Bob Sutton

Bob Sutton is an organizational psychologist and co-author of the forthcoming book The Friction Project with Huggy Rao. Drawing on the duo’s seven years of hands-on research, Sutton teaches audiences how to become “friction fixers,” so that teams and organizations don’t squander the zeal, damage the health, and throttle the creativity and productivity of good people ? or burn through cash and other precious resources — dealing with the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get anything done. On the book, Harvard Business School Professor Amy C. Edmondson says: “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.”

Sutton also speaks on leading at scale and the fundamentals of modern leadership — on how to lead teams and organizations that are innovative, productive, and humane. During the past 15 years, Bob’s research, writing, teaching, and advising on leading at scale focuses on how to grow high performing teams and businesses (“up”), how to spread good norms, practices, and behaviors throughout organizations and stymy bad ones (“out”), and how to design and lead organizations as they become larger, more complex, and older (“big”). Bob’s speeches on the fundamentals of modern leadership draw on his more than 30 years of academic and practical research on how leaders can spur people to do great work and do it without damaging their zest for life or health.

More about Bob Sutton

Robert I. Sutton is an organizational psychologist and Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He studies leadership, innovation, organizational change, and workplace dynamics. His main focus over the past decade is on scaling and leading at scale — how to grow organizations, spread good things (and remove bad things) in teams and organizations, and enhance performance, innovation, and well-being in organizations. In addition, Sutton studies, speaks about, and advises organizations on the fundamentals for great leadership, innovation, and how to build workplaces that are free from destructive workplace dynamics (especially from the antics of temporary and certified assholes).

Sutton received his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from The University of Michigan and has served on the Stanford faculty since 1983. Sutton is co-founder and former co-director of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization, co-founder of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and co-founder of the “Stanford d.school,” a multi-disciplinary program that helps people reach their creative potential.

Sutton has published seven books and two edited volumes. These include The Knowing-Doing Gap and Total Nonsense (both with Jeffrey Pfeffer), Weird Ideas That Work, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, The No Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss (both New York Times bestsellers), Scaling-Up Excellence (with Huggy Rao, a Wall Street Journal bestseller) and The Asshole Survival Guide.

Sutton and Huggy Rao just completed The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder for St. Martin’s Press. This book unpacks insights from the duo’s seven-year project using academic research, case studies, classes and workshops, and ongoing dialog with scholars, executives, and innovators to learn how smart organizations make the right things easier and the wrong things harder and do it without driving employees and customers crazy. The book will be published on January 30, 2024.