Professors Haggy Rao and Bob Sutton knew they were on to something when executives in their management and innovation class at Stanford University began vividly describing the obstacles that stood in the way of their work. I noticed.
“I work in a frustration factory,” said one person who enrolled in the latest course. The other, from a California technology company, was more candid. “Sir, I'm swimming in a sea of shit. My head is barely above water. And you want me to show initiative? Is that even possible?”
Once Sutton and Rao unleash the anger of staffers caught up in bureaucratic red tape, exhausted by petty rules and procedures, and suppressed by micromanagers and indecisive leaders, it's hard to stop them. was difficult. Employees talked about “death by meetings,” “towers of no,” “surly bosses,” and “leadership by gobbledygook.” Having dedicated more than 70 years to teaching and researching organizational behavior, the duo began collating and cataloging the evidence of this frustration. Seven years later, they compiled it into a new book.
It's a surprisingly benign title for an issue that causes such universal irritation. In fact, they wanted to call it “The Sh*tfixers” for a while. It was the name of a webinar series on the subject and the first term used to refer to people working to remove bad friction, or inefficiency, within companies. “The sad irony was… we invited… [on to the show] The people who fixed the friction came in and said, “We'd love to help, but could you please change the name from Sh*tfixers to Fixers?'' ’” Rao said in a virtual interview alongside Sutton. The guests liked the title, but the CEO said, “I don't want the world to know that our company is full of shit.''
[ ‘I loved my job with PwC but…’ ]
The two engage in a hilarious double act. Sutton is also the author of the inspiring bestsellers The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide, which explain how to civilize the workplace and tame the assholes who often dominate the workplace.
His last book as a co-author was 2014's Scaling Up Excellence, about how businesses can grow without being bound by processes and hierarchies. In it, they praised Silicon Valley success stories like Google, Facebook, and Salesforce. But now, nearly a decade later, Sutton explains, “when you talk to the people there, it's getting harder and harder to get things done in that organization.”
That sense of frustration that arises leads them, now called friction fixers, to consider ways in which they can cut down on the layers of unnecessary bureaucracy and over-qualification that plague many organizations. I urged them to do so.
Some of the examples they choose are head-shaking in recognition. One biotech customer service representative told me that due to the large amount of new software being released, he had to switch between “his 13-inch screen on his company laptop, he had 15 applications, and he had 20 windows.” I was forced to. her her IT manager. The healthcare chief executive earned the nickname Dr. TLDR (meaning “too long to read”) for his prolific and frequent notes. Alternatively, the 58-page “Permit Obtaining” document issued by the San Francisco Planning Commission explicitly warns users that they are about to enter “one of the most confusing processes I have ever experienced.” .
But one of the reasons it took them so long to write this book, apart from their near-daily habit of sharing with each other the latest peer-reviewed papers on the subject, is, in Sutton's words: Because I wanted to demonstrate what friction looks like. A double-edged sword. . .on the one hand [it] It depletes initiative and collaboration, while robbing us of the constructive virtues of “good friction.” ”
Friction moderators, or employees who are focused on smoothing out workplace practices, should regularly conduct “good elimination reviews” to evaluate and eliminate bad processes, rules, and habits. But at the same time, you should ask, “What's so simple, easy, fast, and cheap around here?”
When Ed Catmull was president of animation studio Pixar, he brought good friction to the development process for films like Toy Story. “The goal isn't efficiency. It's about making something good or great,” Sutton and Rao say of how the team worked through multiple versions of the original idea, refining it as the film evolved. explained. Colette Cloosterman-van Eerd, from her Jumbo grocery store chain in the Netherlands, saw the need to offset the drive force to increase efficiency with good friction. She introduced “slow lanes” that allow checkout staff to talk to shoppers, especially older people who value social interaction over speed.
[ ‘Oh gosh, I have to become a coder’: how employers are preparing the next generation workforce ]
In some cases, good friction can be used to push out bad friction. When Laszlo Bock was head of human resources at Google, he faced criticism for the tech company's lengthy hiring process, where his candidates and executives sometimes sat in as many as 25 meetings. He claimed that his colleagues asked for permission to conduct more than four interviews. His reluctance to confront his boss automatically streamlined the process.
However, Sutton cautions that simple examples are the exception. In most cases, removing bad friction is a “long and arduous process.”
In 2015, pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca launched a “Centre of Excellence and Simplification'' under executive Pushkara Subramanian. The goal of AstraZeneca's “Million Hour Challenge'' was to “give back'' 30 minutes a week to each employee. Individual initiatives include reducing paperwork, shortening default meeting times, and rapidly rolling out technology to new staff.
Although the project was a success, Subramanian says he became burnt out after his experience at AstraZeneca and subsequent simplification tasks at another company. She currently runs Hellowiz, a relatively simple startup that connects experienced professionals with entrepreneurs seeking advice. She says, “Many simplification efforts at the corporate level require people to abandon old ways of doing things, try new ways of doing things, and make a consistent effort to influence leadership… It must be really mentally exhausting.”
Frictional fixation is also largely unrecognized. Candidates for senior positions are rarely asked about how they smoothed out bad friction or added obstacles to slow down hasty decisions. Instead, “they keep adding more and more,” Rao said, creating what two scholars call an “addition disease.” This can lead to a systemic “tragedy of the commons,” where individuals are unintentionally encouraged to create collective harm.
Rather than pushing everyone to act quickly, leaders need to think of themselves as responsible for managing other people's time, Rao says. “A focus on speed creates time poverty within organizations. And whenever people encounter time hunger, good people can easily do bad things.”
In contrast, when done well, friction modification can benefit the entire organization. For example, within two years of AstraZeneca starting a simplification drive, he saved 2 million hours and reinvested that time into improving drug trials and customer service. Subramanian and the AstraZeneca team were then able to proceed with the final act of frictional correction. They left the never-ending streamlining task to individual departments and functions and completely disbanded the Simplification Center. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
