The Strategic Value of the Undervalued
In their new book, The Friction Project, Stanford professors Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao write about the strategic importance of eliminating bad friction from organizations, and recognizing where good friction is helpful.
One of their examples of good friction is related to what I wrote last week about employees whose caring energy affects others. Sutton and Rao mention research by Christine Porath, whose surveys of employees found that “more than 40 percent say they have no time to be nice.” The authors write, “Many employees feel so rushed that they don’t even take a second to smile and say hello, let alone to pause and ask if a colleague could use their help.”
Of course, the larger issue is that if people are too rushed to say hello, they are probably too rushed to coordinate effectively or to think creatively about how to improve. Employees who create the helpful friction of connection, therefore, have an important, if undervalued, strategic impact.
The Friction Project also discusses how organizations can overvalue those who visibly fix problems, and undervalue those who work in a way that prevents problems in the first place. Sutton and Rao write that “firefighters’ heroics can overshadow the invisible design and maintenance work that prevents calamities. In their research on manufacturing and software development systems, Nelson Repenning and John Sterman found that bad systems persist partly because, as an auto company engineer explained, ‘no one ever gets credit for problems that never happened.’”
A common issue of poorly engineered systems, for example, is that their component parts do not work well together. These kinds of engineering mistakes usually arise because teams lack the connectors who would have helped them coordinate effectively when designing the system, even if it slowed down the individual teams.
In another work, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, & Total Nonsense, Sutton and Jeffrey Pfeffer write about another set of people who are undervalued. They summarize research conducted by Anita Tucker and Amy Edmondson on people who sustain organizational learning in their book and describe four profiles:
Noisy complainers—“Repair problems right away and then let every relevant person know that the system failed.”
Noisy troublemakers—“Always point out others’ mistakes, but do so to help them and the system learn, not to point fingers.”
Mindful error-makers—“Tell managers and peers about their own mistakes, so that others can avoid making them too.”
Disruptive questioners—“Won’t leave well enough alone. They constantly ask why things are done the way they are done. Is there a better way of doing things?”
Even though their actions boost organizational learning, each of the people in these groups creates friction by either slowing things down, or causing somewhat uncomfortable conversations. As a result, they can be less favored relative to those who quietly go along and make nice with others.
But in all cases, we can go wrong by failing to recognize those who create the right kind of friction in our organizations.
Leadership Wisdom
“When the Harvard Business Review interviewed Jerry Seinfeld, the star and cocreator of the long-running hit comedy show Seinfeld, the editors asked him, ‘You and Larry David wrote Seinfeld together, without a traditional writers’ room, and burnout was one reason you stopped. Was there a more sustainable way to do it? Could McKinsey or someone have helped you find a better model?’ Jerry asked, ‘Who’s McKinsey?’ After learning McKinsey is a consulting firm and they aren’t funny, he said, ‘Then I don’t need them. If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way.’”
— The Friction Project