The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 561: Bob Sutton - How Smart Leaders Make The Right Things Easier and The Wrong Things Harder (The Friction Project)

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Order our new book, The Score That Matters, now!  https://amzn.to/41zFYku Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence: Curiosity (ask lots of questions) Willingness to try something new Compassion - Assume you don't know others' struggles  Bob worked with Ed Catmull (Pixar) He was one of the best at combining curiosity, willingness to try new things, and having compassion for people Good Boss vs. Bad Boss Good bosses ask lots of questions and then make the call (John Hennessey, Stanford President)  The Jumbo Grocery Stores in Holland created "slow lanes" for those who wanted to talk… They didn't want efficiency or speed, they wanted a conversation. It's a good reminder that sometimes we should slow down and enjoy our surroundings and the people we're with… Curiosity and Compassion are skills we can build. Take the experiment where they counted the number of questions versus statements and your talking time. Surround yourself with people who will give you direct feedback about your level of curiosity and compassion… When conversing with someone else, how often are you asking questions versus talking about yourself? Think about that… It's not always right to be efficient… Bob shared the Jerry Seinfeld story… The network was considering bringing in McKinsey to help Jerry become more efficient when making his show. He asked, "Are they funny?" They said, no that's not what they do. And he said, "Then I don't need them." It's not always supposed to be efficient. Sometimes, the hard way is the right way… To get the best result, it usually is. Some things Bob believes (we should all post an essay about what we believe): Indifference is as important as passion. The best leaders know what it feels like to work for them. They overcome the urge to focus attention on powerful superiors rather than their followers The best leaders think and act as trustees of their employees' and customers' time. They are "friction fixers" who hold themselves and others responsible for making the right things easier and the wrong things harder. That might mean, for example, reducing friction by eliminating and revamping meetings. "Am I a success or a failure?" is not useful. It is better to ask "What am I learning." Noam Bardin (from Waze) Laszlo Bock - For hiring, "If you need to interview someone more than 4 times, then you must get written approval." This helped speed up the process. One of the roles of the leader is to be the editor-in-chief. Great leaders are great communicators. You must become a good writer and speaker if you want to lead.  Life/Career advice: Seek variation each day A chief of staff job could lead to big things (if you work for the right person) Be kind

Welcome to The Learning Leader Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com to pre-order our new book, The Score That Matters. Once you're there, you will find pre-order bonuses to take advantage of. If you were curious to learn about why a strong purpose beats a good. plan. Why being the greatest is a mirage. How to navigate the tricky art of building trust. How to fight the poison of comparison. Why and how to create your ethos, then I think you're

going to love our new book, The Score That Matters. Go to learningleader.com to order it now. Now on to tonight's featured leader, the great Bob Sutton, is a legend and organizational psychologist, Stanford, Professor, and New York Times bestselling author of many books, including Scaling Up Excellence, Good Boss, Bad Boss, and most recently, The Friction Project. During this conversation, we discuss why leaders should always be early to meetings, why friction is both terrible and wonderful, when to slow down and when to speed up, And Bob shares a story about what Ed Catmull learned from working with Steve Jobs for 26 years that helped him make Pixar into the company they are today.

This one is so good. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy Bob Sutton. All right, Bob Sutton. It's so good to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. It's great to be here, Ryan. I'm excited to talk. You showed up early.

I showed up early. Why is it important to be early? Well, there's two reasons it's important to be early. One is that I think it's considerate of other people. The other thing is that when you show up early, good things happen because you learn things that you wouldn't know otherwise and get opportunities. And we were just talking before,

one of my favorite course assistants ever, Bryce Marion. He was a soccer player in the Stanford soccer team. They won the Nationals three out of four times. He always got there early. So I hired him as a course assistant. And he was the kind of guy when the pandemic hit, and we had a switch in one week from being 70 students in class to 70 students virtual. No complaints. Just ground it out. He was awesome.

So maybe that's a little bit of a story. So he created an opportunity for himself just by showing up early to your class. Yeah, and just being a great guy, too. He's just wonderful. He's actually working at venture capital for him now. So he's doing pretty good. It is interesting, Bob, that I find people that regularly show up early. Seth Godin's another one who always shows up early.

I've recorded them many times. I'm sure you're probably friends with Seth. Always early, no matter what. And I found that people who do that to be kind and compassionate and thoughtful and people that I want to hang out with. It's weird how that works. There's also a personality thing. My mother always, I was early everywhere. So it's just how I was raised.

Me too. I see definitely from high school. football coaches. Even if you were a little bit early, you were late. So you had to be really early every single day. And it's funny, my family, my wife and children make fun of me about this all the time. Because if whatever it is, if I'm driving or I'm in charge, they're like, oh, we're going to go way earlier than we were if, if mom or somebody else. Yeah, yeah, I resemble that remark. I mean, wife and three adult kids, yes. I'm curious, man. So you have done an amazing amount of research in teaching and writing and sharing in your career. And because of all of your

great work, you are surrounded by some of the most effective leaders ever. When you think about those who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time, what are some of the things those people have in common? Boy, that's a tough question. But I think the thing that if I was going to pick one thing, or two things, it's a combination of kind of curiosity. and compassion. So they're always curious about learning more and more, and they have amazing compassion for the people they lead. I'll name one. She's one of my favorite people. Her name is Bonnie Simi. She's currently head of HR and airport operations at a crazy company called Jobi Aviation. They've got about $2 billion in venture capital, and they're designing these little, they actually have

prototype little planes that take off like a helicopter and then the engines go forward. And six-seaters, if you want to do like a 120-mile trip, you get near Uber, you go to a local airport. And instead of, for us, we're going like from San Francisco to Sacramento. So Bonnie is amazing. So three-time Olympian and a luge, for starters, almost made it in the bobsled when she was almost 40. And she was a pilot, a United pilot, then a jet blue pilot. But she quit United for and moved to JetBlue for twice the work and half the pay because

she couldn't stand how bad United was just as an employer and how they treated people. And eventually she became head of talent at JetBlue and the head of JetBlue Ventures. And now she's got this crazy job being, she's doing two things. She's heading HR. This company's growing like crazy. And they've got to get the plane certified to take off at airports and stuff like that. So she's got to hire hundreds of pilots. But Bonnie is the kind of.

person who, and I've known her for about 20 years now, it's always, she's always curious. She always wants to try something new. And that's, just as an example, that when she was at JetBlue, they had problems with airport operations. She went back and got a second master's at Stanford to learn about operations. She already had one from Stanford. She was a undergraduate, too. And then she got curious about venture capital.

And the reason that she became a pilot was when she was a Stanford undergraduate, she saw these airplanes and went to the Palo Alto Airport and just started hanging out and started flying planes. And she's just one of those people. People who work for her, she's just like a mama bear. So she's great. And then the other person who I know pretty well and, for your, Ed Catmill of Creativity Incorporated, we got to know him pretty well when Hagi Rao and I, when we were working on our last book on scaling up excellence. And he's also quoted in the current book, The Friction Project. The amazing thing about Ed, a lot of, leaders you meet, they talk really fast, and I'm a fast talker. You go and you meet with Ed,

you ask him a question, there's always silence, he puts his head down, and then he gives you answers you can't believe. Ed, for your listeners who don't know, he is co-founder of Pixar. He worked with Steve Jobs for 26 years, and he had this vision when he was like in high school that he would make movies with computers. And he did a pretty good job at Pixar. And there was about 15 years of trial and error before they actually figured out they were going to be a company that made movies, by the way. They thought that at one point they were going to be like a technology company for medical devices and for medical stuff. But Ed is just that kind of person. He has great compassion for people.

And he always wants to learn something new. And as I said, somebody always stops and doesn't particularly believe in efficiency, by the way, which is get, that gets us to something. Part of the new book. I know. I am curious, are those two skills, and I'll call them skills, are those two things that we can learn? Can we learn to be more curious? Can we learn and develop our skill to be more compassion? Oh, I love that. Well, let's start with curiosity. So to me, curiosity and some of this is growth mindset type stuff. Some of it is curiosity is when you don't know something, you don't know how to do something, you put yourself in a position where you're going to fail.

And so I think of one of my former PhD students, her name is Liz Gerber. She started something called Design for America and remarkably creative person and is a leader at Northwestern University now. And so when she was my PhD student every quarter, she would take a class in something she was incompetent at, wind surfing. One thing, improv, which actually she subsequently got quite good at, drawing, all the sort of, those three things alone just scare the heck out of me. I know how to windsurf, but the other two, drawing and improv, that's putting yourself out there. And to me, that's how you do it is, if you're always comfortable, something's wrong. And to me, that's what good leaders do. And then the compassion, to me, that's always assuming that you don't know other

people's struggle and in listening more. I think of, well, what, Another leader that I've found, I learned a lot about how to be more compassionate from is my friend David Kelly who founded IDO and founded something called the Stanford D-School where we teach design at Stanford both very successful. And one thing that David always does is when you go and you talk to them, most leaders talk a lot about themselves. And I've learned a lot from David, a lot of us who have been known him for some 25 years. And he almost always just asks a lot of questions about how you're doing and what you need.

and how you're feeling. I think that I learned, and I'm not saying I'm a great leader, but I think I learned a lot about compassion from David. And Bonnie Simmy's the same way. Bonnie always wants to know what's going on with you and what your current struggles are rather than assuming that she knows how you feel and what you need.

So you do think it's something we can all work on to get better. Let's say somebody's like, they're listening right now, Bob, and they go, interesting. Am I curious and compassionate enough? Am I one to, do I have the qualities to sustain excellence, to lead my business or whatever as I'm leading.

What are some ways that you can become more curious and more compassion? Oh, boy. You're asking me stuff. You're forcing me to actually think. I'll take a real simple one for leaders. This actually is pretty systematic. One of the things that we found in our teaching with startup leaders is that, especially young folks who've never led before,

and this is also people who have had their first management job or their second management job, which I know a lot of your listeners fall into that category is, and we do the systematically in our classes. What we do is we have them have like an observer. Sometimes it's our students, sometimes it's somebody they trust. And what we have them do is we go to meetings with them and assess the portion of questions they ask versus statements they make. Oh. And talking time and then do a qualitative assessment of the energy in the group. Just as a little example, and this was a startup, one startup CEO we knew who was having some trouble, our students assess that.

And essentially, he was talking about 80 or 90% of the time and asked virtually no questions. He just made statements. And just in 15-minute stand-up, you could see people looking at their feet getting bored. When they start looking at their phones, you're in trouble. and they'd start looking at their phones and everything. And our students help him so he'd talk less, he'd ask more questions, and he'd make fewer statements. And he'd also, there's that thing that I've learned to do as an old teacher

as I look at my students, and when I see them starting to lose energy no matter what the plan is, I stop and ask a question. It usually works. It doesn't always work. But we've all been part of an audience when the audience starts to drift away. So that's a similar thing. But that's just one thing because to me, that's curiosity, asking questions. And you learn more when you're listening.

And it's also compassion because you're not boring people. So it's having some compassion. But that's just a little thing. But it's just a little technique that we've used intermittently in coaching leaders, for example. Well, a couple things. It is another reminder that the people we intentionally surround ourselves, with those that's huge that you are who your kitchen cabinet whether it's your head beside behind as i've written about the people ahead of you behind you people beside you people behind you like

being very intentional about those people that they can give you tell you the truth that's everything i think that's big and then taking the feedback seriously and actually taking action on it as opposed to saying oh no you're wrong like i'm the leader i'm supposed to make statements right well i think about bob i don't know about you the best mentor the best teachers, the best coaches I've had. They certainly, yes, they were directive and they let me know at times what I need to do, especially the coaches I'm thinking of when I played sports. But they also were so good at asking questions and genuinely caring for what I was saying.

Not like the, oh, I'm supposed to ask questions. I'm not really listening, but I'll do it. And so I always urge people like, think about the greatest boss. And you've written books about this too. Your greatest bosses and your worst bosses, the greatest ones probably asked questions. about you and genuinely cared and listened to what you had to say versus the bad ones were like, here's the number, hit the number, let's go, what are we doing, quit messing around. And I know, and you're studying good bosses and bad bosses that I have to believe that's part of it as well.

Yeah, so it is interesting to talk about this. So this is something, so the, what was it, the beginning of 20, 23. I published a piece in Harvard Business Review with Lindy Greer was the lead author, and it's really her research. I just helped with some of the writing and ideas. development and Lindy's got this stream of research that is really relevant here because her perspective is that the best leaders and the question is is do you have a flatter or a tall organization or do you delegate or not? Her answer is yes. That what the best leaders do, and this certainly describes the best leaders I've worked with, is they flatten or delegate or act compassionate. So let's ask everybody's doing. They'll brainstorm. But then when it's time to make a decision,

They make a decision and it's completely clear what the decision is and they'll cut off conversation and they'll say it's time to go. And if I would pick the best leader, maybe the best leader I've ever dealt with in that is John Hennessy, who was president of Stanford University, a very unusual university president, he started a couple companies. He's been the lead board member of Google slash Alphabet since they founded. He's got a pretty good side gig. He's gotten pretty rich doing that.

Wow, I never heard of this guy, really? He's got the best selling textbook in computer science, too. He's amazing. He's just John Hennessy? John Hennessy, he's amazing. And John Hennessy, I first met him when he was our dean in engineering, and he worked up the hierarchy and became president really quickly because he was so good. John Hennessy's the kind of guy who he'll ask you, who gets your idea, he'll argue with you.

But then he's famous for the handwave. When you see the hand wave, that means, shut up. made a decision. And the thing I loved about John being my dean and then present, he probably had about the same hit rate for good versus bad decisions as other leaders I've dealt with. But it was really clear when he was listening. He'd make decisions really fast. Computer science zero and one. That's the kind of guy he was. He was either in the listening mode. And when he made a decision, it was clear. He always followed through and he made him really fast. And it's fast good though. It's fast. You want to fast? What we can just can talk about?

that because in in okay we do talk about times when fast is bad and and he might have aired on this this is silicon valley sickness of being a little bit too fast but on the whole i think he was pretty good about knowing like nobody's perfect there some people are too fast and some people are too slow it if you have more than one child you have to give them opposite advice you know talk more or less or something but yeah we should talk about speak well i would rather have somebody on the whole there's always exceptions i'd rather have somebody who's too fast than too slow low. I like the fast rovers. I like the fast walkers. It's funny. My friend Garron Stokes always talks about like, I got to set the pace as the leader. And I'm a fast, I'm the fastest

walker. Like, we're going. Like, we're going. And I think there is something to be said for that. While you're probably, like, we're all going to make mistakes. But I'd rather, they always, in football, they always say, like, if you're going to make a mistake, make it going a hundred miles an hour. Like everything you got, as opposed to making a mistake saying, oh, I'm not sure. I think that relates to leadership and decision making as well. Well, well, well, I was to talk a little bit about our new book, The Friction Project. One of the main ideas in that book, and we talk about what to make hard and what to make easy, but another way to think about it, and this is something that we've written about in the book

and we write about a lot of other places, is we think of leadership as you've got the gas and the brake. Yeah. And the greatest leaders, and it's hard, this is like easy to say, but it's hard. The greatest leaders know when to hit the gas and when to hit the brakes and how to do it. And so that's friction. It's like, how do you remove obstacles that make it hard for people to do everything from implement a decision?

This is an amazing thing that we've been, that we're just starting a case study. And it is in the book. And I can't believe I'm saying this. But the organization I know that might have made the biggest progress. There's another one too. The biggest progress in terms of making the right things easy and faster is the California Department Motor Vehicles. You can't believe it.

The DMV. Really? So I had a great experience at the Department of Motor Vehicles. It's in the book where I thought it was going to be there all morning. And they got me in and out

in 20 minutes. With 50 people in line, they did triage. They told me what line to go to. They gave me a form to fill out. I went to like five windows and I was in and out so fast I couldn't believe it.

So now, Huggy Round, my co-author and I just, this just happened on a couple days ago. We're talking to head of the Department of Motor Vehicles, and they see themselves, and this is the main idea of our book, is being trustees of California residents' time to not waste our time. So there's this thing that's called Real ID, which is going to be required throughout the United States in a couple of years, and they change the process, the average process, and you have to go into

the DMV to make a web signature. There's all sorts of things they've moved to online that's easy, but they've moved it from 28 to 8 minutes by just following people and trying to reduce the time. So I can't believe that I'm celebrating the California DMV, but they see themselves as trustees of others' time. So that's making something faster

that we want that to be as efficient as possible. And I can't believe that, and by the way, I hope it'll get in trouble. What I compare Comcast unfavorably to them because Comcast is much more difficult. But in terms of going slow, we talk a lot about going slow. And I can talk about some of the key times when going slow matters, but we've got like a whole bunch of examples.

When does going slow matter most? Two or three times. One is when things are screwed up, people are confused and they don't know what to do. And by the way, you have enough time so that if you don't act quickly, there's some situations where the ship's going to sink or somebody's going to die, then you don't stand around and talk about what we do. You've got to act probably. But just to give you an example, one of our favorite examples in the book, this guy named Nome Barden. Nome Barden started a company called Waze.

A lot of your listeners may use Ways navigation software. That started as a small Israeli company. And there was a point about 2011 where they got $30 million in venture capital. And when the venture capitalists give you money, they want you to do two things. They want you to hire a bunch of people and do a bunch of product development. But Nome figured out that when people, when people downloaded Waze software, a month later, none of them were using it because it was so screwed up and so hard to use. So hit the brakes, the gas and the brakes analogy, and said, we're not going to do any product development or any hiring until we figure out what's wrong. And they just spent like six weeks figuring out what was wrong. And they made the, he called the most important thing list. They figured out what was wrong and they started working their way down. And to me, that's an example of when things are messed up, you hit the breaks. The other time, there's two other times I think what's especially important to slow down.

Another time is creative work. There might be ways to make it less inefficient. But if I look at everything from all the conversations we had over the years with Pixar's Ed Catmill, he said, we don't talk about efficiency. We know it's a messy, confusing process and we iterate until it's right. And just as an example, Ratatouille, a movie that many of your listeners may have seen, Well, Ratatouille went along for more than a year with a director who wasn't doing a very good job. And it's hard to direct a Pixar movie. It's not even a criticism. So Ed got rid of the director, started all over again with a guy named Brad Bird of the Incredibles fame, and it became a great movie.

But that was the kind of thing that they weren't looking for efficiency. And another example, and we quote him in the book is, my favorite Harvard Business Review interview ever, was Harvard Business Review Interviews, Seinfeld, which sounds like the most unlikely thing I've ever seen in my life. And there's one point where they ask him if Jerry Seinfeld, if McKinsey could make the process of developing each episode more efficient. Are they funny? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got like, they said, are they funny? No, he didn't know who McKinsey was. I love, I just love he's like, is McKinsey funny?

No, he goes, no, but they are not funny. I worked with them as a client for years. They have some nice people, but they're in. Not very many of them are funny. But his argument was it the hard way is the right way. And if you look at research on what leads to really creative work, and there's a woman named Theresa Mablay who studied creativity for years at Harvard Business School, and she says once people start hurrying, even if they think they're more creative,

that's when they tend to make big mistakes. And they tend to wear people out and not be as creative. And the other thing, then we all know this about creativity is mostly a function of how many failures you have and how quickly you kill them and learn for the next one. So there's a little bit of quickness. It's like killing bad ideas and moving on to the next one. But then the number of prototypes that I see are required for people to be effective is just unbelievable. That's just the nature of the beast.

It's an efficient process. I'm so glad you brought that up, Bob, because it's funny how all this, like so many people say, I'm not creative like you or I don't have that creativity. And I go, well, none of us really have it. The problem is people compare their first drafts to other people's final drafts. And if you were able to compare to the first draft of somebody else, you would feel a lot better. Like I actually ask authors that I've had on the show, could you actually send me your proposal or your very first draft of the idea of the book or whatever the thing is?

Because it's inspiring for me to see the early work and the messiness and all of the crazy red ink and edits over everything. And it's like, oh, they're a human too. It takes work in second, third, fourth, fifth draft, multiple editors. There's only so, there's so few people who their first draft is just perfect. I'm sure there's fine. But so few. Well, just to double click on what you're talking about, the Friction Project, which we worked on. It says seven years in the book, but now it's been eight years.

So it'd really be eight years. And about two or three years ago, we got to the point we're writing a proposal. and so I have a really good literary agent. Her name is Christy Fletcher, and she has an age. It works for her name Sarah Fuentes. We spent a year before we set the proposal out for bid. And the book was actually for about six months called The Shit Fixers. And the shit fixers came from a brainstorming session

with the famous Adam Grant, who I understand has been on your show. And I've known Adam since even before he was famous. And he's always been smart and charming. He's just such a lovely guy. So Adam and I are having this whole brainstorming session about what we're going to call the book. And we get so excited, I don't remember this is idea or my idea, about the shit fixers. Yeah, that's what we're going to call it. So for six months, it was called the shit fixers.

But it's a great term. But I don't know what the shit fixers mean. The book really is about friction. We spent seven years studying what to make hard and what to make easy. And there's all kinds of shit you can fix it. And that was the, and Sarah eventually said, you know, I don't know how to carry a narrative about the shit fixtures. I can carry a narrative about leaders, our trustees of others' time. Their job is to forget what to make hard and what to make easy and how to do it.

So, yeah, that went on for months. That's just the way it is in the creative process. And by the way, just since you're a sports guy, we do know that the most creative people are the people having the most misses. Didn't Michael Jordan miss more shots than anybody else in basketball history? Do I know that? Oh, yeah. There's a famous that he, a quote from him, the reason why he wins is because he's taken, I've been trusted to take the final shot and fill in the Blake of the number of

times and I've missed whatever and that is why I win. Adam Grand has said this on this very podcast. It's the most creative people. It's not necessarily a quality game. It's a quantity game. They have the most ideas and of those. There's a lot that are horrible, but every once and a while they're good. This is why stand-up comedians like Seinfeld and others go to the small comedy clubs like Dave Chappelle here in Dayton, Ohio would use to go to Wiley's Comedy club where I would go see him and he would just drop in for 30 minutes. And he said, Hey, I'm just here to work on stuff. And there's 50 us, 50 of us in this room.

Wow. Surprise. I'm here to work. And some of it wouldn't be good. It wouldn't be good. Now, you're still, it's Dave Chappelle. So it's pretty awesome. But it's to me, that's the case for all of us for everything we do, not just writing

jokes or making movies or writing a book. It's in leadership. I think that's why we have to have ideas. journals. That's why all leaders should have a writing practice to get the thoughts out of their mind onto the page. You've got to get it out there in order to find the good nuggets. It just takes a while. And I think it takes consistent effort to do it in order to find what's going to work for you. So one other study that's really cool here that's related to this is there's this guy named Justin Berg. He's a Stanford professor. And he did a large-scale study of like just

about every music artist who'd ever lived. You'd study. He's actually an Adam Grant student, since we're talking about Adam, PhD student. And so what Justin found was he found that the one-hit wonders, the people who had one hit early in their career, they tended, so early in your career you had one hit and you get typecast as that's like your song, those people, those artists don't do as well, and the Beatles are an example, as the ones who spend a few years not quite being popular in trying out different styles and different cells. The famous thing was the Beatles spent in Hamburg, Germany. They spent more than a year just playing songs and experimenting and trying to figure out who they were.

But this idea of giving time to experiment without being in the spotlight too much is really important. And my adult daughter is telling me that the story about Taylor Swift is very similar to, that she's experimented before she was really famous. and now she has different styles and stuff. So anyway, so that's like another example of, you're not instantly talented in following the Adam Grant playbook, that people almost always can get better at everything they're doing. And the greatest people, it takes a while.

Well, Ed Catmill experimented with variations of Pixar for some 15 or 20 years before they became the modern Pixar that made Steve Jobs a billionaire for the first time. So there's other examples of that, too. Another example, and let's get to your book for the Friction Project, how smart leaders make the right things easier and the wrong things harder. Google's former HR chief, Laslo Bach, who's also written good books. How did he use good friction to reduce bad friction in their Google interviews?

Oh, this is, so Laslo, it's when I just exchanged email. Laslo 10 minutes ago, he's an amazing guy. So Laslo was head of what they call people operations. He essentially, what is the executive vice president of HR at Google for about seven or eight years. And so he gets there. And there's a tradition which goes way back to what Larry Page and Sergey Brin did when, in the very earliest days, when they hired the first 40 or 50 people, which is they just interview the heck out of them. And they were famous at the Stanford Computer Science Department.

I had eight Google interviews and they still haven't made a decision. Or I had 12 Google interviews and they didn't give me the job. So anyway, so that tradition continued. And when Laszlo got there, they're now a large, complex organization. He said, we do eight, 10, 12. And he added this when I was fact-checking as many as 25 interviews before making a decision. And you think of the effect of that, not only upsetting candidates, but the number of interviews you have to schedule and do. Talk about friction.

So what Laslo did is he came up with a simple rule, which is that if you have to do more than four interviews, you get written. permission from me. That was basically, and he said, and he wrote back to me, that the number of interviews plummeted dramatically, and he said he learned something, and this is something about leadership. Sometimes I hate to say this, but it's true, that having authority can be a really good thing or a really bad thing, and he realized the power of being an executive vice president. Another example that I think all of us can relate to, as I don't, all of us who especially are in large complex organizations. I'm at Stanford. My wife was CEO of the Girl Scouts of Northern California for 15 years. She had this issue too. That what happens is we're in this world

where everybody has a pet software platform. I guess we could have recorded this on like 15 different video platforms. I think I've used them all recently. And in this idea of just this proliferation of the number of apps we have to deal with. And one of the reasons it happens is that almost all of us have the power and authority in big organizations to buy one more software platform on a credit card. And in fact, that's even how software companies do their pricing is to have it below corporate approval rates. So one of the people, a head of a CTO that my co-author, Paul Leonardi, got to know,

this guy was going crazy with the credit card problem. And what he did is he put in a simple rule, which was that whenever you buy some new software, we stop your payment and you have to have written justification and approval from CTO. Now, this is very draconian. They went from 55 to 20 apps in six months. And just as an example, they were paying for four different versions of Slack and only had to pay for one. In addition, the fact they had too many different sort of video platforms, for example. But the point that we're making it, the headline is that sometimes you can use good friction to get rid of bad friction.

Oh, gotcha. And Laslo did this, too. I love this phrase that you use in the book, jargon monoxide. And God, I have the thought bubbles of envisioning some leaders I've worked for in my past. Bob, I'm sure you do too. But what's jargon monoxide and what should we say instead? Well, jargon monoxide.

Well, to us, that's just a fun label for language that is hollow, incomprehensible, confusing. And to us, maybe the sort of the, and we talk about different kinds of jargon monoxide in the book, and I'll talk about a couple of them. But like the challenge when you're a leader, one of the roles of a leader, we haven't talked about this yet. And I stole this from my friend Michael Deering, who was, he was a leader in all sorts of big companies, eBay, retail stores, and he actually worked at Disney too. So it's been a middle manager in lots of different companies.

and then eventually became a venture capitalist, actually, and he's funded more than 200 companies. Harry's Razors, for example, master class, things like that. Anyway, so Michael has this perspective. I taught with him at Sanford for a few years that the best leaders are editors-in-chief of the language, of the process that happens. And from a friction fighter, I really like that idea.

And we were just talking about that for writing how many different drafts have to be done in editing. And so to move to the jargon monoxide, to me, what great leaders do is they're really mindful about the kind of language that people use in the organization. So to use unnecessary jargon. There's some really interesting studies in the medical field that when doctors talk to patients in simple language, so just a real simple ones is saying, instead of say myocardial infraction, which I can barely say, they say, you, at risk of a heart attack, just simple things like that, that people are much more likely to trust their doctors and to comply with medical regime. If I was going to pick, so that's just, we call that, we just call that in-group language or tribalism and stuff like that, that happens between silos.

And that causes problems in organizations because you can't communicate people, you can't understand what they're saying. But if I was going to pick one, which may annoy some of your listeners, my, one of the more troubling forms of jargon monoxide is we call it the jargon mishmash syndrome. And to steal some ideas from Nobel Prize winner, Danny Kahneman talks about the notion that some of the most difficult language to understand is are things that are a random scatter of ideas. That means so many different things to so many different people, nobody can figure out what to do. and my nomination for jargon mishmash is the word agile. And the word agile used to really mean something. Agile software development methods really were specific,

but people apply agile to absolutely everything. And so there was a great speech, which we talk about in the book, that was given by an Australian consultant, and he was very proud of himself, agile consultant, that he could identify in 40 minutes, 40 different types of agile. Everything from like holocracy was one of them. Designed thinking was actually for some

reason another kind of agile and a whole bunch of stuff I never heard of. And if something is 40 different things to 40 different people, to me it means nothing. That's all. So one of the problems with words is that they start out meaning something and then everybody reinvents it their own flavor and that's how many management movements fade into nothing. is that they start out meaning something and pretty soon they mean something different to everybody else. This made me think, Bob, one of the ones that I would love to remove. And I don't know if this is carbon

monoxide. You tell me, so you nominated one. I'm going to nominate one. And mine's a little more broad. I cannot stand acronyms within companies. I hate acronyms. They should just eliminate every acronym. It hurts all of the new people. Yeah. They're embarrassed that they don't know what the acronym is, so they don't ask and they just go on for months and sometimes years not knowing what that internal acronym. I don't know why we don't just eliminate acronyms. Can you help me out with that one? Well, I could give you the, there's actually evidence, there's actually research on this.

So there are some times where people in the in group, acronyms actually help them because they can communicate really quickly in a crisis. So just to go back to my myocardial infraction, the doctor says to the nurse, stat, am I? That means the patient's having a heart attack. We got to move fast. So I think that's good, even if I don't know what that means. I don't know. Is it take that long to say they're having a heart attack?

Does it take that long? There is evidence that as teams, those two kinds of set, as teams start maturing, when they start using more shorthand, they actually do communicate more efficiently. But then there's follow-on studies, to your point, when they add a third, person to the duo who has created their own secret language, two things happen. The group slow down and they start fighting. Okay, Bob, I'm telling you, man. Get rid of them. You don't need it. It doesn't take that long to say they're having a heart attack. Just say it. I don't know. I know I'm a little over the line here, but I actually moved from, I was a director level job, and I moved to our

sister company, same parent company, but different industry. And I'm a VP now of sales, It's like leading leaders and their leaders above me and the leaders below me. And they're using so many acronyms. And I was embarrassed. I didn't know what to say. I was like, so I just started saying, I don't know what that means. What does that mean? In their world, it was like the most basic thing ever.

They couldn't believe that I didn't know what it was. I'm like, how would I know? I haven't been here. I haven't been in this industry at all. And I just hated it. And so I just said, can we just stop using acronyms? But it was really hard. It was an uphill battle, man.

I'm going to tell you. Well, so to give you. an example of when this gets at its worst is that one of the CEOs that we interviewed for the book. Yeah. She had hired somebody to be her COO who was a management consultant and they figured out had never had like a real leadership job. She just, the CEOO had just advised companies. CIO is a chief operating officer, by the way.

Oh, thank you for saying. Ah, good for you. Go ahead. So she kept using all of this jargon, value. and all this sort of synergies is the classic one. And so what happened was there was this really compulsive member of the CEO's staff who started writing down every word she used and made a dictionary. Because nobody else in this organization understand what this woman was saying and basically forced her to define it or had her stop using it. And two things happened is that the COO's language did get better.

When they figured out the value she was adding, they realized it was just a bunch of jargon and she couldn't get anything done. And she ended up, well, let's just say being removed and finding another job. So it was one of those things that, if you will, I guess that's death by jargon monoxide or at least firing by jargon monoxide. But I thought that that's exactly what happened in that organization is that they forced this woman to say, what does this mean and what does this mean for what we are supposed to do? That's why I think having a writing practice is useful for leaders. I think of like Morgan Housel and Tim Urban, Bob Sutton, Adam Grants, good too. Oh, Adam's amazing. People who have done the work, I think the best writers in the world, Bob, do a great job of making their readers feel much smarter after having read their work versus the writers who are certainly smart enough to use these huge words that we don't all understand, that we have to use a dictionary to look up.

And those writers make me feel dumber versus the guys like you and Tim and Morgan and these amazing. writers who they're certainly you guys are all certainly smart enough to write at a level like there but you do it in a way you write in a way that makes it I think so entertaining and it makes me feel smarter I think that's something we should all aspire for but the only way I think to get there is to do it a lot and that's why I think all leaders should have some form of a writing practice what do you think right yeah I think that's right and the the company I would point to that really prides themselves in this, and you probably have heard this, is Amazon really insists that

the way a meeting works is that everybody writes a short memo, and you start to, and they give you classes and how to write. So one friend of mine who was an executive vice president, she got hired from another company, and by the way, she has a PhD, so she should know how to write, although maybe that's a disadvantage. She said that when she got hired, they gave her training and taught her how to write. That's awesome. To prepare for a meeting. And so this idea that rather than preparing PowerPoint for a meeting, you prepare sentences and paragraphs, that's, I think, one of the competitive advantages that Amazon has. And this is consistent with your notion that good writers are made and not born, that this like 45-year-old executive vice president who thought she could communicate

pretty clearly and she can't communicate quite clearly. She had a writing course from Amazon that she said the meetings were so much better compared to where people present PowerPoint. there was so much depth of understanding and untangling ideas, and plus use people's ideas more efficiently. So that's both writing and talking. I also, on the simplicity, one of the most amazing interactions I've ever seen, there's a guy named Haso Platner. He founded the big software company SAP. And we love Hossoplatner at Stanford because he donated $35 million to start the Stanford Design School. So we therefore think he's a pretty good guy. And I remember one of the reasons he donated the money is he met David Kelly, the founder of IDO. And David Kelly speaks so

simple, simply, it's just amazing. One syllable words, really simple ideas. And even things like the way that he describes his leadership is, and he's got a little picture he uses, he said he thinks of leadership being about two things, just love and money. So it's a heart and a dollar sign, okay? And he said, so what I think about it, the way I think about it, is that I have to switch back and forth, which is that there's times when I've got to focus my team on making money, on hitting deadlines, but then they start getting worn out,

and then I go into the love period. He literally has got just a picture, a dollar sign in a heart, and that's how he thinks of himself as running an organization. He's done pretty well. So anyways, I'm watching this interaction between him and Haso Plattner, and Haso finally looks at David and says, you know what I like about you? He says, everybody talks me all day.

I can't understand what the heck. they're saying, I understand every word you're saying. And I thought that was pretty cool. Yep. I 100% with you. I think we all should. The best of the best are smart enough to make their message understandable for others. I think it takes a lot of work. I know from writing books, like my editors will say you need to simplify that page or that paragraph. And I'm so grateful for them. You're right after going through it. And I think all leaders would be better than. I'm going to Shift real quick, though, Bob, this is gone by really fast. I was reading the story about the jumbo grocery stores in Holland.

And this is, I'll tee it up and then you tell it. But this is about like why slowing down to focus on the power of caring can build organizations that drive out bad friction, like the slow lanes at jumbo grocery stores in Holland. What's that all about? So let's back up slightly. So we were talking about when to go slow. There's some really cool academic research on savoring. on how there are some things in life that to be crass

we're all dead in the end and there are some things in life that are just lovely to slow down and enjoy the good things in life a slow enjoyable meal a lovely conversation a walk through the woods just we went for a walk

my wife and I went for a walk on the beach in California and we just sat there and watched sort of the birds for 20 minutes just things like that this idea that the good things in life need to be savored and jumbo grocery stores, which are the largest chain of grocery stores in Holland in the Netherlands. And there's a movement in the Netherlands to deal with loneliness and older people. And they did a prototype and experiment with a slow lane, not a fast lane, a slow lane. Or chat was another thing they called it, where the idea was that it's mostly older folks.

Instead of doing the, what is the self-checkout, you could stop and have a conversation with the clerk, and you knew that when you got in the line, that it's a slow one, and it works so well that they've scaled it out to 200 stores. And that to me is the exact opposite of efficiency. And yes, efficiency is great. I'm frankly, somebody wants to get the heck out of a grocery store as quickly as possible. But I don't have the same needs as people who want to sew down and talk. Although, when I have a bartender, I actually want the bartender to talk to me to tell you the truth. That's one of a good bartender is fun to talk to. And some Uber drivers are, it couldn't be the, I was in Mobile, Alabama and the Uber driver from England moved here to because of his wife and he told me all about

that he lived there 20 years all about the history because I'm like this sounds weird I'm in the deep south and this guy's an English accent still and I couldn't I actually didn't want I he dropped me off the airport right right want the ride to end I wanted to normally I just said a speech so I was tired but I just wanted to like usually like take a nap but it's funny man sometimes though it is cool to have those deep long form conversations with the Uber driver or Any of those people who have deep knowledge about a specific thing that you can tell they're passionate about? I get excited about that. It's funny how that works. Yeah, just about three weeks ago, I was in the Napa Valley and had an Uber driver,

who, by the way, apologized for being two minutes late. I've never heard that before. We're talking about being early. And he was a winemaker who was between gigs. He was really interested. I didn't want that because he'd do everything that was going. And all the gossip in Napa Valley and everything. That was really fun. But yeah, but to your point, that's this idea about saving. And again, I'm not saying that everything in life should be inefficient. But, and I think this takes us back to the main idea of the book, is that a lot of what a leader's job is to figure out when to go fast

and when to go slow. And it's funny, I hadn't thought about this in a while. David Kelly's dollar sign in heart, the dollar sign almost always was money, deadlines, you've got to go fast because clients, they want stuff, faster, better, cheaper. That's what they want. But then there's times where as people get burned out, and this is a related burnout thing, is good leaders figure out when it's not worthwhile adding one more project, having one more tighter

deadline. And I've even seen to go back to David Kelly where he will push back against longtime clients and saying, we could probably get it to you in a week. But, you know, my folks are really burned out. And you want to be, you want them to be here for a few years. You don't want them to go and quit for, go work for another company. I've even seen them, which is unusual to say it to clients that we have to treat our people well. So the good ones are here to serve you next time.

That's a long-term perspective. Wow. So Friction Project, we had a few more minutes, man. And this is amazing. I appreciate your style of writing you and Huggy's style of writing. And I'm curious, you've written books with others. Jeff Fever's been on this podcast before. What's it like writing with somebody else?

How is it better? How is it worse? Like, why do you choose to write? It is. So I don't know about other people's experiences, but I've had very few co-authors, maybe early in my career, where we played sort of tennis and went back and forth and revised one and other sentences. Almost always, there's one person who pretty much ends up writing most of the sentences

are revising them so it's all in the same style. And then there's one person who's more like the idea person. And with my two books with Jeff Fever, I was the person. person, sometimes I come with ideas, but it would be in his voice, even when I disagree with it, by the way, with Huggy. And this is where first and second author, I think, does come in with Huggy. For better or worse, I drive him absolutely crazy. I'm the really compulsive person. And to give you, like, an extreme, and Huggy did write some first drafts of parts of some chapters, but I'm so compulsive, I would rewrite every sentence, to be honest, because I'm so

compulsive. And he couldn't believe it. I would call him up and I'd want to have a 20-minute discussion about two or three words. And so to me, I think having one person whose voice it is makes it good end. And I won't name the book, but there was a book I reviewed for the Washington Post. And oh, I'll say it. It's noise by Danny Kahneman's the first author. And the reason And it's a great book with a great idea, but the reason I found it hard to read was every chapter sounded like somebody else's voice. And there was three co-authors. And so to me... You could tell. There was like dividing and conquering. Yes, yes. But I think a well-edited book, it comes through, it comes through seamlessly rather than a collection of readings from different

authors. But in terms of doing co-authors, I think there's almost always someone who, like, there's the idea of person and there's like the voice person. Yeah. And I find reading much better when it's in one person's voice. And with Faffer, I actually didn't even like his writing voice sometimes, but he writes so fast and he's so pushy I just gave up. One of the guests I've had on this show, Bob, that has created the most. I still get emails about that episode. I think it's over a year ago now to this day because it was so contentious.

And I loved it. I think we should have more conversations like that where we may not agree or disagree. In his case, it was more like, hey, I'm telling you about the reality. You're trying to tell you about the world as you wish it were. I'm telling you as it actually is. And it was fun to go back and forth with a guy like that. So I can only imagine what it was like writing a book with him. Oh, Jeff, he's a machist.

He's brilliant. And I still, he, this is an example for better, worse, my bestselling book is the no asshole rule. And Jeff doesn't, and Jeff said to me the first time he read, he said, I read that book. He said, I don't believe. And he said, the only chapter I like is the one on the virtues of assholes. He said the rest of it, I don't agree with. That's sort of Jeff and I. But what's that old line when two people always agree?

One of them is on Nesson. It's good stuff. No, I do think in getting serious for a second that having conversations with people who you, you're just different then or have different life experiences or see things from a different way and truly having an open mind to try to understand the world from their perspective, from what it was like growing up in their home with their family and their influences, I think that's a good thing for people to regularly do. If you're only hanging out where everyone completely agrees,

that is a great recipe for group think and not a lot of progress. I think if we're having regular dialogue with people that are different, that's a good thing. Yeah, and just to bring in the academic evidence, there's very good research that the best teams disagree in an atmosphere of mutual respect as opposed to everybody telling how wonderful they are or also arguing because you hate people is also bad too. So there has to be that mutual respect.

Yeah, for sure. One more, Bob, before we run, you're around students all the time. So this question actually probably happens on a regular basis. Let's say you're meeting with someone who is earlier in their career, maybe early to mid-20s. And they don't necessarily know exactly what they want to do other than the fact that they want to leave a positive dent

in the world. They want to be in service of others. They want to do great things, but they're not sure what they want to do. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? Oh, boy. My first one, which is, like, is that looking for the job that is the most fun is probably not a very good thing to do early on? Because the jobs that you tend to learn the most or the jobs where there's a little bit of pain. And more generally, the kind of jobs, I think that that especially if your goal is to be a long-term leader as opposed to be an individual contributor. And I certainly respect that many people just want to be individual contributors. They want to write code.

They want to write novels. Some people want to be individual contributors. We want to be a leader. Being in a situation where you see a lot of variation, a lot of different people each day, and they're two completely different sorts of jobs. Although many of us bash sort of being a consultant of some kind, one advantage of being a consultant is you get to see, in a PWC, McKinsey, sort of pick your role, you get to see more leaders in action, both within your firm and in more different ways of living in a shorter period of time.

And the other kind of role, one of my students just got one of these in a big company that I really like for a first job, or early job, are chief of staff jobs. And the reason chief of staff jobs are so good is when you're a chief of staff, in an organization, you quickly learn all the politics. You see a wide range of people, both inside and outside the organization, just in terms and also you learn some tact, which I think I could have learned more tact early in my career. And to me, that's one of the most interesting sort of jobs for learning as much as possible. And the other thing is when you're a chief of staff or a senior executive, especially if they're

good, you get to see everything, everything that happens. So those are the kind of things that I think of. If you can be, and in some ways it's tacky to say it, but if you can be closer to the person in power and help them do stuff, you will learn a lot of stuff and see stuff that they forget you're there, which is good. Because you see them say stuff that maybe they're sorry they said later and so forth. But those are the two kinds of jobs. I think of what the general principle is to have a job where you get to meet lots of people inside and outside the organization and see them in action. And it's not always possible to do it, but those are the kind of jobs. that the students I know tend to learn the most and become great leaders too.

And that first point about the job is like, what's the most fun or enjoyable? My first job was a telephonic sales rep after I got done playing football after college, Bob. And I'm so grateful for that job because I experienced an amazing amount of rejection. I had to get very creative on how to get people to listen to what I had to say. I had very stretch goals. It was really hard. But every job I've had since then and everything I've done since then, it's benefited me that I had to go through that for years and actually ended up doing well and getting promoted into management and all that stuff. But the job was really tough, man.

It's made pretty much every other job since then seem easier. And so in a way, it's good that you start off with something that's hard and you persevere and fight through, find mentors, work on the weekends when you're young and you don't have any responsibilities. Do what you got to do to make it happen. And I think that's a really good piece of advice as well as I love the thought of a chief of staff rule if you can get one because then you're in the mix. Like you're in the middle of everything. And as you prove to the person you're working for that you can do it, you'll get more and more. And I bet you could even potentially create your own job beyond that because you're proving to that person that you can do the hard things and help the company. Yeah.

So one of my favorite chief of staff stories. I've had three or four students who have been chief of staff. And she was describing to me the conversation with the head. head of our organization. So they were having like a big annual award ceremony that all the top executives went to of who sat with whom and who got the power tables, who was in the back, who disliked one another, who he wanted to get to know better. It was, oh, and then the other thing, the spouses were invited. So there was all of this like knowledge about which spouse was difficult and you didn't want to be anywhere near them. She said the amount that she learned about

the firm politics was absolutely, and then she eventually moved it to more of like a line roll from that. And the amount of political in Fafor's term, the amount of knowledge she had about the political dynamics from that of the firm were absolutely amazing. So that's another thing that you learn is just how the politics work in an organization. Love it. Well, the new book's called, again, the Friction Project, how smart leaders make the right things easier and the wrong things harder. Bob, thank you so much for investing in time today. I highly recommend people read the book, read your other books as well. So much good stuff that you've published out there, even on LinkedIn and on your personal website, right, on the 17 things, I believe. Just reread that

again today. I like to update that. All super useful stuff, man. And again, appreciate you being here. I'd love to continue our dialogue. Oh, this is fabulous. It's great. I love your attitude towards leadership. The thing I like about talking with you is I do better with optimists than pessimists, and you have a fundamentally optimistic view of leadership that it can do good and everybody can get better. So I really like that point of view. Thank you. The feeling is mutual, man. I love your work. You've influenced me for a long time without even realizing it, so I'm just very great for you for you. And it's been cool to get a chance to talk with you today. Thank you. Lovely conversation. Have a great day. It is the end of the podcast club. If you're a member

of the end of the podcast club, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Bob Sutton. A few takeaways from my notes, the jumbo grocery stores in Holland created, quote, slow lanes for the people who just wanted to talk. They didn't want efficiency or speed. They wanted a conversation. I think this is a good reminder for us that sometimes we should slow down and enjoy our surroundings and the people we're with. Then curiosity and compassion are skills we can build. How about the experiment run where they counted the number of questions versus statements as well as the total time talking? I think there's a couple parts of this. One is to surround yourself with people who will give

you direct feedback about your level of curiosity and compassion so you can learn. As well as, think about when you're in conversations with friends, with colleagues, with others, how often are you asking questions versus talking about yourself? Really think about that. And then it's not always right to be efficient. Bob shared the Jerry Seinfeld story. The network was considering bringing in McKinsey to help Jerry become more efficient when making his TV show.

And Jerry asked simply, are they funny? They said, no, that's not what they do. And he said, then I don't need them. it's not always supposed to be efficient. Sometimes the hard way is the right way. To get the best result, I found it usually is. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two.

Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Bob Sutton. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you continue to go to Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen and you rate the show five stars, hopefully, and you write a thoughtful. review and by taking a few minutes to invest in this show and share it with others, you continually give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.