Scaling up Excellence

How do you create a great organisation? By scaling up excellence.

The pair’s eagerness drips from every page and it would be a hard-hearted reader who left Scaling Up Excellence anything less than thoroughly energised about the potential for positive change... Very good indeed.

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

Practical and spiced with entertaining case studies. They do not shy away, either, from pointing out that it may sometimes make sense to stay small.

Explains how a brilliant idea or plan developed by a few people can be effectively adopted by the whole workforce.

Scaling up excellence is the key to creating a great organisation. It’s how a small enterprise expands without losing focus. It’s how a brilliant new idea or plan developed by the few goes on to be adopted by the many. And, in hard times and tough situations, it’s how pockets of smart new thinking overcome cultures of indifference or negativity. An organisation that doesn’t know how to scale up what is best within it won’t achieve long-term success. 
 
Bestselling author Robert Sutton and his Stanford colleague Huggy Rao have devoted nearly a decade to uncovering what it takes to create and spread outstanding performance, and in Scaling Up Excellence they share the fruits of their research. Drawing on case studies that range from Silicon Valley enterprises to non-profit organisations, they provide crucial insights into corporate cultures, both good and bad, and offer a road map for establishing and stimulating excellence. In the process, they show how to use ‘premortems’ when making big decisions about change. They reveal why seven is so often the magic number when it comes to team size. They examine successful and unsuccessful quests for improvement – in hospitals, schools and elsewhere. And they discuss when a single corporate mindset is best (‘Catholicism’) and when local variation is preferable (‘Buddhism’). 
 
Scaling Up Excellence is the first management book devoted to what is – or should be – a core priority for every organisation. As such it is destined to become the standard bearer.

Robert I. Sutton

Huggy Rao

This is a practical manual, an entertaining litany of "bad" friction, from pointless meetings to guff-filled emails, a hymn in praise of "friction-fixers", and a timely pointer to the "good" friction that nudges us away from bad decisions

Financial Times, (Best Books of 2024: Business)

Sutton and Rao take us on a delightful tour of bad emails, infuriating subscriptions and labyrinthine hiring processes - and they show us how to fix it all. Hard to put down and easy to like, this is a business book to savour.

Tim Harford, author of The Data Detective

This is the ultimate guide to diagnosing and fixing the problems in your organization. If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place.

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

Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao have spent the last decade studying the causes and remedies for friction troubles at a wide range of companies. They've distilled their lessons to help you and your team make the right things easier and the wrong things harder in your company. Every executive, investor, board member, and leader should buy The Friction Project.

Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock Partners

Sutton and Rao have given us a thousand gems, each an invaluable insight on its own ... 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 of Right kind of wrong: The science of failing well

The idea of leaders as friction fixers is dynamite ... Sutton's and Rao's insights in The Friction Project offer leaders at all levels important tools and real-world examples to recognize the role that both kinds of friction can play in their organization's success.

Shantanu Narayan, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Adobe

If you dream of freeing your people and organization to focus their time on what really matters, The Friction Project is the book for you. More than ever today we need more nimble, innovative, customer centric, and human organizations. Eliminating needless friction is at the heart of that quest, as Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao show in their wonderful new book.

Herminia Ibarra, The Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School and author of Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, and Working Identity

A great and provocative read. As a business leader I never thought of leaders as 'friction fixers.' The Friction Project identifies when friction is and is not desirable. It's packed with real-world examples from varied organizations, their frictions, and above all, how the people who make repairs practice their craft.

Carlos Brito, CEO of Belron and former CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev

As I read this groundbreaking book, I imagined a future where every leader eliminates bad friction and harnesses good friction to build better organizations. Every manager MUST read The Friction Project to learn how, by leading through a friction lens, and using the practical solutions Sutton and Rao provide, they can create productive, innovative, and caring workplaces.

Tsedal Neeley, Harvard Business School; author of Remote Work Revolution and co-author of The Digital Mindset

Subtract friction and an organization will move faster, become more innovative and drive productivity gains. The Friction Project is a 'how-to' guide in a period of workforce transformation across sectors.

Donna Morris, Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer, Walmart Inc.

An entertaining and eminently practical guide by two Stanford professors about how to simplify, streamline and subtract the bad stuff that clogs up work and stifles productivity.

How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder

Every organisation is plagued by destructive friction. Lengthy and convoluted emails, inefficient processes, and antiquated procedures can all be obstacles to excellence at work.Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful. Often teams need to slow down, struggle and develop some bad ideas to find that rare good one. And leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. 
Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers.” 
 
 
Sutton and Rao will help you to: 
<ul><li>identify where to avert and repair bad organisational friction</li><li>acknowledge where to maintain and inject good friction</li><li>reframe friction troubles that can’t be immediately fixed, so they feel less threatening</li><li>repair failing organisations</li></ul> 
The Friction Project is the ultimate guide to making the right things easier and the wrong things harder.

Robert I. Sutton

Praise for The Friction Project

This is a practical manual, an entertaining litany of "bad" friction, from pointless meetings to guff-filled emails, a hymn in praise of "friction-fixers", and a timely pointer to the "good" friction that nud ...

Sutton and Rao take us on a delightful tour of bad emails, infuriating subscriptions and labyrinthine hiring processes - and they show us how to fix it all. Hard to put down and easy to like, this is a business b ...

This is the ultimate guide to diagnosing and fixing the problems in your organization. If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place.

This is a practical manual, an entertaining litany of "bad" friction, from pointless meetings to guff-filled emails, a hymn in praise of "friction-fixers", and a timely pointer to the "good" friction that nud ...

Sutton and Rao take us on a delightful tour of bad emails, infuriating subscriptions and labyrinthine hiring processes - and they show us how to fix it all. Hard to put down and easy to like, this is a business b ...

This is the ultimate guide to diagnosing and fixing the problems in your organization. If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place.

This is a practical manual, an entertaining litany of "bad" friction, from pointless meetings to guff-filled emails, a hymn in praise of "friction-fixers", and a timely pointer to the "good" friction that nud ...

Sutton and Rao take us on a delightful tour of bad emails, infuriating subscriptions and labyrinthine hiring processes - and they show us how to fix it all. Hard to put down and easy to like, this is a business b ...

This is the ultimate guide to diagnosing and fixing the problems in your organization. If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place.

Books by Robert I. Sutton

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