Quotes by Robert Sutton

The “No Asshole Rule” doesn’t allow anyone to get away with demeaning, nasty, or disrespectful behavior toward others in the workplace. People who continually behave that way need serious reform or should be shown the door.

The rule is needed because too many organizations allow such behavior to persist. For example, surveys show that one out of two Americans has an abusive boss. And one out of five or six people is in work relationships where they feel persistently, emotionally abused.

Assholes have devastating cumulative effects partly because nasty interactions have far more impact on us than positive ones—five times the punch, according to recent research. And it takes numerous encounters with positive people to offset the energy and happiness sapped by a single episode with one asshole.

The behavior of assholes damages individual well-being and also impacts corporate profits, mostly because it reduces people’s commitment to the organization and drives out some of the best employees.

The right kind of friction can help any organization. To take a famous example, Intel cofounder and retired CEO Andy Grove can be a strong-willed and argumentative person. But Grove is renowned for sticking to the facts and for inviting anyone-from brand-new Intel engineers to Stanford students whom he teaches about business strategy to senior Intel executives-to challenge his ideas. For Grove, the focus has always been on finding the truth, not on putting people down. Not only do I despise spineless and obsequious wimps, but there is good evidence that they damage organizations. A series of controlled experiments and field studies in organizations shows that when teams engage in conflict over ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect, they develop better ideas and perform better. That is why Intel teaches employees how to fight, requiring all new hires to take classes in "constructive confrontation." These same studies show, however, that when team members engage in personal conflict-when they fight out of spite and anger-their creativity, performance, and job satisfaction plummet. In other words, when people act like a bunch of assholes, the whole group suffers.

10. The best single question for testing an organization’s character is: What happens when people make mistakes?

11. The best people and organizations have the attitude of wisdom: The courage to act on what they know right now and the humility to change course when they find better evidence.

The process of finding new uses for old things is not always intentional. Accidental discoveries sometimes enable firms to serve unexpected customers. Viagra and Minoxidil are examples of such happy accidents. The discovery that Viaga usage was associated with penile erections in some men was initially given little attention by researchers from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals when this "side effect" was first noted in clinical trails. The drug was originally developed to be a treatment for hypertension, and after that failed, it was tested as a treatment for angina. Once again the drug failed. But this time Pfizer researchers followed up on the side effect from their earlier study. They ran clinical trials of Viagra as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, which led them to discover a new application for this existing drug. Similarly, Minoxidil was originally sold in tablet form as a treatment for high blood pressure. A side effect of this medicine was unwanted hair growth. So researchers from Upjohn started examining if it could be applied to the scalp to increase hair growth in balding men. Significant growth was observed in more than half the subjects who used it, and Minoxidil is now marketed in the United States by Upjohn as Rogaine. Researchers at both Pfizer and Upjohn didn't anticipate these side effects, but both groups were creative because they were observant and persistent enough to find new use for an existing medication. In the right hands, nothing succeeds like failure.