Professor Robert Sutton’s new book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, adds some fun and spice to the leadership debate. Although somewhat conservatively titled, his message hits a nerve with those of us who have suffered at the hands of the real thing. Maybe it’s the epithet, which he defines as someone who persistently belittles and abuses those of inferior power or status. Or maybe it’s his argument that assholes exact a cost to the bottom line as they single-handedly corrode an organisation’s cohesion.
An IT company he mentions went so far as to calculate a star salesman’s TCA–total cost of asshole–by totting up expenses attributed to his behaviour. Turnover, legal bills and anger-management courses rang up a TCA of $160,000.
Why exactly have we tolerated assholes in business for so long? Bob convincingly demonstrates using surveys, psychological studies and anecdotal evidence that workplace assholes are far more trouble than they’re worth. They succeed by getting results and making the numbers, but they do so at a huge cost to the rest of the organisation and to the well-being of the people around them.
Not only that, but assholes breed. Not only do they tend to bring out the worst in others (creating more assholes) they also tend to hire assholes like themselves. Or they make sure to hire people who are too weak to oppose them.
As engaging as the book is, even more interesting is the generated material developed by others. Check out the video, the blog, the Asshole song, the Checklist, the Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE) – Are You A Certified Asshole? , or even send an ArseMail — help a victim or apologise for being an asshole . It seems as if the No Asshole Rule is developing a life of its own.
