Search results for ""Author Robert I. Sutton""

From the international bestselling expert on dealing with assholes'With cutting-edge research and real-life examples that are thought-provoking and often hilarious, this is an indispensable resource'Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project'At last someone has provided clear steps for rejecting, dejecting, deflecting, and deflating the jerks who blight our lives. Better still, that someone is the great Bob Sutton, which ensures that the information is useful, evidence-based, and fun to read'Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-Suasion'If only Bob Sutton's book had been available to help me deal with the full complement of 1st-class assholes I've encountered in my 50-year professional life. No names shall be mentioned'Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of ExcellenceBeing around assholes, whether at work or elsewhere, can damage performance and affect wellbeing: having one asshole in a team has been shown to reduce performance by 30 to 40%, and research shows that rudeness spreads like a common cold. In The Asshole Survival Guide, Stanford professor Robert Sutton offers practical advice on identifying and tackling any kind of asshole - based on research into groups from uncivil civil servants to French bus drivers, and 8,000 emails that he has received on asshole behaviour.With expertise and humour, he provides a cogent and methodical game-plan to fight back. First, he sets out the asshole audit, to find out what kind of asshole needs dealing with, and asshole detection strategies. Then he reveals field-tested, sometimes surprising techniques, from asshole avoidance and asshole taxes, to mind-tricks and the art of love bombing. Finally, he explains the dangers of asshole blindness - when the problem might be yours truly.Readers will learn how to handle assholes - in the workplace and beyond - once and for all!

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Scaling up excellence is the key to creating a great organisation. It’s how a small enterprise expands without losing focus. It’s how a brilliant new idea or plan developed by the few goes on to be adopted by the many. And, in hard times and tough situations, it’s how pockets of smart new thinking overcome cultures of indifference or negativity. An organisation that doesn’t know how to scale up what is best within it won’t achieve long-term success. Bestselling author Robert Sutton and his Stanford colleague Huggy Rao have devoted nearly a decade to uncovering what it takes to create and spread outstanding performance, and in Scaling Up Excellence they share the fruits of their research. Drawing on case studies that range from Silicon Valley enterprises to non-profit organisations, they provide crucial insights into corporate cultures, both good and bad, and offer a road map for establishing and stimulating excellence. In the process, they show how to use ‘premortems’ when making big decisions about change. They reveal why seven is so often the magic number when it comes to team size. They examine successful and unsuccessful quests for improvement – in hospitals, schools and elsewhere. And they discuss when a single corporate mindset is best (‘Catholicism’) and when local variation is preferable (‘Buddhism’). Scaling Up Excellence is the first management book devoted to what is – or should be – a core priority for every organisation. As such it is destined to become the standard bearer.

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The definitive guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations. Find out why Adam Grant says "If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place."Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers.”Sutton and Rao kick off the book by unpacking how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others’ time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their help pyramid shows how friction fixers do their work, from reframing friction troubles they can’t fix right now, so they feel less threatening, to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams.Sound familiar? Sutton and Rao are here to help. They wrap things up with lessons for leading your own friction project, including linking little things to big things; the power of civility, caring, and love for propelling designs and repairs; and embracing the mess that is an inevitable part of the process (while still trying to clean it up). 'Entertaining and eminently practical' - Financial Times

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Why are there so many gaps between what firms know they should do and what they actually do? Why do so many companies fail to implement the experience and insight they've worked so hard to acquire? The Knowing-Doing Gap is the first book to confront the challenge of turning knowledge about how to improve performance into actions that produce measurable results. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, well-known authors and teachers, identify the causes of the knowing-doing gap and explain how to close it. The message is clear--firms that turn knowledge into action avoid the "smart talk trap." Executives must use plans, analysis, meetings, and presentations to inspire deeds, not as substitutes for action. Companies that act on their knowledge also eliminate fear, abolish destructive internal competition, measure what matters, and promote leaders who understand the work people do in their firms. The authors use examples from dozens of firms that show how some overcome the knowing-doing gap, why others try but fail, and how still others avoid the gap in the first place. The Knowing-Doing Gap is sure to resonate with executives everywhere who struggle daily to make their firms both know and do what they know. It is a refreshingly candid, useful, and realistic guide for improving performance in today's business.

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