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The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder
Every organization is plagued by destructive friction—the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get anything done. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers,� so that teams and organizations don’t squander the zeal, damage the health, and throttle the creativity and productivity of good people—or burn through cash and other precious resources.
Sutton and Rao kick off the book by unpacking how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others� time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their help pyramid shows how friction fixers do their work, which ranges from reframing friction troubles they can’t fix right now so they feel less threatening to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams.
Sound familiar? Sutton and Rao are here to help. They wrap things up with lessons for leading your own friction project, including linking little things to big things; the power of civility, caring, and love for propelling designs and repairs; and embracing the mess that is an inevitable part of the process (while still trying to clean it up).
Sutton and Rao kick off the book by unpacking how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others� time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their help pyramid shows how friction fixers do their work, which ranges from reframing friction troubles they can’t fix right now so they feel less threatening to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams.
Sound familiar? Sutton and Rao are here to help. They wrap things up with lessons for leading your own friction project, including linking little things to big things; the power of civility, caring, and love for propelling designs and repairs; and embracing the mess that is an inevitable part of the process (while still trying to clean it up).
293 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 30, 2024
371 people are currently reading
5,617 people want to read
About the author
Robert I. Sutton
25books262followersRobert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and a Professor of Organizational Behavior, by courtesy, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Sutton studies innovation, leaders and bosses, evidence-based management, the links between knowledge and organizational action, and workplace civility. Sutton’s books include Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge into Action (with Jeffrey Pfeffer), and Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (also with Jeffrey Pfeffer). His most recent book is the New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. His next book, Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best � and Survive the Worst, which will be published in September 2010 by Business Plus.
Professor Sutton’s honors include the award for the best paper published in the Academy of Management Journal in 1989, the Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching, selection by Business 2.0 as a leading “management guru� in 2002, and the award for the best article published in the Academy of Management Review in 2005. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense was selected as the best business book of 2006 by the Toronto Globe and Mail. His latest book, The No Asshole Rule, won the Quill Award for the best business book of 2007. Sutton was named as one of 10 “B-School All-Stars� by BusinessWeek in 2007, which they described as “professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond academia.� Sutton is a Fellow at IDEO and a member of the Institute for the Future’s board of directors. Especially dear to his heart is the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, which everyone calls “the Stanford d.school.� He is a co-founder of this multi-disciplinary program, which teaches, practices, and spreads “design thinking.� His personal blog is Work Matters, at .
Professor Sutton’s honors include the award for the best paper published in the Academy of Management Journal in 1989, the Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching, selection by Business 2.0 as a leading “management guru� in 2002, and the award for the best article published in the Academy of Management Review in 2005. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense was selected as the best business book of 2006 by the Toronto Globe and Mail. His latest book, The No Asshole Rule, won the Quill Award for the best business book of 2007. Sutton was named as one of 10 “B-School All-Stars� by BusinessWeek in 2007, which they described as “professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond academia.� Sutton is a Fellow at IDEO and a member of the Institute for the Future’s board of directors. Especially dear to his heart is the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, which everyone calls “the Stanford d.school.� He is a co-founder of this multi-disciplinary program, which teaches, practices, and spreads “design thinking.� His personal blog is Work Matters, at .
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 103 reviews
February 1, 2024
I struggled with this one. The book is about knowing when to reduce friction and when to increase friction in business. Unfortunately, it took almost 20% of the book (tremendous friction) trying to explain why I should read the book.
While there is some great information and solid stories of examples through the remainder of the book, it was so hard to get to that I wanted to quit reading at least a half dozen times.
It feels like a book written by professors for professors that are being graded on the number of words they use in n the book. Please simplify the book so that busy entrepreneurs can actually digest the content.
While there is some great information and solid stories of examples through the remainder of the book, it was so hard to get to that I wanted to quit reading at least a half dozen times.
It feels like a book written by professors for professors that are being graded on the number of words they use in n the book. Please simplify the book so that busy entrepreneurs can actually digest the content.
April 10, 2024
In The Friction Project, Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao set out to shine a light on the invisible, but very real, issue of friction in organisations. While most of us instinctively think of friction as a bad thing (like bureaucratic red tape, complicated multi-step processes etc), friction can also be a positive thing, by making it difficult to do the wrong thing. The problem, Sutton and Rao argue, is that organisations often make the right things too hard and the wrong things too easy. Yet, these issues with friction are "orphan problems" that "no one is assigned, rewarded, or feels accountable for repairing". The mission of The Friction Project is therefore to equip people to be "friction fixers".
Takeaways from this book:
#1: Mindset is key. Friction fixers first and foremost hold the conviction that they are accountable for friction fixing and see themselves as "trustees of how people spend their time".
#2: Friction fixing is a craft that we can learn, practice, develop, teach and spread to others.
#3: Friction fixing is not a one-off exercise but requires constant attention and maintenance, like mowing the lawn.
#4: To spread the practice and build a culture of friction fixing, we must "celebrate and reward the doers, not poseurs" and focus on fixing things, not who to blame. Honor those who avert friction fiascoes and not just those who repair and tackle the problems that flare up.
#5: Be intentional about how much friction is appropriate - what ought to be hard and what ought to be easy. Ask yourself (i) is this the right or wrong thing to do; (ii) is this something that can be readily done or does it require additional training and/or motivation; (iii) is failure cheap, safe, reversible and instructive; (iv) is delay wasteful, cruel or downright dangerous; (v) are people already overloaded, exhausted and burned out, or do they have bandwidth to add more to their plates; (vi) does this require people to work alone or together and if together, what are the coordination/collaboration costs; (vii) will reducing or eliminating friction for some people result in it being heaped onto others?
#6: Friction fixing can take place at different levels: (i) reframing - helping others construe friction troubles as less daunting and distressing; (ii) navigating - helping others find the best path through the system; (iii) shielding - deflecting and absorbing friction troubles; (iv) neighbourhood design and repair; (v) system design and repair.
#7: Friction can be a positive. Sutton and Rao argue that when organizations move too fast and make bad decisions and errors without hitting the pause button, these errors build up and create more pressing problems eventually; 'organizational debt" can accumulate as organisations repeatedly make compromises to "just get things done". The authors also remind us that the best work happens after "collaborators develop deep emotional trust, which requires working, talking, and failing and succeeding together over long stretches of time…subtraction…clears the way for the necessary, time-consuming and inevitable failure, confusion, and messiness that are the hallmarks of creative work".
Sutton and Rao warn us of the following friction traps that must be avoided/eliminated:
#1: Oblivious leaders who have the "privilege that spare [them] from the hassles, humiliations and barriers heaped onto everyone else" and who mistakenly believe that because they are a powerful and connected insider, they automatically know everything that matters about their organiszation. Leaders who wield power and influence can become oblivious to the costs and inconveniences that they and their organisation heap on customers and clients.
Wise leaders "keep reminding themselves that their charges are wired to respond to their words more strongly than they intend - and their privilege can render them clueless to such magnification. When they make offhand comments, write missives with unfinished ideas, or get pissed off, they pause to add 'Please do nothing, I was just thinking out loud'". Wise leaders ask and listen more than they talk, shadow their employees to understand their work (vs doing walkabouts), reduce social distance and show respect for their subordinates' expertise, and can "flex the hierarchy" (i.e. they know when to flatten the hierarchy and when to activate it).
#2: Addition sickness, where humans are wired to think of doing new things rather than getting rid of things, when addressing a problem. Organisations accentuate addition sickness by rewarding those who do more with promotions and prestige, while ignoring or punishing those who subtract. "Leaders who start big programmes are celebrated, not those who disband bad ones".
The authors suggest doing Good Riddance Reviews by (i) identifying the "stupid stuff" to eliminate; (ii) figure out the value and cost of your meetings; (iii) measure the burdens imposed by performance measurement (are you spending so much time evaluating one another that you don't have time to do your work); (iv) catalog sources of email overload; (v) observe and interview users; (vi) build a journey map; (vii) try a perfectionism audit.
#3: Broken connections - the failures of communication, collaboration and integration of action among the different parts of the organizations. The authors argue that powerful people tend to devote little attention to solutions for coordination problems; people are prone to suffer from "coordination neglect" where they fixate on parts of organizations and ignore how the parts ought to work together. There are two modes of coordination neglect: component focus is the first mode where people in a team or silo devote too much attention to their own work and too little to how it will shape and be shaped by others' work. The second mode is partition focus, where decision-makers devote much attention to assembling an organization with great parts - and too little attention to how the pieces ought to work together.
To tackle this, Sutton and Rao advocate onboarding people to the organisation, not just the job, by teaching newbies how their work meshes with that of others, how the organisation functions, and how to use the system to help them do their work. In some organisations, it might make sense to create specialists in the organization who are charged with integrating the once-disconnected roles, silos and action. In other cases, it might make sense to reduce the need for coordination, as collaboration, info sharing and transparency bring real costs, not just unmitigated benefits.
Sutton and Rao suggest that "the best leaders treat their organizations as malleable prototypes. They use their influence to keep tinkering with, replacing, and removing rules, structures and responsibilities."
#4: Too Much Emphasis on Speed. Sutton and Rao suggest that before launching a new project, team or organization, one should pause to "consider the talent, roles, norms and resources you will need to succeed". Premortems or previctorems can be instructive in this respect. For projects already underway, do a relaunch if the team is facing performance or interpersonal problems.
Perhaps the most valuable parts of The Friction Project are the examples the authors give of sources of organisational friction (or lack thereof). Many of them are familiar when you read them but looking at them through the lens of organisational friction (and considering what one might, as a friction fixer, do about it) is illuminating. Some force uncomfortable self-reflection -might I be the source of bad friction, or might I benefit from having some friction imposed on me?
Like this example of bad friction being created and shifted on those who should not be made to bear it:
"managers weaponize technologies to make their jobs easier, and everyone else's harder. Administrators who used to shield doctors, lawyers and scientists from red tape such as approving budgets, expenses, and time sheets, now use software that heaps such chores on the people they once served�.more and more of us are bogged down by such 'robotic bureaucracy' - those relentless computer-generated administrative demands that cause "death by a thousand 10-minute tasks"".
Or this example of too little friction, thereby making the wrong things too easy for employees and customers: the CEO who "falls in love with every flavour of the month" and employees are then made to go for training on design thinking, lean start-up, agile management, digital transformation and what have you and expected to somehow apply them all at once. Sutton and Rao recount how a group of sixty energy executives, when asked who the most powerful people in their company were, replied "The people who can get away with wasting your time."
Or this excerpt:
"Anyone who has tangled with organisations as an employee or customer has had moments, days, and sometimes, months and years when it felt as if the overlords who imagined and run the place have no respect for their time. Such as encounters with systems that seem designed to create maddening ordeals rather than give the simple answers, services, or refunds we need. Or unbearable meetings with ill-defined agendas and clueless blabbermouths that stretch on for hours. Or wrestling matches with rules, procedures, traditions, and technologies that once made sense but are not so antiquated, pointless, and inefficient that they make you want to pull your hair out. All are forms of friction that chip away at our initiative, commitment, and zest for work. That hurt our coworkers and the customers and clients we serve. And that undermine the productivity, innovation, and reputations of our organisations."
That The Friction Project introduced me to such terms as "jargon monoxide" was a bonus.
Takeaways from this book:
#1: Mindset is key. Friction fixers first and foremost hold the conviction that they are accountable for friction fixing and see themselves as "trustees of how people spend their time".
#2: Friction fixing is a craft that we can learn, practice, develop, teach and spread to others.
#3: Friction fixing is not a one-off exercise but requires constant attention and maintenance, like mowing the lawn.
#4: To spread the practice and build a culture of friction fixing, we must "celebrate and reward the doers, not poseurs" and focus on fixing things, not who to blame. Honor those who avert friction fiascoes and not just those who repair and tackle the problems that flare up.
#5: Be intentional about how much friction is appropriate - what ought to be hard and what ought to be easy. Ask yourself (i) is this the right or wrong thing to do; (ii) is this something that can be readily done or does it require additional training and/or motivation; (iii) is failure cheap, safe, reversible and instructive; (iv) is delay wasteful, cruel or downright dangerous; (v) are people already overloaded, exhausted and burned out, or do they have bandwidth to add more to their plates; (vi) does this require people to work alone or together and if together, what are the coordination/collaboration costs; (vii) will reducing or eliminating friction for some people result in it being heaped onto others?
#6: Friction fixing can take place at different levels: (i) reframing - helping others construe friction troubles as less daunting and distressing; (ii) navigating - helping others find the best path through the system; (iii) shielding - deflecting and absorbing friction troubles; (iv) neighbourhood design and repair; (v) system design and repair.
#7: Friction can be a positive. Sutton and Rao argue that when organizations move too fast and make bad decisions and errors without hitting the pause button, these errors build up and create more pressing problems eventually; 'organizational debt" can accumulate as organisations repeatedly make compromises to "just get things done". The authors also remind us that the best work happens after "collaborators develop deep emotional trust, which requires working, talking, and failing and succeeding together over long stretches of time…subtraction…clears the way for the necessary, time-consuming and inevitable failure, confusion, and messiness that are the hallmarks of creative work".
Sutton and Rao warn us of the following friction traps that must be avoided/eliminated:
#1: Oblivious leaders who have the "privilege that spare [them] from the hassles, humiliations and barriers heaped onto everyone else" and who mistakenly believe that because they are a powerful and connected insider, they automatically know everything that matters about their organiszation. Leaders who wield power and influence can become oblivious to the costs and inconveniences that they and their organisation heap on customers and clients.
Wise leaders "keep reminding themselves that their charges are wired to respond to their words more strongly than they intend - and their privilege can render them clueless to such magnification. When they make offhand comments, write missives with unfinished ideas, or get pissed off, they pause to add 'Please do nothing, I was just thinking out loud'". Wise leaders ask and listen more than they talk, shadow their employees to understand their work (vs doing walkabouts), reduce social distance and show respect for their subordinates' expertise, and can "flex the hierarchy" (i.e. they know when to flatten the hierarchy and when to activate it).
#2: Addition sickness, where humans are wired to think of doing new things rather than getting rid of things, when addressing a problem. Organisations accentuate addition sickness by rewarding those who do more with promotions and prestige, while ignoring or punishing those who subtract. "Leaders who start big programmes are celebrated, not those who disband bad ones".
The authors suggest doing Good Riddance Reviews by (i) identifying the "stupid stuff" to eliminate; (ii) figure out the value and cost of your meetings; (iii) measure the burdens imposed by performance measurement (are you spending so much time evaluating one another that you don't have time to do your work); (iv) catalog sources of email overload; (v) observe and interview users; (vi) build a journey map; (vii) try a perfectionism audit.
#3: Broken connections - the failures of communication, collaboration and integration of action among the different parts of the organizations. The authors argue that powerful people tend to devote little attention to solutions for coordination problems; people are prone to suffer from "coordination neglect" where they fixate on parts of organizations and ignore how the parts ought to work together. There are two modes of coordination neglect: component focus is the first mode where people in a team or silo devote too much attention to their own work and too little to how it will shape and be shaped by others' work. The second mode is partition focus, where decision-makers devote much attention to assembling an organization with great parts - and too little attention to how the pieces ought to work together.
To tackle this, Sutton and Rao advocate onboarding people to the organisation, not just the job, by teaching newbies how their work meshes with that of others, how the organisation functions, and how to use the system to help them do their work. In some organisations, it might make sense to create specialists in the organization who are charged with integrating the once-disconnected roles, silos and action. In other cases, it might make sense to reduce the need for coordination, as collaboration, info sharing and transparency bring real costs, not just unmitigated benefits.
Sutton and Rao suggest that "the best leaders treat their organizations as malleable prototypes. They use their influence to keep tinkering with, replacing, and removing rules, structures and responsibilities."
#4: Too Much Emphasis on Speed. Sutton and Rao suggest that before launching a new project, team or organization, one should pause to "consider the talent, roles, norms and resources you will need to succeed". Premortems or previctorems can be instructive in this respect. For projects already underway, do a relaunch if the team is facing performance or interpersonal problems.
Perhaps the most valuable parts of The Friction Project are the examples the authors give of sources of organisational friction (or lack thereof). Many of them are familiar when you read them but looking at them through the lens of organisational friction (and considering what one might, as a friction fixer, do about it) is illuminating. Some force uncomfortable self-reflection -might I be the source of bad friction, or might I benefit from having some friction imposed on me?
Like this example of bad friction being created and shifted on those who should not be made to bear it:
"managers weaponize technologies to make their jobs easier, and everyone else's harder. Administrators who used to shield doctors, lawyers and scientists from red tape such as approving budgets, expenses, and time sheets, now use software that heaps such chores on the people they once served�.more and more of us are bogged down by such 'robotic bureaucracy' - those relentless computer-generated administrative demands that cause "death by a thousand 10-minute tasks"".
Or this example of too little friction, thereby making the wrong things too easy for employees and customers: the CEO who "falls in love with every flavour of the month" and employees are then made to go for training on design thinking, lean start-up, agile management, digital transformation and what have you and expected to somehow apply them all at once. Sutton and Rao recount how a group of sixty energy executives, when asked who the most powerful people in their company were, replied "The people who can get away with wasting your time."
Or this excerpt:
"Anyone who has tangled with organisations as an employee or customer has had moments, days, and sometimes, months and years when it felt as if the overlords who imagined and run the place have no respect for their time. Such as encounters with systems that seem designed to create maddening ordeals rather than give the simple answers, services, or refunds we need. Or unbearable meetings with ill-defined agendas and clueless blabbermouths that stretch on for hours. Or wrestling matches with rules, procedures, traditions, and technologies that once made sense but are not so antiquated, pointless, and inefficient that they make you want to pull your hair out. All are forms of friction that chip away at our initiative, commitment, and zest for work. That hurt our coworkers and the customers and clients we serve. And that undermine the productivity, innovation, and reputations of our organisations."
That The Friction Project introduced me to such terms as "jargon monoxide" was a bonus.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 30, 2024
I knew I would love this book because I love everything Sutton writes.
While I’m not sure this is useful as a “how to� it is rich with detailed case studies of unique ways that organizations and their people have created and reduced friction—both obstructive and positive friction.
The amount of source material is voluminous. That alone makes the book a compelling read.
Along with all of the case studies, the book also succeeds at distilling some key principles for identifying, assessing and addressing friction.
A key insight is that friction needn’t be problematic. Sometimes it alters performance in positive ways.
I read it twice —and I suspect it will remain an important resource for me in my own work and thinking.
Highly recommend.
Thanks to Net Galley for an advanced review copy.
While I’m not sure this is useful as a “how to� it is rich with detailed case studies of unique ways that organizations and their people have created and reduced friction—both obstructive and positive friction.
The amount of source material is voluminous. That alone makes the book a compelling read.
Along with all of the case studies, the book also succeeds at distilling some key principles for identifying, assessing and addressing friction.
A key insight is that friction needn’t be problematic. Sometimes it alters performance in positive ways.
I read it twice —and I suspect it will remain an important resource for me in my own work and thinking.
Highly recommend.
Thanks to Net Galley for an advanced review copy.
April 5, 2024
My natural inclination is to try to make things simpler and faster. This book convinced me that is only useful in certain circumstances. The authors make a compelling case that certain tasks and processes require a certain amount of friction to force people to pause and think instead of yielding to heuristics. Even though this seems to be slowing decisions and progress, in the long run it is more efficient and effective.
The book defines friction in the context of decision-making and productivity, as the resistance or obstacles encountered when trying to accomplish tasks or make choices. The authors argue that friction either facilitates or hinders progress, depending on how it is managed. It highlights the significance of recognizing and addressing the right kind of friction to improve outcomes.
Smart leaders are integral in identifying and reducing unnecessary friction within organizations. Effective leaders must determine when to make the right things easier and the wrong things harder, leading to better decision-making and increased productivity.
Throughout the book, the authors use real-world case studies and examples to illustrate the principles and strategies discussed. These examples demonstrate how organizations have successfully applied the concept of friction to improve decision-making and productivity.
This book was engaging and full of practical insights. Make sure you get a version of the book that includes interviews with the author at the end as that conversation was insightful.
The book defines friction in the context of decision-making and productivity, as the resistance or obstacles encountered when trying to accomplish tasks or make choices. The authors argue that friction either facilitates or hinders progress, depending on how it is managed. It highlights the significance of recognizing and addressing the right kind of friction to improve outcomes.
Smart leaders are integral in identifying and reducing unnecessary friction within organizations. Effective leaders must determine when to make the right things easier and the wrong things harder, leading to better decision-making and increased productivity.
Throughout the book, the authors use real-world case studies and examples to illustrate the principles and strategies discussed. These examples demonstrate how organizations have successfully applied the concept of friction to improve decision-making and productivity.
This book was engaging and full of practical insights. Make sure you get a version of the book that includes interviews with the author at the end as that conversation was insightful.
August 28, 2024
I really struggled with this book. I felt the book in itself was friction because much of what the author was putting across, really great nuggets could be distilled down to two solid chapters only.
Also the case studies and stories were repetitive. Also the authors way of describing professors was just long, simply mentioning the name and company would be enough instead of sharing all the titles the person holds including the board they sit in etc.
Also the case studies and stories were repetitive. Also the authors way of describing professors was just long, simply mentioning the name and company would be enough instead of sharing all the titles the person holds including the board they sit in etc.
January 27, 2024
I was provided both the print and audio ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.
This was great! I deal with these situations in my day job every day. We have situations where our executive team asks us to eliminate unnecessary processes and stop inviting 100 people to meetings that only need 5 people. It is a very expensive meeting that could have been resolved with a 2 sentence email and resolved in about 5 minutes What do we do instead? We schedule a meeting to figure out how to schedule a meeting to figure out how to cut down the invitee list for the meeting we actually need to have. My greatest hope is that the people causing the friction in companies actually read this. Hopefully future friction fixers will read this and end up in positions of authority and be able to implement more efficient processes and make some of the changes the authors talk about in this book.
The writing was relatable with examples of places where friction was eliminated to make companies more efficient and successful. There were examples where patient care was improved and customer service was improved when friction aka the right stuff was improved and taken into account and the wrong stuff aka the stuff that doesn't add value and takes up time was eliminated. I've experienced many of these types of situations first hand working on projects in my own career. I think this is a great read if you are an up and coming professional or an aspiring leader. As a individual contributor, these are all of the things I wish would change in the companies I've worked at and would like leadership to change.
This book is a presentation of quite a few case studies. There is alot of telling of friction filled situations and how friction fixers saved the day. There isn't really a prescriptive checklist of how to make this work in your own industry or how to apply the examples to what you are doing today. This books isn't going to make you a more effective leader overnight and solve all of your problems after you read it. It will however make you think about places you can potentially look for friction and where you can look for efficiencies. If you are a leader in an organization it will also perhaps give you some suggestions of who to talk to within your organization to get ideas of where the friction lies and how to make things work a little smoother for your employees and customers.
This was great! I deal with these situations in my day job every day. We have situations where our executive team asks us to eliminate unnecessary processes and stop inviting 100 people to meetings that only need 5 people. It is a very expensive meeting that could have been resolved with a 2 sentence email and resolved in about 5 minutes What do we do instead? We schedule a meeting to figure out how to schedule a meeting to figure out how to cut down the invitee list for the meeting we actually need to have. My greatest hope is that the people causing the friction in companies actually read this. Hopefully future friction fixers will read this and end up in positions of authority and be able to implement more efficient processes and make some of the changes the authors talk about in this book.
The writing was relatable with examples of places where friction was eliminated to make companies more efficient and successful. There were examples where patient care was improved and customer service was improved when friction aka the right stuff was improved and taken into account and the wrong stuff aka the stuff that doesn't add value and takes up time was eliminated. I've experienced many of these types of situations first hand working on projects in my own career. I think this is a great read if you are an up and coming professional or an aspiring leader. As a individual contributor, these are all of the things I wish would change in the companies I've worked at and would like leadership to change.
This book is a presentation of quite a few case studies. There is alot of telling of friction filled situations and how friction fixers saved the day. There isn't really a prescriptive checklist of how to make this work in your own industry or how to apply the examples to what you are doing today. This books isn't going to make you a more effective leader overnight and solve all of your problems after you read it. It will however make you think about places you can potentially look for friction and where you can look for efficiencies. If you are a leader in an organization it will also perhaps give you some suggestions of who to talk to within your organization to get ideas of where the friction lies and how to make things work a little smoother for your employees and customers.
April 10, 2024
Great book. The authors focus on time. Managing it and understanding how important it is. Bottom line is leaders and managers must be engaged, balancing organizational structure that leads to a toxic culture creating opportunities for friction and understanding the value of employees and customers' time.
July 7, 2024
Read halfway through. A ton of great takeaways, but yet again, a book that should be a TED talk
December 14, 2024
Solid book. To make the right things easier and the wrong things harder is a revolutionary idea. Has very useful ideas and truths. The stories are not very engaging or clear. I think an article could cover all the key points without making it into a book.
February 19, 2024
One of the best business books I’ve read in a while. Started with the audiobook and listened to each chapter twice. Then, I bought the hard cover so I could mark it up with notes and refer to it. I think that is enough said.
—NEW for 2024�
STAR LEGEND
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ = Back in the TBR to re-read / You should read
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ = Enjoyed it and you probably will too
⭐️⭐️⭐️ = Not mad at it, but would only recommend to specific readers
⭐️⭐️ = Finished but don't recommend
⭐️ = Couldn't finish
—NEW for 2024�
STAR LEGEND
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ = Back in the TBR to re-read / You should read
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ = Enjoyed it and you probably will too
⭐️⭐️⭐️ = Not mad at it, but would only recommend to specific readers
⭐️⭐️ = Finished but don't recommend
⭐️ = Couldn't finish
July 6, 2024
I recommend this read. It’s extremely well research. I really enjoyed many of the pithy company stories and examples of ideal leadership behaviors scattered throughout this book. Here is a sampling of my summary:
Google cofounder Sergey Brin in 2011 became smitten with the cool Google Glass prototype. It was a textbook case of spending money as a substitute for thinking. Sergey rushed it to market with massive fanfare. Glass was plagued with hardware and software bugs, terrible battery life, and unresolved privacy issues. Sergey soon stopped wearing it, and Google pulled it off the market.
Senior leaders, many times, fall in love with every flavor of the month, and every consultant who sells them. [“Fad surfing”]
[“Leadershit,� “being waterboarded by PowerPoint,� “jargon monoxide,� “rule freaks,� “death by meeting.”]
The leaders at Jumbo, a big Dutch supermarket chain, figured out that many older customers enjoyed their short interactions with cashiers because many were lonely and wanted conversations. Jumbo, as part of the Dutch government’s One Against Loneliness campaign for seniors, experimented at one store with a “slow Checkout lane� for customers who are not in a rush and wanted to linger and chat with a cashier. The experiment was so successful that 200 Jumbo stores now have slow, chat checkout lanes. Removing too much friction can be a mistake.
The IKEA effect shows that “labor leads to love� - the harder we work at something, the more we come to value it. Effort justification explains why fraternities, sororities, and militaries subject newcomers to all sorts of exhausting and embarrassing ordeals to instill commitment and comradery. In the right doses and proper precautions � that friction and frustration can breed enduring loyalty. First ask: “Is it the right � or the wrong � thing for us to do?� “Do we have the will and skill to do it well?”�
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”�
Learn from the fatal missteps of eager first / early movers. Amazon was not the first online bookstore; the defunct Books.com and Interloc were among the earlier entrants. Netscape, the first commercially successful web browser, was launched years before Google. Myspace was a successful social networking service before Facebook. Couchsurfing was founded before Airbnb. Being first is risky when smart fast followers can learn from your troubles and pass you by.
Studies show that to do creative work right, teams need to slow down, struggle, and develop a lot of bad ideas to find a rare good one. Ed Catmull of Pixar wrote, “The goal isn’t efficiency, it is to make something good, or even great. We iterate 7-9 times, with friction in the process.� There is no quick and easy path to creativity. If you want to kill creativity, insist that people standardize all their work methods and have as few failures as possible, while explaining and justifying how they spend every minute and dollar.
At many healthcare providers, nurses and doctors devote too much time to updating patients� electronic health records and too little time examining, treating, and comforting patients. A 2019 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that doctors devoted 43% of their time to updating patients� electronic medical records and only 13% to provide direct patient care. The chief quality officer at Hawaii Pacific Health launched the Getting Rid Of Stupid Stuff program (GROSS). Anyone could nominate anything in the records system that they thought was poorly designed, unnecessary, or just plain stupid. The team received 188 nominations and implemented 87 improvements. Fixing all the stupid stuff freed up a lot of time.
Daniel Kahneman argued that when people are in a “cognitive mindfield,� when they are confused, overwhelmed, or things are falling apart, it is wise to slow down and assess a situation rather than doing something rash, dumb, or dangerous. That’s what Waze CEO Noam Bardin did in 2010 after his navigation software start-up got $25 million in funding. His investors pressured him to use the money to hire new employees, add features, and expand to new markets. But Waze was losing new US customers at a rapid rate, and Bardin wasn’t sure why. He ignored the investors� advice, froze hiring, and asked all employees to stop what they were doing to help figure out what was driving users away in the critical US market. After six weeks of talking to customers and analyzing data, Waze employees identified customer pain points and began removing them. Then the company hit the accelerator and started hiring people and releasing a new version of Waze about once a month for six months. Customers loved the changes, and millions became loyal users. Google bought the company for $1 billion in 2013.
Peoples� default problem-solving mode is to add rather than subtract complexity. There is power of pausing to think about removing needless complexity, however. Too many of our teams and organizations are mired in muck because the wrong things are too easy and the right things are too hard.
Be a trustee of others� time. In Winston Churchill’s 234-word “Brevity� memo, he implored his colleagues to “see to it that their reports are shorter.� He urged them to write short and crisp paragraphs, stop using jargon, and practice “short windedness.�
In 2013, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and his top team canceled hundreds of time-sucking meetings. Employees were wasting so much time in meetings that they kept missing crucial deadlines. Yet people soon slipped back into their old ways. Like mowing the lawn, constant maintenance is required. One needs to inject friction at the right times and places like the crew chiefs of NASCAR or Formula One racing teams - scheduling regular pit stops while searching for signs that it’s time for emergency repairs.
Rohm and Haas (a chemical manufacturer now part of Dow Chemical) have produced scores of successful CEOs for other companies. Companies led by CEOs groomed by Rohm and Haas performed 67% better than those companies did when other CEOs were in charge. Rohm and Haas preach the Five Voices method. Before making a big decision, leaders slow down, do careful research, and talk to people until they understand five key stakeholders. “It’s not about pleasing your boss � it’s about doing the right thing by your shareholders.�
David Kelley, cofounded and CEO of IDEO, realized that unhealthy friction was rising because the system that worked for staffing projects when the company had 50 designers didn’t work with 150. IDEO’s philosophy was “enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellect.� They emphasize treating organizations as imperfect and unfinished prototypes.
Celebrate and reward doers, not posers.
Beware of the people who talk a good game, but never follow through. They are adept at smart talk but allergic to grinding out the work to connect their words to actions. They are pretenders or “hollow Easter bunnies.� Smart but empty talk happens because it is easier to say smart things than to do smart things, and because smooth talkers get immediate kudos while dogged doers must delay gratification.
Focus on fixing things, not who to blame. Leaders who blame and punish employees who raise problems, point out colleagues� mistakes, and confess their own missteps create cultures of fear. Some firms tell employees to never reveal a problem until they also have a solution, shoot the messenger, and pressure to overstate progress and to hide defects. Boeing’s broken culture abandoned the focus on quality and safety, cutting corners and expenses to drive up revenue and its stock price first. The culture prompted employees to hide design and manufacturing flaws from one another leading to Boeing 737 Max jet crashes in Indonesia in October 2018 and in Ethiopia five months later. Boeing convinced regulators that a short computer-based training session was sufficient for Max pilots. Boeing employees celebrated after that light and cheap training was approved. Boeing insiders felt afraid to raise concerns and expressed backstage reservations to one another. When employees didn’t meet production goals, they were named, shamed, and grilled in front of their coworkers. The culture of fear and secrecy, which put the almighty dollar ahead of human lives, became the main culprit in the two 737 Max crashes. After the crashes, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg “suggested that poorly trained foreign pilots, not the company, were to blame.� An estimated $18 billion hit resulted from canceled, lost, and delayed 737 Max orders in addition to the lost lives.
Honor people who avert friction fiascos, not just firefighters. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “There comes a point where we need to stop pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.� No one ever gets credit for the problems that never happened. Too many organizations celebrate the saviors. Who gets excited about maintenance?
Jeremy Utley and Jessica Tracy reference “authentic pride� (the self-esteem gained from being a conscientious and caring person who accomplishes good things by treating others well ) versus “hubristic pride� (where people feel endowed with enduring qualities that anoint them as superior to others - unleashing their arrogance, conceit, and self-aggrandizement). Hubristic pride is more immediate but fleeting and depends more on taking shortcuts and less on doing hard work.
Google cofounder Sergey Brin in 2011 became smitten with the cool Google Glass prototype. It was a textbook case of spending money as a substitute for thinking. Sergey rushed it to market with massive fanfare. Glass was plagued with hardware and software bugs, terrible battery life, and unresolved privacy issues. Sergey soon stopped wearing it, and Google pulled it off the market.
Senior leaders, many times, fall in love with every flavor of the month, and every consultant who sells them. [“Fad surfing”]
[“Leadershit,� “being waterboarded by PowerPoint,� “jargon monoxide,� “rule freaks,� “death by meeting.”]
The leaders at Jumbo, a big Dutch supermarket chain, figured out that many older customers enjoyed their short interactions with cashiers because many were lonely and wanted conversations. Jumbo, as part of the Dutch government’s One Against Loneliness campaign for seniors, experimented at one store with a “slow Checkout lane� for customers who are not in a rush and wanted to linger and chat with a cashier. The experiment was so successful that 200 Jumbo stores now have slow, chat checkout lanes. Removing too much friction can be a mistake.
The IKEA effect shows that “labor leads to love� - the harder we work at something, the more we come to value it. Effort justification explains why fraternities, sororities, and militaries subject newcomers to all sorts of exhausting and embarrassing ordeals to instill commitment and comradery. In the right doses and proper precautions � that friction and frustration can breed enduring loyalty. First ask: “Is it the right � or the wrong � thing for us to do?� “Do we have the will and skill to do it well?”�
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”�
Learn from the fatal missteps of eager first / early movers. Amazon was not the first online bookstore; the defunct Books.com and Interloc were among the earlier entrants. Netscape, the first commercially successful web browser, was launched years before Google. Myspace was a successful social networking service before Facebook. Couchsurfing was founded before Airbnb. Being first is risky when smart fast followers can learn from your troubles and pass you by.
Studies show that to do creative work right, teams need to slow down, struggle, and develop a lot of bad ideas to find a rare good one. Ed Catmull of Pixar wrote, “The goal isn’t efficiency, it is to make something good, or even great. We iterate 7-9 times, with friction in the process.� There is no quick and easy path to creativity. If you want to kill creativity, insist that people standardize all their work methods and have as few failures as possible, while explaining and justifying how they spend every minute and dollar.
At many healthcare providers, nurses and doctors devote too much time to updating patients� electronic health records and too little time examining, treating, and comforting patients. A 2019 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that doctors devoted 43% of their time to updating patients� electronic medical records and only 13% to provide direct patient care. The chief quality officer at Hawaii Pacific Health launched the Getting Rid Of Stupid Stuff program (GROSS). Anyone could nominate anything in the records system that they thought was poorly designed, unnecessary, or just plain stupid. The team received 188 nominations and implemented 87 improvements. Fixing all the stupid stuff freed up a lot of time.
Daniel Kahneman argued that when people are in a “cognitive mindfield,� when they are confused, overwhelmed, or things are falling apart, it is wise to slow down and assess a situation rather than doing something rash, dumb, or dangerous. That’s what Waze CEO Noam Bardin did in 2010 after his navigation software start-up got $25 million in funding. His investors pressured him to use the money to hire new employees, add features, and expand to new markets. But Waze was losing new US customers at a rapid rate, and Bardin wasn’t sure why. He ignored the investors� advice, froze hiring, and asked all employees to stop what they were doing to help figure out what was driving users away in the critical US market. After six weeks of talking to customers and analyzing data, Waze employees identified customer pain points and began removing them. Then the company hit the accelerator and started hiring people and releasing a new version of Waze about once a month for six months. Customers loved the changes, and millions became loyal users. Google bought the company for $1 billion in 2013.
Peoples� default problem-solving mode is to add rather than subtract complexity. There is power of pausing to think about removing needless complexity, however. Too many of our teams and organizations are mired in muck because the wrong things are too easy and the right things are too hard.
Be a trustee of others� time. In Winston Churchill’s 234-word “Brevity� memo, he implored his colleagues to “see to it that their reports are shorter.� He urged them to write short and crisp paragraphs, stop using jargon, and practice “short windedness.�
In 2013, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and his top team canceled hundreds of time-sucking meetings. Employees were wasting so much time in meetings that they kept missing crucial deadlines. Yet people soon slipped back into their old ways. Like mowing the lawn, constant maintenance is required. One needs to inject friction at the right times and places like the crew chiefs of NASCAR or Formula One racing teams - scheduling regular pit stops while searching for signs that it’s time for emergency repairs.
Rohm and Haas (a chemical manufacturer now part of Dow Chemical) have produced scores of successful CEOs for other companies. Companies led by CEOs groomed by Rohm and Haas performed 67% better than those companies did when other CEOs were in charge. Rohm and Haas preach the Five Voices method. Before making a big decision, leaders slow down, do careful research, and talk to people until they understand five key stakeholders. “It’s not about pleasing your boss � it’s about doing the right thing by your shareholders.�
David Kelley, cofounded and CEO of IDEO, realized that unhealthy friction was rising because the system that worked for staffing projects when the company had 50 designers didn’t work with 150. IDEO’s philosophy was “enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellect.� They emphasize treating organizations as imperfect and unfinished prototypes.
Celebrate and reward doers, not posers.
Beware of the people who talk a good game, but never follow through. They are adept at smart talk but allergic to grinding out the work to connect their words to actions. They are pretenders or “hollow Easter bunnies.� Smart but empty talk happens because it is easier to say smart things than to do smart things, and because smooth talkers get immediate kudos while dogged doers must delay gratification.
Focus on fixing things, not who to blame. Leaders who blame and punish employees who raise problems, point out colleagues� mistakes, and confess their own missteps create cultures of fear. Some firms tell employees to never reveal a problem until they also have a solution, shoot the messenger, and pressure to overstate progress and to hide defects. Boeing’s broken culture abandoned the focus on quality and safety, cutting corners and expenses to drive up revenue and its stock price first. The culture prompted employees to hide design and manufacturing flaws from one another leading to Boeing 737 Max jet crashes in Indonesia in October 2018 and in Ethiopia five months later. Boeing convinced regulators that a short computer-based training session was sufficient for Max pilots. Boeing employees celebrated after that light and cheap training was approved. Boeing insiders felt afraid to raise concerns and expressed backstage reservations to one another. When employees didn’t meet production goals, they were named, shamed, and grilled in front of their coworkers. The culture of fear and secrecy, which put the almighty dollar ahead of human lives, became the main culprit in the two 737 Max crashes. After the crashes, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg “suggested that poorly trained foreign pilots, not the company, were to blame.� An estimated $18 billion hit resulted from canceled, lost, and delayed 737 Max orders in addition to the lost lives.
Honor people who avert friction fiascos, not just firefighters. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “There comes a point where we need to stop pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.� No one ever gets credit for the problems that never happened. Too many organizations celebrate the saviors. Who gets excited about maintenance?
Jeremy Utley and Jessica Tracy reference “authentic pride� (the self-esteem gained from being a conscientious and caring person who accomplishes good things by treating others well ) versus “hubristic pride� (where people feel endowed with enduring qualities that anoint them as superior to others - unleashing their arrogance, conceit, and self-aggrandizement). Hubristic pride is more immediate but fleeting and depends more on taking shortcuts and less on doing hard work.
August 12, 2024
The Friction Project describes the challenges of friction -- the overhead we have to deal with to get things done -- in organizations, and how to address them. While we might think (as the authors said they initially did) think that friction is always something to eliminate, there are also times when friction is a valuable mechanism to give people pause when doing things that could cause problems. (One example: ‘hitting share� on posts that might be factual.)
The book is a guide to being a Friction Fixer -- someone who can remove useless friction and add the useful kind. While “leaders� are often mentioned, Sutton and Rao point out that anyone can play the role of Friction Fixer (and why many changes require support at multiple levels).
Like many useful books in this domain, this one mixes research, stories from both the authors� experiences and research , as well as the wider world, making the scenarios relatable and the book quite readable. I also also appreciated the many references to other books on related topics (which has the downside of making my To Read list longer than I’d like).
There are actionable steps throughout the book, on areas from making communication more effective (eliminating “Jargon Monoxide�), ensuring that the right people are involved in decisions, and identifying the right pace at which to approach a problem. And the book ends with a summary of key action items.
The book left me with some questions (one example: authors suggest avoiding words whose meaning has shifted like “agile� without explaining how to break the cycle of the next work having its meaning morphed as well), But the advice is useful and actionable.
A more challenging issue for me is that, despite stating early that anyone can be a friction fixer, there is a lot of emphasis on people in positions of power (“leaders�). While those in power are often the cause of many friction mismatch issues -- often because of being disconnected from what’s really happening -- the frequent discussions of what ‘leaders� did right (and wrong) seemed to tale away from the message that we all have a role (I also don’t love calling executives ‘leaders� by default, since anyone can lead, and not all executives lead-- at least not in the sense of attracting (rather than commandeering) followers.
Those minor points aside this is a good book on an important issue, and one which has actionable advice.
The book is a guide to being a Friction Fixer -- someone who can remove useless friction and add the useful kind. While “leaders� are often mentioned, Sutton and Rao point out that anyone can play the role of Friction Fixer (and why many changes require support at multiple levels).
Like many useful books in this domain, this one mixes research, stories from both the authors� experiences and research , as well as the wider world, making the scenarios relatable and the book quite readable. I also also appreciated the many references to other books on related topics (which has the downside of making my To Read list longer than I’d like).
There are actionable steps throughout the book, on areas from making communication more effective (eliminating “Jargon Monoxide�), ensuring that the right people are involved in decisions, and identifying the right pace at which to approach a problem. And the book ends with a summary of key action items.
The book left me with some questions (one example: authors suggest avoiding words whose meaning has shifted like “agile� without explaining how to break the cycle of the next work having its meaning morphed as well), But the advice is useful and actionable.
A more challenging issue for me is that, despite stating early that anyone can be a friction fixer, there is a lot of emphasis on people in positions of power (“leaders�). While those in power are often the cause of many friction mismatch issues -- often because of being disconnected from what’s really happening -- the frequent discussions of what ‘leaders� did right (and wrong) seemed to tale away from the message that we all have a role (I also don’t love calling executives ‘leaders� by default, since anyone can lead, and not all executives lead-- at least not in the sense of attracting (rather than commandeering) followers.
Those minor points aside this is a good book on an important issue, and one which has actionable advice.
May 6, 2025
I work in foster care, and I have been in conversations where those in charge assume "the system is broken" means that foster parents just want to adopt kids that they didn't get to. I have always been of the opinion that the hard heart work of caring for families in moments of crisis is what I signed up for, but when cases went sideways because the organizational systems did not support good work, that is how the system is broken. This book gave me the language to articulate when it's too easy to do the wrong things (like let timelines slip) and super hard to do the right things (like follow the Foster Parent Problem Resolution Process.)
This book is a favorite with regard to organizational structuring. Just watch out for all the "bs"s in chapter 7 and the occasional f-bomb.
This book is a favorite with regard to organizational structuring. Just watch out for all the "bs"s in chapter 7 and the occasional f-bomb.
December 13, 2024
One very good insight which perhaps is enough to make the book worth scanning. The insight is around the lack of recognition and reward for those who prevent problems, errors and catastrophes e.g. the maintenance and in some areas administrative personnel oh praise recognition, and bonus is go to those who Create something new not those who keep good and great things running air, free and safe.
Are useful insights doing a premortem or previctorium could help provide good insights have done properly for thinking planning and visualizing.
At at the end they give principles [which they should’ve been given in the beginning and Witcher OK but pretty basic one serve a trustee of others time i.e. respect, which they don’t mention, two ownership and accountability brackets (really) and three organizational design. Which is actually an interesting one which they didn’t really spend that much time on except the rating some holographic type of management.
Then more insight, such as it’s the journey “� again not really explored but empathize of the point that if you focus on the journey or those who do are more likely to complete the task, reach the goal overcome the obstacles.
What’s with using Muppets as an analogy for chaos or order Muppets and talking about how you need both the balance each other and crap love to shake up these guys pretending that there’s some some two sided force that needs to be balanced. What a load of nonsense it’s called the diversity of teams And that open robustness that you get from having different personalities and different types and different ways of achieving a goal.
University of Michigan Lindy, Greer, powerful leadership insight on those leaders who are debt at flexing the hierarchy, knowing when to delegate and listen and knowing when to take decisive action. Uses the tired military analogy, but doesn’t mention the after action review.
Leidy Klotz author of subtract wired to neglect, subtraction and use addition as a substitute for thinking. my management principle is you can only have three top priorities and maybe two others. Any addition means something drops lower down or out of the list.
One of the big problems with the book is the starting point which they claim to be the application of friction or friction less. However, that’s not the starting point it’s the middle the starting point is clarity, communication and alignment over mission vision, values, and goals and then aligning and realigning using friction in those areas that are not aligned and reducing friction in those activities in areas that are jumping into reducing friction from Meetings and emails, Macy, useful or productive, but it’s not usually sustainable and only works for a short time as it doesn’t address the underlying issues. Regardless of friction or alignment to values and mission complicating factor is ensuring that the mission values are clear enough as to provide guidanceas to where friction should be increased or removed.
General rundown of poor management practices, including arrogance, moving too fast, etc. etc. I were no real or any framework on proper approaches to management different ideologies or frameworks philosophies for management and pointing out the obvious though when easy to read and plenty of examples of wrongdoing the example of moving too quickly Such as the one from Henrii Horowitz pushing Zes fits doesn’t really address issues around getting the balance rate and moving not too fast or not too slow.
Are useful insights doing a premortem or previctorium could help provide good insights have done properly for thinking planning and visualizing.
At at the end they give principles [which they should’ve been given in the beginning and Witcher OK but pretty basic one serve a trustee of others time i.e. respect, which they don’t mention, two ownership and accountability brackets (really) and three organizational design. Which is actually an interesting one which they didn’t really spend that much time on except the rating some holographic type of management.
Then more insight, such as it’s the journey “� again not really explored but empathize of the point that if you focus on the journey or those who do are more likely to complete the task, reach the goal overcome the obstacles.
What’s with using Muppets as an analogy for chaos or order Muppets and talking about how you need both the balance each other and crap love to shake up these guys pretending that there’s some some two sided force that needs to be balanced. What a load of nonsense it’s called the diversity of teams And that open robustness that you get from having different personalities and different types and different ways of achieving a goal.
University of Michigan Lindy, Greer, powerful leadership insight on those leaders who are debt at flexing the hierarchy, knowing when to delegate and listen and knowing when to take decisive action. Uses the tired military analogy, but doesn’t mention the after action review.
Leidy Klotz author of subtract wired to neglect, subtraction and use addition as a substitute for thinking. my management principle is you can only have three top priorities and maybe two others. Any addition means something drops lower down or out of the list.
One of the big problems with the book is the starting point which they claim to be the application of friction or friction less. However, that’s not the starting point it’s the middle the starting point is clarity, communication and alignment over mission vision, values, and goals and then aligning and realigning using friction in those areas that are not aligned and reducing friction in those activities in areas that are jumping into reducing friction from Meetings and emails, Macy, useful or productive, but it’s not usually sustainable and only works for a short time as it doesn’t address the underlying issues. Regardless of friction or alignment to values and mission complicating factor is ensuring that the mission values are clear enough as to provide guidanceas to where friction should be increased or removed.
General rundown of poor management practices, including arrogance, moving too fast, etc. etc. I were no real or any framework on proper approaches to management different ideologies or frameworks philosophies for management and pointing out the obvious though when easy to read and plenty of examples of wrongdoing the example of moving too quickly Such as the one from Henrii Horowitz pushing Zes fits doesn’t really address issues around getting the balance rate and moving not too fast or not too slow.
February 3, 2025
- The Friction Project is about forces that make it impossible to get things done
- Fiction Fixers are a trustee in protecting people’s time
- 5 Commitments: “mowing the lawn�, organizations are malleable prototypes, celebrate and reward doers not posers, focus on fixing things not blaming, honor people who avert friction fiascoes not just firefighters
- Smart but empty talk happens because it’s easier to say smart things than to do smart things
- Savvy trustees hit the pause button and figure out what to make easy, hard, or impossible before they turn to how to do it
- Friction Forensics examples: is it the right or wrong thing to do? Do you have enough skill and will to do it? Is failure cheap, safe, and reversible? Is delay wasteful, cruel, or dangerous? Are people overloaded and burned out? Will reducing friction for some cause more friction and burden for others? Are the learnings that result from hard work and frustrations worthwhile given the humans and financial toll?
- The Help Pyramid: Reframing, Navigating, Shielding, Neighborhood Design and Repair, System Design and Repair
- if you are more powerful that your colleagues or customers, you are at risk of being clueless about their friction troubles and how you add to their misery. Symptoms: (1.) privilege spares you from the hassles, humiliations, and barriers heaves on everyone else (2.) because you are connected and powerful, you know everything that matters to your organization (3.) selfishness
- Consequences of being clueless: executive magnification, multiplication madness, decision amnesia, cookie licking, sham participation
- Hurting by trying to help - don’t make it worse (management by walking around)
- Antidotes to cluelessness: less transmission and more reception, ride along and help do the work, downward deference, flex the hierarchy
- Never confuse the hierarchy that you need for managing complexity with the respect people deserve
- Jargon Monoxide: convoluted crap, meaningless bullshit, in group lingo, jargon mishmash syndrome
- “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.� - Alberto Brandolini
- Excessive speed leads to burnout, selfishness, bulleying, bad decisions, and kills creativity
- Damage by excessive speed can ripple throughout an org, making it hard to reverse .. tech and org debt
- Hitting the breaks:
1. Pause to start right - consider talent, norms, and resources
2. Ask questions that make people stop to tink before they do something stupid
3. Where’s your Times Square?
4. Do a relaunch
5. Use friction to create cadence
6. Communicate a lot or not at a
- Fiction Fixers are a trustee in protecting people’s time
- 5 Commitments: “mowing the lawn�, organizations are malleable prototypes, celebrate and reward doers not posers, focus on fixing things not blaming, honor people who avert friction fiascoes not just firefighters
- Smart but empty talk happens because it’s easier to say smart things than to do smart things
- Savvy trustees hit the pause button and figure out what to make easy, hard, or impossible before they turn to how to do it
- Friction Forensics examples: is it the right or wrong thing to do? Do you have enough skill and will to do it? Is failure cheap, safe, and reversible? Is delay wasteful, cruel, or dangerous? Are people overloaded and burned out? Will reducing friction for some cause more friction and burden for others? Are the learnings that result from hard work and frustrations worthwhile given the humans and financial toll?
- The Help Pyramid: Reframing, Navigating, Shielding, Neighborhood Design and Repair, System Design and Repair
- if you are more powerful that your colleagues or customers, you are at risk of being clueless about their friction troubles and how you add to their misery. Symptoms: (1.) privilege spares you from the hassles, humiliations, and barriers heaves on everyone else (2.) because you are connected and powerful, you know everything that matters to your organization (3.) selfishness
- Consequences of being clueless: executive magnification, multiplication madness, decision amnesia, cookie licking, sham participation
- Hurting by trying to help - don’t make it worse (management by walking around)
- Antidotes to cluelessness: less transmission and more reception, ride along and help do the work, downward deference, flex the hierarchy
- Never confuse the hierarchy that you need for managing complexity with the respect people deserve
- Jargon Monoxide: convoluted crap, meaningless bullshit, in group lingo, jargon mishmash syndrome
- “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.� - Alberto Brandolini
- Excessive speed leads to burnout, selfishness, bulleying, bad decisions, and kills creativity
- Damage by excessive speed can ripple throughout an org, making it hard to reverse .. tech and org debt
- Hitting the breaks:
1. Pause to start right - consider talent, norms, and resources
2. Ask questions that make people stop to tink before they do something stupid
3. Where’s your Times Square?
4. Do a relaunch
5. Use friction to create cadence
6. Communicate a lot or not at a
January 21, 2024
"The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder" by Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao is a insightful and practical guide that delves into the complexities of organizational friction. Drawing from seven years of extensive research, the authors provide valuable insights on how to become effective "friction fixers" and navigate the delicate balance between useful and destructive friction in the workplace.
Sutton and Rao begin by unraveling the mindset of skilled friction fixers, who act as trustees of others' time. The concept of friction forensics is introduced, enabling readers to identify areas where organizational friction needs to be averted and repaired, as well as where good friction should be maintained and injected. The authors present a helpful pyramid outlining the ways friction fixers approach their work, from reframing immediate issues to designing and repairing entire organizations.
The heart of the book focuses on five common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams. Sutton and Rao provide in-depth analyses of each issue, offering practical solutions rooted in their extensive research. The clarity and accessibility of their writing make complex organizational concepts easily understandable for readers.
The authors offer a sense of familiarity to readers who may recognize these friction troubles in their own workplaces. The practical lessons provided in the book serve as a valuable toolkit for leaders and individuals seeking to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness. The emphasis on linking small actions to larger goals, the power of civility and empathy, and the acceptance of the inevitable messiness in the process contribute to the book's real-world applicability.
"The Friction Project" stands out for its blend of academic rigor and practical wisdom. Sutton and Rao not only diagnose the sources of friction but also prescribe actionable strategies for addressing them. The book concludes with valuable lessons for leading one's own friction project, highlighting the importance of embracing complexity while striving to improve organizational dynamics.
In summary, "The Friction Project" is an insightful and well-researched guide that offers practical solutions for leaders and individuals grappling with organizational friction. Sutton and Rao's expertise shines through, providing readers with the tools and knowledge needed to navigate and transform workplace dynamics effectively.
Sutton and Rao begin by unraveling the mindset of skilled friction fixers, who act as trustees of others' time. The concept of friction forensics is introduced, enabling readers to identify areas where organizational friction needs to be averted and repaired, as well as where good friction should be maintained and injected. The authors present a helpful pyramid outlining the ways friction fixers approach their work, from reframing immediate issues to designing and repairing entire organizations.
The heart of the book focuses on five common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams. Sutton and Rao provide in-depth analyses of each issue, offering practical solutions rooted in their extensive research. The clarity and accessibility of their writing make complex organizational concepts easily understandable for readers.
The authors offer a sense of familiarity to readers who may recognize these friction troubles in their own workplaces. The practical lessons provided in the book serve as a valuable toolkit for leaders and individuals seeking to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness. The emphasis on linking small actions to larger goals, the power of civility and empathy, and the acceptance of the inevitable messiness in the process contribute to the book's real-world applicability.
"The Friction Project" stands out for its blend of academic rigor and practical wisdom. Sutton and Rao not only diagnose the sources of friction but also prescribe actionable strategies for addressing them. The book concludes with valuable lessons for leading one's own friction project, highlighting the importance of embracing complexity while striving to improve organizational dynamics.
In summary, "The Friction Project" is an insightful and well-researched guide that offers practical solutions for leaders and individuals grappling with organizational friction. Sutton and Rao's expertise shines through, providing readers with the tools and knowledge needed to navigate and transform workplace dynamics effectively.
September 27, 2023
Sutton and Rao are well-known teachers and researchers on how to fix problems. This book shows us how to add the good kind of friction—to make mistakes or slogging through administrative sludge harder to occur—and reduce the bad kind of friction—to streamline getting the desired results. Unfortunately, this is the first paradox: the title and use of the word “friction� as both a good thing and a bad thing. The authors may have wanted to use different words to describe the good form and the bad form. They report on not only their own work but admit that they’ve built this treatise on the research, writings and consulting efforts of others as well. So secondarily, it’s hard to discern where their originality begins and ends.
They define a pyramid of methods for fixing friction, enabling friction, getting the results you want and avoiding the undesirable consequences. They provide a toolbox for discovering those areas that are rife with bad friction. They give a plethora of case studies throughout the book.
For those unfamiliar with how to look at their organization’s efforts with objective lenses, this is a helpful book. It won’t be so helpful for those familiar with evaluative and awareness techniques encompassed by Theory of Constraints (identifying the critically constrained resource and eliminating obstacles for complete utilization and effectiveness and improving the throughput of the whole system), Lean (specifically identifying wastes and value-stream mapping), Six Sigma, Kepner -Tregoe, Kahnemann’s and Tversky’s thinking biases and blind spots (Think Fast, Think Slow), simply experiencing your own systems as your internal and external customers would, simply asking of each procedural step/report request “So what? Who cares? What will we know or do differently based on this?�, and so on.
I’m appreciative of the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to preview this book.
They define a pyramid of methods for fixing friction, enabling friction, getting the results you want and avoiding the undesirable consequences. They provide a toolbox for discovering those areas that are rife with bad friction. They give a plethora of case studies throughout the book.
For those unfamiliar with how to look at their organization’s efforts with objective lenses, this is a helpful book. It won’t be so helpful for those familiar with evaluative and awareness techniques encompassed by Theory of Constraints (identifying the critically constrained resource and eliminating obstacles for complete utilization and effectiveness and improving the throughput of the whole system), Lean (specifically identifying wastes and value-stream mapping), Six Sigma, Kepner -Tregoe, Kahnemann’s and Tversky’s thinking biases and blind spots (Think Fast, Think Slow), simply experiencing your own systems as your internal and external customers would, simply asking of each procedural step/report request “So what? Who cares? What will we know or do differently based on this?�, and so on.
I’m appreciative of the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to preview this book.
June 3, 2024
The common-sense to interesting-insight ratio is pretty high, but there are useful tidbits here and there.
December 8, 2024
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book through a ŷ giveaway. Despite this gift, my thoughts are entirely my own.
Friction is often considered a problem in healthy workplaces, but the complete avoidance of this can be just as problematic. In The Friction Project, Sutton and Rao define and outline what constitutes destructive forms of friction, how these forms occur, and how to make these destructive forces harder for folks to fall into. Simultaneously, they also discuss how to apply constructive friction to slow down teams when this is the most beneficial option for a given problem. Their analysis is done through case study analyses, descriptions of research in organizational behaviour, and personal anecdotes. Chapters include topics such as becoming a trustee of other people’s time, the help pyramid used by friction fixers, friction traps (e.g. oblivious leadership), and how and when to apply good friction.
There are several nuggets of good advice for managing people, personalities, and expectations among a team where not everyone is on the same level of the corporate hierarchy. One that resonated most with me is the difference between "Grease People" and "Gunk People" and how both have appropriate uses. Rather than trying to loosen up a gunk person, who's uptight about rules and bureaucratic, or slow down a grease person, who bends rules and takes risky chances, instead they should be funneled into different tasks or be incorporated into a task at different times. Together they'd cause bad friction and get the project nowhere, but when applied appropriately it makes bad decisions harder to execute (gunk person) and good decisions less likely to get bogged down in debate (grease person).
Unfortunately, a large part of the reading experience felt like I was at a mandatory productivity and wellness workshop put into written form. I felt this way because there were a lot of buzzwords, phrases, and jargon-less jargon used that are often also used in those workshops leaders attend and self-congratulate at... Also, as the book continued many of the initial case studies were reintroduced as if the reader had never heard of that particular case. Re-introducing cases isn't inherently bad - it can show the development of ideas across chapters - but the way in which it was done made it feel like the authors didn't think I was capable of paying attention.
Friction is often considered a problem in healthy workplaces, but the complete avoidance of this can be just as problematic. In The Friction Project, Sutton and Rao define and outline what constitutes destructive forms of friction, how these forms occur, and how to make these destructive forces harder for folks to fall into. Simultaneously, they also discuss how to apply constructive friction to slow down teams when this is the most beneficial option for a given problem. Their analysis is done through case study analyses, descriptions of research in organizational behaviour, and personal anecdotes. Chapters include topics such as becoming a trustee of other people’s time, the help pyramid used by friction fixers, friction traps (e.g. oblivious leadership), and how and when to apply good friction.
There are several nuggets of good advice for managing people, personalities, and expectations among a team where not everyone is on the same level of the corporate hierarchy. One that resonated most with me is the difference between "Grease People" and "Gunk People" and how both have appropriate uses. Rather than trying to loosen up a gunk person, who's uptight about rules and bureaucratic, or slow down a grease person, who bends rules and takes risky chances, instead they should be funneled into different tasks or be incorporated into a task at different times. Together they'd cause bad friction and get the project nowhere, but when applied appropriately it makes bad decisions harder to execute (gunk person) and good decisions less likely to get bogged down in debate (grease person).
Unfortunately, a large part of the reading experience felt like I was at a mandatory productivity and wellness workshop put into written form. I felt this way because there were a lot of buzzwords, phrases, and jargon-less jargon used that are often also used in those workshops leaders attend and self-congratulate at... Also, as the book continued many of the initial case studies were reintroduced as if the reader had never heard of that particular case. Re-introducing cases isn't inherently bad - it can show the development of ideas across chapters - but the way in which it was done made it feel like the authors didn't think I was capable of paying attention.
February 26, 2024
Wow, this is an insightful book! The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder by organizational psychologist Robert I. Sutton and Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Hayagreeva Rao delves into the fascinating world of organizational dynamics. Their mission is to tackle the pervasive issue of friction, which is those forces hindering progress, slowing down processes, and making it downright challenging to get things done within organizations.
The authors start by defining friction as anything that makes tasks harder, more complicated, or slower. But there's a twist: not all friction is bad. Some forms are actually useful, and the key lies in distinguishing between the destructive and constructive types of friction.
Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, Sutton and Rao equip readers with the tools to become "friction fixers." These leaders learn to navigate the delicate balance between eliminating harmful friction and preserving the beneficial kind. For example, the authors explore how skilled friction fixers act as stewards of others' time. They identify areas where bad organizational friction can be averted and repaired, while also maintaining and injecting good friction.
Adam Grant aptly states, "If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place." So, whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, The Friction Project offers practical wisdom for making organizations more efficient, effective, and harmonious.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a temporary e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.
The authors start by defining friction as anything that makes tasks harder, more complicated, or slower. But there's a twist: not all friction is bad. Some forms are actually useful, and the key lies in distinguishing between the destructive and constructive types of friction.
Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, Sutton and Rao equip readers with the tools to become "friction fixers." These leaders learn to navigate the delicate balance between eliminating harmful friction and preserving the beneficial kind. For example, the authors explore how skilled friction fixers act as stewards of others' time. They identify areas where bad organizational friction can be averted and repaired, while also maintaining and injecting good friction.
Adam Grant aptly states, "If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place." So, whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, The Friction Project offers practical wisdom for making organizations more efficient, effective, and harmonious.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a temporary e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.
February 26, 2024
Often in business, we make the easy stuff easier and the hard stuff harder. When it comes to projects, particularly in technology, unnecessary friction can cause employees to leave, projects to take too long, and projects to fail. This friction can occur in the culture, in the project itself, or with differences of opinion. Too little friction can cause products to fail on the market, poor quality control to affect brand reputation, and more. How do we add friction to the right areas and reduce friction where it needs to be reduced? In this audiobook, Rao an Sutton highlight organizations who have done just that. They outline a five help pyramid for how employees can reduce the friction and suggestions for how executives can implement systematic repair.
Narrator, Sean Patrick Hopkins does a great job of bringing to life the enthusiasm and passion found within this book. He has an engaging intonation and helps to make the information in this book more interesting. The information provided is helpful, practical, and unique. Case studies provided illustrate how effective the techniques mentioned can be. He gives suggestions for how to reduce meetings, fix friction, and increase productivity and innovation. This is a must-have listen for executives, project managers, and product developers. Recommended for most library collections.
Please Note: A copy of this book is given in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are our own. No other compensation was received.
Narrator, Sean Patrick Hopkins does a great job of bringing to life the enthusiasm and passion found within this book. He has an engaging intonation and helps to make the information in this book more interesting. The information provided is helpful, practical, and unique. Case studies provided illustrate how effective the techniques mentioned can be. He gives suggestions for how to reduce meetings, fix friction, and increase productivity and innovation. This is a must-have listen for executives, project managers, and product developers. Recommended for most library collections.
Please Note: A copy of this book is given in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are our own. No other compensation was received.
Want to read
August 22, 2023What I really look forward to in this book is what the friction's purpose is. We all remember the Jack Welch days of GE and the commodification of quality improvement through brand names like six sigma. Now, that spirit is argued to be part of the eventual downfall for GE. Does that mean that it was wrong to do it? Does that mean that we redefine what an inefficiency is? Possibly, but I really trust these two guys to tease that out. What I find refreshing in what this book purports as its approach is the built a nuance to the central concept. There is no oversimplified outset that promises a satisfactory singular answer to whatever issues are up for discussion.
It looks to be something useful to a young person who has MBA or equivalent degree but who has also worked in organizations that match what this book is going to be talking about. I for example did not have the organizational experience but was taught most of the lessons that you normally would expect in a master's business degree program. But I'm only realizing now what was applicable and how I should have approached that material in school. I hope to learn a lot from this book and I really think that the authors of the perfect ones to do it.
It looks to be something useful to a young person who has MBA or equivalent degree but who has also worked in organizations that match what this book is going to be talking about. I for example did not have the organizational experience but was taught most of the lessons that you normally would expect in a master's business degree program. But I'm only realizing now what was applicable and how I should have approached that material in school. I hope to learn a lot from this book and I really think that the authors of the perfect ones to do it.
February 10, 2025
I picked up The Friction Project by Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao because of its intriguing subtitle: How to Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder. This phrase isn’t just a practical guideline—it poses a deep, almost philosophical question relevant to both society and organizations. Friction is not necessarily a problem always. A leader shall use friction optimally at appropriate places.
For anyone leading an organization, this concept can serve as a powerful guiding principle. The book presents numerous insightful ideas, such as being mindful of colleagues� time, avoiding “jargon monoxide,� and fixing coordination issues. While some of these points may seem obvious, the authors emphasize that true leadership lies in mastering the obvious—paying attention to details, taking responsibility, and actively reducing friction.
One of the book’s core messages is that organizational constraints should never become “orphan problems.� A good leader refuses to accept the status quo and works to eliminate unnecessary obstacles. Overall, The Friction Project offers a refreshing approach to understanding how organizations shall function by making the right things easier and the wrong things harder.
For anyone leading an organization, this concept can serve as a powerful guiding principle. The book presents numerous insightful ideas, such as being mindful of colleagues� time, avoiding “jargon monoxide,� and fixing coordination issues. While some of these points may seem obvious, the authors emphasize that true leadership lies in mastering the obvious—paying attention to details, taking responsibility, and actively reducing friction.
One of the book’s core messages is that organizational constraints should never become “orphan problems.� A good leader refuses to accept the status quo and works to eliminate unnecessary obstacles. Overall, The Friction Project offers a refreshing approach to understanding how organizations shall function by making the right things easier and the wrong things harder.
February 2, 2024
I read an electronic copy from Netgalley. I found it a little hard to read. That said, though, I have not had a day when I haven't thought about friction since I read the book. How can I make the right things easier and the wrong things harder? What do I want people to do that they are not doing? What do I want people to stop doing? How can I make that happen without having to be an enforcer or a policeman? Friction!
I shouldn't make this review public because I want to be able to adjust the friction in my systems without the people in my life knowing that's what I'm doing.
There are also several little gems in here.
-- "The first principle such leaders follow is we serve as trustees of others� time."
-- "problems are like dinosaurs. They’re easy to handle when they’re small, but if you let them go, they’ll grow up to be big and nasty."
-- "Specialized and well-defined jargon used by insiders can bolster communication, fast action, and feelings of belonging"...but can alienate outsiders.
--"Friction fixers build good endings."
I am planning to go find the first book this pair wrote.
I shouldn't make this review public because I want to be able to adjust the friction in my systems without the people in my life knowing that's what I'm doing.
There are also several little gems in here.
-- "The first principle such leaders follow is we serve as trustees of others� time."
-- "problems are like dinosaurs. They’re easy to handle when they’re small, but if you let them go, they’ll grow up to be big and nasty."
-- "Specialized and well-defined jargon used by insiders can bolster communication, fast action, and feelings of belonging"...but can alienate outsiders.
--"Friction fixers build good endings."
I am planning to go find the first book this pair wrote.
December 23, 2024
„Admirăm echipele și organizațiile care reușesc mai mult într-un timp mai scurt decât ne-am fi imaginat vreodată�. (p.64) Robert I. Sutton și Huggy Rao, „The Friction Project- How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder�, St.Martin Press, 2024
TEXT De Ziua Recunoștinței pentru ce te-ai gândi să mulțumești? Tradiția americană pornește de la recolta anului respectiv și e legată de a patra zi de joi din noiembrie. S-ar putea să ai nevoie să înveți că până și greutățile au rolul lor. Dar mai ales depășirea lor. În „The Friction Project�, Robert I. Sutton și Huggy Rao investighează ce îți creează de obicei dificultăți: liderii uituci, amețeala suprasolicitării, legăturile rupte, monoxidul de jargon ca și echipele pripite. Și astfel se încheie seria recomandărilor de carte citEști dedicată în noiembrie „exotismului familiar�.
CITAT „Steve Jobs a fost celebru pentru felul în care făcea legătura între amănunte și chestiunile majore�. (p.241) Robert I. Sutton și Huggy Rao, „The Friction Project- How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder�, St.Martin Press, 2024
TEXT De Ziua Recunoștinței pentru ce te-ai gândi să mulțumești? Tradiția americană pornește de la recolta anului respectiv și e legată de a patra zi de joi din noiembrie. S-ar putea să ai nevoie să înveți că până și greutățile au rolul lor. Dar mai ales depășirea lor. În „The Friction Project�, Robert I. Sutton și Huggy Rao investighează ce îți creează de obicei dificultăți: liderii uituci, amețeala suprasolicitării, legăturile rupte, monoxidul de jargon ca și echipele pripite. Și astfel se încheie seria recomandărilor de carte citEști dedicată în noiembrie „exotismului familiar�.
CITAT „Steve Jobs a fost celebru pentru felul în care făcea legătura între amănunte și chestiunile majore�. (p.241) Robert I. Sutton și Huggy Rao, „The Friction Project- How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder�, St.Martin Press, 2024
June 7, 2024
Robert Sutton is infectious. I started with his book 'Scaling up Excellence' (/en/book/sho...) then started going through each and every piece of work by him. Then it became like a 'binge reading' anything and everything he wrote.
'The Friction Project' is another interesting book by him, where he spent tons and tons of his time and experience to put together the pieces which creates friction in an organization and how as a leader one should encourage 'doers and not the posers'. And how one should find better ways to build better system than trying to cover up existing.
He highlighted the need for 'subtraction' and emphasized time as currency and how one should be extra cautious in spending others time be it writing an email or inviting relevant people to meeting, or keeping meeting short. And underlined the power of explaining things simpler by getting rid of jargons and fancy acronyms.
Overall an interesting read ! Thanks Sutton for an amazing work.
'The Friction Project' is another interesting book by him, where he spent tons and tons of his time and experience to put together the pieces which creates friction in an organization and how as a leader one should encourage 'doers and not the posers'. And how one should find better ways to build better system than trying to cover up existing.
He highlighted the need for 'subtraction' and emphasized time as currency and how one should be extra cautious in spending others time be it writing an email or inviting relevant people to meeting, or keeping meeting short. And underlined the power of explaining things simpler by getting rid of jargons and fancy acronyms.
Overall an interesting read ! Thanks Sutton for an amazing work.
October 3, 2023
The Friction Project is an easy read with lots of real world examples on how to cut out useless meetings, redundant approvals, and excessive communication to make good work easier, while balancing that efficiency with the right checks to ensure quality and safety. It gave me some good ideas of areas I can seek feedback from my own team on to help them be more effective and waste less of their time.
My favorite thing: I particularly enjoyed the notion that you can temporarily try out any change that is easy and low risk and know that it can be rolled back if it doesn't work. As a result, I am trying a one week a trial of new ownership assignments with my team for previously group owned tasks to improve issue response times and more evenly split work loads.
My least favorite thing: I wish that the section on reframing negative friction issues with your team discussed empathetic listening more than just delivering platitudes about how it isn't a big deal in the long term.
My favorite thing: I particularly enjoyed the notion that you can temporarily try out any change that is easy and low risk and know that it can be rolled back if it doesn't work. As a result, I am trying a one week a trial of new ownership assignments with my team for previously group owned tasks to improve issue response times and more evenly split work loads.
My least favorite thing: I wish that the section on reframing negative friction issues with your team discussed empathetic listening more than just delivering platitudes about how it isn't a big deal in the long term.
Want to read
December 22, 2023Anyone who works in an organization will find helpful things from this book! Especially those in leadership. I think we've all been there: reading a too long email that could've been a lot more concise, in a meeting that could've been an email, struggling through red tape to do something that should be fairly simple. So many of our programs and organizations have a lot of this "bad friction." Sutton and Rao have spent 7 years studying friction and this book is there analysis on how to help leaders reduce bad friction and increase good friction. As they say to "focus on what to make easier and faster and what to make harder and slower, [so that] life will be better for workers and the people they serve."
As someone who is both a leader/the head of my organization but also within a much larger framework where I am 3 or 4 rungs down the line of leadership, I got a lot out of this book. I will definitely be taking what I have learned and applying it in my work.
As someone who is both a leader/the head of my organization but also within a much larger framework where I am 3 or 4 rungs down the line of leadership, I got a lot out of this book. I will definitely be taking what I have learned and applying it in my work.
April 27, 2024
Robert Sutton & Huggy Rao - The Friction Project: 9/10
Book 12 of 2024.
This book was thought-provoking and gave me a lot of ideas for a leadership presentation as it explores workplace dynamics, especially on overlooked aspects of team performance.
I really liked its practical approach to addressing workplace challenges with real-world examples and actionable strategies, providing the tools needed to navigate and manage friction within an organization.
The emphasis on transparency and accountability resonated well with me, relating to the Company Values I helped set up over a year ago, with ownership and transparency as key values in fostering a progressive mindset to contribute towards success.
If you are leading a team, this is a must-read for you to drive meaningful change in your organization. I highly recommend it to fellow professionals seeking actionable insights to navigate the complexities of today's workplace.
Book 12 of 2024.
This book was thought-provoking and gave me a lot of ideas for a leadership presentation as it explores workplace dynamics, especially on overlooked aspects of team performance.
I really liked its practical approach to addressing workplace challenges with real-world examples and actionable strategies, providing the tools needed to navigate and manage friction within an organization.
The emphasis on transparency and accountability resonated well with me, relating to the Company Values I helped set up over a year ago, with ownership and transparency as key values in fostering a progressive mindset to contribute towards success.
If you are leading a team, this is a must-read for you to drive meaningful change in your organization. I highly recommend it to fellow professionals seeking actionable insights to navigate the complexities of today's workplace.
March 15, 2024
I loved The Friction Project. I'm a crisis engineer who works with organizations of all types and sizes that are struggling, and I've already found myself using some of the stories from this book when making recommendations. Often to solve the same problem you'll want to actively remove friction from some areas, while -- the more overlooked step! -- also adding friction to reduce unwanted behaviors, or behaviors that should be [more] rare. This book is applicable to anyone trying to make change from any role in an organization, whether you're in the field serving end users in a government agency or at the top of a publicly-traded company.
I especially love the call-out boxes with prompts, and the many interesting and diverse stories throughout the book, which made for an engaging and actionable read.
I especially love the call-out boxes with prompts, and the many interesting and diverse stories throughout the book, which made for an engaging and actionable read.
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