Good Boss, Bad Boss
Robert Sutton, Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Stanford
bobsut
stanford.edu
Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Stanford University October 1, 2010, 12:50pm, Gates B03
This talk is about how bosses can master essentials like striking the right balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough, leavening their confidence with just enough humility, bringing in the right stars and reforming (or expelling) bad apples, linking talk to action, shielding their people from unnecessary intrusions and idiots of every stripe, doing dirty work like disciplining and firing employees in timely and humane ways, and keeping their inner jerk from rearing its ugly head.
Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and a Professor of Organizational Behavior, by courtesy, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Sutton studies innovation, leaders and bosses, evidence-based management, the links between knowledge and organizational action, and workplace civility. 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 most recent book is the New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. His next book is Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best…. and Survive the Worst, which will be published in September 2010.
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. His latest book, The No Asshole Rule, won the Quill Award for the best business book of 2007. 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. 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.” His personal blog is Work Matters, at www.bobsutton.net.
The talks are open to the public. They are in the Gates Building, Room B03 in the basement. The nearest public parking is in the structure at Campus Drive and Roth Way.
View this talk on line at CS547 on Stanford OnLine.
Titles and abstracts for previous years are available by year and by speaker.