How to Reduce the Friction that Hurts You — and Harness the Friction that Helps

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Organizations too often subject their employees and customers to unnecessary friction that creates inefficiency and causes frustration. But, in some situations, friction can be a positive force, spurring more innovation and better decision-making. So how do you reduce the bad kind and embrace the good? Stanford professors Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao have studied this problem for seven years and offer strategies for leaders at every level to help them recognize when friction is needed or not and then add or subtract accordingly. They share ample examples of people and companies getting it right. Sutton and Rao are the authors of The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder, as well as the HBR article, "Rid Your Organization of Obstacles that Infuriate Everyone."

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you work with early career professionals, my colleagues at
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0:08.4	Young Professional's Guide to Building a Meaningful Career on your own terms.
0:11.9	Share New Here with the Young Professionals in your life. a meaningful career on your own terms.
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0:15.9	Listen for free wherever you got your podcasts.
0:18.6	Just search new here. Welcome to the HBRIDIA cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard. When you hear the word friction, where does your mind go? Do you think of it as a force that leads to something positive and useful? Like how rubbing two sticks together can create a fire?
0:55.1	Or do you think of it as an enemy of progress, slowdown mechanism, bureaucracy, conflict?
1:00.6	Our guest today have spent the past seven years investigating friction in
1:04.0	organizations the good kind that can lead to wiser decisions and more
1:08.0	innovative solutions and the bad kind that leads to inefficiency and
1:12.2	waste, exasperated employees, and unhappy customers and clients.
1:16.0	They say that all of us, no matter our level, need to better recognize when friction is helping or hindering our success
1:22.0	and learn how to add or subtract it as necessary. when friction is helping or hindering our success
1:22.8	and learn how to add or subtract it as necessary.
1:26.3	Bob Sutton is a professor, Emeritus,
1:28.4	at Stanford University, co-founder
1:30.4	of its Center for Work, Technology, and Organization,
1:32.8	and its D-School and Technology Ventures program.
1:35.7	Huggy Rao is professor of organizational behavior,
1:38.0	human resources, and sociology at Stanford,
1:40.9	and the director of its TELUS leadership form.
	...

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