One of the strange things about The No Asshole Rule that took me at least a year after publication to understand is that just owning, displaying, and -- in particular -- giving someone the book as a present (or even suggesting they read it) can have strong effects.  And they are not all good. On the positive side, a senior executive at a large professional service firm told me that at a meeting of the firm's partners, the CEO waved around a copy of the book and told them that whether or not they followed the rule would be factored into compensation decisions.  Most of them had not read the book, and didn't read it after that, but just the act of waiving around the book and suggesting something like "and if you are a chronic asshole, we are going to push the delete button pictured on the cover" was enough to get their attention and, I am told, did help a few of the most recalcitrant jerks tone down their nastiness. 

A number of people have also explained to me that the book is a useful "defensive tool" or "protective device." An attorney reported that although she had not read it yet, she bought a copy and displayed it prominently in her office – and pointed to it when one of her colleagues started turning nasty.  A senior executive from a large technology company told me a similar story just a few weeks ago.  He did claim to have liked and read the book, but argued it was even more useful as a protective device.  People saw it on his desk, which reminded them to be civil, and “When they do lose it, I hold it up in front of my face like a shield – they usually get the message and turn down venom immediately. 

But there are also dangers to simply owning the book, as people are sometimes offended by it -- especially when they are concerned that they are the asshole in question.  In the fast few years, several people have told me that when they brought the book to work, they were ordered to hide it, bring it home, and never bring it to work again because the title was in such bad taste.  An office assistant wrote me that her boss put a negative note in her personnel file because the book upset several coworkers.  This assistant added that the only person it really upset was her boss, because she was a certified asshole and she and everyone else knew it.  In a more troubling case, a woman berated me on the phone and over email because her sister was fired for bringing the book to work because her boss found the title offensive.  This cold-hearted act provided further evidence he was a bosshole, but that was little consolation as she needed the job.

Unfortunately, I learned of a new example of the dangers of using the book (regardless of its actual contents) yesterday in a rather heartbreaking comment that “Regan” made in response to my question “What’s the worst advice you have ever received:”  

The only management book I have ever bought was the "No Asshole Rule" because it was about time someone put it in writing. It was a great book, my whole department loved it - they advised me give it to my boss to read - he did not see the humour in it, and he must have seen himself clearly fit the definitions of "asshole" because I lost my job shortly after giving him the book. So, although I think The No Asshole Rule is the best management book ever written - I think the advice about giving it to your boss if he/she is a tyrant is pretty bad advice - didn't work out too well for me anyway.....

I found it quite painful to read how much Regan liked my book and how much it ended-up hurting him -- I didn't advise him to give to his boss, but I hope others can learn from this incident .  Although I hope you find the ideas in the book to be helpful, but I also hope that – especially if you are in a place where paranoia and mistrust run high and psychological safety is low – you will learn from these cautionary tales, and be careful where you bring the book and who you give it to as a "present." 

A broader lesson is that – ironically – telling a person that he or she is an asshole can be an insulting thing to do, and can sometimes turn even a civilized person into an asshole.  And apparently, this is especially true if that person really is a certified asshole (and especially dangerous to you if he or she wields power over you).

Apparently, John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States said that. I like that quote because, while so much writing, research, and advice focuses on what leaders say and do (which is right), sometimes people forget that the measure of a leader is found in how he or she affects others, and Adams makes the point so well.

I encountered this quote in an "inspirational" slide deck with music called "Are You A Leader," which was apparently done by a company called Signature. A reader named Matt was kind enough to point me to it, suggesting I might like it.  I did like a lot of the quotes in it and it was well done, although it is a little too pretty and uncritical for my tastes, but that probably says more about my personality than the quality of the deck -- which was clearly done with much thought and care.

I opened that The New York Times Books section yesterday, and there it was: Chip and Dan Heath's new book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard was Number 1 on the "Advice" list (a list that is usually harder to get on than thr Nonfiction list).  My reaction was "Holly Cow," or as as I wrote Chip, it was really "Holly Shit."   Number 1!  This is their second New York Times bestseller and second masterpiece in a row following the now classic Made to Stick.  I read a pre-publication version not because Chip and Dan sent it to me, but because my wife Marina Park -- CEO of the Northern California Girl Scouts -- got a copy (along with thousands of other people like her in positions to bring about change). This is not only a brilliant marketing strategy, it means that the ideas are spread and will be used by people in positions to do the most good.   As you can see from Marina's  blog post, she found the book to be extremely useful in thinking about both her role and other social problems.

A toast to the Heath Brothers, two guys who have woven together evidence-based ideas and great stories to write two of the most useful books of our era.  Indeed, many authors write about things they can do well themselves, but these guys not only write about ideas that spread and stick, and how to make change happen, they demonstrate their working knowledge of these topics by implementing  brilliant marketing strategies.  And on top of that, they are two of the nicest guys around.

I was rather shocked, and quite delighted, to get an email from Katie Clark at IDEO yesterday with several different new graphics for the top of my blog.  I didn't ask her or talk to her about, she just decided to send me some new ones because she and her colleagues at IDEO were looking at my blog and decided to try some new designs.  I feel mighty lucky to have friends who are world class designers and decide on a whim to give me presents like that.  Thanks Katie!

The new design above is the one I like best.  In the IDEO and d.school spirit, this is a prototype and I can always go back to the old design or perhaps see if you like one of the other one's better.  For starters, what do you think of the new design above?

P.S. I would also like to give a big thank you to Tim Keely for inserting the new graphic.

I have written here fairly often about research by Harvard Business School's Boris Groysberg on the virtues and limits of star employees.  One of my posts described has delightful research that shows firms should steal superstar women, not men.  It turns out that when star men move to another firm, they tend to do a lot worse in the new setting.  In contrast, star women tend to sustain their performance when they go to another firm.  Groysberg suggests this difference is explained because women are more skilled at establishing new relationships and less likely to engage in dysfunctional internal competition in their new firms.

Boris's new research is equally fascinating, a while back, he sent me an article he wrote with two colleagues called called "Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth" (see complete reference below). They studied over 6000 industry analysts from 246 research departments in Wall Street firms -- these are people who write reports about the current and expected performance of firms, and who specializes in particular industries. Their reports predict future earnings for companies and contain recommendations about whether to buy or sell stocks.  As Boris and his colleagues show, some of these analysts are stars, selected by the Institutional Investor as being the top person in their industry and being picked as a star is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation.  The results of this research are interesting because, while some leaders might think that there is no such thing as having too many stars, Boris and his colleagues found a curvilinear relationship between the number of stars in a group and overall performance -- so, having a few stars help, have a few more doesn't hurt (but doesn't help), but groups reach a tipping point where too many stars seem to dampen performance. 

Groysberg and his colleagues suggest that the "too many cooks" problem happens because partly because, when a group is filled with individual stars, the dynamics degenerate because people devote excessive attention to the the internal status game and competition and hesitate to share information that may help the group as a whole, but will threaten their standing in the group.  In other words, when there are too many stars, people focus on what is best for themselves, see other top performers as people who are in the way rather than people they should help, and the overall performance of the team seems less important.

This is just one study, but a quite rigorous one one.  And it adds for evidence to the claim that Jeff Pfeffer made in the The Knowing-Doing Gap that dysfunctional internal competition is one of the most vile impediments to turning knowledge into action in groups and organizations.  Once the game becomes "I win when you lose," the team or organization suffers.

Here is the complete reference: Groysberg, Boris, Jeffrey T. Polzer, and Hillary Anger Elfenbein. "Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth: How High Status Individuals Decrease Group Effectiveness." Organization Science (forthcoming). 

This Wednesday, March 3rd, we are holding a special section of my class on Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach.  Class will be held in an auditorium at Stanford, at Gates B01.  Our guest star for the day is IDEO Partner and head of marketing, Whitney Mortimer (pictured to the left). I have invited Whitney because our class is currently studying how to build and sustain a culture of innovation, and IDEO is the poster child for this feat.   \

I've know Whitney more than 10 years and she has often been a guest in this class.  In general, she has refrained from being a public face who represents this great company, leaving that to others like the amazing Tim Brown and David Kelley.  But whenever I hear Whitney talk about IDEO, I always see them from a different and compelling vantage point, as her perspective on the links among IDEO's culture, strategy, brand, and history is unique, despite all that has been said and written about this great company and its leaders.

This event is open to the public, but there are a few details and constraints.  First, pizza and soft drinks will be served right outside the classroom from about noon to 12:25.  Then Whitney's talk will commence from 12:30 to 1:30.  Because the room only holds about 200 people (and we will occupy perhaps 100 seats with our students and some other guests) we only have room for about 100 guests.  In addition, we need to know how much pizza to order. So, if you are going to join us, please send and rsvp to Carol XU, her email is jxcarol2001[at]gmail[dot]com.

Also note that we are "closing" the invitation at 9AM on Weds. morning or when we are sold out, whatever comes first. We hope to see you there, it should be great fun, and it is a fun chance to learn about the history of one of the greatest and most civilized companies I know, and from a perspective that is a bit different than is usually told.

An editor at Psychology Today, where I am now blogging, wrote and asked for some ideas her might use in the print edition. His question was "What's the worst advice you've ever received (Or just some really bad advice ...).   I wrote him that I had received -- and given -- so much bad advice, that I couldn't pick a "worst," but told this story. 

Here is one -- with two pieces of bad advice.  When I was working on marketing my last book, The No Asshole Rule, I first had a publisher offer me a contract, but they insisted that I had to change the title --- in part -- because people wouldn't buy a book with that mild obscenity in the title.  I told them that I wouldn't consider an offer unless they went with the title and walked.  Then, as I was working on marketing the book in the months prior to publication a fellow with more than 25 years experience in the book industry insisted that I was nuts to send copies of the book to perhaps 100 bloggers (most of whom I knew because I am a blogger too) and to see if they might write something about the book months before it was published.  He insisted that trying to sell a book before it was available was waste of time and effort.  I believe that, in addition to the ideas in the book, that the main two reasons that the book became a New York Times bestseller are because of the title, which no one ever seems to forget, even when they hate it.  The second reason is that the buzz on the web created a lot of Amazon pre-orders, which helped the book become the #1 Non-fiction bestseller for much of the first week it was out and one of the top 5 business books for several weeks (it was ultimately the #8 business book for 2007).  When the book first came out, the major bookstores had done modest pre-orders and I had only a couple of stories in the media.  The Amazon numbers (created by pre-publication buzz) led the major bookstores to put in big orders and led the media to do many stories on the book. 

One of my mottos in life (which I first heard from a Stanford undergraduate years ago named Kathy) is "Don't believe everythingt hey tell you"  This is especially true if they add something like "I have been in the business for 25 years and I know what I am talking about."  As one of my former students, Andy Hargadon used to say in response to this line, "Do you have 25 years of experience, or have you experienced the same year 25 times?"

I wonder, dear readers, what your answer to this question might be, what is the worst advice you have ever received?

There is saying, kind of a crude little formula, I have been using for years when I write and give talks on what it takes to build a culture where people innovate routinely (which I think I stole from Charles O'Reilly at the Stanford Business School):

Creativity + implementation = innovation

I have always found it a useful oversimplification of the two big things that have to happen in order to innovate, to cash in on new ideas.  It is also related to one of the main ideas in Weird Ideas That Work, that creativity is about increasing the amount of variation and all around messiness and routine work is about driving out variance and driving in order and predictability.  

In this spirit, one of the student groups in my class on Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach, did a fantastic case study of the culture of innovation at Lunar Design. The members were Ioannis Alivizatos, Meeta Arora, Stephen Streeter, and Ben Merrick.  They heard the quote in the title of this post from John Edson (pictured to the left), Lunar product design firm that has designed many familiar products including the HP Touchsmart, the Oral B CrossAction toothbrush, and the Modu phone.  I think that "“From Chaos Comes Creativity, from Order Comes Profit” conveys a similar message to the one I borrowed from Charles – that the messiness and failure required to generate a new idea needs to be shut-off as you move into the implementation phase, where more control and order are required.  Knowing how and when to make that shift is tough, although the best firms and bosses make it happen routinely.  For example, Intel’s motto “disagree and then commit” reflects this spirit – you fight during the creative part, but join arms to make the idea work during the implementation part, even if you think the decision was wrong.

P.S. And following my last post on failure, I also liked how a key element of their culture was that, when people made mistakes, they framed it as "Paying for education."

"Failure will never be eliminated, and so the best we can hope for from human beings and organizations is that they learn from their mistakes, that rather than making the same mistakes over and over again, they make new and different mistakes.

The upshot for Jeff Pfeffer and me is that, perhaps the single best diagnostic to see if an organization is innovating, learning, and capable of turning knowledge into action is “What happens when they make a mistake?” Stealing some ideas from research on medical errors, leaders and teams can “forgive and forget,” which may be temporarily comforting, but condemns people and systems to make the same mistakes over and over again – in the case of hospitals, this means you bury the dead (or close the incision) and don’t talk about it.  Or you can remember who made mistakes, chase them down, humiliate them, and thus create climate of fear. In such situations, the game becomes avoiding the finger of blame rather than surfacing, understanding, and fixing mistakes (see Harvard’s Amy Edmondson’s wonderful research on drug treatment errors for evidence on this point).  Or you can Forgive and Remember, which is not only the title of a great book by Charles Bosk, it is the philosophy that the best teams and organizations use. You forgive because it is impossible to run an organization without making mistakes, and pointing fingers and holding grudges creates a climate of fear. You remember – and talk about the mistakes openly –so people and the system can learn. And you remember so that, even though you have tried to retrain people and teach them, if some people keep making the same mistakes over and over again, then, well, they need to be moved to another kind of job."

The connection to The No Asshole Rule, however, was made clear in a most thoughtful blog post from Peter Seebach in response to the book.  I was especially taken by this paragraph about his workplace:

Now that sounds like a functional workplace.. a nearly perfect example of how "forgive and remember" ought to work. And the link to rule is splendid. 

A reader named Kevin just wrote and told me a great story:

A good friend of mine in college was at a busy nightclub, on the crowded dance floor, dancing with his girlfriend.  It was very crowded, to the point where you could barely dance and in close proximity to everyone around you.  He overheard a guy that was “hitting” on a girl.  He had been drinking and was pretty obnoxious.  He told the girl that he very much wanted to get” into her pants”.  Her response was “sorry buddy, there is already one asshole in these pants, and no room for another”.  The guy was immediately defused and left the dance floor with his tail between his legs, and no longer bothered anyone at the nightclub.  Thought you might get a chuckle from this brilliant comeback.

Is it true? I don't know and don't care, it is the best asshole put-down story I've heard in a long time.  Another great story came from Tina a few years back on an funny moment in her MBA class -- and that one is better documented than the tale above.

I love my university, I've been treated far better than I deserve during my 25 plus years at Stanford.  But as much a I love it, I wonder if it is time for us to run something like a "stupid rules contest" here.  I once met the CEO of a large bank in New England who explained to me how they had made things much better by running such a contest and taking the suggestions seriously. For example, they got rid of a rule that people waiting outside a branch could not be let in until official opening time.  They changed things so, if it was 10 or 15 minutes before opening time and, say, people were waiting outside in the cold, employees could open the door and let them wait in the warm lobby.

I don't want to mention any specific rules at Stanford, as I don't want to point fingers at any group or person.  But although no doubt each was developed and implemented with the best of intentions, it seems to me that they accumulate like barnacles on a ship, with one after another being added.  Each one slows down the process of teaching and research, and the old ones never seem to be removed.

Perhaps a stupid rules contest here would help. I admire Stanford's leaders, so this is not meant to be an attack on any individual, I just think it is something that happens to organizations over time, and I wonder if it would be a good time to haul our organizational ship into the dry dock and scrape off some of those old barnacles -- and perhaps some new ones we have grown to that make things harder to do than need be. 

Deming emphasized that forced rankings and other merit ratings that breed internal competition are bad management because they undermine motivation and breed contempt for management among people who, at least at first, were doing good work. He argued that these systems require leaders to label many people as poor performers even though their work is well within the range of high quality. Deming maintained that when people get unfair negative evaluations, it can leave them "bitter, crushed, bruised, battered, desolate, despondent, dejected, feeling inferior, some even depressed, unfit for work for weeks after receipt of the rating, unable to comprehend why they are inferior."  

To Deming's point, there is one organization I work with -- a high tech firm with about 250 employees -- that eliminated formal reviews except when people are being considered for a promotion or when they are having serious performance problems and need to "on plan" (i.e., shape up or be fired). They have about ten different levels in the organization, and everyone at the same level gets the same pay and same sized bonus.  And they have been emphasizing frequent and lower stakes feedback instead.  So I know of at least one place that is having some success breaking from this often hollow and destructive ritual.

 If you want to read the most compelling and complete case against the traditional performance evaluation, however,I suggest that you pre-order UCLA Professor Sam Culbert's new book Get Rid of the Performance Review. He first made this argument in the Wall Street Journal, but the book digs into this argument in far more detail and offers solutions for managers and companies who want to replace the traditional review -- or at least reduce the damage that they do.  To help spread the word about the book, and to find out if as many people despise the performance review as Sam (and I) believe, he has -- a bit like the ARSE -- designed a ten-item test called How Much Do You Hate Performance Reviews?  I just took it and scored a 36, which means I really hate them.  

Take the test and let me know what you think, and after you complete it, you can read the first chapter of the book.  I predict that this book is going to spark a lot of controversy and, I hope, inspire leaders and organizations to use performance evaluations less, and to do a better of using them.  At least I hope so.

Here is the first question to give you a taste:

1- My favorite performance review was:

a. when my boss correctly identified weaknesses that I was eager to work on.

b.when I was reviewed, anonymously, by many insightful colleagues I interact with, including some who want my job.

d. when my boss forgot to give me one

I just got an email (it took them just a couple hours) from the Urban Dictionary that our definition of Passhole as ""someone who opts out of participating in a decision, but then complains bitterly about the outcome." has been accepted."  BUT -- and I should have looked before -- Passhole is already there, with 14 different definitions of the word, most having to do with driving.  The top rated one is:

Our definition will appear in a couple days. When it does, please get in there and vote for it early and often!

Thanks again, that was fun.

Or, in the words of Steve Jobs, the journey was the reward in this case.  As most readers will recall, this all started as a little contest in response to Mozilla's Asa Dotzler: Let's Invent a New Word or Phrase: What do you call someone who "opts out of participating in something but then complains about the outcome."  I have been overwhelmed by the number of suggestions, and even more than that, the quality and complexity of the conversation about the various candidates.  At the moment, there are a combined 80 comments on the post above and the follow-up post that listed the "finalists."   My reading of the votes is that -- although not everyone liked it --  passhole got the most votes.

I just submitted Passhole to the Urban Dictionary  as a new word.  I changed the definition just slightly to  "someone who opts out of participating in a decision, but then complains bitterly about the outcome."

In order to honor some of the other suggestions (I apologize if yours didn't make it, I picked them based on my biases, but of course, other will have different preferences), I added the following words to the list of synonyms and related words and phrases that ask for: passive-aggressive, Monday morning sniveler, detached dissident, douchenag, sour grapers, unconscientious objector, inverted  cheerleader, submarine, seagull, weenie-whiner, whampire, free-griper. I have never submitted anything to the Urban Dictionary, but I felt compelled given your remarkably thoughtful suggestions and comments. I understand that they reject a lot of submissions -- I will let you know how it turns out. Once again, I can't thank everyone enough for making so many comments, and make such thoughtful comments.

Indeed, as much as I love the fun of the names and all that, I was even more taken with the wonderful conversation about the dangers of labeling people passholes. Many smart comments were made, and although labeling people has advantages ( I would argue, for example, that openly talking about norms against assholes or passholes, and calling others or yourself when you violate those norms, are signs of a healthy culture), nonetheless, multiple commentors did a lovely job is calling out the risks of the label. Note these comments in particular, as I think they are especially wise:

Bob G. makes a great case that labeling people as passholes can, at times, be a case of blaming the victim:

Dave described such an asshole environment:

I think you are all jumping on the trashing bandwagon a little too fast. I happen to work in one of those very toxic environments where you are pretty much discouraged to contribute, when you do contribute, your feedback is pretty much disregarded and the administration does what they want anyways (meaning they "pretend" to want feedback, but only go through the motions), and very often decisions made do go down south, affecting those of us on the frontlines. So yes, after a while, those like us who actually care just stop giving the feedback or saying anything... I refuse to take the blame for asshats who make bad decisions in spite of getting good advice (ie they choose to ignore the good advice). So, you know, lay off a bit. It is not always as simple as you think.

What's the net effect of an exercise in this sort of "personality branding". Let's come up with a name for the sorts of people that annoy "us". Let's come up with something mean to call "them". What's up with that, Bob?

I've gotten a kick out of the suggested names, but I have to chime in to support of Thomas's concern about the 'branding' of a person by applying such a label.There are several important and serious concern about labeling a person -- one of which is that depersonalizes them and makes them all about the behavior, not about who they are in toto.Plus, as Maren pointed out, once we attach a label to the behavior/person, it can lead us to "complain about the complainers" and let ourselves off the hook for acting to fix it.

So, let's find a good (and funny!) name to capture this dysfunctional behavior *and* also figure out a generous, positive way to respond to it when we see folks trying it.

I put C.V's comment in bold, because, after going through this exercise -- which was more involved and educational than I ever imagined at the outset -- that is pretty much where I stand.  For me, the upshot of all this is that organizations and leaders have a responsibility to remove obstacles to authentic participation and when they find that -- after decision has been made -- passholes surface and start torpedoing the decision, they should look in the mirror before blaming them.  On the other hand, a well-functioning team or organization will stop this kind of behavior in its tracks and in particular leaders will model the right behavior -- which includes resisting the temptation to be a passhole even though they have the power to do so and calling out their own sins when they act like one. 

Once again, a big thanks to all of you for individual and collective wisdom.

I am both delighted and overwhelmed by the deluge of smart and often responses to my  last post: Let's Invent a New Word or Phrase: What do you call someone who "opts out of participating in something but then complains about the outcome. You made 57 comments -- by far a record for any Work Matters post and C.V. Harquail put up a related and quite inspiring conversation with Maren, one of her readers that i found very thoughtful.  As you may recall, this was all sparked by an email from Mozilla's Asa Doztler, who asked the question.  There are about 100 suggestions in the various comments and so many are wonderful, that is isn't easy to pick the best.  So how about this. I will pick some I especially liked.  Please let me know what your favorite is, or if you prefer another, and we will see what Asa and his colleagues prefer as well. Here are nine and I pasted in text when people offered it. 

Lazy Bee. Instead of being a busy bee who helps everyone out and brings in honey, this is a bee who doesn't help out the group but reserves the right to sting you once the work is done.

Passhole.  Describes someone who passes on the opportunity to contribute to an idea, then criticizes what others come up with. Also appropriate for a driver in the right lane who speeds up and recklessly cuts in front of you

Unconscientious objector

"Inverted cheerleaders" comes to my mind; goes with the people who suffer from rectal-cranial inversion syndrome.

Submarines: They stay at depth until the last minute (when you are about to ship a product or are trying to pass a final milestone) and then pop up and torpedo (obviously with no constructive criticism either).

Seagull: A "seagull contributor", like a seagull manager, usually holds themselves above and beyond the fray, but sporadically swoop down to steal your french fries and crap on everything.

Weenie-whiner

Whampire: someone who whines while feeding off the energies of the living. Someone who whines while feeding off the energies of the living.

Free-griper: captures both the free-riding and the kvetching...

What is your favorite?  Which one did I leave out that you liked even better?  Any more suggestions?

Looks like I hit a nerve with my previous post. For years I've been writing about the good example Toyota set for the design and manufacture of cars. I've been writing about the even better example they are as a model for modern-day management and leadership. At times, it might have appeared I was fawning over them…that I might not see their shortcomings. Perhaps. The one thing I know about Toyota is that they understand that their company is built on human beings…the greatness coming from the everyday ingenuity of people along with the limitations from our mistake-making.

I still choose to interpret both Lahood and Toyoda are sincere.Still, it is easy to interpret arrogance in Toyota's actions regarding unintended acceleration just like it's easy for some to interpret grand-standing from Ray Lahood. I feel no safer after listening to either Secretary Lahood tell us that he will hold Akio Toyoda to his promise to be more diligent regarding safety or to the apologetic TV commercials from Toyota. In making our interpretations we must acknowledge our predispositions just as we acknowledge Toyota's pattern of apologizing and the bluster of American politicians. Considering all of that, I still choose to interpret both Lahood and Toyoda are sincere. It will help us learn from this experience.

(...)
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Akio Toyoda is on the hot seat. Reportedly, he is a forward-thinking guy who is intent on bringing the legacy of the family to the design of the future of the company. Unfortunately, CEO Toyoda is being tested beyond that of any of his recent predessors. Toyota is in trouble…in the market for cars…in the financial markets…and as as model for managing companies.

Last week I was speaking with Norman Bodek, Godfather of Lean, about Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo for my up-coming book. Norman knew both of them. He was their English-language publisher and he introduced 100s of people to them on his more than 75 study missions to Japan. I had just finished my weekly staff video conference where our consultants lamented that Toyota must have lost their way. I asked Norman what he thought.

Confront this reality: Electronic hardware and software is not bug free.The conventional wisdom about Toyota's quality issues is that they got distracted while pursuing a goal to be the world's largest car company. Norman didn't think they were ever pursuing that as a goal. At one time Toyota's CEO Watanabe predicted that it would happen, but it was never the goal. Yet, we can't ignore their rapid expansion into many new markets across the world. Norman speculated that too many of Toyota's managers of today weren't influenced by Engineer Ohno and Dr. Shingo.

Another contributing factor is the complication in today's vehicles. I read an article in the last week that said there are upwards of 100 computer chips controlling everything from emissions and speed to real-time fuel economy and handsfree cellphone capability. All that hardware requires software. Programmers will tell you that no software is bug free. Ever see the Windows blue screen of death?

One of my good friends wrote a short note to me this morning asking,

"WTF is up with Toyota? How did this happen? I thought they set the standard for quality control?"

Great questions. My answer:

"It's not as bad as Secretary Ray Lahood and the media have made it.
"It's worse than anything that has happened before at Toyota.
"Toyota's solution to the sticking accelerator is elegant.
"It took Toyota way too long to put the pieces together to get there."

It's the same question my colleagues have been asking me. I haven't known how to answer any of them until this morning. Today, something clicked.

(...)
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I’ve written a few posts about Doctor Nicholas Christakis and Doctor James Fowlers' research. This post is about their book - Connected: the Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives . Their research uses network analysis techniques to the aid the understanding obesity, smoking, happiness, back pain, sexual practices, beliefs, and other social phenomena. Their interesting finding is that all these phenomena are contagious.

Christakis and Fowler base their findings on a careful analysis of the Framingham Heart Study, conducted from 1948 to the present in a small Massachusetts city. They have mapped more than 50,000 ties between just over 12,000 people. In essence they argue that if friend’s friend’s friend - whom you’ve never met, and lives 50 kilometres away - is unhappy, then you’re likely to be unhappy as well. In other words there are three degrees of influence. They demonstrate the same outcome for smoking behaviour and obesity, and attribute it to “norming behaviour”. In short we are part of a collective (social network) that seeks homeostasis and is bound by certain rules. According to Christakis and Fowler these are:

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This question came in an email yesterday from Mozilla's Asa Dotzler, who is renowned for his skill as an open-source marketer, especially in spreading the Firefox browser.  The engine that propels any open source community is having a wide range of smart and hardworking people who generate and refine solutions, and are eager to step in and fix them when things go wrong.  So maintaining norms that encourage people to participate in generating solutions and making decisions-- rather than those who don't pitch in or help make decisions but always complain bitterly about the outcome  -- is crucial to any open source community. 

I would add that the same goes for life inside organizations: Some people refuse to speak-up or pitch-in when ideas are being developed, are unable or unwilling to go to key meetings, and generally don't have the will, time, or inclination to help their colleagues, but then repeatedly shoot-down the decisions that are made, refuse to help implement them, and bad mouth their more hardworking colleagues.  They are destructive assholes in my book.  Indeed, as Jeff Pfeffer and I showed in The Knowing-Doing Gap, there are some organizations where people seem to get rewarded and promoted for shooting down other people and their ideas --- not for generating, proposing, and implementing ideas.  At one large bank we studied, we saw and were told about episode after episode where people who proposed new ideas were ripped to pieces. The people who got ahead in the organization had learned it was career suicide to actually develop and push ideas -- the rewards were all given to critics who not only took down the new ideas, but also took down people who developed and proposed them.

To return to Asa and his friends at Mozilla, they want to discourage this kind of behavior (and so do people in a lot of other workplaces), and are trying to come-up with a punchy, sticky, and fun word to describe these destructive characters.  Here is what Asa wrote me:

A few of us at the office today realized that we didn't have a good word for someone who opts out of participating in something but then complains about the outcome. The most obvious example is someone who doesn't vote and then laments the election results. Ideally this word wouldn't be specific to simply expressing a preference (as in voting) because we'd like it to also include people who, given the opportunity to participate in something much more involved (say, stopping global warming,) fail to take advantage that offer and then complain about the results.  

I can't come up with anything good.  Terms like "lazy complainers," "destructive second-guessers," and "listless lamenters" don't cut it.  In the spirit of the open source movement, I asked Asa if I could put this out here and see if the readers of Work Matters could come up with something better. We would love to see your ideas. Language is a powerful thing, and it would be great to have powerful word to describe this destructive behavior and/or the people who do it again and again.

I have argued in the past that there are a lot of evidence-based disadvantages to working in an open office, as there are many more interruptions, distractions, and other stressors --- and of course less privacy.  And there are quite a few studies that show when people move from closed to open office designs, they don't like it all and their productivity sometimes drops.  I had an experience a few weeks back, however, that has me questioning the limits of this research -- and believing that if an organization has the right norms, leadership, and especially collective trust  (and have the right people and right skills to truly do cooperative work), that open offices can be a splendid thing. 

This all struck me a few weeks back when I went to visit  David Kelley at IDEO to chat about some ideas we were hatching for the Stanford d.school (which David, a Stanford professor, co-founded along with IDEO... David was the strongest driving force behind both ventures).  I had the usual delightful conversation with IDEO's receptionist (Joanie was working that afternoon) and went upstairs to what is best described as IDEO's "management floor," where IDEO's CFO, head of marketing, Chairman (David Kelley), General Manager (Tom Kelley), and CEO (Tim Brown) all work.  As I turned the corner to the main floor, sitting right where the receptionist on the floor would sit (if they had one, they don't) was none other than CEO Tim Brown.  I frankly took a double-take, as (in many organizations) he was sitting in just the place that would be reserved for an assistant, and frankly, would be seen as one of the lowest status places to sit because of the constant interruptions and because there was no gatekeeper to keep colleagues and random visitors like me from walking-up and talking to him.  I assumed this was a mistake or something, but became more puzzled when I realized that there was some stray group (including Chris Flink, head of  IDEO's New York office) in what I thought was Tim's office.  After I met with David (who was charming and fun as always), I saw that Tim was still there, and I asked him why he wasn't in his office. He said it wasn't his office any longer and that he had moved to what I would call the "receptionist's position," which made him -- as he later explained it -- "the most public person on the floor."

I called him a week or so later to ask more about this approach. He told me that most of IDEO's senior people had moved out of their offices and now when there was a need for more private conversations, there were a lot of small conference available (i.e., their old offices) that everyone could use.  He then explained that after working for IDEO for many years -- including as head of their London and San Francisco offices -- after he became CEO five or six years ago and was given his own office (albeit a pretty small one with glass that limited his privacy) he found it "vaguely embarrassing and frustrating to be in an office." After awhile, he and others moved to a different approach, where they were out in the open and there was more casual and exchange and fewer barriers.  I also asked Tim what happens when visits IDEO's other offices -- at places like London, Chicago, New York, Shanghai, and San Francisco. He said that -- although he spends time in conference rooms in meetings with IDEO people and clients (especially when confidential matters are discussed), he takes a desk in the middle of the action because "When I am there to visit and get to know the people and how they work, I can't learn much sitting in a private office."  

We also had a conversation about what he does when he needs a quite place to work, after all, he did write a great book last year called Change By Design.  He said that he has plenty of quiet time to think, especially when he travels, and that to write a book, well that was something that he did at home on nights and weekends!

To me, the upshot of all this is NOT everyone should move to an open office and every CEO should be in the middle of the social swarm like Tim.   Rather, the lesson is that what Tim and other senior people at IDEO do works when you have the right kind of culture and leadership, when the work requires interdependence and knowledge sharing, and people have developed the right skills and routines to work effectively when they are out in the open and on display to everyone else.  I think it is especially important to develop strong norms around courtesy, about how loud to talk, when to avoid interrupting others, and so on, and to make it safe for anyone in the setting to gently remind others when they are violating such norms.  I have noticed, for example, that it took some years to develop these kinds of norms at the Stanford d.school (the one "open place" that I work at a fair amount), and we are now -- on the whole -- quite considerate and respectful. The great thing about IDEO, of course, is that they have the kind of culture and skilled people who can make openness work.

P.S. In fact, if you are interested in Tim's perspective on the kind of people they strive to hire and develop, check out this recent interview that Morten Hansen (of Collaboration fame) did with Tim Brown on "T-Shaped People."