How Stanford’s Bob Sutton is deconstructing office politics.
The fact that the workplace is chock-full of overbearing bullies is not exactly news—that’s been going on since when? The dawn of time. Actually doing something about these tormentors, though, is something of a breakthrough. That’s what Bob Sutton, a Stanford professor of management science, has done with his new book, The No Asshole Rule—Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (Warner Business Books, 2007). Sutton’s book not only sets up the criteria for branding someone an a-hole, but offers up suggestions on how to weed them out and foster a more harmonious workplace. Along the way, Sutton reveals anecdotes about “certified assholes” like Steve Jobs (maybe that black turtleneck is a little too tight or could it be the designer jeans?) and others. But he also admits that when a little ass-kicking needs to be done around the office, an asshole is your best bet. Hey, I guess it takes one to know one. I got Sutton on the phone recently to discuss the current state of assholedom.
Paul Kilduff: I understand you’ve been doing a lot of radio interviews for your book. It seems to me that the American radio airwaves have become a bastion of the asshole. Have you been interviewed by Mancow yet?
Bob Sutton: Funny you should mention that. Tomorrow I do Mancow and then I do the Wall Street Journal of the Air the next day. The range is just stunning.
PK: So you’ve become the media go-to expert on assholes. Was that your intention?
BS: I was a respectable organizational psychologist. I don’t know what happened to me. Who am I and how did I get here?
PK: Are we living in the Age of the Asshole these days? Has it reached epidemic proportions?
BS: It’s one of those things—I think academics always like to say that this is a greater problem than ever. . . . There are some things—at least two things about modern society that should make people grumpier and nastier. One is, there’s a lot of evidence on the overworked American and I think that the longer hours you work and the less sleep you get, the grumpier you get. I don’t know about you, but sleep deprivation is the number one way to turn me into an asshole. And the second thing is all this literature on wage and status dispersion. When we enter a world where there are Haves and Have-nots, two things happen. One is the people at the top get greedier and more focused on satisfying their own needs. And the people at the bottom feel more pushed around and more pissed off.
PK: Define Steve Jobs.
BS: Steve is the poster child for the virtues of assholes. What he’s famous for is his claim around perfection. Do you remember when there was his Next computer thing? I knew one of the manufacturing managers. We were social friends with them and went out to dinner with them. . . . I guess the machines in the back were sort of this off-white or grayish color and Jobs walked in and they’d bought these new Ford vans, these white vans, that were a similar color but not quite the same shade of white. Jobs literally started screaming and crying and throwing things and threatening to fire everybody who hadn’t matched the colors perfectly.
PK: So let me get this straight. He went ballistic because the vans weren’t the same color as the computers?
BS: The vans were not the same color. And so [my friend had] to try to get this manufacturing plant online, and what do they have to do? They have to spend a couple of days getting the vans repainted the exact shade of white. Put in the words asshole and [Steve] Jobs in Google, you get a couple of hundred thousand hits. The interesting thing about Jobs is that he has this real obsession with the aesthetics of things. There’s a rumor among the Stanford undergraduates that he fired one of them from the Apple store because he didn’t like the bags that she picked out for the Apple store.
PK: Where are we most likely to encounter assholes—a law office?
BS: Doctors, surgeons in particular, look like one of the occupations that is the absolute worst. Lawyers have the stereotype, but the surgeons, and the nurses they abuse, seem to have the evidence.
PK: Where does the asshole thrive?
BS: Anytime you have a hierarchy. And you have power differences. And you have people under pressure to perform. I think people can turn nasty.
PK: Are assholes born or made?
BS: There actually are some people who are abused children or had tough upbringings who are probably more prone to do it, and in fact, there’s bullying data from Norway—long-term studies—that people who are bullied are more likely to be bullies when they grow up. But one of the main ideas of the book is this notion that assholes are us. And it’s an infectious disease that we get and give to people and that’s why I focus so much on the notion of organizational cultures. There is some research in the book that shows that people who have . . . alpha-male-like bosses become like those bosses. The main advice I give my students is that if they’re in a situation where they see all these nasty people and they’re going to join the organization, two predictable things are going to happen to them. One is they’re going to become an asshole. And the second thing is it’s going to have an incredibly bad effect on their mental and physical health. My argument is always you should stay out when you can.
PK: Are there any laws against being an asshole?
BS: The question is, “Is being an equal opportunity asshole against the law?” And there’s some growing case-law evidence that it might be unlawful in some cases in the United States.
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Suggestions? E-mail Paul Kilduff at pkilduff@sbcglobal.net. | The Kilduff File Archive
