Quotes from Robert I. Sutton

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. —Henry David Thoreau

This is our company—it's not theirs—it's ours.

My rule of thumb is that no work team should have membership in the double digits (and my preferred size is six), since our research has shown that the number of performance problems a team encounters increases exponentially as team size increases.

The best bosses break down problems into bite-sized pieces and talk and act like each little task is something that people can complete without great difficulty.

managers continue to use methods that force people to see old things in old ways, expecting new and profitable ideas somehow to magically appear.

The truth is that bosses...don't matter as much as most of us believe. They typically account for less than 15 percent of the gap between good and bad organizational performance, although they often get over 50 percent of the blame and credit.

Sometimes, the best management is no management at all. Jeffrey Pfeffer likes to say that managers should be required to take something like the physician's oath: "First, do no harm.

a twenty-year study that tracked six thousand British civil servants found that when their bosses criticized them unfairly, didn't listen to their problems, and rarely praised them, employees suffered more angina, heart attacks, and deaths from heart disease. You get the idea. It doesn't matter whether the assholes around you are getting ahead or (more likely) screwing up their lives, careers, and companies. They pose a danger to you and others.

Confirmation bias can cause bosses to make excessively glowing judgments about people they have invested a lot of time and money in or who they simply find to be likable or admirable. Even if your judgment is generally sound, confirmation bias can blind you to mediocre or even downright rotten performance displayed by your favorites.

As this VP discovered, being a boss is much like being a high-status primate in any group: the creatures beneath you in the pecking order watch every move you make – and so they know a lot more about you than you know about them.

As a boss, you need to establish a pecking order where people who know the most about a problem wield the greatest influence over what is done. You especially need to watch who talks the most (and least). Don't let your people fall prey to the blabbermouth theory of leadership. At least in Western countries, people who talk first and most frequently usually wield excessive influence over others – even when they spew out nonsense.

Nolan Bushnell, the founder and former CEO of the Atari Corporation, remarks that "sometimes the best engineers come in bodies that can't talk

an idea is creative when it is new to people who use or evaluate it, and (at least some of them) believe it could be valuable to themselves or others.

Hire newcomers that other people in your company will dislike." David

We don't think enough about the steps required to achieve those ends, and when we do we underestimate how much time and effort they will take. But thinking only about looming deadlines and short-term goals is a mixed bag as well. We focus on what is feasible, on the steps to take right now, but we forget or downplay long-term goals. So we direct our efforts toward achievable milestones even when they undermine our ability to reach our ultimate destination.

Accountability means that an organization is packed with people who embody and protect excellence (even when they are tired, overburdened, and distracted), who work vigorously to spread it to others, and who spot, help, critique, and (when necessary) push aside colleagues who fail to live and spread it.

Countries with hot climates suffer higher murder rates and more political violence; more violent crimes occur in hot years;

If clients treat you like dirt, fire them if possible. If you can't, charge asshole taxes, give employees who work with them combat pay, and limit everyone's exposure to these creeps.

Hire people you know you don't need now, but you think you might need later.

better to shoot the messenger than to learn about—and fix—the problems. In contrast to such constructive defiance, I know bosses who employ the opposite strategy to undermine and drive out incompetent superiors. One called it "malicious compliance," following idiotic orders from

He reminds them that "life is messy sometimes. Sometimes the best you can do is to accept that it is messy, try to love it as much as you can, and move forward.

If you hire people who prompt discomfort in yourself and others, take extra care to listen to their ideas and insist that others do so as well.

Organizations that scale well are filled with people who talk and act as if they are in the middle of a manageable mess.

The fourth big lesson is that scaling starts and ends with individuals—success depends on the will and skill of people at every level of an organization.