The Friction Project with Bob Sutton

In The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder, Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao share insights on friction—the forces that make it harder, slower, more complicated, or even impossible to get things done in organizations.

Sutton is an expert on organizational psychology at Stanford University and a best-selling author. His latest book is a culmination of a seven-year research effort on how effective organizations function without driving employees and customers crazy.

Together with Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, Sutton explores what friction is, where it comes from, and its effects - both positive and negative. They discuss the practical steps leaders and employees can take to remove and add friction in the right places. They also discuss broader implications, like whether the nature and consequences of friction will change in a world increasingly characterized by machine-machine and machine-human, rather than only human-human interactions.

Key topics discussed:

00:54 | What is organizational friction

04:30 | The negative consequences of friction

08:42 | What does good friction look like?

14:14 | How to remove friction

17:22 | What creates friction

19:11 | Removing friction and creating problems

22:04 | Is friction less problematic in a world of AI?

25:26 | How can ideas about friction be applied in academia?