Fixing Friction: Eliminating The Forces That Make Work Harder with Hayagreeva 'Huggy' Rao

In this conversation we unpack workplace Friction with Hayagreeva 'Huggy' Rao. Friction can be both good and bad in a workplace, knowing how to use it and how to eliminate it when it's doing harm is critical.

The Friction Project is the latest book by Huggy Rao and Bob Sutton and is The definitive guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations.

THE FRICTION PROJECT: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder is written by bestselling authors and Stanford professors Robert I. Sutton and Hayagreeva “Huggy” Rao. It presents a decade’s worth of research on what ought to be easy and what ought to be hard in organizations, and how to change things for the better. Based on their research, case studies, and hundreds of engagements with top companies, the authors reveal just how widespread this affliction is, and provide a roadmap for readers to take up the mantle and blaze a path out of the muck. 

Our episode today with Huggy Rao unpacks this book and the incredible research conducted to help you discern between good and bad friction, and what to do about it.

Huggy Rao is the Atholl McBean professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science, the Sociological Research Association, and the Academy of Management. He has written for Harvard Business Review, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Market Rebels and coauthor of the bestselling Scaling Up Excellence.

Praise for The Friction Project:

“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.”

—Amy C. Edmondson, Professor, Harvard Business School, Author, Right kind of wrong: The science of failing well (Atria, 2023)

“I have found every place I’ve been to be filled with people who REALLY CARE about doing the right thing for the company. Sutton and Rao show how leaders who pay attention to friction - which kinds are

helpful and which are not—can equip these people with the right tools, build their trust, and make incredible progress as a result.”

— Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, former President of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, and author of Creativity INC: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

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