Plastic covers the outside of the fuselage plug of the Boeing jet that exploded in mid-air on January 5, 2024. NTSB (via Getty Images)
good morning.
I read the book over the long weekend. friction project, a new book by two of my favorite business school professors, Robert Sutton and Hagie Rao of Stanford University. They worked with companies for seven years to weed out the bureaucratic sludge that slows down organizations, allowing him to combine the best of academic behavioral science with real-world examples.
But what's really compelling about this book is that while it cites meaningless and soul-crushing friction as the biggest problem facing most companies, it also recognizes that sometimes friction can be good. The authors say Google Glass rushed to market in 2012, but collapsed under the weight of hardware and software issues, poor battery life, unresolved privacy issues, and reviews calling it the “worst product”. He uses Google's Sergey Brin as an example. of all time. “A little friction would have helped.
So how can we remove the bad friction while preserving the good? Some of my takeaways:
Let's start with self-awareness. CEOs frequently complain that it is middle managers who are sabotaging execution. But Sutton and Rao discovered that many leaders' habits drag out meetings, waste time, and mislead others in countless ways. “When you exercise influence over others, you may not realize that you are causing trouble to those below you, or that your organization is causing trouble to your clients and customers.” It's best to think of yourself as a custodian of your employees' time, as well as your clients and customers.
Champion subtraction project. “Humans by default ask, 'What can I add here?' rather than, 'What can I remove?'” Those who fight friction create new rituals to ensure the opposite. To do. Have your team identify wasted effort, meaningless practices, and unnecessary obstacles to action and systematically eliminate them.
notice 'Ignore adjustment People tend to fixate on their part of the organization and ignore how each part needs to work together. Sutton and Rao point to Steve Ballmer's Microsoft as an example where employees across the organization were stack-ranked, leading to “management by character assassination.” Satya Nadella abolished the stacked ranking system and encouraged employees to “learn everything” rather than “know it all.”
Add “good friction” if necessary. There are clearly limits to the “act fast and break things” approach—Just ask anyone at Boeing. Sutton and Rao advise adding friction at key moments, especially when irreversible and costly decisions are about to be made. One suggestion is to pause and do a “pre-win” or “pre-die” and imagine in advance why your project or product ultimately succeeded or failed.
There's much more to this rich book, presented in a fun style. Count it as the first book to be added to your business books in 2024. Please see the news below for more information.
alan murray
@alansmurray
[email protected]
top News
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THis edition of CEO Daily is curated by Nicholas Gordon.
