The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder

The definitive guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations.

Every workplace is clogged with destructive friction—the convoluted, time-consuming, and soul-crushing gyrations that drive people crazy and undermine organizational performance. Countless employees, executives, and customers bemoan hours lost to mazes of red tape, “efficiency tools” that become anything but, and clueless leaders who pile on needless complexity, all of which make it far too difficult to get necessary things done at work. And yet, striving toward a “frictionless organization” is a misguided goal, because too many organizations also make the wrong things too easy to do. Half-baked ideas and technologies that attempt to dampen friction often make things even worse, eating away at our energy, creativity, and productivity.

Bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao have spent the last decade studying what ought to be easy and what ought to be hard in organizations, and how to change things for the better. Drawing from a deep well of research, case studies, and hundreds of engagements with top companies, The Friction Project reveals just how widespread this affliction is, and charts a roadmap for readers to take up the mantle and blaze a path out of the muck. Sutton and Rao tease out the most common and destructive forms of friction, and share proven tactics, tools, and practices that can help us avert these traps and move forward. Ultimately, The Friction Project makes the case for a new philosophy that empowers us to build positive, productive, and humane organizations that make life better for their people and those they serve.

About the Author

ROBERT I. SUTTON is an organizational psychologist and professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School. He has given keynote speeches to more than 200 groups in 20 countries, and served on numerous scholarly editorial boards. Sutton’s work has been featured in the New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Atlantic, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and Washington Post. He is a frequent guest on various television and radio programs, and has written seven books and two edited volumes, including the bestsellers The No Asshole Rule; Good Boss, Bad Boss; and Scaling Up Excellence.

HUGGY RAO is the Atholl McBean professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science, the Sociological Research Association, and the Academy of Management. He has written for Harvard Business Review, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Market Rebels and coauthor of the bestselling Scaling Up Excellence.