Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-30% $20.89$20.89
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$16.85$16.85
$3.99 delivery Monday, May 20
Ships from: GoodwillVSB Sold by: GoodwillVSB
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Audible sample Sample
The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder Hardcover – January 30, 2024
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Purchase options and add-ons
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).
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Press
- Publication dateJanuary 30, 2024
- Dimensions5.7 x 1 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-101250284414
- ISBN-13978-1250284419
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
“This is the ultimate guide to diagnosing and fixing the problems in your organization. No one knows more about making work better than this pair of experts, and they’ve produced a remarkably insightful, engrossing, evidence-based, and actionable read. If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place.”
―Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife
"Friction―good and bad―is among the most important but least understood elements of an organization. Get it right, and your team will wake up happy to go to work, get it wrong, and you'll make everyone miserable and undermine their ability to scale your vision. Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao have spent the last decade studying the causes and remedies for friction troubles at a wide range of companies. They’ve distilled their lessons to help you and your team make the right things easier and the wrong things harder in your company. Every executive, investor, board member, and leader should buy The Friction Project.”
―Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock Partners
"A spectacular achievement. Sutton and Rao show that friction is the secret source of organizational failure―and success. Full of practical advice, this book will make the world a better place."
―Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University, author of Sludge
"Sutton and Rao have given us a thousand gems, each an invaluable insight on its own, reinventing management as the art of ensuring that things get done as they should without unnecessary struggle. Marshalling the crucial insights from classic works, as well as from the very latest studies, they make a convincing case for friction as a vital focus and offer countless practical suggestions that you can apply in your work. I guarantee that their profoundly humane arguments will win your hearts, change your behavior, and transform your companies."
―Amy C. Edmondson, Professor, Harvard Business School, author of Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well
“An energetic guide … Readers tired of sitting through unnecessary meetings will want to check this out.”
―Publishers Weekly
"If you dream of freeing your people and organization to focus their time on what really matters, The Friction Project is the book for you. More than ever today we need more nimble, innovative, customer centric, and human organizations. Eliminating needless friction is at the heart of that quest, as Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao show in their wonderful new book."
―Herminia Ibarra, The Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior, London Business School, and author of Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, and Working Identity
"Subtract friction and an organization will move faster, become more innovative and drive productivity gains. The Friction Project is a 'how-to' guide in a period of workforce transformation across sectors."
―Donna Morris, Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer, Walmart Inc.
"The idea of leaders as friction fixers is dynamite. Their job is to remove obstacles to help teams drive decisions and impact, whether that’s through eliminating friction that’s impeding progress or introducing friction to foster debate and better outcomes. Sutton’s and Rao’s insights in The Friction Project offer leaders at all levels important tools and real-world examples to recognize the role that both kinds of friction can play in their organization’s success."
―Shantanu Narayan, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Adobe
"It’s a great and provocative read. As a business leader I never thought of leaders as 'friction fixers.' The Friction Project identifies when friction is and is not desirable. It’s packed with real-world examples from varied organizations, their frictions, and above all, how the people who make repairs practice their craft."
―Carlos Brito, CEO of Belron and former CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev
"As I read this groundbreaking book, I imagined a future where every leader eliminates bad friction and harnesses good friction to build better organizations. Every manager MUST read The Friction Project to learn how, by leading through a friction lens, and using the practical solutions Sutton and Rao provide, they can create productive, innovative, and caring workplaces."
―Tsedal Neeley, Harvard Business School, author of Remote Work Revolution and coauthor of The Digital Mindset
"Are you making the right things effortless and the right things hard? Sutton and Rao take us on a delightful tour of bad emails, infuriating subscriptions and labyrinthine hiring processes―and they show us how to fix it all. Hard to put down and easy to like, this is a business book to savor."
―Tim Harford, author of The Data Detective and host of Cautionary Tales
"I have found every place I’ve been to be filled with people who REALLY CARE about doing the right thing for the company. Sutton and Rao show how leaders who pay attention to friction―which kinds are helpful and which are not―can equip these people with the right tools, build their trust, and make incredible progress as a result."
―Ed Catmull, cofounder of Pixar, former president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, and author of Creativity Inc.
"A leader's role in removing and managing friction is a powerful lens for building companies that go fast and slow at the right times. Sutton and Rao break down this challenge with insightful stories and actionable lessons you won't want to miss."
―Clara Shih, CEO of Salesforce AI, founder and board chair of Hearsay Systems, and author of the New York Times bestseller The Facebook Era
About the Author
Huggy Rao is the Atholl McBean professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science, the Sociological Research Association, and the Academy of Management. He has written for Harvard Business Review, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Market Rebels and coauthor of the bestselling Scaling Up Excellence.
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Press (January 30, 2024)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250284414
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250284419
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.7 x 1 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #22,815 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #52 in Workplace Culture (Books)
- #299 in Business Management (Books)
- #435 in Leadership & Motivation
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Robert Sutton is a Stanford Professor, organizational researcher, and best-selling author. His seven management books include bestsellers The No A**hole Rule, Good Boss, Bad Boss, and (with Huggy Rao) Scaling Up Excellence. His latest book is The A**hole Survival Guide:How to Deal With People Who Treat You Like Dirt.
Sutton was named as one of 10 B-School All-Stars by BusinessWeek, described as professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond academia. Sutton is an IDEO Fellow and co-founder of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Center for Work and and Stanford Design Institute (the d.school). His latest adventure at Stanford is the Designing Organizational Change project, which you can learn about at http://stvp.stanford.edu/doc. He has written over 150 academic and popular articles and chapters, and over 1000 blog posts. He often leads workshops and gives speeches about his books and is academic director of several Stanford executive programs including Customer-focused Innovation. Sutton tweets @work_matters. Visit www.bobsutton.net to learn more.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
I especially love the call-out boxes with prompts, and the many interesting and diverse stories throughout the book, which made for an engaging and actionable read.
Whether you are a leader, coach, consultant, individual contributor, or human being trying to deal with life’s challenges, this eye-opening book will motivate you to look for ways to become what Bob and Huggy call “Friction Fixers.”
The book mentions companies such as AstraZeneca, Uber, JetBlue, Hawaii Pacific Health, Jumbo, and many others have addressed work friction, demonstrating the remarkable impact of these interventions.
Authors go deeper into explaining how leaders can become friction fixers, what challenges they will face, what role organizational design plays, introduce Help Pyramid, and so much more.
Highly recommend!
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2024
The book mentions companies such as AstraZeneca, Uber, JetBlue, Hawaii Pacific Health, Jumbo, and many others have addressed work friction, demonstrating the remarkable impact of these interventions.
Authors go deeper into explaining how leaders can become friction fixers, what challenges they will face, what role organizational design plays, introduce Help Pyramid, and so much more.
Highly recommend!