Archive for the ‘Book Summaries’ Category

The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t by Robert I. Sutton ©2007 & 2010 should help organizations of all kinds make their cultures less toxic and more productive. Click at the bottom of any page to get a copy so you can get started dealing with jerky behavior where you live and work.

Robert I. Sutton

• Robert is Professor of Management Science at the Stanford Engineering School and researcher in the field of evidence-based management. He is a popular speaker and the author of two other best sellers Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be The Best…And Learn From The Worst and Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More without Settling for Less with Huggy Rao.

1. Asshole Defined

• With a title like this, it is essential to define what one means by the term asshole. Robert offers two tests we can use to spot this type of person. Test one: After talking to the person, do you feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled? Test two: Does this person aim venom at people who are less powerful rather than at people who are more powerful? He also gives us a list of actions that assholes use. They include personal insults, uninvited contact, threats and intimidation, sarcasm, two-faced attacks, dirty looks, and ignoring people. We are cautioned that there is a difference between a temporary asshole and a certified asshole, as nearly all of us act like one at times.
• Just because you want to avoid hiring assholes, neither do you want to hire spineless wimps. What is needed is for teams to engage in conflict over ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Robert even suggests taking classes in constructive confrontation. When he studied this topic, Robert found that just about everyone he talked to volunteered stories about abuse in their work environment. While every work environment has a significant problem with this, some are worse. It seems that nurses may lead the league when it comes to taking abuse from doctors, along with patients, their families, fellow nurses, and supervisors. Men and women are victimized at about the same rate and the lion’s share of abuse is within gender. What you want are people who are consistently warm toward people who are unknown or of lower status.

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Wired to Care: how companies prosper when they create widespread empathy by Dev Patniak with Peter Mortensen ©2009 explains the importance of empathy and how to spread it around. While written for businesses, this is a book that all school leaders should read and act on. Click at the bottom of any page to by copies for leaders you know.

Dev Patniak and Pete Mortensen

• DEV is the CEO of Jump Associates, a strategy and innovation firm. Jump helps companies create new businesses and reinvent existing ones. Jump works with some of the world’s most admired companies, including GE, Nike, Target, and Virgin. Jump has become particularly well-known for its pioneering culture. Dev is a frequent speaker at business forums and his articles have appeared in numerous publications, including BusinessWeek, Forbes, and Fast Company. He is an adjunct professor at Stanford University, where he teaches a course called Needfinding. Contact Dev at dpatnaik@jumpassociates.com and follow him on Twitter at @devpatnaik.
• Pete is the communications lead for Jump Associates. A journalist by training, he has written for and edited numerous monthly, weekly and daily publications, including Spin Magazine, nyou, the Holland Sentinel, the Windsor Times, and Wired News.

Part I: The Case for Empathy Introduction

• As the title says, we are wired to care. Unfortunately, that instinct seems to get short-circuited when we get together in large groups. Real empathy can ensure more ethical behavior in a way that no policies and procedures ever could. The trick is to encourage everyone to walk in other people’s shoes. This book is packed with great stories that demonstrate how some companies strive to really understand their customers and meet their needs. If you want people to be interested in you and what you do, you should be genuinely interested in the people you are dealing with.

2. The Map Is Not the Territory

• Reports are abstractions and often lose touch with reality. A plan is only a map that doesn’t know the territory. In organizations, decision makers often find themselves working with simplified data that lacks context. This makes it easy to digest but can’t tell the whole story. There is a great story here about how Lou Gerstner turned IBM around by sending his people out to meet with customers and develop more empathy. As a result, support and service became a major growth area for the company. His mantra was “what are you hearing from our customers?” Empathy helps people see the world as it really is, not how it looks on a map. (Doug: I have long thought that it is important to view parents and students as customers, listen to them, and try to meet their needs. As a principal, I also viewed teachers and other staff members as my customers.)

3. The Way Things Used to Be

• The longer a team knows each other, the better they tend to do. This is something Dev discovered while teaching at Stanford. For thousands of years people made things for people they knew. Thanks to industrialization, a rift grew between producers and consumers. Is something lost when snowshoes are made by people who have never seen snow? Dev believes that it is much harder to succeed when you create things for people you don’t know. I love the story of the Zildjian Cymbal Company used to reinforce this concept. Their secret was keeping close relationships with drummers. Unfortunately, most companies don’t work this way and lose the ability to meet face to face with ordinary people. Such face to face meetings forms empathic connections.

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