Bob Sutton

When is the change going to be over?

Bobsutton — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:54:33 -0800

An executive my wife knows reported one of her people recently asked her this question. The last couple years have been tough on all of of us, and especially tough on people who had assumed that the future would be an imitation of the past. Of course, the answer is that the change will never be over. More so than ever, a boss's job is to prepare his or her people by developing expectations that there will be constant change, while (as I wrote in HBR), providing as much prediction, understanding, control, and compassion as possible.

I wonder, what else can a boss do to help people anticipate, cope with, and flourish in the face of change?

The Baboon Troop that Mellowed Out After the Alpha Males Died

Bobsutton — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:35:57 -0800

I got an email last night from a former student (thanks Hendrick!) who wanted to let me know that Stanford's Robert Sapolsky had done a WNYC radio show called "New Normal?" (listen here) where he described his 2004 article with Lisa Share on a troop of baboons -- which became more peaceful (or at least less nasty) after the alpha males died. It is amazing stuff, and more evidence that being a jerk and having power go hand in hand. Here is a link to the original academic article (which I was able to download for free). It is short and quite accessible, and just astounding stuff: Here is how I described it in The No Asshole Rule:

Biologists Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Share have followed a troop of wild baboons in Kenya for over 20 years, starting in 1978. Sapolsky and Share called them “The Garbage Dump Troop” because they got much of their food from a garbage pit at a tourist lodge. But not every baboon was allowed to eat from the pit in the early 1980s: The aggressive, high status males in the troop refused to allow lower status males, or any females, to eat the garbage. Between 1983 and 1986, infected meat from the dump led to the deaths of 46% of the adult males in the troop. The biggest and meanest males died off. As in other baboon troops studied, before they died, these top-ranking males routinely bit, bullied, and chased males of similar and lower status, and occasionally directed their aggression at females.

But when the top ranking males died-off in the mid-1980s, aggression by the (new) top baboons dropped dramatically, with most aggression occurring between baboons of similar rank, and little of it directed toward lower-status males, and none at all directed at females. Troop members also spent a larger percentage of the time grooming, sat closer together than in the past, and hormone samples indicated that the lowest status males experienced less stress than underlings in other baboon troops. Most interestingly, these effects persisted at least through the late 1990’s, well after all the original “kinder” males had died-off. Not only that, when adolescent males who grew up in other troops joined the “Garbage Dump Troop,” they too engaged in less aggressive behavior than in other baboon troops. As Sapolsky put it “We don’t understand the mechanism of transmission… but the jerky new guys are obviously learning: We don’t do things like that around here.” So, at least by baboon standards, the garbage dump troop developed and enforced what I would call a “no asshole rule.”

I am not suggesting that you get rid of all the alpha males in your organization, as tempting as that may be at times. The lesson from the baboons is that when the social distance between higher and lower status mammals in a group are reduced, and steps are taken to keep the distance smaller, higher status members are less likely to act like jerks. Human leaders can use this lesson to avoid turning into mean, selfish, and insensitive jerks too. Despite all the trappings, some leaders do remain attuned to how people around them are really feeling, to what their employees really believe about how the organization is ran, and to what customers really think about their company’s products and services. As “The Garbage Dump Troop” teaches us, the key thing these leaders do is to take potent, and constant, steps that dampen rather amplify the power differences between themselves and others (both inside and outside the company).

Any reactions? What do you think the implications for implementing the no asshole rule?

P.S. I seem to have a bit of an obsession with power dynamics in baboon troops, you may recall this post called Of Baboons and Bosses, on how lower status troop members glance at the alpha male every 20 or 30 seconds.

Intuition vs. Data-Driven Decision-Making: Some Rough Ideas

Bobsutton — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:22:50 -0800

A Stanford undergraduate doing a case analysis on using intuition versus systematic analysis wrote me an email last night to get my thoughts on the difference between the two, especially in light of the work that Jeff Pfeffer and I did on evidence-based management. Below is my lightly edited response. This is just off the top of my head (is it mostly intuition?). I would love to hear your thoughts on this distinction -- if it is useful, how the two concepts fit together, when one is more useful than the others, and so on:

I don't think that intuition and evidence-based management are at odds. There are many times when decision-makers don't have very good data because something is new, the situation has changed (e.g., where do you invest money right now?), or because what might seem like intuition is really mindless well-rehearsed behavior that comes from years of experience at something, so even though people can't articulate the pattern they recognize, they still are acting on a huge body of experience and knowledge. And on the very other side of experience there are virtues to the gut reaction of naive people, as those who are not properly brainwashed may see things and come up with ideas that expertise drives out of their brains (e.g, that is why Jane Goodall was hired to observe chimps, in part, because she knew nothing).

The trouble with intuition is that we now have a HUGE pile of research on cognitive biases and related flaws in decision-making that show "gut feelings" are highly suspect. Look-up confirmation bias --- people have a very hard time believing and remember evidence that contradicts their beliefs. There is also the fallacy of centrality, a lot more obscure, but important in that people -- especially those in authority -- believe that if something important happens, they will know about it.

My belief -- and it is only partially evidence-based -- is that intuition works best in the hands of wise people (this is all over hard facts), when people have the mindset to "act on their beliefs, while doubting what they know," so that they are always looking for contradictory evidence, encouraging those around them to challenge what they believe, and constantly updating (but always moving forward), then I think that intuition -- or acting on incomplete information, hunches, conclusions -- is right. Here is one place I've talked about it. Brad Bird of Pixar is a good example of someone with this mindset, as we learned when we interviewed him for the McKinsey Quarterly. So is Andy Grove. I think the most interesting cases to look at are those where people with a history of good guesses or gut decisions -- what mistakes has Steve Jobs made? What about Google... indeed, it is interesting that they believed they were going to crush Firefox with Chrome , but their market share remains modest a year later. My point here isn't to say anything negative about Jobs or Google -- they have impressive track records, plus some history of the usual failures that all humans and human organizations suffer from. Rather, my point is that by looking at errors by people and firms that have generally good track records, you can learn a lot about conditions under which judgment fails, because you can rule out the explanation that they generally suffer from judgment.

There is a lot written on intuition and the related topic of quick assessments --- see Blink -- and some evidence (although Gladwell exaggerates about the virtues of snap judgments, as the best are often made by people with much experience in the domain, but as always he makes wonderful points). Also see this book by David Myers for a balanced and evidenced perspective on intuition.

My view is that intuition and analysis are not opposing perspectives, but tag team partners that, under the best conditions, where hunches are followed and then evaluated with evidence (both quantitative and qualitative, that is another issue, qualitative data are different than intuition, and often better) versus when hunches and ingrained behaviors are mindlessly followed and impervious to clear signs that they are failing.

Work Matters readers: Again, I would appreciate your thoughts, as this is one of those core challenges for every boss and for a lot of behavioral scientists too!

I Am Just Like You

Bobsutton — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:31:08 -0700

A few days back, I wrote about David Dunning's book Self-Insight, which presents a compelling case that there are numerous impediments to self-awareness and that many of these roadblocks are mighty difficult to overcome. I am now on the last chapter, which contains some interesting ideas about how to increase our awareness of how skilled or unskilled we might be at things and our awareness of how others see us. Dunning points out that a host of studies show that one major impediment to self-awareness is that people see themselves as unique -- usually as superior to others -- when that actually are not: as more ethical, emotionally complex, skilled, and so on. Dunning proposes on page 166 that:

"People would hold more accurate self-perceptions if they conceded that their psychology is not different from the the psychology of others, that their actions are molded by the same situational forces that govern the behavior of other people. In doing so, they could more readily learn from the experiences of others, using data about other people's outcomes to forecast their own."

I find this quite fascinating. I believe that the average person would benefit from this perspective, but some industries would suffer -- especially those that have a kind of Ponzi scheme quality where most people fail, a rare successes happens now and then, but no matter what happens, the people who run the system always seem to benefit. Both casino operators and venture capitalists come to mind.

The implication, however, that if we assume "I am just like you" rather than "I am special and different," or even that "we are all the same," we might make better decisions and learn at others' expense rather than our own strikes me as a lesson that could be quite valuable. For example, I've been rather obsessed about the virtues and drawback of learning from others mistakes rather than your own (see this post on Randy Komisar and Eleanor Roosevelt), as this question has huge implications about how to teach people new skills and the best way to develop competent and caring human-beings.

Reducing Interruptions and Saving Lives: New Study on Drug Treatment Errors

Bobsutton — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:21:29 -0700

I have written here and other places on Amy Edmondson's wonderful research on how, when nurses feel as if they have psychological safety, they openly talk about and try to correct drug treatment errors, but when they work in a climate of fear, they are afraid to even admit when they have made mistakes -- which led to a rather bizarre finding in Amy's early research that in nursing units where people felt safe, even compelled,to talk about and learn from mistakes, they reported ten times more errors than in a nursing unit where the supervisor slammed nurses who admitted or where "caught" making mistakes.

This morning's San Francisco Chronicle reports an equally fascinating study on reducing drug treatment errors. This one focuses on the evils of interruptions, which as research by Gloria Mark shows, slows and undermines performance, and creates great job stress. As the article reports "A UCSF program to improve accuracy in administering drugs - with particular emphasis on reducing interruptions that often lead to mistakes - resulted in a nearly 88 percent drop in errors over 36 months at the nine Bay Area hospitals, according to results being released today." The cool thing about the article is that the nurses at different hospitals invented different local methods for reducing interruptions, to the vest you see pictured above to covering windows so colleagues couldn't see them (and thus run in and interrupt them), to developing quiet zones, or quiet times during drug administration. Note that drug treatment errors are huge problem, resulting in over 400,000 preventable injuries per year and 3.5 billion in costs. So a 88% reduction is huge.

This research is also fascinating to me because it shows how, so often, when people say they are too busy, don't have enough money, or their will be resistance to change that these are excuses, or worse yet, negative self-fulfilling prophecies. In particular, I think that people -- especially managers -- often use spending money as a substitute for thinking, when inexpensive and low-tech solutions work just fine. I am looking forward to digging into this research further.

Flawed Self-Evaluations: David Dunning's Facinating Work

Bobsutton — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:19:17 -0700

Professor David Dunning from Cornell University, along with numerous colleagues, has done fascinating and sometimes discouraging research on self-awareness. His most famous paper on the topic was published in 1999 with Kruger ... check-out the abstract of Unskilled and Unaware of it. I have known about it for a long time, but I have just discovered Dunning's book, Self-Insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself. This is a pretty pure academic book, but it sure is fascinating, and should make all of us stop and pause when we feel supremely confident about ourselves. You can learn tidbits like people do a pretty bad job of guessing their IQ scores, are downright awful at rating their ability to catch other people's lies, that workers do a far worse job of assessing their own social skills than their superiors or peers, that in survey of thousands of high school seniors 70% of respondents rated their leadership ability as above average while only 2% rated their leadership ability as below average, and -- turning to my own profession -- that 94% of college professors say they do above average work.

Self-Insight also contains an update of research for the 1999 article -- the basic finding is that people with worst skill levels at diverse tasks (ranging from debating skill to having a good sense of humor) consistently overestimate their abilities by huge amounts. For example, people who had skill levels at the 12th or 13th percentile usually estimated that they were in the 60th percentile of performance. In contrast, people above the 50th percentile made far more accurate assessments -- although the most skilled people tended to underestimate their relative skill a bit.

The upshot of this rather famous work is that you should be wary of self-assessments in general, but especially wary of people who seem to be incompetent. As Dunning puts it, "The central contention guiding this research is that poor performers simply do not know -- indeed cannot know -- how badly they are performing. Because they lack the skills required to produce correct answers they also lack the skills to accurately judge whether their own answers are correct."

The book has all sorts of great research and I found it a lot more fun to read than most academic books, but be warned that it contains a lot of studies and such.

Selecting Talent: The Upshot from 85 Years of Research

Bobsutton — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:42:07 -0700

I recently wrote about how the "talent wars" are likely to be returning soon in the U.S. (and indeed, there are signs they have already returned in places like China and Singapore), and how companies that have treated people well during the downturn will have an advantage in keeping and retaining the best people --and those that have not damn well better change their ways or will face the prospect of their best people running for the exits in concert with the inability to attract the best people. A related question has to do with the problem of determining who the best people might be -- what does the best evidence say about the best way to pick new people?

Its is always dangerous to say there is one definitive paper or study on any subject, but in this case there is candidate -- a paper I have blogged about before when taking on graphology (handwriting analysis). But there is one article that just might qualify. It was published by Frank Schmidt and the late John Hunter in the Psychological Bulletin in 1998. These two very skilled researchers analyzed the pattern of relationships observed in peer reviewed journals during the prior 85 years to identify which employee selection methods were best and worst as predictors of job performance. They used a method called "meta-analysis" to do this, which they helped to develop and spread. The advantage of this method is -- in the hands of skilled researchers like Schmidt and Hunter -- is it reveals the overall patterns revealed by the weight of evidence, rather than the particular quirks of any single study.

The upshot of this research is that work sample tests (e.g., seeing if people can actually do key elements of a job -- if a secretary can type or a programmer can write code ), general mental ability (IQ and related tests), and structured interviews had the highest validity of all methods examined (Arun, thanks for the corrections). As Arun also suggests, Schmidt and Hunter point out that three combinations of methods that were the most powerful predictors of job performance were GMA plus a work sample test (in other words, hiring someone smart and seeing if they could do the work), GMA plus an integrity test, and GMA plus a structured interview (but note that unstructured interviews, the way they are usually done, are weaker).

Note that this information about combinations is probably more important than the pure rank ordering, as it shows what blend of methods works best, but here is also the rank order of the 19 predictors examined, rank ordered by the validity coefficient, an indicator of how strongly the individual method is linked to performance:

1. Work sample tests (.54)

2. GMA tests ..."General mental ability" (.51)

3. Employment interviews -- structured (.51)

4. Peer ratings (.49)

5. Job knowledge tests (.48) Test to assess how much employees know about specific aspects of the job.

6. T & E behavioral consistency method (.45) "Based on the principle that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. In practice, the method involves describing previous accomplishments gained through work, training, or other experience (e.g., school, community service, hobbies) and matching those accomplishments to the competencies required by the job. a method were past achievements that are thought to be important to behavior on the job are weighted and score

7. Job tryout procedure (.44) Where employees go through a trial period of doing the entire job.

8. Integrity tests (.41) Designed to assess honesty ... I don't like them but they do appear to work.

9. Employment interviews -- unstructured (.38)

10. Assessment centers (.37)

11. Biographical data measures(.35)

12. Conscientiousness tests (.31) Essentially do people follow through on their promises, do what they say, and work doggedly and reliably to finish their work.

13. Reference checks (.26)

14. Job experience --years (.18)

15. T & E point method (.11)

16. Years of education (.10)

17. Interests (.10)

18. Graphology (.02) e.g., handwriting analysis.

19. Age (-01)

Certainly, this rank-ordering does not apply in every setting. It is also important to recall that there is a lot of controversy about IQ, with many researchers now arguing that it is more malleable than previously thought. But I find it interesting to see what doesn't work very well -- years of education and age in particular. And note that unstructured interviews, although of some value, are not an especially powerful method, despite their widespread use. Interviews are strange in that people have excessive confidence in them, especially in their own abilities to pick winners and losers -- when in fact the real explanation is that most of us have poor and extremely self-serving memories.

Many of these methods are described in more detail here by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Also note that I am not proposing that any boss or company just mindlessly apply this rank ordering, but I think it is useful to see the research.

The reference for this article is:

Schmidt, F.L. & Hunter, J.E. (1998) The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings,” Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262–274.

P.S. Note the corrections, thanks Arun!

d.school Alum Laura Jones Selected by BusinessWeek as one of "21 People Who Will Change Business"

Bobsutton — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:58:03 -0700

I just got a note that Laura Jones, who now works for Visa on innovation initiatives, was selected by BusinessWeek as one of 21 People Who Will Change Business. We were lucky enough to have Laura in our class on Creating Infectious Action class about two years ago, and I agree that Laura has the zest for life, smarts, and determination -- plus the leadership skills -- to change business or anything else. That is Laura (on the left, you can see her energy) during our first day of class, developing prototypes to improve dental hygiene. I still remember the first time met Laura, and was rather amazed to hear her say that the reason she applied to the Stanford Business School was she wanted to take d.school classes, and the great work she has done at the d.school and at the business school has apparently been noticed. Congratulations to Laura and take this coverage as a good sign for design thinking and for the value of the perspective that the d.school offers. I look forward to hearing about the work that Laura is doing at Visa.

More Jargon Monoxide: A Lovely BBC Story Adds to the Pile

Bobsutton — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:02:51 -0700

One of the themes I can't resist posting about is the horrible language used in business. It has been especially fun since I heard Polly LaBarre call the whole mess, "Jargon Monoxide," one of the best phrases I have ever heard in my life. I wrote a later post on terms that make me squirm, where I complained about value added, leverage, and core competence. Most recently, we had some fun, and expressed some disgust, talking about euphemisms for layoffs, which -- thanks to your comments -- produced such gems as "fitness plans," "offboarded" (I see a picture of someone walking the plank in mind's eye), "He got the box," and the differences between management language "Your position is redundant" or "rationalizing," versus employees language like "He got shit canned" or "he got whacked."

The ever helpful Dave sent me a great BBC article today that continues the tradition of cataloging jargon monoxide. It is called 50 Office Speak Phrases You Love To Hate. I don't want to spoil your fun by listing too many, but I especially loved to hate "ideas showers," "we need a holistic cradle-to-grave approach," "granularity," and a truly wonderful sentence that a university sent out to its staff after a round of layoffs "We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders."

I believe the translation of that sentence is "We are trying to figure out what the hell to do next."

Let me know if you have any new favorites that might be added to the BBC article.

P.S. Dave, thanks again.

Former CEO Richard S. Fuld of Lehman Brothers: A Striking Picture

Bobsutton — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:42:56 -0700

Do You Learn More from Working for a Bad Boss than a Good Boss?

Bobsutton — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:00:21 -0700

Bad bosses suck, as I often document here. Of course, you knew that anyway -- many of you know it all too well from first hand experience. But perhaps they do more good than I have given them credit for in the past. Carol Bartz, the feisty, tough, unusually plain-speaking CEO of Yahoo! (see this earlier post or this story), makes an intriguing point about bad bosses in today's New York Times that is weirdly related to my recent post On Noticing That You Don't Notice. Here is the link to the interview, and the argument I found especially intriguing:

I also think people should understand that they will learn more from a bad manager than a good manager. They tend to get into a cycle where they’re so frustrated that they aren’t paying attention actually to what’s happening to them. When you have a good manager things go so well that you don’t even know why it’s going well because it just feels fine.

When you have a bad manager you have to look at what’s irritating you and say: “Would I do that? Would I make those choices? Would I talk to me that way? How would I do this?”

There are several elements of this comment that made me stop and think. The first follows from my post on not noticing, as the implication is that when things are going great, you don't engage in very deep cognition about them, because little is happening to give you pause or upset you. In fact, this point is consistent with research on cognition and emotion suggesting that people in good moods do not engage in as much mindfulness,deep thought, or self-doubt as people in bad moods.

The second thing that intrigues me is as I thought about some of the more interesting bosses I've been reading about and communicating with, I've ran into quite a few who make a related argument. Perhaps most famous is the late Robert Townsend, author of the still amazing Up the Organization, who argued repeatedly that he learned how to be a good boss at American Express because his bosses were so bad and the company was so badly ran that he learned what not to do -- very close to Bartz's point. Even closer is an amazing comment I posted here a couple years ago from a surgeon, who during his residency at a prestigious hospital, got together with fellow residents every week to vote on the senior or "attending" surgeon who most deserved the "asshole of the week" award -- and wrote in a journal that had been passed down from generation to generation of residents. The great thing about this story is that he his fellow residents all vowed not to be assholes when they became more senior, and all -- who now hold prestigious appointments through the country -- have all worked to try to keep that vow.

Now, as much as I love Bartz's thought process, I do disagree with her that when people have a lousy boss and want to escape, she tells them " You have to deal with what you’re dealt. Otherwise you’re going to run from something and not to something. And you should never run from something."

That bugged me for two reasons. The first is that, if these complaints are about a lousy boss who reports to Carol, it is her job to do something about it, not to just tell the victims to suck it up and just deal with it. Indeed, there is so much research showing the damage that lousy bosses do to productivity, commitment, and well-being that Carol or any other boss who learns of a horrible boss below them in the pecking order owes it to their company to deal with it. The "victims" may be learning more, but those lessons come at a high price that hurts both organization's and people.

The second thing that bugs me is from the victim's perspective, which is that there is so much evidence that bad bosses do damage (recall this Swedish study on heart attacks), that if you care about your physical and mental health -- and those of the people you come in contact with, your friends, lovers, children, and so on -- that you should escape as soon as you possibly can.

Clearly, I don't agree with Bartz about everything, but I admire her enormously because she is so thoughtful and so straightforward, a refreshing voice in a world where too many people are afraid to express strong opinions.

This all raises a great question: What is the most important thing you ever learned NOT TO DO from working for a bad boss?

P.S. One another thing I agree with Bartz about -- in fact a headline of the article -- is that perhaps we ought to get rid of annual performance reviews, as there is good reason to believe that they do more harm than good, as I blogged about here and this Wall Street Journal article by Sam Culbert argues.

UPDATE: I always appreciate the quality and range of comments that readers make, but in this case, they are even better than usual. I suggest that you read them carefully. This post has been up less then a day, so I expect even more good stuff and to change my opinion again over the coming days. But my initial reaction to the comments is that I (and certainly Bartz) should have emphasized the dangers of bad bosses even more, the damage they do to people and as at least one comment implies, the danger that -- just as abusive parents tend to produce abusive children -- the odds are high that bad bosses will teach their followers to be bad bosses like them. Also, by just talking to people who have survived and learned from bad bosses, and become bosses themselves, we blind ourselves to all the able people who have left companies and occupations because they had the sense to leave, were so damaged that they had to leave, or worse yet, became lousy bosses someplace else applying what they learned -- and after doing a lot of damage -- got fired and demoted. Yes, there are examples of the opposite effect, of people who have become great bosses by doing the opposite of past lousy bosses, but the psychological forces of imitation, learning, and identification with authority figures all push people in the opposite direction. Perhaps the best way to learn for bad bosses is to watch and study other people's bad bosses -- that way you get the learning without the damage and risk of imitating their incompetent and nasty ways.

Civilian Friends vs Police Friends: From Captain Nick Gottuso

Bobsutton — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:35:02 -0700

I just got this missive about cops from Captain Nick Gottuso, a Police Department Captain in Hillsborough, California. Nick is also one of the Commanders of a SWAT team composed of about 50 officers from local police departments on the San Francisco Peninsula, and heads up their sniper squad. You can see him above, in full uniform beside the SWAT truck. Nick was the coach on one of my daughter’s soccer teams and I get to know him as I was an assistant coach -- he is a great guy.

Nick is also a great shot. I once asked him why some of the coins on his key chain had bullet holes in the side rather than middle, and wondered if he had missed. He answered that he had put the bullet on the side because it made it easier to get on the key chain. Nick loves his job as much as anyone I know. And you can understand why when he tells about the things he does, like being involved in hostage stand-offs, and the smaller but important things he does every day. For example, he was involved in catching a thief who stole something from one of my colleague’s houses. Because I know Nick, and how much he loves and identifies with his job, I was especially struck by this note he sent around (the origin is unclear, I’d love to give credit to the person who wrote it, so if you know, please chime-in).

Let me know what you think. Here is Nick’s preface: "For those of you who are Cops, you will find this very true. For those of you who aren't... this gives you a little insight as to why we are, the way we are.”

Always a Cop:

Once the badge goes on, it never comes off, whether they can see it, or not. It fuses to the soul through adversity, fear and adrenaline and no one who has ever worn it with pride, integrity and guts, can ever sleep through the 'call of the wild' that wafts through bedroom windows in the deep of the night.

When Cops Retire

When a good cop leaves the 'job' and retires to a better life, many are jealous, some are pleased and yet others, who may have already retired, wonder. We wonder if he knows what he is leaving behind, because we already know. We know, for example, that after a lifetime of camaraderie that few experience, it will remain as a longing for those past times. We know in the law enforcement life there is a fellowship which lasts long after the uniforms are hung up in the back of the closet . We know even if he throws them away, they will be on him with every step and breath that remains in his life. We also know how the very bearing of the man speaks of what he was and in his heart still is.

These are the burdens of the job. You will still look at people suspiciously, still see what others do not see or choose to ignore and always will look at the rest of the law enforcement world with a respect for what they do; only grown in a lifetime of knowing. Never think for one moment you are escaping from that life. You are only escaping the 'job' and merely being allowed to leave 'active' duty.

So what I wish for you is that whenever you ease into retirement, in your heart you never forget for one moment that 'Blessed are the Peacemakers for they shall be called children of God,' and you are still a member of the greatest fraternity the world has ever known.

Civilian Friends vs Police Friends

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Get upset if you're too busy to talk to them for a week.
POLICE FRIENDS: Are glad to see you after years, and will happily carry on the same conversation you were having the last time you met.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have never seen you cry.
POLICE FRIENDS: Have cried with you..

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Borrow your stuff for a few days then give it back.
POLICE FRIENDS: Keep your stuff so long they forget it's yours.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Know a few things about you..
POLICE FRIENDS: Could write a book with direct quotes from you.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will leave you behind if that's what the crowd is doing.
POLICE FRIENDS: Will kick the crowds' ass that left you behind.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Are for a while.
POLICE FRIENDS: Are for life.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have shared a few experiences. ..
POLICE FRIENDS: Have shared a lifetime of experiences no citizen could ever dream of...

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will take your drink away when they think you've had enough.
POLICE FRIENDS: Will look at you stumbling all over the place and say, 'You better drink the rest of that before you spill it!!' Then carry you home safely and put you to bed...

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will talk crap to the person who talks crap about you.
POLICE FRIENDS: Will knock them the hell out for using your name in vain.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will ignore this.
POLICE FRIENDS: Will forward this.

On noticing that you don't notice

Bobsutton — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:17:52 -0700

I've been working with a long document in Microsoft Word, and having the general struggles that go with being a PC owner. I never upgraded to Vista because I heard the horror stories, but still it seems that I spend about 10% of my work time, sometimes more, either struggling to figure out how to do things, to undo things that Word does to me that I don't want, or to wait for the endless boot or shutdown times or upgrades they install that slow the machine. On the other hand, although I was kind of hostile to them before I got one, I keep noticing that -- except when I am typing -- that I do all sorts of things on my iPhone without noticing them, I notice that I don't notice any friction.

I first heard this phrase from IDEO design guru Bill Moggridge who, among many other things, the author of a great book called Designing Interactions. It is one of those phrases that applies to all sorts of things, great customer experiences where good things happen and your feel no friction, organizational practices that are seamless and painless, and even government services that seem designed to reduce the burden on you. I think of the difference between the airport at Singapore -- or even Hong Kong -- versus going through most of Kennedy or the awful Heathrow. I think "not noticing" isn't exactly the same as delight, or perhaps is a special kind of delight you have when something or some experience does not tax your emotional or cognitive energy.

I wonder, what other products, experiences, or practices do you love because you "notice that you don't notice?"

You Better Start Treating Your People Right, Or The Best Will Be Leaving Soon

Bobsutton — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:21:58 -0700

This week's Economist has a story called Hating What You Do, which presents a rather discouraging but well-documented argument that, since the downturn began, a lot more people are a lot more unhappy with their jobs. For example, to quote the story, "A survey by the Centre for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy, found that between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of employees who professed loyalty to their employers slumped from 95% to 39%; the number voicing trust in them fell from 79% to 22%." Ouch.

Certainly, some of this unhappiness is due to the fear, bad news, pay cuts, loss of benefits, objective loss of job security, job overload (an effect of layoffs on survivors), and other bad experiences provoked by these hard times. But there is huge variation in how well or badly different organizations have treated their people during the past couple years. The Economist article refers indirectly to my HBR article on being a Good Boss in a Bad Economy (see the McKinsey interview for free). If you recall from my prior posts, my basic argument was that there is a big difference between what organizations and bosses must do to survive during tough times and how they do it -- and the keys to doing dirty work (like pay cuts and layoffs) well include providing people as much prediction, understanding, control, and compassion as possible in the process.

Well, now that we seem to be seeing early signs that, within a year or perhaps less, many companies will be hiring again (in fact, I notice that Google is back to hiring already, and they did some layoffs earlier in the year), your chickens will be coming home to roost soon. If you are a boss or organization that has treated your people well despite the challenges, the return of the so-called "war for talent" will be great for you because your best people won't run for the door when the job market starts heating-up again and you will have an easy time recruiting great people because, after all, the good word spreads.

But if you have treated people like dirt during the tough times (for a horror story, see here), have been inept about how you have implemented tough decisions (see here) or have simply been clueless about your people's perspective during these tough times (see here), you may have been able to keep great people working for you during these tough times and to hire some of the best. You can be sure, however, that they have told their friends about how much your company or you suck. They are waiting for things to get better, and perhaps encouraged by the signs the labor market is coming back, are probably doing their jobs extra well these days to enhance their reputation for that coming job search. So you may be fooling yourself into believing all is well when it is not.

In my view, if you have been nasty, inept, or greedy about how you've treated people during the downturn, you will deserve everything you get when, as things start getting better, your best people start leaving in droves and the best candidates not only turn down your job offers, they don't even bother to apply because your reputation stinks. Looking at it from your perspective, however, you've might have just enough time to salvage your reputation if you begin reversing your vile ways right now. And, if you've treated your people well during these tough times, cranking up the respect, attention, and -- if you can afford it (I know it is tough) -- your pay and benefits right now just a bit could pay huge dividends down the road.

Squeaky Wheels, The Health Care Debate, and Student Complaints About Grades

Bobsutton — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:22:18 -0700

The academic year at Stanford has started and, although my main teaching isn't until next quarter, I am starting to review my courses and think about what changes I am going to make this year. After thinking about last year, and some of the complaints I had about grades, I am thinking that I need to spell-out my policy more strongly and clearly than before: If you complain about your grade on an assignment, I regrade the whole assignment and your grade can go up and down. This kind of policy is necessary in my classes as -- especially for the engineering students I teach -- doing well requires strong writing and creative skills, and is more objective than the problem sets and other objective tests that students often get in other classes. My final exam question, for example, is "Design the ideal organization. Use course concepts to defend your answers." I have learned over the years that there seems to be little relationship between how much students complain and the quality of their work. I sometimes think it is a personality characteristic. More likely, however, there are a subset of students who have learned that the more they complain about grades, the better grades they get.

Although I don't like student complaints,some compelling research shows there are considerable rewards for people who complain. This brings us to the health care debate because there is good reason to believe that whatever system we end-up in the U.S., that we ought to take the squeaky wheel problem into account -- both to protect patients and insurance companies. There was fascinating 2004 study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine by Carole Roan Gresenz and David M. Studdert on the outcomes of approximately 3500 disputes filed by patients over insurance payments they received for emergency room visits (here is the abstract). These data were provided by two of the largest Health Maintenance Organizations in the United States. The researchers found patients who filed formal complaints through the appeals process won more than 90% of the time -- and the average size of the bill disputed was $1,107, so not exactly chicken feed. The other lesson from this research is that people who did not appeal never got a penny -- so squeaking definitely paid-off. The policy questions are complex and I lack the knowledge to untangle them here. Many people do not appeal, so the lesson might be that it is cheaper from HMOs and other health insurance operations to underpay consistently and just cave in quickly when people do complain. The result may be that a lot of people are unwittingly getting worse coverage than they deserve because they don't have the time, motivation, or information about the odds of success. And a related result might be that insurance providers have a system (not entirely of their own design... they are constrained by laws and rules) that is producing a massive number of complaints.

The broader lesson, to go back my grading and the squeaky wheel problem, is that there are probably too many incentives out there for all of us to complain... and if you are running organization or system that you believe uses fair standards to judge people's merit, performance, or whatever -- but people seem to be complaining constantly anyway -- take a good look at how you respond to complaints. Do the squeaky wheels get the grease, whether they deserve it or not?

Work Matters Hits One Million Lifetime Page Views

Bobsutton — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:07:14 -0700

I started writing Work Matters in June 2006. Diego Rodriguez (of Metacool fame) and I were teaching a class called Creating Infectious Action, and Diego convinced me that -- if I was interested in infectious action -- I ought to start blogging. Diego also correctly pointed out that I liked to write and seemed to have a short attention span, and thus was well-suited to blogging (an accurate observation). I also got great early encouragement from Guy Kawasaki, Todd Sattersten, Kent Blumberg, and Gretchen Rubin. My first post (more accurately my second post, I think I deleted the very first one, which was just a short welcome) was called Brainstorming in the Wall Street Journal and was a response to an article that questioned the value of brainstorming -- I was motivated to write it because academic researchers have taken such a narrow view of what "brainstorming effectiveness" means that it reflects severe ignorance of how and why brainstorming is used by real experts in real organizations.

I knew that Work Matters was getting close to a million page views, but didn't expect it to happen so fast as this blog averages about 800 page views a day, but yesterday's post on my trip to Singapore and suspect HR assumptions apparently struck a nerve aa almost 5000 people visited yesterday (the most ever, I think). To be precise, Typepad statistics indicate that Work Matters has as of this moment 768 posts, 2863 comments (thank you!), an average of 822.60 page views per day (thank you), and a total of 1002748 lifetime page views.

I would like to thank everyone who has visited and commented on this blog and helped me in hundreds of other ways. But I would especially like to thank a few readers out there -- especially Rick -- who have figured out that I am prone to producing typos and often unable to see them, and for taking the time to point them out.

I am not completely sure why I keep doing this, but it is fun, I have learned an enormous amount from the comments that people post and email me, and as 55 year-old guy with an increasingly bad memory, it is a great place to store all sorts of stuff that many readers aren't interested in but help me (like the list of 150 or so books that I like). Who knows how long I will keep doing this, but for now, I am still enjoying it a lot.

"William Safire is on Hiatus," New York Times, October 4, 2009

Bobsutton — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:13:40 -0700

Alas, the hiatus is permanent. I guess they missed their own obituary for him on September 27, 2009. I just read this is in The Sunday New York Times Magazine on page 14 at the bottom of the "On Language" column, which he wrote for years. The best part is the title of the article that appears above, called "Error-Proof." Apparently, the Times caught their error, or just have such a long production lead time that it was too late, as the online version indicates:

Postscript: October 3, 2009
MAGAZINE

A note with the “On Language” column on Page 14 this weekend refers to the absence of the regular columnist, William Safire. Mr. Safire died last Sunday, after some copies had gone to press.

I know that print journalism is a tough business, but I did note that the new Economist, which I got in the mail Friday, also had an obituary for Mr. Safire. Mistakes in life are unavoidable and there is no doing anything without making them, but this one cracked me up because of the name of the article that it appeared under (which is a very nice essay, by the way, on how the obsession with grammatical correctness is a "schoolmarm's hallucination"). I suspect the author, Ammon Shea is a bit horrified by all this, but I hope he also sees the humor and takes heart in that more people will likely read his column as a result.

Challenging Ingrained Assumptions in HR: My Remarks at the Singapore Human Capital Summit

Bobsutton — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:54:03 -0700

As I reported in my post on the "Dumbest Practices Used By U.S. Companies," I was fortunate to be part of the closing panel at the Singapore Human Capital Summit last week. I had a delightful time in Singapore, as my hosts did a wonderful job of organizing the conference and making sure that those of us involved in the conference never stopped exchanging ideas with others -- in talks to large groups, meetings with small groups of business leaders and government employees, and one-on-one meetings of all kinds. My liaison for the conference, Noelle Yee, somehow scheduled things so I was busy almost every minute but somehow never seemed rushed.

I met all kinds of interesting people at the conference, but several stand-out. The first was Yuzaburo Mogi, CEO of the Kikkoman Corporation, which I believe is the leading producer of soy sauce in the world. Mr Mogi's ancestors started the company over 300 years ago and he has worked there for 51 years. Mr. Mogi was fun and had a great zest for life. I loved hearing his stories. Among other things, he described his firm's ventures into the wine business and how, although it isn't as profitable as soy sauce, the wines made by his company (which are not available in the U.S.) have been winning awards in Europe.

The second was Dr. Robert Care, CEO of Arup Australasia. I have blogged about Dr. Care before, as Arup is renowned for doing the toughest structural engineering work in the world, from the Sydney Opera House to the stunning "water cube" in 2008 Peking Olympics. I confess, however, I was especially keen to meet Dr. Care to talk with him about the "no dickhead rule" that he had instituted and that I had blogged about here before. Dr. Care, a charming and tall man, explained how they were using the rule to encourage civility and cooperation, which was essential to both the kind of work they do and -- as it is a firm wholly owned by an employee trust -- essential given the kind of culture they have and want to perpetuate.

Third, and although I have known him for about 30 years, I was especially impressed with an exchange that HR guru Dave Ulrich had with an audience member, who was lamenting about the lack of power that HR had and who wondered if people from HR could ever be CEO's. Dave, quite wisely I thought, gently responded that it wasn't constructive to focus on that question, as if you were in HR the kind of work you do is remarkably valuable to your company and it is your job to do it as well as possible -- and it is just isn't very constructive for your colleagues or yourself to obsess over issues like whether HR has enough power. I am not even sure I entirely agreed with Dave's answer, but he stated it more elegantly than I did here, and -- as he told me in private conversation shortly thereafter -- people who focus too much on becoming top dog in the future and not enough on the quality of the work they do right now are the wrong people to take leadership positions.

I could go on and on about other people and things I learned. But because so many readers here and at BNET wrote so many great comments (about 75 total at the moment) about "the dumbest practices used by U.S. companies," I thought I had better tell you how those ideas shaped my comments. I did not directly label my closing remarks as "dumb practices."Rather as I hung out at the conference, and thought of the comments you made and the topics we were discussing at the conference, I decided that -- in the short 10 minutes I had (I confess that I ended-up going 12 minutes... my apologies to master of ceremonies Professor Narayan Pant), that I would use the time to question some deeply held and often suspect HR assumptions and practices. The ultimate aim of the conference, and a host of other other efforts by Singapore's Ministry of Manpower and other agencies is to develop and spread the very best "people management" practices throughout Singapore and the rest of the region. Although many executives and academics at the conference were mindful of these challenge, it still felt like they (and me too.... it is an automatic response) often mindlessly slipped into doing what had always been because, well, it had always been done that way.

As such, about four hours before my talk, I slipped away for a couple hours and pounded out the list below of 10 "Flawed, Suspect, and Incomplete Assumptions About Managing People." The conference organizers, bless their hearts, were nonplussed by my absurd request to produce and pass out 800 copies to audience with a couple hours notice. I thanked and apologized to Low Peck Kem (who has a great job title "Director of People Matters" at the Ministry of Manpower), and she gave an answer that I've never heard before "Anything is possible" and added "this is easy."

The handout is reprinted below, and although it was impossible to include everything in this 12 minute talk (indeed, I only made it to point 8), I think you can see the influence of your comments as well as many other themes I have talked about on this blog. The point I emphasized to the audience was that I am not even sure that I believe everything on the list: My goal was to jolt them into thinking about and to challenge their assumptions. Also, to add some background, I have provided links to past posts and other sources that expand on the points below. I would love your comments and especially your disagreements because, as I said, this list is meant to provoke rather then persuade.

Bob Sutton’s Top 10 List

Flawed, Suspect, and Incomplete Assumptions about Managing People

1. HR ought to be all about spotting, hiring, and breeding individual talent (HR could pack a bigger wallop by focusing on teams and networks more).

2. HR should focus on finding, hiring, and developing the very best people (Bad is stronger than good – about 5 times stronger -- so screening-out, reforming, expelling the very worst people is more crucial to collective performance).

3. Find some great superstars and pay them whatever is necessary to keep them happy… and certainly a lot more than everyone else (The best organizations pay higher than competitors, but have more compressed pay).

4. Competition makes people, teams, and companies stronger (Unless people and teams are rewarded for undermining one another rather than helping each other… dysfunctional internal competition is one of the most pervasive problems in American firms).

5. Harmony and having a shared vision are crucial to success (Perhaps for routine work; but creativity depends on battling over ideas. Part of HR’s job should be to teach people how to “fight as if they are right, and listen as if they are wrong”).

6. The key to success is copying practices used by the best companies. (The best companies may be succeeding despite rather than because of their HR practices).

7. Every company needs a great performance review system. (Are they really worth the time and effort? Do they do more harm than good?).

8. Taking a leadership position brings out the best in people. (This is a dangerous half-truth. Giving people power over others turns them into self-centered jerks).

9. The most important thing HR can do is to find and develop great senior leaders (Having an organization with a high proportion of good bosses is probably more important).

10. The best organizations have the best people, “the people make the place.” (There are huge differences in talent, but the best organizations typically have the best systems and not necessarily the best raw talent).

Robert Sutton, Stanford University (www.bobsutton.net)

Singapore Human Capital Summit

30 September 2009

Art Imitates Life: The Muffin Incident on Entourage

Bobsutton — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:31:54 -0700

Last night, I was watching my favorite fictional asshole in action, Jeremy Piven, who plays a big-shot Hollywood agent on the HBO show Entourage. Ari pretty much has all the asshole moves mastered, from threats, to insults, to backstabbing, to a perfect hostile glare and shit-eating grin, to shameless lust for power and money, to little moves like the time he grabbed a candy bar from a staff member, took a bite, and threw it in trash, while shouting at her that she was fat.

There was a scene in the episode I saw last night (called "Scared Straight") where -- after Ari had been very unhappy with the assistants brought to him by people in HR and had fired one after another. A guy from HR tried, apparently, to calm Ari down by bringing him his favorite breakfast muffin. Ari got pissed-off because it was the wrong flavor and, as pictured above, shoved it in the poor guy's face and fired him on the spot.

This fictional incident was no doubt inspired by a (apparently) real one reported in the Wall Street Journal in an astounding 2005 article called "Bosszilla" about Academy Award winning producer Scott Rudin (Sorry, but WSJ only makes the full article available to subscribers). The incident (and Rudin's legendary firing of assistants) is described in The No Asshole Rule as follows:

The Wall Street Journal estimated that he went through 250 personal assistants between 2000 and 2005; Rudin claimed his records show only 119 (but admitted this estimate excluded assistants who lasted less then two weeks). His ex-assistants told the Journal that Rudin routinely swore and hollered at them – one said he was fired for bringing Rudin the wrong breakfast muffin, which Mr. Rudin didn’t recall but admitted was “entirely possible.”

I love this story because of the description of the fact checking in particular. In The No Asshole Rule, I used the Bosszilla story to argue that, if the reports about Rudin are true, he appears to qualify as as certified asshole.

A Rock Concert With The No Asshole Rule For Performers

Bobsutton — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:03:13 -0700

The New Yorker, as with every other publication, wrote about Kanye West's rude intrusion and insults aimed at Taylor Swift during the Video Music Awards, or VMAs. The thing that intrigued me in this article was The New Yorker described another rock concert that seems to be operated much differently, known as the ATP or "All Tomorrow's Parties," which uses the the no asshole rule and is damn serious about it. I quote author Sasha Frere-Jones:

ATP Director Barry Hogan maintains a “no assholes” policy for all the performers who appear at his festival. If you read this oral history of ATP in the Village Voice, you will see exactly who has violated that policy and how Hogan feels about them. It seems unlikely that Kanye would ever make it past one appearance at ATP, and less likely that he would want to be invited in the first place.

And if you click to this link to the Village Voice, you will see that Hogan and his co-organizers Deborah Kee Higgins name the bands that banned under the no asshole rule... looks like this guy has pushed the eject button! (I couldn't resist putting it here). And please note from this little excerpt that, most wondrously, one of these asshole bands is called Butthole Surfers (I couldn't make-up anything nearly as good). To quote the Voice article:

Higgins: We have a "No Assholes" policy. You can play once because we don't know you're an asshole, but you can't play twice.

Hogan: Killing Joke and the Butthole Surfers will never play ATP again, and they can both suck my balls. And you can put that in print. The Black Lips will never play again—they're assholes. They broke into a chalet and started stealing stuff.

I have some odds and ends to wrap up over the next few weeks, but I clearly need to update my list of places that don't tolerate assholes. I have had some great examples lately, like the one at Shakespeare Miami. Plus one of the great things about visiting Singapore was that I had a nice long chat with CEO Robert Care from ARUP about why and how he implemented the No Dickhead Rule -- so I can update that example too. Robert was about as charming a guy as I ever met and was most serious about the eliminating the financial and human damage done by jerks.

This post almost feels like I am writing fiction or a parody of organizational life, but I am not making this stuff-up, I am just reporting it, and I confess, smiling a lot as I type.

P.S. A big thank you to John for pointing me to this article.