The Entrepreneur’s Bookshelf:The No Asshole Rule

Starting up with people is not an easy task. A lot about working in different places, be it a small and medium enterprise or a multi-national company are about relationship management. If you have not encountered an asshole in your workplace, you must be either really lucky or you are the asshole yourself. Recently, I chanced upon this interesting book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t by Robert Sutton and thought I might do a short review on it.

You have probably encountered one of the following from people who worked with you or are your bosses: (1) personal insults, (2) invading your privacy, (3) uninvited physical contact, (4) threats and intimidation (both verbal and non-verbal), (5) Sarcastic jokes and teasing, (6) Withering email flames, (7) Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims, (8) public shaming or ‘status degradation’ rituals, (9) Rude interruptions, (10) Two-faced attacks, (11) Dirty looks and (12) Ignoring or treating people as if they are invisible. If you encounter these actions, you have more or less encountered the dirty dozen of what an asshole entails. Well, most bosses and managers are assholes, otherwise you would not be there. Believe it or not, this book also reviews that assholes are also victims of their own actions. So, what’s the solution to the problem?

Of course, John Sutton started off writing this book by presenting a proposal of the material that culminates in this book to the editors of Harvard Business Review. Thinking that he will be rejected, the Harvard Business Review did exactly the opposite. Slowly, he was convinced to write the book by the fear and despair expressed to him by people who have suffered these injustices, the tactics and tricks they used to survive and of course, the revenge stories. So, the purpose of this book, according to him, is to create civilized workplaces, which he believe is not a naive dream.

As a matter of fact, the book presents top ten steps in enforcing the no asshole rule:

• 1. Say the rule, write it down and act on it: If you are not the consistent type to follow a rule, just say nothing at all, otherwise, you end up being called a hypocrite. For leaders, it is important that you must not be seen to be inconsistent with your rules.
• 2. Assholes will hire other assholes: Sure, keep the resident jerks from hiring other people, and if you can’t, just increase the pool of good and civilized people.
• 3. Get rid of assholes fast: I often hear someone say, “Why did we wait so long to get rid of that idiot?”
• 4. Treat certified assholes as incompetent employees: Even if they are great employees but they don’t treat others well, you can certify them as incompetent.
• 5. Power breeds nastiness: Giving power away may not be a good idea, because it may turn seemingly nice and sensitive people to big jerks.
• 6. Embrace the power-performance paradox: Accept that there is a chain of command in your organization, but do everything you can to downplay or reduce status differences among the team. It means flattening your team.
• 7. Manage moments – not just practices, policies and systems: Try to make small changes in a way such that you bring about a great change. Don’t be a revolutionary, otherwise, it will backfire on you. You have to constantly find ways to get around the system, rather than fighting the system.
• 8. Model and teach constructive confrontation: Develop a culture to let people know when to argue and when to quit fighting. It is important to gather more evidence and listen to people. Stop whining over a small matter, and learn from your mistakes.
• 9. Adopt the one asshole rule:This is a way to enforce ‘reverse role model’ behaviour. It is usually easy for someone to be an asshole.
• 10. The bottom line: Link big policies to small decencies: Effective asshole management comes about when there is a virtuous and self-reinforcing cycle between the important things that the companies do and the little things that happen when people start cooperating with each other.

Of course, in this book, John Sutton also brought in the one of the biggest exhibits for asshole-hood and guess what, it’s Steve Jobs, the current CEO of Apple. He also tries to expose the positive side using the same example. I thought that it’s one of the funniest chapters I have read.

If you want to be nicer to people around you or you want to fend against assholes, this book might be a good read.

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