: All right, Amy. Thanks. That was a fabulous introduction. I, I think, uh, you know me better than I know me, so that’s wonderful.
[00:01:17] Amy Sandler: Well, my goal by the end of the conversation is that we all know Bob Sutton a little bit better, maybe, maybe even Bob Sutton.
[00:01:23] Kim Scott: That everybody loves Bob Sutton as much as we love Bob. Thrilled, thrilled to be chatting with you.
[00:01:31] Bob Sutton: Oh, it’s great to, it is great to be talking to you, Kim and Amy. Fabulous.
[00:01:35] Kim Scott: So, Bob, why don’t we start out talking about, uh, sort of take a giant step back. Uh, you have been doing research since you wrote a dissertation, uh, on, uh, sort of organizations how to, uh, how to how, how to survive assholes as well to create a no asshole rule. Uh, and what kind of friction is good and what kind of friction is bad. So how, how does, how, how does all this get reflected in today’s business?
[00:02:07] Bob Sutton: Oh, gosh. Well, so, so I, I’ve basically been some flavor of organizational psychologist for forty years, and if you go back and then I’ll go forward. So my dissertation in what in academia they call the tenure run. So this is the set of papers you put together, so they give you more job security than you ever deserve in life. But, uh, so, so my research was on organizational death. And organizational decline slash downsizing. That was my original work. And my perspective and, and so my dissertation was on, uh, how you disband an organization that you have declared is we’re going to kill it, basically.
[00:02:49] Kim Scott: Okay.
[00:02:49] Bob Sutton: Everything from an auto plant to the geography department at the University of Michigan. So, so, but, but, so I was looking for similar, similar patterns, but the hallmark of my work as an organizational psychologist is, I’m always interested in, uh, two kinds of outcomes. One is, and Amy said this beautifully actually, one is a, essentially the set of organizational performance outcomes. I believe that organizations need to be efficient, productive, innovative, otherwise nobody eats. That’s just, that’s just the way it is. But as, as, uh, one of my favorite sayings is there’s a difference between what you do and how you do it.
[00:03:29] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:03:30] Bob Sutton: And, um, and in the process of running an organization, you can treat people well or terribly. So to bring us back to the modern, uh, organization, and I’ll try not to talk about politics too much, but this is happening in all sorts of organizations, not just in Washington with DOGE, if I’m calling that correctly. It’s happening at Meta. It’s, it’s happening, um, at Google. Uh, and I don’t know some other places you probably worked at too, Kim. And, and so there’s this, this, this challenge that, uh, that, that when you make business decisions, you can treat people like dirt or you can treat them well. So just, just for example, and, and this would apply to Meta, DOGE, and it would apply to the plant closings that I looked at, like the, like the shutting of the geography department and a Chrysler plant in Michigan.
[00:04:20] Kim Scott: Right.
[00:04:21] Bob Sutton: That, that, um, that if you do it in such a way that you treat people, uh, where you give them predictability, you give them some logic about why you’re maybe shutting the plant or, uh, laying them off or laying their colleagues off. You give them some control over how it unfolds and you treat them with as much compassion as possible, I would argue that two things happen. One is that, uh, that, that you save as much money and are as efficient as possible and innovative as possible, and this would be layoffs in particular, especially the remaining organization. And then, and, and then the other, the other thing that happens is that you don’t damage human wellbeing.
[00:05:02] You don’t, you don’t make it, it, so they get physically sick and die and get sick and, and have a terrible situation. So, so, so, so, and yes, sometimes there are trade-offs. I’m not, some, sometimes people will argue that, uh, that treating people well is always the best outcome for business. I’m not sure that’s a hundred percent true. Sometimes there are trade-offs and, and there’s limits of each. So, so one of my perspectives is people will always have an argument whether assholes are more effective or not. I even have a slide here, I could show you that, that if you treat people like dirt, they’re less productive. They get sick, they quit, they’re less in. I can show you all that. Uh, I don’t care, even though I can show you the evidence. If you’re an asshole. I think you’re a piece of shit as a human being. I don’t want you, go away, F you.
[00:05:51] Kim Scott: I love that. I love that.
[00:05:53] Bob Sutton: So I don’t care. Even though I can, I, I could get an argument like my friend Jeff Pfeffer says sometimes that assholes finish first and we certain there are seeing some evidence. I don’t care. You’re a piece of junk as a human being, you’re doing damage everywhere you go. I don’t care how much money you make.
[00:06:07] Kim Scott: I love that. I love that. Because I think that often people try to use the, the data to bully you as opposed to prove something, you know? There’s a lot of people who bully with data, and very often when people say, prove it to me that you know that it’s okay to be nice, like it’s okay to be a decent human being. I don’t, I don’t have to prove it to you. That’s a, that’s a waste of my time.
[00:06:33] Bob Sutton: Well, just some of the academic seminars I’ve been to are unbelievably, they’re so rude. Especially economists are so rude. I, I actually pissed off a future Nobel Prize winner so much at a talk at the University of Chicago he walked outta my talk ’cause I wouldn’t let him, uh, take over my talk. Seven minutes in I said, no, you’re being rude. You’re interrupting, uh, me. My mother would say, you’re a rude guest. And I’m the guest, are you like rude to company?
[00:07:02] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe your mom could have, well, anyway, I’m not gonna go down there. Who might have used that advice over the, in the past few days. Um, so, so Bob, one of the many things I love about every conversation you and I ever have is that you have research and it so validates my own anecdotes, which is, which is kind of, I don’t have research, I have my own anecdotes. That’s it. But making sense of one’s own experiences is hard enough. And I think the moment when I decided that management was interesting was when I was at a startup, uh, a tech startup that nobody’s ever heard of. And they had to do layoffs, and I agreed that there was a good business case for layoffs. The layoffs were necessary, uh, in this case. Um, and, and, but they did it in the worst possible way.
[00:08:02] Bob Sutton: Oh, yes, of course.
[00:08:03] Kim Scott: They, they hired this guy who I can only describe as a paid asshole, like the, the CEO did not have the courage to come and have these conversations himself with everyone, and this paid asshole, of course, didn’t know who anyone was. And so he, he,
[00:08:21] Bob Sutton: This sounds familiar.
[00:08:23] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve all seen the show. And so everybody who got fired was, was fired in this, you know, basically it was a layoff and, and the, the reason there was a layoff was management mistake, but the paid asshole said, well, you’re, we’re choosing to lay you off ’cause you’re no good. You know, so, but like that, that was not accurate nor, you know, was it helpful.
[00:08:46] Bob Sutton: Well, even if that’s true, it’s not a useful thing to say. Because, ’cause other people say the grace, for grace of god go I. And the other thing, since it’s a startup. It’s a long life. You may see them again and not hire them. And maybe fuck them over behind their back because they fucked you over.
[00:09:01] Kim Scott: Exactly. So that’s number one. The second, the second mistake he made was that he thought everyone who he had just laid off had left, but they hadn’t left yet. And because he didn’t know anybody, he didn’t know. And so then he summons everybody together, not realizing that, that half the people in the audience, he’s just fired and tells everybody, why are, why are you all looking so depressed, you know? Like yelling, yelling, uh, telling people how to feel, which really, telling people what to do doesn’t work. And, and telling people how to feel is just obnoxious. Uh, and I remember at that moment thinking, you know, this could have been done so much better. And how one does this makes all the difference. And that was really the moment when I decided that I, that I, that management was interesting. It was, it was, it actually really did matter.
[00:09:59] Bob Sutton: So that, I mean, I love that ’cause that’s almost the perfect story of how not to do it. Well, first of all, you don’t you, you don’t even know who you’re laying off. But, but, but the idea, just this idea of prediction, understanding, control and compassion, I mean that,
[00:10:12] Kim Scott: None of that was present.
[00:10:13] Bob Sutton: And, and, uh, you know, the, the, the famous, uh, Bill Campbell of, uh, The Trillion Dollar Coach was famous for, you’re present. You hug people. You help them carry out their boxes. And, and there’s, you’re doing that for like three reasons. One, because of the impact on the person who you’re, you’re laying off.
[00:10:34] Kim Scott: Yeah. Like Bill Campbell never would’ve had someone else do it. He would’ve done it himself.
[00:10:38] Bob Sutton: Oh, oh, absolutely. He would, he would do it himself. And, and that, and then the other thing is, is the impact on the people who are left and also maybe living with yourself too might be, be part of it too.
[00:10:50] Kim Scott: Well, I do think that people, one of the things, one of the distinctions you draw is between the bonafide jerk and the temporary jerk. I think one of the advantages that the bonafide jerks have in the, in the world is that they don’t waste any time with, you know, waste, waste is not the right word.
[00:11:09] Bob Sutton: Feeling bad about hurting people?
[00:11:11] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:11:11] Bob Sutton: Well, it’s psychopaths too, so.
[00:11:13] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yes, exactly. Well,
[00:11:14] Bob Sutton: Mass murderers, you know.
[00:11:16] Kim Scott: Yeah, they don’t, uh, yes, exactly. Exactly. Um, so, let’s talk a little bit about friction. Uh, and the friction project, because I think that, uh, that you, you talk about efficiency, and, and you, and, and you write a lot about scaling, but, but not everything that matters can scale. And efficiency is sometimes ruinously inefficient in the long run.
[00:11:48] Bob Sutton: And cruel. So, so, well, so let me just to back up the, the, the way that Huggy and I got interested in this and we spent way too much time on this book.
[00:11:59] Kim Scott: Huggy Rao is your co-author.
[00:12:00] Bob Sutton: Huggy Rao. Yes, my co-author, and, and uh,
[00:12:03] Amy Sandler: And this is The Friction Project?
[00:12:05] Bob Sutton: Yeah. Here, here’s the book bug. Okay. So there’s the cover for people.
[00:12:08] Kim Scott: Well hold it a little longer.
[00:12:10] Bob Sutton: Oh, sorry.
[00:12:10] Kim Scott: It’s a beautiful book.
[00:12:11] Amy Sandler: Don’t give us any friction between us and The Friction Project.
[00:12:14] Bob Sutton: You want Radical Candor. I got that. So, um, and Radical Respect too. Anyhow, so Huggy and I started this project because what, in 2014, we wrote a book on scaling, which, which we talked to you quite a bit about. And all these organizations, not just companies. And as I say, I have to laugh ’cause some of you’ve worked at like, uh, Google, Meta. My employer,
[00:12:36] Kim Scott: I’ve never worked at Meta.
[00:12:37] Bob Sutton: I apologize.
[00:12:39] Kim Scott: Or Facebook.
[00:12:39] Bob Sutton: Or Facebook.
[00:12:40] Kim Scott: I very consciously decided I would not, ’cause the first time I met Mark Zuckerberg, he handed me a business card that said, I am the CEO.
[00:12:48] Bob Sutton: Oh no, you got.
[00:12:50] Kim Scott: And I was like, no way am I working at that company.
[00:12:55] Bob Sutton: So I’m gonna tell a story that it’s gonna get me in trouble, but the first time, I, I didn’t even, know who Mark Zuckerberg was, but I had a class visitor. About 2005, 2004. And this woman just walked up to me in 2005 or so because, uh, The No Asshole Rule was already being written. And she said, hi, my name is blank. I work for a twenty-one year old asshole. That asshole was Mark Zuckerberg. That was the first time I ever had any reference to him, I don’t know he existed. Okay.
[00:13:22] Kim Scott: That, that was a good introduction.
[00:13:24] Bob Sutton: That was a good introduction. Anyway, so, uh, so, so, so what happened was there was all these organizations, Meta, Google, uh, and my employer, Stanford, which we, we, we talk, we say a lot of critical things about Stanford in the book, um, that as they got larger, older, and more complex, so they, they got to scale, baby scale, and then when their dreams came true, came a bunch of nightmares as well. Which is, things got harder to do. They were slower. All the in fighting, you know, all the problems that come with, with, uh, with, with, uh, complexity in organizations. So, so we spent, you know, years studying this. In fact, we had a Friction podcast, which you were a guest on, for example, for a couple years. And, uh, and, but we learned two things along the way, which is, one’s a good news. The other one’s a twist. The good news is that actually there’s a whole bunch of things that certain organizations are doing to get rid of bad friction. It isn’t just hopeless. Everything from the DMV to, to Google if you want. Like the, the range. Like there are good things that happen. And the other thing that we learned was that there’s all sorts of things that should be slow, difficult, or impossible. And, uh, so let’s start out with impossible. So while she’s in, in jail now, you know, so Elizabeth of a Theranos fame. Like, uh, you know, there were certain things that turned out like putting her device on, Miss Army Helicopters, was impossible for her, Elizabeth Holmes. It was good that was impossible.
[00:14:52] Kim Scott: Yes. Yes.
[00:14:53] Bob Sutton: And, and uh, and then there’s other things like it turns out that maybe ChatGPT and other large language models will save us. But any effort to make innovation too efficient, it turns out, if you look at fifty years of academic research I know of, turns out to not work. So just for example, I, and maybe you can help me with this, Kim. I have no evidence during the sixty years, seventy years of the history of venture capital I know of in Silicon Valley that they have improved their success rate for the companies that they fund. They still,
[00:15:26] Kim Scott: No. And they’re now, they’re saying, oh, we’re gonna use AI to improve our success rate.
[00:15:30] Bob Sutton: Yeah. Maybe, maybe it’ll help them fail, fail faster. And, and, and that’s true with comedians jokes, like the number of jokes they have to try. It’s for pharmaceutical firms, the number of compounds, whatever they have to try to, so, so, so certain things, you just have to be patient. And then, oh, my favorite one, the quote, The Supremes is, you can’t hurry love.
[00:15:50] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:15:50] Bob Sutton: Uh, there’s all this, this evidence. And, and so Amy said, you’ve been working together for seven years. So this idea that it turns out the longer people work together, that, uh, that the better they do with their job, especially when it’s creative and sort of uncertain. So Hewlett Packard would, would be an, an example.
[00:16:12] Kim Scott: The Undoing Project, like
[00:16:14] Bob Sutton: Yes, The Undoing Project is Kahneman and Tversky, they spend all that time hanging out.
[00:16:20] Kim Scott: Uh, that’s the book, Michael Lewis book. Go ahead Amy.
[00:16:23] Amy Sandler: Bob, is that like when we focus so much in Radical Candor on relationships and there’s ways that you can, you know, Kim’s origin story of Radical Candor was, you know, the guy in the street and I see you really love that dog and that there are these, you know, sort of quick ways to kind of build relationship. But I’m curious, what is underneath that from the research? Is it about trust? Is it about kind of giving people the benefit of the doubt? What’s going on there?
[00:16:46] Bob Sutton: Well, well, so, so the, the research, so the way academics, you can ask me about some study. It’s topics I know nothing about. I know a little bit about this. Is there’s research on what they call cognitive trust or quick trust. So it turns out, so I never met Nick before in my life, but, uh, but you know, I, I’ve sort of met somebody in his audio role before. Or somebody like you, Amy, who’s like the host. So, so we sort of know what the rules and the roles are so we can sort of move forward. But, but it turns out, so that’s cognitive trust. We know the roles. We know the rules, like two pilots in an airplane, for example. But when it comes to really deep understanding of, of who is, is, is good at what and how to balance our needs and to think long term, the, it turns out that the, that uh, that this idea of developing emotional trust, they call it, is something that can, that can take, um, quite, um, a long time. And, and one of my favorite examples, which is contrary in some ways to, uh, the Elizabeth Holmes story, is that the only Stanford startup I’ve ever invested in, so this is bias. There’s this company called Sequel. It started by two women, Greta Meyer and Amanda Calabrese. They met when they were sophomores and they started talking ’cause they were athletes and their tampons were leaking. So they started working on, um, the science of developing a better tampon, which they claim hasn’t been improved in eighty years.
[00:18:12] Kim Scott: I’m sure they’re right.
[00:18:13] Amy Sandler: I think we can believe that.
[00:18:14] Bob Sutton: Yeah. Well, I, I think some people in this call would know that better than I would. So anyways, so first, a couple of years they did the science and then they took, um, every entrepreneurship class together they could imagine. And if you hear them talk about it, like, like they had to battle their way through the relationship. Either they, they were gonna stay together or they were never gonna talk to each other again. And, and, and now, you know, to fast forward, there is a company called Sequel. They have five million dollars in venture capital. They have a product and they have FDA approval, which Elizabeth Holmes never got for a product. So, so that’s, so I’m rooting for them.
[00:18:46] Kim Scott: Me too.
[00:18:47] Amy Sandler: That’s amazing. And, well, it’s interesting as you’re talking about that, and even, I’m just thinking about Kim and I getting to know each other and the ways in which we have different strengths that can cause friction sometimes. So like where’s the, what’s the role of like interpersonal friction in that creativity?
[00:19:03] Bob Sutton: Well, so, so if you, again, I, I’m being more academic than I sometimes have, but, but if you look at research on creativity. And for example, if you compare two things, like do teams brainstorm a lot or do they fight a lot? Well, the teams that fight, and this is the Andy Grove playbook, that teams that fight in an atmosphere of mutual respect and know when to start fighting and how to stop, oh, and then back to the emotional and cognitive. That, you know, they, they, they, they don’t, they don’t insult each other personally too much. There’s also cultural differences, like I’d imagine that an insult in Israel is different than in Japan. I bet you Finn could tell us about that. Uh, but, but, but, but this, this idea that in teams that fight and mostly have emotional trust, those are the most effective. Teams.
[00:19:48] Kim Scott: I think that fighting is a little bit like, remember, uh, when Amy Edmondson found, she expected that the hospitals that reported the most errors would be the least safe but they were the most safe. I think that fighting is something similar, like the more you get to know someone, the more you need to fight. Because if you don’t fight you’re gonna get feedback debt, you need to fight fair, you need to fight well. But otherwise these like unresolved conflicts they, they fester and fester.
[00:20:21] Bob Sutton: So, so that’s the, that’s the emotional, you know, and, and being sort of like an, to be ethnic, an out of control Jew who’s married to a pretty emotionally controlled WASP, uh, nonetheless we do need, we, we fight in different ways. Uh, she mostly fights on facts and she’s a lawyer too, so she almost always wins. And I mostly wanna fight about the emotional part. Um, but nonetheless, you know, first of all, it forms a relationship, but the other part is that cognitive thing is, is that, is that if you have a good argument with someone over the facts and do things like, well, imagine we tried it, what would be the first couple of steps? Or what does success look like? And argue over that, that, that you’re, you’re less likely to, to do it badly, right?
[00:21:03] Kim Scott: And you gotta have a fight over the emotional things too, because, because being a WASP myself, I’m very, I don’t even know when I’m upset half the time. I rely on the people around me.
[00:21:17] Amy Sandler: I think I told Kim over the weekend, we had an offsite where I was like, how are you feeling about, you know, the upcoming kids’ birthday? You know what emotions? She’s like, I don’t know. I’m like, I’ll feel them for you, Kim.
[00:21:31] Kim Scott: I really didn’t, I really did not, I was like, until you asked me the question, Amy, I hadn’t, I hadn’t asked myself that question.
[00:21:38] Bob Sutton: Oh, yeah. Well, as opposed to I was, I was raised, uh, a good example is I figured out late in life that my Jewish mother never actually felt guilt. She would just display it because it was convenient for manipulating people. So we were supposed to display emotions for strategic purposes, not, and oh, that’s one of the topics I’ve also studied is the expression of emotion in organizational life. And sometimes it’s strategic. It’s not,
[00:22:05] Kim Scott: That is really true.
[00:22:07] Bob Sutton: It’s, it’s not, it’s not just. Uh, you know, it’s,
[00:22:11] Kim Scott: It’s not real emotion. It’s manipulative insincerity.
[00:22:14] Bob Sutton: So, so, uh, one of the things I did, this is a digression, but not, is, uh, when was this? I don’t know the, the, the early nineties, I worked as a telephone bill collector. Like, people like, like they’d all be in this bull, big bullpen, uh, collecting, uh, you know, Visa and MasterCard, um, bills for a very large bank and they taught us, they taught us strategic emotions. And, and one of the things they taught us, which is pretty interesting, was that if somebody wasn’t upset enough about their bill, you would slam ’em and be nasty to ’em. Do you ever wanna buy a car? So, do you wanna have your phone shut off? You ever wanna buy a house? Sure, don’t pay me. But if they were too upset or too anxious and they were so, because sometimes they get so anxious or afraid to pay, pay the bill, like, like they’re just freaked out, then you get kind, soothing. And, and, and you, and you say, it’ll be okay, there’s just, it’s not the end of the world. It’s really simple. All you’ve gotta do is, and then they’ll say, I can’t pay the whole bill. If you could just send us fifty dollars, it would be much better for your credit, um, rating. Even if you can’t send us the whole two hundred, we’ll note that and the creditors will know it. I mean, they, they would teach us this strategic emotion. And so that was basically to be nasty to nice people and nice to nasty people. Sort of like, or upset people basically.
[00:23:37] Kim Scott: Wow. Wow. You know, I was thinking about this the other day. I was, um, I was trying to buy something and the sales person started, and I decided I wasn’t gonna buy the thing. The salesperson really started trying to bully, started being an asshole. And, and I remember I was, I was taking some, some cues out of the, no, out of The Asshole Survival Guide. I was like, I finally looked at this person, I said, do you think that I’m gonna say yes because you’re being an asshole to me. Like, like, like, does that, but, but I guess that works sometimes. You know, that’s why they were doing it.
[00:24:19] Bob Sutton: But they, they taught us in, in bill collector school, schools, the difference between a salesperson and a bill collector is a salesperson, you know, it, it, it’s sort of like a, like, my job is to manipulate you. But when I’m a bill collector, you have entered into a contract which you are violating. So, so, and I dunno if that’s true, but I, but I think the sales situation versus sort of like a compliance situation where you’re legally obligated is different.
[00:24:45] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:46] Bob Sutton: But who knows?
[00:24:46] Kim Scott: Anyway. Who knows who does.
[00:24:48] Amy Sandler: Well, Kim, you mentioned The No Asshole Rule. The Asshole Survival Kit.
[00:24:52] Kim Scott: These are two different books, by the way.
[00:24:53] Amy Sandler: Two different books. And you know,
[00:24:55] Bob Sutton: Hold them up, Bob.
[00:24:56] Amy Sandler: Yeah, hold them up because,
[00:24:57] Bob Sutton: I, I don’t even have those books.
[00:24:58] Amy Sandler: Well, people are gonna wanna get these because, Bob, one thing that pops up on our podcast a lot is, but what about when I’m working for an asshole, even though we try not to put people into boxes. Either the behavioral, you know, the momentary thing. So I would love just to get a few tips, especially now that we’re in 2025. First of all, is it showing up in different ways or is it the same old assholery that you studied in the early, you know, 2000?
[00:25:25] Bob Sutton: Well, we could argue whether we’re at, and I, and I recently in, in 2017 when The No Asshole Rule came out, I actually was interviewed in the Trump Tower. Right after we had a brand new president.
[00:25:38] Kim Scott: It was, it was way before 2017.
[00:25:40] Amy Sandler: Well, that was the, the newer one, right?
[00:25:42] Bob Sutton: No, no, no, no, no.
[00:25:42] Kim Scott: The Asshole Survival Guide.
[00:25:43] Bob Sutton: The Asshole Survival Guide. And, and, and I claim to the, I dunno, the New Yorker or New New York, uh, journalist that we were at peak asshole and have now corrected myself. So I was wrong. But, but, uh, but so, but assholes will always be with us. And there’s, there’s a certain percentage of people who routinely treat others like dirt. Those are certified assholes. And then there’s a certain, all of us under the wrong conditions can be demeaning. I mean, in fact, psychologists are brilliant at turning people into jerks. What you do is you put ’em in a rush, you put ’em under time, you have them be around assholes. You give ’em sleep deprivation. Uh, you treat ’em like, there’s all sorts of ways to turn us all into jerks.
[00:26:22] But if you’re working with somebody who is a, uh, who I would call a certified asshole, to me there’s, there’s sort of three responses, or maybe four. One is just to take it. I mean, this is the whole world of cognitive behavioral therapy. Uh, and, and this is sort of, I, uh, one of the examples I use is a friend of mine, uh, Becky Margiotta, um, in the nineties, she went to West Point and she was one of the first female, um, you know, leaves, I just, they call ’em at West Point. And, and, and there it’s almost, it’s almost structural that people insult you every day. And Becky would say, you know, I just gotta get through this. When I look back on it, it won’t be so bad. She’d say, these people are just acting, they’re, and all that sort of stuff. So that’s cognitive behavioral therapy, so not letting it touch your soul.
[00:27:12] Kim Scott: So it was like, that’s systemic assholery almost.
[00:27:15] Bob Sutton: No, that’s systemic asshole, assholery. That, that and probably venture capital too. So, um, but, but, but nonetheless, if it’s this idea where you reframe the situation. So that’s one. The, the other one, which is to just quit. And to me there’s two kinds of quitting or to avoid it. One is you can quit. And people do quit, and I always say, be careful. Make sure you have a job when you quit. The other one, which is more subtle is that, is that a lot of times you don’t necessarily quit, but you find ways to avoid contact with them. So you don’t go to the meetings they’re at if, well, if, if you are working at, you know, now we, we have the situation with, with, uh, hybrid work. You can figure out what days they work and just not be in the office those days. I already had, but so, so, and, and then, uh, and then there’s finding ways to bring them down. And, um,
[00:28:12] Amy Sandler: I think people’s ears are really perking up on this one, Bob.
[00:28:15] Bob Sutton: And, and, and the ways to bring them down, the model here, and I’ve met her a little bit, is Gretchen Carlson at Fox News, which is, although she did, she, which is, you know, number one, you figure out who your friends are, so you sort of build a posse. Um, number two, you, you keep, you know, you record it. Like you, you keep a record and everything.
[00:28:40] Kim Scott: You document it.
[00:28:40] Bob Sutton: You document it. And then hopefully you can find somebody more powerful to sort of screw them over. Okay? And, uh, or, or, or, or get them removed. Now this doesn’t always work, uh, because there are some situations where they are so powerful, um, that it may not work. But you know, Gretchen Carlson did seem to get Roger Ailes fired. So, so that, that, that would be, that would be an example. But, but I always warn people that the percentage of time it works is difficult and, and, and being impatient and uh, and trying to fight back on them initially doesn’t work. Oh, one more thing, at least for temporary assholes or, um, is that sometimes that if it’s, sometimes giving people feedback, they’re leaving people feeling like dirt is important. Because that’s another one of my distinctions. One are strategic assholes. The others are clueless assholes, and there are a lot of people in the world who lack the awareness of how they’re making other people feel. So sometimes this is a case where Radical Candor may actually work.
[00:29:44] Kim Scott: It may work, yeah.
[00:29:45] Bob Sutton: If, especially if you’ve got a clueless caring asshole and some, and there are people like that in the world.
[00:29:50] Kim Scott: I, I was, I was at, at one point was behaving like a clueless, caring asshole. I’ll, I’ll tell you the story and you can tell me, uh, how this fits into your research. So I had just taken this new job at Google and I was managing a big team. And an HR person came to me and said, Kim, you’re, you’re, you’re really, you’re intimidating your team. You’re making them feel powerless. And I did not believe, you know, I felt like I, I was, I, that was exactly, yes. Yeah. And I think this, I’ve been thinking about this, one of the biggest problems in the world is if you think, if anytime I think, me, but I would never do that, I’m not that kind of person. God damnit, I am that kind of person.
[00:30:39] Bob Sutton: Yeah, well that’s,
[00:30:41] Amy Sandler: I like to say what you resist persists.
[00:30:43] Kim Scott: Yes. So anyway, I was like, and also I sort of felt like almost self-righteous, you know? I had spent my whole career trying to be taken seriously. When, like at what point did I become intimidating, right? You know, like that was not, was so outside of the way I thought about myself. And luckily she persisted and she said, look. Go in, ask your team to do something you know to be impossible and notice, does anyone push back? Nobody pushed back.
[00:31:14] Bob Sutton: Okay. Well, that’s a, that’s a good indication of that, that there was not psychological safety, right? So.
[00:31:19] Kim Scott: Yes, yes, yes. There was, there were so many pro, but that was, but it was also by, by convincing me to do this, uh, that was what helped me realize that I was doing things wrong.
[00:31:30] Bob Sutton: Well, well, in between the, The No Asshole Rule and, um, The Asshole Survival Guide, I came to a realization since one of the reasons I wrote The Asshole Survival Guide was I basically got, I don’t know, seven or eight thousand emails that basically said, I work for, um, an asshole. What do I do? Were variations of it. Or work with an asshole.
[00:31:48] Kim Scott: That’s, yeah.
[00:31:49] Bob Sutton: Uh, and, uh, and I realized that, uh, that a useful, uh, sort of a rule for almost all of us is to be slow to label other people as certified as assholes. And to be quick to label ourself. Because all the biases, if you look at the survey, the, the, the like national survey data by the Workplace Bullying Institute, and they’ll ask, have you ever worked with or do you work with or for an asshole, it’s like forty percent or fifty percent of the public says yes. And then they say, have you ever been, have you ever engaged in persistent bullying? It’s like, it’s like one half of one percent of the population will, will admit to it. So, so, so the evidence is to just, to be careful, to be careful of, of your biases. But yes, I, somewhere towards the end of The Asshole Survival Guide, uh, I actually wrote a nasty email to a, to a student who was driving me crazy, and I had my department chair, Peter Glynn, come into my office and say, uh, didn’t you write a book about this? So I, so, so I wrote the guy an apology. And, and then I also apologized to him in person. I’m not sure he forgave me, but, uh, but I thought that was good leadership by, by Peter Glynn who was excellent, very emotionally sensitive chair.
[00:33:08] Kim Scott: You know, our mutual editor, Tim Bartlett.
[00:33:12] Bob Sutton: The Amazing Tim Bartlett.
[00:33:13] Kim Scott: Amazing and then, uh, uh, and very lovable Tim Bartlett, uh, uh, who is, you know, the editor is the boss of the book, so he’s our, we both have the same boss. Uh, he would, when I was writing Radical Candor because, uh, you know, uh, I tend to maybe, I don’t always show I care personally as much as I think I’m doing. And often in the, in the notes he would sit, he would, I would have written something in this very harsh way trying to be clear and he would write, care personally, question mark.
[00:33:47] Bob Sutton: Well that, but that, that’s it. But, but one thing I will say, except since we’ve had this conversation too, that in different sorts of relationships with people from different cultures, and this has to do with assholeness and Radical, and Radical Candor versus obnoxious aggression.
[00:34:00] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:34:00] Bob Sutton: It’s, I, I think I’m quoting you, Kim, that it happens at your ear, not your mouth.
[00:34:05] Kim Scott: Yes. I think I’m quoting someone else and I tried to find out who it was recently and I Googled it and you know who it said said it?
[00:34:12] Bob Sutton: You.
[00:34:15] Kim Scott: I did not make that up. Somebody else did.
[00:34:18] Bob Sutton: So, so one of the things I have in one of my books is Sutton’s Law. Which is that if you think you came up with an original idea, uh, you probably didn’t. Somebody already had it. And, and then it, that this isn’t my idea either. I stole it from somebody else. So you just accept that. You, you, you, you, you’ve just gone, but, but, but the, the point I was going to make is, is that in certain sorts of relationships in certain cultures, so if we do, did you work in both Israel and Japan?
[00:34:44] Kim Scott: I did, I did, yes.
[00:34:45] Bob Sutton: And Russia too. So you understand. And then Silicon Valley, which where we pretend to be nice and stab you in the back.
[00:34:51] Kim Scott: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:34:52] Bob Sutton: So, uh, so, so anyways, the, the, the question of, of what’s insulting, so I, I, early in my career, I, I did my research on the expression of emotion with this Israeli woman Anat Rafaeli. And we would just scream at each other. And just insult each other. And, and I, you know, and, and I could, I kind of have that obnoxiousness and we just got into it and it was so great because,
[00:35:17] Kim Scott: And it was fun. You all were having fun.
[00:35:19] Bob Sutton: It, it was fun. It was, we were just used to it. Now, now the problem is that, that people thought that we were like having like a terrible dispute and, and every now and then be yelling so loud when my colleagues would think that we were near blows. We were just having fun. Like we were like little kids. Like, like the mouse and the computer, we’d fight over, have to put their hand in their mouse, like we’d slap each other away. We were having so much fun.
[00:35:40] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not everybody has fun in that way, do they?
[00:35:43] Bob Sutton: No, no, no. I, like my co-author Huggy Rao, who you know well, like, like Huggy, like Huggy’s very polite. That wouldn’t work with him.
[00:35:51] Kim Scott: He would not slap you, he would not like having his hands slapped.
[00:35:53] Bob Sutton: Yelling at Huggy doesn’t work. He just, he actually would probably start crying and walk away. I mean, he’s just, that’s not his style.
[00:36:00] Kim Scott: Well I came to love, uh, yelling. And when I, when I, when, but I was not raised that way. You know, I was raised as a female in the south. Never say, you know, never say no, never disagree. Like, pretend, you know, isn’t that nice. That was how I was raised. But I found that exhausting and I, uh, and I, uh, once I, especially when I was working a lot in Israel, which I feel very liberating, from, um, the way I grew, grew. At first it was scary, like when I first got there and people were yelling at each other, you know, I had this pit in my stomach and I realized, oh, they’re having fun.
[00:36:38] Bob Sutton: Oh, they’re having.
[00:36:39] Kim Scott: And I’m gonna have fun like that too. And then I found when I would go home, I’d get on the airplane after I left Memphis and I would massage my cheeks from the fake smile.
[00:36:51] Bob Sutton: But well, so, but, but there’s also some code switching there. I think that we’ve all been, that, that in different situations you have to, and, and so these are called display rules or emotional norms that, that you, you, you sort of switch. And in the old days I used to, uh, sometimes work a little bit with HP and a little bit, um, for Intel. And HP, which is sort of, it’s like Stanford, it’s passive aggressive with backstabbing. And, and so you had to be really nice and pretend to be nice. And at Intel you just go to the meetings. It’s like, Andy, you just kind of like, just everybody yell at one another.
[00:37:23] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, well, it’s, it, this goes back to Radical Candor against measured, not at the speaker’s mouth, but at the listeners ear. And it’s different from culture, from culture to culture.
[00:37:34] Bob Sutton: And, and it’s hard. I, I do remember going to a joint meeting that was supposed to be, uh, between HP and Intel that was supposed to be cooperative. Literally talked to both sides. And, and it was, the HP I, I failed. The HP people were those assholes. And the Intel people were those wimps.
[00:37:52] Kim Scott: Oh no.
[00:37:56] Bob Sutton: So what do you do?
[00:37:57] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s hard. It is hard to, it is hard to, and it’s not exactly code switching. It’s, it’s like being, realizing that communication gets measured not in your mouth but at the listener’s ear and realizing you have to adjust for that. It’s not, and that’s not being inauthentic. Like sometimes people will say, ah, I’m an asshole, but that’s just who I am you know? And that’s not.
[00:38:21] Bob Sutton: No, no, that doesn’t work.
[00:38:23] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you, you gotta pay attention if you can’t communicate well.
[00:38:29] Bob Sutton: And, and, and to your point, that, that’s why, um, the, the way that, uh, that, that I define assholes is people who leave others feeling demeaned, de-energized and disrespected.
[00:38:40] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:38:41] Bob Sutton: So, so, so that’s the ear. The AirPod.
[00:38:44] Kim Scott: Yeah, exactly.
[00:38:53] Can we talk a little more about friction?
[00:38:55] Bob Sutton: Sure, sure.
[00:38:55] Kim Scott: And efficiency though, because it seems very relevant.
[00:38:58] Amy Sandler: Kim, if I can jump in?
[00:38:59] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:38:59] Amy Sandler: Bob, I saw you on your website, there was a great video about the, uh, The Friction Project and you had, there was this, uh, a moment where you had two questions that friction fixers ask. Question one was, do I know what I’m doing? And question two was, is the decision reversible? And those questions felt very relevant in terms of potentially what the good use of friction for efficiency could look like.
[00:39:29] Bob Sutton: Well, well, so do I know what I’m, I don’t think that, I think those applies to all sorts of decisions. Which is basically, am I, am I competent enough to make this decision? So, uh, so I don’t want, uh, well, somebody doesn’t know anything about air traffic controlling, telling somebody how to be an air traffic controller. This is a hypothetical example. But, and, and, and, and the other thing, which is, uh, which is this idea, uh, about whether or not a decision is reversible or how much harm that it does. So, um, Jeff Bezos calls this a two-way door. So whether it’s a reversible decision versus a one-way door, which is irreversible, or my friend Diego Rodriguez, who was at IDEO for years, uh, he has, he has this idea of what he would ask clients, where is your place for failing? So, so the, so with, you know, to use the airplane example or the simulator is a place to fail.
[00:40:23] Um, but, uh, flying the airplane is not the place to fail. So, so, so to me, those are the kinds of things that I think of in, in terms of, of decision and, and where you wanna think about friction. And, and, and then the other thing that, that I would add, which I think is important in, in, in, in something that, so that, that we see in the research we do, is it turns out that the more complicated a problem is to solve the longer you need to take to actually figure it out which is this, and this is a poking at DOGE. Because, uh, some things in life are really complicated and, and, uh, and, and possibly my favorite example in our book, and I keep following them, is that there was a form in the state of Michigan that was completed by two point five million residents a year to get, you know, food stamps to get, uh, to get financial aid to, to, to get medical care. And, um, it was the longest form in the country. It was a thousand, uh, questions long. One question was, when was your child conceived as an example of a bad question? So this guy, Michael Brennan, who led the effort to fix the form.
[00:41:36] Kim Scott: So that was bad friction.
[00:41:37] Bob Sutton: That was bad friction. But what he did was he brought everybody aboard. He brought the people at the department that oversaw it. He worked on the front lines. He, they did like ten prototypes. They brought in the lawyers. So it was, and, and, and now the form is eighty percent shorter. This is a case where it actually was, was a complicated thing, was fixed, but he, he took he and his team at this nonprofit called Civilla. The reason that they took the time was, first of all to bring everybody aboard ’cause they had the expertise ’cause they were on the front lines. And, and then the other reason was, was that, uh, was that it was a complicated problem. There were seventeen hundred pages of rules and regulations they had to comply with. So they could legally have the new form.
[00:42:23] So to me that’s an example of, of sometimes when they have friction fixing because something’s complicated, you need to slow down and figure it out. ‘Cause some things in life are complicated, some things are simple, but not everything is simple.
[00:42:36] Kim Scott: And it looks so simple if you know nothing, you know? You know, like, I’m sure if you gave me that form, I’m like, oh, I’ll just edit it, just, and then, and then all manner of laws would’ve been broken. All manner of people would be, you know, like one of the times I learned this, it seemed like a very simple solution, simple problem, not a complicated light one like you’re describing. But I would, uh, we, we all, we had that, it was an open space and everybody had a desk and we were gonna move the desks. And it was taking the team what I thought too long, you know, to decide who was gonna sit where. I just went in on a Sunday and moved everybody, and it was like I almost got, I almost got removed as CEO. You just don’t know, when you don’t know, you don’t know the problems you’re creating. It’s sort of like, oh, you know, I could not fill up my, I could not replace the oil in my car and I’ll save a lot of money. You know, until my car stops.
[00:43:43] Bob Sutton: So, so there’s, there’s this book by this guy named, uh, William Schutz. It’s called Profound Simplicity. And he makes the argument that human understanding goes through sort of three phases. One is simplistic. The other one is basically convoluted and confused. And at the end the book’s called Profound Simplicity. But to get to that profound simplicity, it’s sort of like the writing process. At first, oh, this book’s gonna be really easy to write. And then you’re like in the weeds for years. And then hopefully at the end, something simple and elegant comes out when it comes out right. And it’s true in film editing, anything like that.
[00:44:16] Kim Scott: The government.
[00:44:17] Bob Sutton: Government, yes. You, you, you pick your, and some things are relatively simple to fix it. And, and I, I don’t wanna say that there aren’t things that are simple to fix, but, uh, uh, but, but some things in life are complex and do require sort of slowing down and wrestling with the friction.
[00:44:35] Kim Scott: And thinking, like, really thinking deeply about, yeah, I mean, when I sat I don’t, I don’t know about you, but when I sat down to write Radical Candor, I thought it was gonna take me three months. I was like, oh, I know what I wanna say. I’m a fast writer. And it took me four years. Uh, I’m glad I spent the four, the four years. I’m glad I didn’t just rush.
[00:44:54] Bob Sutton: Yeah, well, well, so I think, so, I mean the last book, uh, The Friction Project, we worked on the project one way or another for eight years and it was probably, probably actually a year working on the proposal and a year working on the book is, is the way that I, that book. But I, I hate to, the, the shortest book and the easiest book I’ve ever written was The No Asshole Rule, I think ’cause I knew the least about it of any other topic. And, and so the problem is that this sells more than all my other books combine still. And, and, and by the way, the other thing is that, you know, and you and I went through this with, with our lovely editor Tim, of having to get the blurbs, the praise and the black cover. The No Asshole Rule, here it is, it has no blurbs because nobody would blurb it because it had the word asshole on it. And, and I like asked like seven or eight, you know, we got all these blurbs for my two books before everybody was, happy to, oh really? I don’t really want to have that name. So, uh, so anyways.
[00:45:48] Kim Scott: Times have changed. I had no problem getting blurbs for the kickass boss, but that’s, thanks, that’s thanks to you. You, you bled the heart.
[00:45:56] Amy Sandler: You paved the way, Bob.
[00:45:57] Kim Scott: Yes. You paved the way.
[00:45:58] Bob Sutton: Well, well, well, no, but, but, but it may, but what it makes me wonder is, and in fact there’s some pushback in the publishing industry, is, do we, this whole blurb thing just might be a tradition. It is a nice way to have, get in touch with old friends and, and get them to pretend to read your book. But there are some advantages to it.
[00:46:15] Amy Sandler: Bob, I’m curious, just back to The Asshole Survival Guide because it’s, you know, it sounds to me like you wrote that ’cause people were asking for very like practical, tactical stuff, which I know is one reason why people love Radical Candor. You mentioned at a high level things people can do, but I’m curious as you reflect on some of the letters that you got from people or the advice, anything that kinda leaps out, it’s like, oh gosh, I would love for your listener, like there was this one thing this person did and they were so surprised it worked really well.
[00:46:43] Bob Sutton: Uh, oh, one thing that I’m gonna put in a good word for, um, and uh, and my wife gets implicated in this story is gossip. Which, which is uh, don’t go on the internet. Like try to find somebody who has worked in the place, and especially in the team and the boss you’re working for. Especially somebody who has quit or got fired and to find out the truth before you accept a job.
[00:47:11] Kim Scott: Yes. And that’s not gossip, that’s research.
[00:47:14] Bob Sutton: Well, I think it’s gossip too. So, so, so, so my wife, this is in the book, when she was a young associate before she was a partner in a law firm, uh, she accepted a job with a fairly famous litigator. This wasn’t just a litigation attorney, Silicon Valley litigator. And, um, and so after she accepted the job, uh, she got called by an associate, worked for the same guy who described to her in massive detail what an asshole this guy was. So my wife calls up, uh, HR like she’s supposed to, and said, I’ve changed my mind. I, I’ve decided, and they asked her why, and she told them the truth. So anyhow, so, so the guy calls her up and screams at her.
[00:47:56] Kim Scott: It’s like the sales guy who thought he would yell at me and make me buy the thing.
[00:48:00] Bob Sutton: So, so my wife, who is a very calm, like, she’s like, she’s used to, you’re a litigator. So she just waited for him to go and she just simply said, um, so your behavior in this phone call confirms my decision in the information I collected about you, and hung up on him. So, but just think about that.
[00:48:18] Kim Scott: I love that.
[00:48:18] Bob Sutton: All, and, and, and Adam Grant has written somewhere on LinkedIn about this argument too, that there are cases where gossip, which is, you know, basically the juicy bits you say about people when they’re not around. That’s how I would define gossip. Uh, that, that, that there, there are like, sometimes it’s just vicious. But in that case, it’s actually protective of people who have less power. So, so, so I learned to appreciate gossip.
[00:48:43] Kim Scott: And, and if you can’t get any gossip, by the way, if you’re gonna take a job for somebody new, and this is the asshole avoidance guide. Uh, try to get in a disagreement with your new boss before you start. And, and you, you’ll learn a lot in a disagreement about what it’s gonna be like.
[00:49:04] Bob Sutton: Ooh, ooh, I like that.
[00:49:05] Kim Scott: Get the offer. Don’t do it before you get the offer. Get the offer, uh, and then, uh, and then try, have a disagreement about it.
[00:49:15] Bob Sutton: Yeah. That, that actually, that actually is, is an excellent task. Yeah. If you can’t get the gossip about that. And of course gossip is, you have to be careful. Sometimes it is unreliable, sometimes it’s just somebody who’s a disgruntled employee and so forth.
[00:49:26] Kim Scott: Yeah. Well, and like I really, I have for all my, for all my railing against assholes, I do have kind of an affection for assholes too. So, so, so I might be able to tolerate a certain level of assholery that others can’t.
[00:49:42] Bob Sutton: Well, well, so, so there is, so maybe there’s, you and I were actually talking about this at dinner recently.
[00:49:49] Kim Scott: Yes. We were.
[00:49:49] Bob Sutton: About the, about the difference between people who have, uh, who, who have, uh, good user interfaces and bad operating systems.
[00:49:57] Kim Scott: I’d much rather have a good operating system and a bad user.
[00:50:01] Bob Sutton: And, and, and so, so those people would that sort of, and, so, and, and, and, and, and the problem with, with, with people who seem really friendly, like those are the people who can completely screw you. Because they’re so nice to you. And then afterwards, then they’re also, they cool you out too. So, so, so that, that’s sort of like grooming and abusive.
[00:50:21] Amy Sandler: I mean it goes back, Bob, I think to what you were saying in your training with the, the call center of how you are being, you know, sort of trained to, to work with emotions and understanding what would work for different emotional states.
[00:50:36] Bob Sutton: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, and, and, and, and, and, and, and just to be clear, um, that all strategic emotions are not just warm and fuzzy and caring. Uh, in fact, if I look at the cover of Radical Candor, isn’t it ruinous empathy, that, that, you know, that and, and, and, and there’s even, oh, there’s some great research, uh, by one of my old colleagues, Barry Staub, about strategic temper tantrums. These are strategic tantra tantrums that are, that are by, uh, basketball coaches at halftime. And this is so long ago. The way they did it is in college and high school games, they’d have a tape recorder in the, uh, locker room at halftime, and they’d analyze the data and essentially to summarize, the coaches who never yelled, and the coaches who yelled all the time didn’t have much effect, but the coaches who occasionally lost their temper and started yelling at their teams.
[00:51:25] Kim Scott: They got their attention.
[00:51:26] Bob Sutton: They, they, they get an increase in score and, and, and, and, and, and the argument, the, the academic argument is it’s got to do with attribution. If somebody always yells at you, they’re just a, an asshole. But if they only yell at you every now and then you think, gee, maybe it is me.So, uh, so that, that’s, that’s, I, that’s, I just love that.
[00:51:45] Kim Scott: And maybe it, maybe it really was, I mean.
[00:51:47] Bob Sutton: Maybe yeah, maybe it really was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and, and so there there are strategic uses of anger that are not necessarily cruel, and then there’s moral outrage, outrage, which is sometimes justified. So, so anger sometimes is good.
[00:52:01] Kim Scott: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:52:03] Amy Sandler: Well, speaking of moral outrage and before we, Bob, are there certain of inquiry right now that either you’re, you’re doing some research on that are especially interesting to you, like what’s kind of, where’s, where’s your brain, brain headed right now?
[00:52:17] Kim Scott: Well, well, so the thing I’m having the, honestly, the most fun with, we’ll see if I can do any good, I’m trying, is, okay, so if, if you look at The Friction Project, it actually starts out with a, a dumb email sent by a Stanford administrator that was a twelve hundred and sixty-six words long with a seventy-five hundred word attachment.
[00:52:34] Amy Sandler: But who’s counting? I’m with you.
[00:52:37] Bob Sutton: Inviting all two thousand faculty members to spend Saturday brainstorming on Zoom about the new sustainability school. I’m not joking. So, so anyhow, our new president, John and Stanford has all these things that are very difficult to do, as in any large, complicated bureaucracy. Our new president, John Levin, one of his top three priorities, and god knows he’s busy with, with all sorts of things raining down from the government. But one of his top three priorities is to simplify Stanford and to reduce the administrative burden that we all place on one another. So I’m having, and so I’m going the, I, I think I’ve done ten, uh, friction talks at Stanford in the last three months, including to the cabinet. I’ve never been to the cabinet, people run the university. So I got to talk to them.
[00:53:22] And, you know, it’s, it’s early days, but there does seem to be some progress. Like, like I, I, I mean, just for example, I, I, I talked to a, a group of business people and one of them had cut the monthly meeting every three months. Another one had a fifteen person, this isn’t because of me, it’s just stuff that’s happening that it’s in the air. Uh, one of them that, that he had fifteen people in three different teams, and they were using three different project management softwares, which is very hard to communicate, so he forced them to use one. And, and there are other examples I could point to at Stanford, but, but in it’s sort and, and so, uh, there are, there’s specific work being done, but, but I do think if you start with the assumption that, that my job is to be a trustee of others’ time, which I think is the assumption that is, is being embraced in some parts of Stanford.
[00:54:16] So that, that’s the thing I’m having the most fun about and I’m most hopeful about. And, and, and I, and I, I, I can be very negative about our Stanford administrators as I just was with that twelve hundred and sixty-six word email. But, but I will say that from what I can tell that the, the management of Stanford is doing a pretty good a job despite how brutal the environment is. And then we have a new dean, the first female dean of the Stanford Business School. Her name is Sarah Soule. So, uh, so she’s one of the most, talk about competent and caring, the most competent and caring people I’ve, I’ve met during my years in academia. So I’m having fun with that.
[00:54:51] Amy Sandler: I, I love to hear it. First of all, as someone who has probably written a few twelve hundred sixty-five word emails, um, I, I know the pain they can cause, so I love that you’re doing that, but also I’m just thinking how can we scale Bob Sutton and get that, uh, efficiency work into maybe other sectors beyond just higher education? So that is maybe, um, I’m planting a seed of maybe learnings can be transferred to other, uh, sectors.
[00:55:15] Bob Sutton: Well, well, I, I, I think, I think that I’m actually not even a particularly good friction fixer, but I think that all of us, from where we are, can make things easier for other people. I, I, I think that it’s possible. And uh, and I see some hope in different, in Google too. There’s even some hope in Google. There’s all sorts of places.
[00:55:32] Kim Scott: Oh, there’s lots of, lots of hope. Lots of hope for Google.
[00:55:35] Amy Sandler: So is that the invitation for our listeners, that we’re inviting each of us to be a friction fixer?
[00:55:39] Bob Sutton: And to be a trustee of other’s time to be. And that doesn’t mean that you always make things as efficient as possible, but if you’re gonna take a lot of their time, uh, think, think about situations where the struggle is worth it.
[00:55:50] Kim Scott: Yeah. Make sure they get a good return on their time.
[00:55:53] Bob Sutton: Yeah.
[00:55:54] Amy Sandler: Wonderful. And finally, Bob, before we close, how can people find you and your great books?
[00:55:58] Bob Sutton: Uh, well, I do have a website, BobSutton.net, but, uh, uh, you know, and, and I’m on, I’m on LinkedIn and I, I tend to be responsive to emails. As long as you’re not an idiot or an asshole, I’ll probably, um, I’ll probably answer your email.
[00:56:12] Amy Sandler: Let’s keep it, keep it short, folks. Be a trustee, be a trustee of Bob’s time.
[00:56:17] Bob Sutton: Well, although some, some people write very long, very entertaining emails. So, so I don’t, I don’t wanna stop those people. I mean, I’ve had twelve hundred sixty-six word emails that are awesome. So I, so, so if you can carry it off, I wanna see those long ones too.
[00:56:35] Amy Sandler: Oh, sounds like a challenge.
[00:56:38] Kim Scott: Awesome. So fun talking to you, Bob. Thank you so much.
[00:56:42] Bob Sutton: Well, well, thank you, Amy. Thank you, Kim.
[00:56:44] Amy Sandler: Thank you. It was a treat.
[00:56:46] Bob Sutton: And, and Brandi and Nick who are backstage, I guess. So thank you all so much.
[00:56:50] Amy Sandler: Okay, so head on to Radical Candor.com/podcast to see the show notes for this episode and praise and public, criticize in private. So if you like what you hear, please rate and review us wherever you’re listening. And if you’ve got criticism for us, you know, we welcome it. Email that to podcast@radicalcandor.com. Go order Bob’s books wherever you get your books, wherever books are sold. Bye for now.
[00:57:15] Bob Sutton: Bye-bye.
[00:57:16] Kim Scott: Take care everyone.
[00:57:17] Amy Sandler: The Radical Candor Podcast is based on the book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott. Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal, with script editing by me, Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Roff, and is hosted by me, still Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer. The Radical Candor podcast theme music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Follow us on LinkedIn Radical Candor, the Company, and visit us@radicalcandor.com.
Have questions about Radical Candor? Let's talk >>
Follow Us
Instagram
TikTok
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook
Radical Candor Podcast Listeners Get 10% Off The Feedback Loop
You’ll get an hour of hilarious content about a team whose feedback fails are costing them business; improv-inspired exercises to teach everyone the skills they need to work better together, and after-episode action plans you can put into practice immediately.
We’re offering Radical Candor podcast listeners 10% off the self-paced e-course. Follow this link and enter the promo code FEEDBACK at checkout.
Watch the Radical Candor Videobook
We’re excited to announce that Radical Candor is now available as an hour-long videobook that you can stream at LIT Videobooks. Get yours to stream now >>
Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal with script editing by Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff and is hosted by Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer.
The Radical Candor Podcast theme music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Order his book: The Reason For The Rhymes: Mastering the Seven Essential Skills of Innovation by Learning to Write Songs.
Download our free learning guides >>
Take the Radical Candor quiz >>
Sign up for our Radical Candor email newsletter >>
Shop the Radical Candor store >>
Get Radical Candor coaching and consulting for your team >>
Get Radical Candor coaching and consulting for your company >>
Meet the team >>