PENGUINPOST29 - Flipbook - Page 25
ADVICE
THE SILENT
PRODUCTIVITY KILLER
Uncover the hidden culprits sabotaging workplace efficiency with
renowned experts, Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao, and learn how to
master the art of friction reduction for enhanced productivity and
satisfaction in this extract from their book, The Friction Project.
“T
he email, all 1,266 words of it
(not including a separate 7,266word attachment), popped up
in our inboxes on a Monday morning at 9:14,
before the coffee had begun to kick in. Sent
by a Stanford vice-provost to more than two
thousand faculty, it invited us to spend the
following Saturday brainstorming about the
mission of our university’s new School of
Sustainability. We love the new school and
were, at first, willing to give up a Saturday
to help craft the mission – it’s important to
our students, faculty, and the planet. But the
email left us annoyed and skeptical of any
meeting convened by the big cheese who
wrote it. That email was wordy, repetitive,
confusing, and packed with defensive
responses to picky past criticisms. Though
it acknowledged how busy we all were, our
struggles to decipher it sucked up more time
than we would have thought possible.
With a little editing, the email could have
been cut to five- or six hundred crisp words,
and the attachment to two thousand words or
so. Time would have been saved. Frustration
spared. That leader’s reputation wouldn’t have
taken a hit. And more Stanford faculty would
have shown up that Saturday – including us.
Anyone who has tangled with organisations
as an employee or customer has had moments,
days, and, sometimes, months and years when
it felt as if the overlords who imagined and
run the place have no respect for their time.
Such as encounters with systems that seem
designed to create maddening ordeals rather
than give the simple answers, services, or
refunds we need. Or unbearable meetings with
It’s about
how to think
and live like
a friction
fixer who
makes the
right things
easier and
the wrong
things
harder.
The Friction Project
is out now.
ill-defined agendas and clueless blabbermouths
that stretch on for hours. Or wrestling
matches with rules, procedures, traditions,
and technologies that once made sense but are
now so antiquated, pointless, and inefficient
that they make you want to pull your hair out.
All are forms of friction that chip away at our
initiative, commitment, and zest for work.
That hurt our coworkers and the customers
and clients we serve. And that undermine the
productivity, innovation, and reputations of
our organisations.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that
so much can be done to dampen the damage
inflicted by friction problems, to reduce or
eliminate such troubles, and to stop such
ugliness from rearing its head in the first place.
Every leader, whether you have influence
over one or two people, or over hundreds or
thousands, can be part of the solution.
The Friction Project is about forces that
make it harder, slower, more complicated,
or downright impossible to get things done
in organisations. It’s about why and when
such friction is destructive, useful, or a mixed
bag. Above all, it’s about how to think and live
like a friction fixer who makes the right things
easier and the wrong things harder. So that
work doesn’t grind people down and drive
them crazy.
We call it a friction project because we
have, for the last seven years, made it our
project to learn everything we can about
the causes and cures for friction problems.
Our goal is to help leaders craft homegrown
projects that are tailored to fix the friction
troubles in their organisations.”
THE PENGUIN POST MARCH/APRIL 2024
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