Since Huggy Rao wrote Scaling Up Excellence in 2014 with co-author Bob Sutton, they have been deluged with stories about how organizations stymie and exasperate their executives, front-line employees, customers, and so many others.
The beleaguered people who we teach, participate in our research, and reach out to us often provide disturbing details. They explain how getting smart and necessary things done where they work requires convoluted, unnecessary, time-consuming, and soul-crushing gyrations—which get worse as organizations grow, age, and become more complex. This burden distracts them from more crucial matters. It undermines their performance and creativity. And it frustrates, discourages, and exhausts them.
These unsettling lessons prompted them to launch The Friction Project. They are on a messy, multi-pronged mission to understand the causes and cures for destructive organizational friction–and when it is wise to make things harder to do.
