Bob Sutton | How Leaders Can Become “Friction Fixers” To Make Work Better

Leadership Biz Cafe with Tanveer Naseer

This is one of the interviews for my "Leadership Biz Cafe" podcast that I couldn't wait to share - my interview with Stanford professor and all-around great guy, Bob Sutton.

Bob is an organizational psychologist, Stanford professor, and best-selling author of “The No Asshole Rule”, “Good Boss, Bad Boss”, and “Scaling Up Excellence”.

My conversation with Bob revolved around his latest book, “The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder”, and this simple question - why are some organizations able to effortlessly adapt and transform to meeting changing market conditions, while others seem to be held back by the very processes that are meant to help get things done?

Based on 7 years of research, Bob discovered that it all comes down to learning how to be a "friction fixer" who understands the difference between "good friction" and "bad friction".

While I was (obviously) expecting Bob to be an incredibly insightful and well-informed guest on organizational culture – I hadn’t expected to laugh as much as Bob and I did before, during, and after we went on the air.

Listening to this episode, it’s hard not to feel an undercurrent of warmth over the course of the episode, which gives this episode a lovely feel-good mood paired alongside fantastic insights and hilarious stories about how leaders can become “friction fixers” to improve the way their organization works.

And at the end, Bob shares with me one of the best and kindest compliments I've ever received about my work.

If only there was a way to hang an audio clip up on the refrigerator door....

In other words, come for the laughs, stay for thought-provoking ideas you’ll learn in this engaging conversation.

Noteworthy links:

Buy Bob’s book “The Friction Project” on Amazon*

Learn more about Bob’s work: https://www.bobsutton.net/

Read Tanveer’s article mentioned during the episode: "Encouraging Your Employees To Reach For The Moon" https://tanveernaseer.com/encouraging-your-employees-to-reach-for-the-moon/

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.