This program features a bonus conversation between the authors.
The definitive guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations. Find out why Adam Grant says, "If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place."
Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. 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."
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, 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 troubles: 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).
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.
The Friction Project
How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 30, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781250902481
- File size: 252041 KB
- Duration: 08:45:05
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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October 23, 2023
Organizational psychologist Sutton and Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Rao follow up their 2014 collaboration, Scaling Up Excellence, with an impassioned guide for reducing “friction,” which they define as “forces that make it harder, slower, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations.” Highlighting organizations that have successfully simplified their operations, the authors describe how the chief medical officer at Hawaii Pacific Health saved hundreds of nursing hours per month by making such minor tweaks as reducing the “required clicks for documenting a diaper change from three to one.” Sutton and Rao outline a five-level “help pyramid” suggesting how workers with different degrees of power might resolve “friction”; those with less institutional influence will have to settle for helping coworkers view obstacles as less daunting by joking about challenges, but senior executives can implement “systemic repairs.” (For example, higher-ups at pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca saved staffers “from thousands of unnecessary emails” by “adding steps before employees could ‘reply all’ to more than twenty-five” recipients). The guidance is solid and the case studies illustrate how even small changes can have large effects. Readers tired of sitting through unnecessary meetings will want to check this out. -
The latest book by a professor of organizational behavior and a colleague is served well by the upbeat performance of veteran narrator Sean Patrick Hopkins. Much like the principal author's speaking style--a bonus interview with Sutton and his coauthor concludes the production--Hopkins's vocal enthusiasm is prominent but never detracts from the intellectual soundness of these ideas. The authors say friction is the part of any organizational process that makes work more difficult to complete. Good friction slows down processes so that people have time to be more thorough. Bad friction consists of complications that will be familiar to everyone--bloated verbiage, endless meetings, irrelevant paperwork, and self-indulgent managers. With help from the narrator's fitting performance, these are accessible ideas for addressing a rampant problem in organizational life. T.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
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