The Friction Project

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

Robert I. Sutton, Hayagreeva "Huggy" Rao

Publisher: Penguin, 2024, 293 pages

ISBN: 978-0-241-59484-8

Keywords: Organizational Development

Last modified: May 23, 2025, 11:40 p.m.

Bestselling authors and Stanford University professors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao tackle one of the most persistent and destructive problems with organizations today.

Every organization is plagued by destructive friction — the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get anything done. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, 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,' so that teams and organizations don't squander the zeal, damage the health, and throttle the creativity and productivity of good people — or burn through cash and other precious resources.

If friction is causing your organization challenges, Sutton and Rao are here to help. In this highly practical guide, they show the difference between good and bad friction, examine the causes and solutions of the five most common kinds and, ultimately, show that embracing the mess is an inevitable part of the process (while still trying to clean it up).

  • Part I: Setting the Stage
    • Introduction: Why Friction Is Terrible and Wonderful. And How You Can Fix It
    • Our Friction Project
  • Part II: The Elements of Friction Fixing
    1. A Trustee of Others' Time
    2. Friction Forensics: The Easy Way or the Hard Way?
    3. How Friction Fixers Do Their Work: The Help Pyramid
  • Part III: The Friction Traps: Intervention Points for Friction Fixers
    1. Oblivious Leaders: Overcoming Power Poisoning
    2. Addition Sickness: Putting the Subtraction Mindset to Work
    3. Broken Connections: On Preventing Coordination Snafus
    4. Jargon Monoxide: On the Drawbacks and (Limited) Virtues of Hollow and Impenetrable Babble
    5. Fast and Frenzied: When and How to Apply Good Friction
  • Part IV: The Wrap-Up