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Friction: Friend AND Foe
Friction isn’t the enemy—it’s how you handle it that counts. Do you use it for advantage or does it frustrate your efforts? That’s the beating heart of The Friction Project by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao, a book I’ve been mulling over for its straight-talk on what drags us down—or keeps us steady—at work and beyond. Sutton and Rao, both Stanford heavyweights, dug into seven years of research to decode friction: the stuff that bogs us down (think oversized committees hashing out decisions across endless meetings or unecessarily long forms) and the fixes smart leaders use to cut through it. But it’s not all bad—imagine if all the friction of "getting a Pilot's License" was removed? Clearly, some friction can be good thing! Their big idea? Become a “friction fixer”—someone who optimizes the amount of friction in every situation, making friction your friend.
Friction Fixers
They cast these fixers as “trustees of others’ time,” a phrase that’s stuck with me for its specific practicality—a great lens to evaluate processes. It’s about owning the clock, morale, and resources—yours and everyone else’s—and making it count. As a people-manager, it's always been a priority to help my teams make the best use of their time, skillset, and energy by balancing the productivity, quality, and morale of my staff; this book resonates with me for that reason, as I view myself as a trustree of their time and morale and the resources of my employer.
The book itself is a solid, but easy, read. It’s loaded with real-world examples—big companies like AstraZeneca streamlining bloated processes (committed to saving 2,000,000+ employee hours) or slashing a 42-page Michigan government form by 80%, into something sane. That said, some examples meander—like they’re padding the pages—and theres the occasional profanity that might add a bit of emotion, but doesn’t add clarity or precision. But the meat of it—those actionable findings—shines through. It’s less about theory and more about doing: how to spot friction, cut what’s useless, and keep what works. I liked it for that, even if it could’ve been tighter.
Direction of Posts
My intention is to create this as a 7-part series covering seven friction types:
- Bureaucratic Friction
- Decision-Making Friction
- Communication Friction
- Cognitve Friction
- Social Friction
- Strategic Friction
- Environmental Friction
To make each post/friction-type easy to digest and apply, I'm planning to provide a clear structure in each:
- what it is,
- how to spot it,
- its impact,
- examples of needing more or less friction, and
- direct fixes and ideas you can use.
I'll start each post with a "Friction-Free Zone" -- the TL;DR of the post -- followed by a "Friction in Action" section, containing the full text of the post that will give you the time and content to more fully digest the concepts. If you need friction-free for fast moving, you'll have it; if you want a bit more friction to slow things down, you'll have that, too.
I hope you'll find a great deal of value in managing the friction in your world as we extend beyond the workplace and into our homes and daily life. Friction is everywhere and it's important we manage it, as trustees of each others' time!
Who Are Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao?
Robert Sutton’s an organizational psychologist and Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford’s Engineering School. He’s written hits like The No Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss, blending research with real talk—decades of it, across 200+ talks in 20 countries and piles of articles. Huggy Rao’s the Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, a fellow at top-tier behavioral science groups, and Sutton’s partner on this and Scaling Up Excellence. They’ve got a track record of cracking what makes systems tick—or stall—with years of hands-on study and success.
