 Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering and a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford. Sutton has been teaching classes on the psychology of business and management at Stanford since 1983. Especially dear to his heart is the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, which everyone calls “the Stanford d.school.” He is a co-founder of this multi-disciplinary program, which teaches, practices, and spreads “design thinking.” Sutton studies innovation, leaders and bosses, evidence-based management, the links between knowledge and organizational action, and workplace civility. He has published over 100 articles and chapters on these topics in peer-reviewed journals and the popular press. Sutton’s books include Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge into Action (with Jeffrey Pfeffer), and Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (also with Jeffrey Pfeffer). His last book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t and his current book Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Survive the Worst are both New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers. His current writing project (with Hayagreeva Rao) is (tentatively) called Spreading Excellence: The Art and Science of Spreading Success. Professor Sutton’s honors include the award for the best paper published in the Academy of Management Journal in 1989, the Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching, selection by Business 2.0 as a leading “management guru” in 2002, and the award for the best article published in the Academy of Management Review in 2005. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense was selected as the best business book of 2006 by the Toronto Globe and Mail. Sutton was named as one of 10 “B-School All-Stars” by BusinessWeek in 2007, which they described as “professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond academia.” Sutton is a Fellow at IDEO and a member of the Institute for the Future’s board of directors. TOPICS Sutton weaves together the best psychological and management research with true stories to reveal the mindset and moves of the best bosses – which he bolsters by contrasting them with evidence on how the worst bosses think of themselves and treat their people. Sutton shows how bosses can master essentials including: -Striking just the right balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough convincing followers and superiors they are in charge and in control -Leavening their self-confidence with just enough humility, -Bringing aboard the right stars and reforming (or expelling) bad apples -Closing the smart-talk trap -- linking what they say to what their people do -Shielding their charges from unnecessary intrusions and idiots of every stripe -Doing dirty work like disciplining and firing employees in timely and humane ways, And, of course, keeping their inner jerk in check. Combining ideas from HBR top book of the year Weird Ideas That Work, his experience as an IDEO fellow, academic research on innovation, and his experience in the new Stanford Institute of Design – where the focus is on teaching and coaching student teams that are doing real creative for real companies like Mozilla, Fidelity, WalMart, SAP, Timbuk2, Google, and others – Sutton talks about and leads workshops with organizations about the challenges of managing and doing creative work. Stanford Professor Robert Sutton and Stanford Associate Consulting Professor Perry Klebahn often work together to lead workshops that combine Sutton’s knowledge of theory and research about innovation with Klebahn’s real-world experience and hands-on approach. Sutton and Klebahn started using this approach (along with other Stanford faculty) in a Stanford Executive Program on Customer-focused Innovation (CFI), and more recently, have applied this blend of academic and experiential learning in design thinking workshops. In doing so they have worked with groups including Arco gas stations, Tesla Motors, Del Monte Foods, the Ministry of Manpower in Singapore, and the Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi. Sutton and Klebahn’s workshops typically run three hours and highly interactive, resulting in lessons about key elements of innovation and design thinking including leadership, group dynamics, human resource management and, especially, the fundamentals of the design process and hands on learning about how to apply it to a host of business problems. In addition, they work with clients to develop and deliver workshops that are customized to the client’s needs and interests. | Bob Sutton talks about the merits of failure.
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Robert Sutton
TAGS: Human Resources, Innovation, Leadership
