119: Stanford Professor Bob Sutton | The Best Leaders Are Trustees of Others’ Time

Bob Sutton, Professor at Stanford University, is a New York Times bestselling author of 9 books including his most recent, with co-author Huggy Rao, titled The Friction Project. Bob co-founded Stanford’s Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and the “d school.” Bob has served as an advisor to McKinsey, Bain, and Microsoft, as a Fellow at IDEO, and as faculty at the World Economic Forum, and he is currently a Senior Scientist at Gallup.

Bob has given keynote speeches to more than 200 groups in more than 20 countries and has been a guest on numerous radio and television shows, including ABC, Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, Fox, NBC Today Show, PBS, NPR, Marketplace, and CNN.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The best leaders see themselves as trustees of other’s time. As Bob told his employer at Stanford, and even a Google executive yesterday, “If the California DMV can be trustees of our time, you can do it for your employees too.”
• At the CA DMV, Bob showed up at 7:30 am, and 60 people were in front of him. Bob was thrilled when he saw a worker walking each row passing out forms, prepping people for their visit, and re-routing those in the wrong line. This DMV hero was a trustee of other peoples’ time (and Bob was out in less than an hour).
• Our natural tendency is to add things to anything we do, whether it’s a recipe, a vacation, or our jobs. But when we switch to the subtraction mindset, we can vastly improve things.
• Switch to the subtraction mindset: In the state of Michigan there was a form that 2.5 million residents filled out that had 1,000 questions. But thanks to Project Reform, the form is now 80% shorter and takes half the time.
• Lead with love. Starting with love, and then building the logistics behind it, can lead to vastly improved experiences compared to starting with logistics. For example, when Netflix made it easy to cancel, they got much better data from their customers.

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Website: https://www.bobsutton.net/

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