Friction and the Role of Leaders

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Friction is any obstacle hindering job performance, creating time poverty and hindering employee curiosity. Leaders strategically insert obstacles to encourage thoughtful decision-making. They focus on removing bad friction to facilitate right actions and insert good friction to impede wrong decisions. For critical decisions with high costs, inserting good friction is advised to ensure thorough deliberation. Conversely, when decisions are easily reversible, minimizing bad friction is essential to facilitate quick actions.

Why resistance isn’t always a bad thing.

Friction — that’s Professor Huggy Rao’s metaphor for the forces that hamper workplace efficiency. But as he says, some friction can be helpful — if you know how to use it.

In his book, The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder, Rao and coauthor Robert I. Sutton explore how operational obstacles show up in the workplace and, more importantly, what we can do about them. Through what Rao calls “friction fixing,” leaders can “take out the bad friction to make the right things easy to do [and] put in good friction to make the wrong things harder [to do].”

As Rao discusses with host Matt Abrahams on this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, leaders can eliminate bad friction through good communication. “Communication matters a lot,” he says. “The simple rule is, make sure a 10-year-old can understand it on the first try.”

Episode Reference Links:

Huggy Rao: Website
Huggy’s Books: The Friction Project, Scaling Up Excellence, & Market Rebels
Huggy’s Successful Communication Recipe - “Ah! Aha! Haha!” by Ramji Raghavan
Ep.14: Be Better at Work: How to Communicate Better with Coworkers and Employees: Website / YouTube

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Matt Abrahams >>> LinkedIn

Chapters:

(00:00:00) Introduction

Host Matt Abrahams introduces guest, Huggy Rao, and his latest book on the importance of focusing on friction to become our best selves.

(00:01:24) Scaling Mindsets and Communication

Insights on scaling excellence and the critical role of simple communication in fostering the right mindset.

(00:04:28) AstraZeneca: Scaling Simplification

A case study on simplification efforts at AstraZeneca & the gift of time that they gave their employees.

(00:08:49) Understanding Friction: Terrible and Wonderful

The dual nature of friction, highlighting its role as both a hindrance and a catalyst for decision-making.

(00:11:05) Jargon Monoxide

Complicated jargon’s impact on organizations, and the need for simplicity in communication.

(00:13:03) The Art of Storytelling

The benefits & goals of storytelling, creating moral elevation & emotional connection.

(00:15:12) Job Titles and Accountability

An experiment on the impact of personalized job titles on team performance and accountability in tech startups and the introduction of “good friction”.

(00:17:57) The Final Three Questions

Huggy shares his strategy for reducing friction in his life, a story about the communicator he most admires, Saul Alinsky, and his three ingredients for a successful communication recipe, Aah! Aha! Ha-Ha!