Organizational psychologist, Stanford faculty, New York Times bestselling author, and speaker. Eight books including Good Boss, Bad Boss, The No Asshole Rule, and Scaling Up Excellence. Latest:The Friction Project.
Menlo Park, California, United States
261K followers
500+ connections
261K followers
500+ connections
About
Robert Sutton is an organizational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author. He is author of eight books, including (with Huggy Rao) "The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder." He studies leadership, organizational change, innovation, scaling, and workplace dynamics. At Stanford, he is Professor of Management Science and Engineering (emeritus) and a faculty fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He co-founded the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Institute of Design (“the d school”), and Center for Work, Technology, and Organization.
Sutton speaks on friction in organizations, other challenges of leading at scale, and fundamentals of modern leadership. To book him, contact Charlotte Perman at United Talent Agency at perman_c@unitedtalent.com or 212.647.6307.
Sutton won the Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching, and numerous other Stanford teaching awards. He won awards for the best paper of the year in the Academy of Management Journal and in the Academy of Management Review. Sutton was named as one of 10 “B-School All-Stars” by BusinessWeek, “professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond academia.” The London Business School honored him with the Sumantra Ghoshal Award for Rigour and Relevance in the Study of Management.
Sutton has published over 200 articles in academic and popular outlets. His books include"Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense" (with Jeff Pfeffer), selected by the Toronto Globe and Mail as the best business book of 2006. "The Knowing-Doing Gap" (with Pfeffer) was chosen for Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten’s "100 Best Business Books of All Time." Fast Company's Bill Taylor described "Weird Ideas That Work" as "the smartest and most original take on leadership and organizational creativity that I’ve read." Sutton's "Good Boss, Bad Boss" and "The No Asshole Rule" are New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers. Scaling-Up Excellence (with Rao) is a Wall Street Journal bestseller and Financial Times picked it as among the best six management books in 2014.
On "The Friction Project," Adam Grant wrote: “This is the ultimate guide to diagnosing and fixing the problems in your organization. No one knows more about making work better than this pair of experts, and they’ve produced a remarkably insightful, engrossing, evidence-based, and actionable read. If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place.”
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Bob Sutton reposted thisBob Sutton reposted thisCongrats Michael Arena! My friend and former Chief Talent Officer at General Motors and AWS has a new book coming out, The New Social Code. The timing couldn’t be better: as AI gets smarter and more capable, our ability to build meaningful relationships may become an even greater human advantage. Michael and co-author Greg Pryor unpack the science behind the relationships that help us find opportunities, build trust, generate insights, focus attention, and influence others. If you’re thinking about the human side of the future of work, then grab a copy here: https://lnkd.in/gNTTfhbB #Books #FutureOfWork #Leadership #ArtificialIntelligence #TheNewSocialCode
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Bob Sutton reposted thisBob Sutton reposted thisI finally got to ask Bob Sutton a question I've carried for years. Bob is a Stanford professor emeritus and the author of The Friction Project and The No Asshole Rule, which is about to hit its 20th anniversary. He joined our MasterClass Executive cohort for a live session this morning. I told him that as a consultant, I'm often brought in to fix projects everyone has written off, and early on the team usually sees me as the villain. One team called me the viper. So how do you create the friction a turnaround needs without being labelled the asshole? His answer was simple and a little humbling. If you walk in as the know-it-all and do all the talking, people will decide youre a jerk. Start by listening, especially to your harshest critics. He even teaches leaders to watch how much of the talking time they take. Then he asked me if I do that. I told him the truth: I listen better now (thanks to an old mentor of mine, Tom Wahl), but it took me almost 20 years to get there. Early in my career, I knew everything. He said he loved my spirit, and I'll take it. A few more ideas I wrote down: → Every one of us has a cone of friction. From the front line to the CEO, we make things easier or harder for the people around us every day. Great leaders keep asking how to remove unnecessary burdens, and how to make the wrong things harder to do. → Your immediate boss shapes your engagement far more than the CEO or the culture does. The best bosses act as a human shield, protecting their people from the nonsense from on high. (Thanks, Warren Asuchak) →For a cohort learning to lead with AI, this one hit home. AI makes each of us faster on our own, but Bobs research is finding it can slow teams down when nobody takes the time to check what their agents produce before handing it to a colleague. He called the unchecked output botshit. His fix: slow down, be crystal clear on the mission (what the military calls commanders intent), agree on what good and bad look like, and keep auditing. Make it harder to add new agents and easier to retire the ones that arent pulling their weight. The best part, though, was the chat. Before Chicago, my cohort were names on a screen. Now I know their stories, their laughs and what lights them up, and watching the chat fill with people I'd sat beside at Booth made a virtual session feel like a reunion. Mandar Bapaye, Lisa A. Nevins Will Kesling Arvinder K. Simon Blint Maite Creixell Aidan Wagner and so many more! Listening first, protecting your people and making work easier for others: its the same thread Coach K and Nicholas Epley pulled on. Leadership lives in the relationships, even when half the team is made of agents. Thank you, Bob. MasterClass MasterClass Executive: Cohort Voices The University of Chicago Booth School of Business Stanford University #Leadership #TheFrictionProject #MasterClassExecutive
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Bob Sutton shared thisOh this sounds good. Perry Klebahn has taught me more about how to spend less time "getting ready" and how to just "get started" than anyone else. How to prototype my way to learning, solutions, and confidence. I am not alone, in addition to being a veteran founder (he invented the modern snowshoe when he was student and then scaled and sold the Atlas Snowshoes Company) and senior executive (he was the second highest ranking executive at Patagonia for several years, and then on the board for several more), Perry has been teaching design at Stanford for decades. In one of us his Stanford d.school classes, Launchpad, more than 100 companies have been started, more than half of which are still alive in some form (and some interesting failures, including David Rogier's effort, which helped set the stage for MasterClass). About Perry's class: https://lnkd.in/g7rumkH2Bob Sutton shared thisWhat if the prototype is not the answer but the question? That is the challenge of ambiguity. When you do not yet know the right question you cannot think your way to certainty. At some point you have to make something and see what happens. This idea sits at the heart of the first article in The Greater Unknown. My new instalment on Substack exploring how founders, educators, designers and leaders navigate ambiguity and act without certainty. For the first piece I asked Perry Klebahn, entrepreneur, former CEO and co-founding faculty member at Stanford’s d.school, how he approaches the unknown. We explore the role of artifacts in navigating ambiguity, how to find real signals when there is no playbook and why real user engagement reigns supreme over surveys. For #entrepreneurshipeducators there is also a timely look at how Perry has gone beyond integrating AI and started rethinking and redesigning the LaunchPad curriculum in response. As Perry explains through surfing, you can learn to read the ocean but you cannot predict exactly when the next great wave will arrive. You have to get into the water, read the conditions and be ready to move. Thank you for sharing your wisdom Perry! Link in the comments. #TheGreaterUnknown #DesignThinking #EntrepreneurshipEducation
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Bob Sutton shared thisAdam is one of the most generous people I know with his time, ideas, and emotional support. He doesn’t just talk about being a giver, he lives it. So this advice from him is especially meaningful as the only way he can be so giving to so many others is by saying no to many things to protect his time and sanity, and to do a (relatively) few things well. I have a small fraction of the demands on my time that Adam does, but in the spirit of his wise comments, I hope you understand when I decline your request to blurb your book, to have 30 minute talk about your startup, product, or research idea, to go to your interesting conference, or to write something with you. And I hope you will forgive me when I fail to answer your email or question on LinkedIn. I try to answer as many as I can. But to do what I do as well as I can, to spend time with the people I like and love, to take time to exercise, and to do silly things I like and savor, I too decline and ignore many worthy requests. It isn’t you, it is me!Bob Sutton shared thisWhat I’ve learned as a recovering people pleaser: https://lnkd.in/egNxVNcT
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Bob Sutton reposted thisBob Sutton reposted thisGiven all the recent 'AI apocalypse' hype, it's time for a reality check: 95% of American workers have not fully delegated one single task to AI. Even among software engineers, 90% haven't. Recently, an Epoch AI and Ipsos survey of 1,106 employed Americans generated some alarming press; NBC said that that "one in five workers delegate work to AI." Taken at face value, it sounds like 20% of our jobs are already automated. In that world, we are just a handful of years away from the massive disruptions predicted by tech leaders. But when you dig past the headlines and into the survey's microdata (which I did because they made it public, thanks Epoch AI/Ipsos), the reality doesn't match the hype. There is very little actual work being handed over to AI. The "20%" is mostly minor tweaks. Sure, 1 in 5 workers use AI, but this broadly includes tiny, sporadic tasks like using an LLM to fix grammar or reword an email. Full delegation is rare. When the survey asked a stricter question, whether AI does most or all of at least one specific task, the number plummets to just 5%. Even among the most likely early adopters (software engineers), 9 out of 10 do not have a single task they can fully hand off to AI. Even when a task is given to AI, it doesn't always save time: workers report saving time only 53% of the time. Notably, 1 in 6 AI-assisted tasks actually takes longer than it did before. A recent chart release by Anthropic showed that exactly 0 percent of their R&D is fully automated. Zilch! We are drowning in wild hype about AI taking all white-collar jobs. But the data suggests that we can all take a deep breath. We are still firmly in the experimentation phase, and it seems like we are going to be here for a while.
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Bob Sutton reposted thisBob Sutton reposted thisWhen AI joins the team, who owns the outcome? Quinn Miller argues that organizations are creating morale and trust problems by launching AI tools before clarifying roles, responsibilities, and accountability. Miller shows how ambiguity around AI ownership can slow work, weaken psychological safety, and make teams less willing to speak up. The article notes that 78% of CHROs agree workflows and roles need to change to get full value from AI investments. Yet many organizations are still reacting after confusion has already set in. The practical lesson is simple: define the human role before deploying the machine. Trust matters more than ever in the AI era. https://lnkd.in/gUAzHW3YClarity Before AI: Why Workforce Planning Starts With Defined RolesClarity Before AI: Why Workforce Planning Starts With Defined Roles
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Bob Sutton shared this“The New Social Code is the guidebook that every leader and organization needs to flourish, rather than freeze-up and fail, in the AI era. This unusually well-written gem is packed with compelling evidence and stories that will help you to harness the human relationships, networks, and trust you need to thrive financially and emotionally, rather than to be left behind, in these exciting and sometimes frightening times.” That is my reaction--and blurb-- after reading an advance copy of Michael Arena's wonderful book. Michael is a rare talent, just this morning, I was saying to learning and development at a huge company, that Michael is either the most academic senior executive I ever met, or the most experienced and skilled academic researcher who also happens to be a veteran senior executive I ever met! (Although Joel Podolny gives Michael a run for his money!).Bob Sutton shared thisAI is making intelligence abundant. That makes human connection the new scarcity. That is the idea behind our new book, The New Social Code. The greatest misconception about the AI revolution is that it is primarily a technology story. It isn’t. It is also a relational one. AI is extraordinary at processing information. It can analyze massive datasets, recognize patterns, generate ideas, write code, and explore thousands of possibilities in seconds. But when success depends on trust, judgment, context, opportunity, or influence, the advantage shifts back to people. That is where The New Social Code begins. Drawing on decades of social-network research, organizational experience, and unforgettable stories, Greg Pryor and I unpack five relational edges that can help people thrive in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms. Computer code tells machines how to execute. The New Social Code helps people understand how to connect, navigate relationships, and accomplish what machines cannot. If you are thinking about what it will take to remain relevant and thrive in the age of AI, we wrote this book for you. Preorders are now open: https://lnkd.in/gc6hXYvJ The New Social Code: Five Relational Edges That Outperform Algorithms Available October 27. If you preorder the book, please let me know and we will get you a complementary toolkit.
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Bob Sutton shared thisA great story about Sarah Soule, one of my favorite "Likeable Badasses." She cares about others, knows how to get things done, and knows how and when to be tough. And she is SO funny....a seriously excellent leader who does not take herself too seriously. I wonder if Alison Fragale has seen other badass leaders use humor as part of being likeable, to activate energy in others, and to make work and life more fun--Sarah is so good at that!Bob Sutton shared thisThis was a fun pinch me moment! I open up the Stanford University Graduate School of Business magazine to see Dean Sarah Soule featured (no surprise), but look what shares the page...a little profile about a former graduate student and her book!! I coudn't be more flattered to be in Sarah's company. Stanford is so lucky to have her at the helm. Getting my PhD at Stanford was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I'm honored to have done something that is worthy of the name. And if you're wondering what those six circles are on the image, those are from the adhesive of a postcard that they stuck on the page. I'll assume that was just random and they didn't decide to cover up the one page in the magazine that featured only women. 😄
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Bob Sutton shared this"Mediocrity is the real threat" rings most true to me....for people of all ages. I would add a seemingly contradictory twist. That everything worth doing is not worth doing well. Two reasons. First, to do excellent work takes a lot of time, and when you are faced with too many demands, doing a mediocre or even a bad job at things that don't matter, but you still need to "check the box," helps clear the way to be excellent at what does matter (And note AI is great for doing mediocre work FAST). Second, there are times when "strategic incompetence" also clears the way for you to focus on what matters most because, after you screw up work that is low-learning, low-status, and low impact (especially bureaucratic shit work--something that young professional women especially get assigned) your "superiors" will be less likely to ask you to do it again (I got this advice from a famous psychologist, Robert Zajonc, when I was a young assistant professor--that being incompetent at administrative tasks would HELP me get tenure because, after screwing up such work, I would not be assigned it again, and could focus on my research--on the excellence that mattered in academia!).Bob Sutton shared thisThese three truths share one enemy: the impressive-looking substitute. The polished resume instead of the work. The heroic sprint instead of the daily practice. The safe middle instead of the real attempt. One more from the list for this decade: take a break or you'll break. Amateurs grind until they crack. Professionals take breaks. Follow @danielpink for behavioral science you can put to work the same day you read it. Send this to your intellectually curious friend. #lifeadvice #30s #harshtruths #careeradvice #danielpink
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Thanks. Such a great and difficult question. Your nuanced post is wonderful
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Marko Ladis hah well having watched him over the years, he is quite disciplined about pressing people to pick there most promising option and then to iterate and refine and test it again and again until it either proves to be viable or is a dead end. The design thinking lingo is shifting between focus and flare phases. But that doesn’t quite capture how tough minded he is about the process. With AI, he reports that students often don’t struggle enough to develop promising ideas.
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Bob Sutton liked thisBob Sutton liked thisPitching! Pitching is one of the most heavily studied topics in entrepreneurship, and it's also something that every investor and founder knows intimately. But there are still lots of surprises when we dig in: --> A 1 SD increase in passion (as conveyed in face, voice, and word choice) increases funding probability by 35%, but ventures funded on passionate pitches underperform on growth, follow-on funding, and survival. Research by Allen Hu and Song Ma --> When faced with a positive gut impression vs weaker business plans (or vice versa), investors tend to rely on their gut…and those gut intuitions are better predictors of which ventures become home runs than the business fundamentals are. Research by Laura Huang and Jone Pearce --> Humble founders are seen as more fundable (and are more likely to raise funds), but narcissists are as well. Research by Laurent Vilanova and Ivanova Vitanova --> In pitch Q&A, investors tend to ask men promotion-framed questions (about growth and upside) and women prevention-framed questions (about risk and downside); this bias equates to significant funding disadvantage for women (roughly half). But, answering a prevention-framed question with a promotion-framed answer allows founders to compensate for a lot of that disadvantage. Research by Dana Kanze, Laura Huang, Mark Conley, and Tory Higgins. This afternoon, I got to dig into these tensions on stage with three amazing panelists: Nancy Sullivan (Illinois Ventures), Ryan Coon (Green Street Growth), and Shay Brokemond (Orange & Blue Ventures) as a headline panel for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Founders Week. The main takeaway of the discussion for me is that giving and evaluating pitches is hard! So much of what investors do lives in gut intuition, but that's also where many biases live. Another is that the pitch is actually one small moment in a much richer relationship, and thinking about pitches on their own misses a lot of what it takes to actually succeed as an investor or a founder. This is also part of a broader effort at Illinois (and specifically at the Origin Ventures Office of Entrepreneurship - Gies College of Business) to explore how we can bring together the science and practice of entrepreneurship. More on that tomorrow. In the meantime, thank you Melissa Graebner, the OVOE team, and everyone running Founders Week for making it happen :-)
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Bob Sutton liked thisBob Sutton liked thisNobody at Atlassian is required to come into the office, and attendance went up 9% last year anyway. There are lots of ways to get office attendance up if you're looking for appearances, but the better way is to give people what they need: a place to connect and tackle gnarly problems together. Magnets vs mandates, transformation vs billboarding. Owl Labs found that 48% of office workers choose their office days based on when senior leaders or clients will be there. Jessica Guynn's piece in USA TODAY this morning is about exactly this: "billboard days," where people commute in to be seen. Nick Bloom and I are both in it; Nick describing how office peacocks need an audience... Atlassian is earning its attendance, and a lot of others are getting people to show up for the boss's calendar. At a Charter Forum session I hosted last month, Atlassian's Alisa Yu, PhD put it simply: "When coming together is an act of agency rather than a policy requirement, a vibrant space and strong community become a true magnet. There's no badge tracking required." Future Forum partner-in-crime Ryan Anderson of MillerKnoll talked about how AI is changing why people need shared space, and it's not about the individual needs. His team went looking for how AI changes behavior at work and found individuals on laptops looking, well, like people on laptops. The real shift showed up when whole teams started redesigning how they work together, and that intense, real-time work pulled them into the same room. His suggestion for what to call it beats anything in your RTO memo: re-attach, not return. This week's Work Forward has the rest, including the three kinds of space Atlassian is designing for and what to measure instead of badge swipes. Links to both pieces are in the first comment. So what's pulling your team into the office right now, and is it more than putting up appearances?Nobody at Atlassian is required to come in, but attendance keeps going up.Nobody at Atlassian is required to come in, but attendance keeps going up.
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Bob Sutton liked thisToday Civilla is announcing a grant from the The OpenAI Foundation to explore how AI can help with some of government's hardest problems: benefits access, policy navigation, eligibility determinations. The tool is new. The discipline isn't. We will keep designing with the people who use these services and the public servants who deliver them, because we believe in keeping humans at the center. What gives me hope isn't the technology. It's the public servants who keep showing up with care and optimism, year after year, even when the systems around them are hard. This grant is in service of them and the people they serve. #HumanCenteredDesign #PublicSector #GovTech #AIBob Sutton liked this2026 has been a year of experimenting for Civilla. We've been experimenting with new frameworks, methodologies, and tools that enhance our design process and improve public services for everyday Americans. Today, we're excited to announce that we've received a grant from the OpenAI Foundation to continue this experimentation by exploring AI tools that address some of the most difficult challenges our public institutions are facing across benefits access, policy navigation, and eligibility determinations. As we explore what AI can make possible, we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done: centering the people who use these services and the public servants who deliver them. Their care, optimism, and will to keep moving forward are what give us hope for a more beautiful civil society. Read the full announcement here: https://lnkd.in/gGiGrxg2
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Bob Sutton liked thisBob Sutton liked this"Bet on yourself." That was the key takeaway from the conversation Ilana Stern and I had with a group of students at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business this week. But first, you have to make yourself worth betting on. That starts with investing in yourself and building real skills, relationships and credibility, so that when you do place the bet, it pays off. Together, we talked through what that looks like over a career: → Taking a job that stretches you so much it's scary → Founding a company → Backing early-stage founders → Putting your professional reputation on the line for a big swing that could define your career I was surprised by the turnout. Nearly 200 MBAs came out on a Monday night for a talk on entrepreneurship and marketing. That says a lot about what Ilana and her partners at Salt VC have built. It also says a lot about this class, which has the hunger and curiosity it takes to make winning bets. Marketing hasn't always been a central focus at the GSB, but go-to-market has never mattered more. With AI democratizing the means to build technology, the skills to understand market-based needs, drive adoption, and develop loyal customers become core differentiators. The next generation of builders sees that, and they're already investing in themselves.
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Bob Sutton liked thisBob Sutton liked this“Nothing beats being an aware, sensory human being who is curious about other people, places, and things.” We were so glad to welcome Jane Fulton Suri, a pioneer of human-centered design back to IDEO for a conversation with CEO Michael Peng. Her early work in human factors shaped products still in use today, like Oral-B toothbrushes and Evenflo strollers. Jane shares how being observant and absorbent through all your senses leads to the best insights: getting haircuts to map IDEO’s first customer journey, or watching a surgeon cup a kidney like a baby bird to design technology for transplants. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did: https://lnkd.in/ekXwT8Kk
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Bob Sutton liked thisBob Sutton liked thisThe best books leave you changed. But I’d add. Sometimes change isn’t about learning something new. It's about finding the words for something you've always felt deep down. Here are three books I’ve read in the past year that did exactly that: -The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. I read a section every morning before I write. It’s become a trusted companion in my creative life. -A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. Whenever I am caught up in the concerns of the moment, I return to this book, which immediately brings me back to my broader purpose. -Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport. A book to live by. It reminded me of a deep value I hold: quality over quantity. What about you? What book(s) reshaped you or revealed something you already knew — in a way that stayed with you long after the last page?
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Bob Sutton liked thisBob Sutton liked thisOne of the most meaningful developments to me this fall has been the embrace of Incorruptible in the academy. Faculty at more than a dozen universities, from Harvard and Stanford to Oxford and Cambridge, and so many more, have taken it up. “The best business book I’ve ever read.” Tara Ceranic Salinas, Professor of Business Ethics, University of San Diego “My favorite business book of the last five years.” Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Business School
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Bob Sutton liked thisBob Sutton liked thisTwo brilliant chances to hang out in Sydney, on a similar topic, but for quite different audiences, and it's all landing on Wednesday 14th Oct. In the morning, the absolutely outstanding Rebecca Hinds, PhD (best selling author, and favourite of Bob Sutton & Hayagreeva Rao) is in town with the folks from Glean who've done some comprehensive research into AI adoption, trends at the individual and org level, and the unwanted emergence of Botsitting & Botshitting! The conversation will include brilliant insights from Glean and their clients, such as Devesh Maheshwari from Lendi Group, Louise Anderson from Optus, Stuart Freer (MAICD) from Coates, and Gregor Vogel from SiteMinder. Limited spots: https://lnkd.in/gSaDUHmj In the arvo, or for the whole day, there's a brilliant Google sponsored event called Ascend'26 (thanks Mike Langford & Paul Migliorini for pulling together. This is for start ups, scale ups, VC's and active members of the ecosystem, on the importance of best in class tech os and human os to thrive! Hear from the likes of Niki Scevak, Tim Doyle, Dilani Kahawala, Sami Ede, Elli Hanson, Jethro Cohen, Jacky Koh and more.... V limited spots: https://lnkd.in/gwuErJJg Sebastian Watkins, Trent Innes Gerard Florian David Walker Emily E. Sauter Grace Brown David Hyman Matt Wiadowski Taia Briggs
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Bob Sutton liked thisBob Sutton liked thisLast night’s fourth edition of "Hard Things: Physical AI" was our best yet. Chris Yeh is one of Silicon Valley’s sharpest—and fastest—thinkers. His insights-per-hour rate is genuinely hard to match, and the conversation covered far more ground than a typical panel. We had a full house at Foley & Lardner LLP. Thank you to Louis Lehot for the partnership and for hosting us, as always. The full video is coming soon. Subscribe to Mavka Events on Luma: https://luma.com/mavka to get an invitation to the next Hard Things conversation.
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