Check Out Your ARSE

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Website Delight

Competencies: leadership, self-development

Who benefits: assholes and non-assholes

Consultant Usage: fun spot to explore

What’s it about? Okay, let me acknowledge that you haven’t even begun to read my review today and already you are disgusted!  Look, today I am just a reporter.  Not even a very good one.  I am going to plagiarize almost everything in this post.  It will be difficult for you to find even a single original thought of mine.

Let me begin by begging Robert Sutton not to sue me.  And Bob, if you do sue, it was my decision alone to post this review.  My employers had no advance notice and no editorial say.  And in my feeble defense, I post this review as a tribute to you, one of my all-time favorite authors.  My goal here is to get people to go to your Work Matters website, read your books, and practice what you preach.

For those of you not in the know, Robert Sutton is the author of The No Asshole Rule, one of the best management books in the past 5 years.  It also, hopefully, explains there us a relationship between today’s post Title and Who benefits and what follows.

Now comes the plagiarism.  I am going to reproduce Dr. Sutton’s “12 Things I Believe” in hopes that you will go to his website for some incredible insights and a goodly dose of humor.  Here they are:

1. Sometimes the best management is no management at all — first do no harm!
2. Indifference is as important as passion.
3. Saying smart things and giving smart answers are important. Learning to listen to others and to ask smart questions is more important.
4. You get what you expect from people. This is especially true when it comes to selfish behavior; unvarnished self-interest is a learned social norm, not an unwavering feature of human behavior.
5. Avoid pompous jerks whenever possible. They not only can make you feel bad about yourself, chances are that you will eventually start acting like them.
6. Anyone can learn to be creative, it just takes a lot of practice and little confidence
7. “Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”
8. Sutton’s Law: “If you think that you have a new idea, you are wrong. Someone else probably already had it. This idea isn’t original either; I stole it from someone else”
9. “Am I a success or a failure?” is not a very useful question
10. The world would be a better place if people slept more and took more naps
11. Strive for simplicity and competence, but embrace the confusion and messiness along the way.
12. Jimmy Maloney is right, work is an overrated activity.

One of the other delightful/humorous features of this Blog is the opportunity it gives you to examine your ARSE (Asshole Rating Self-Exam).

If that’s not enough, you can find out if your boss is a Certified Brasshole by taking the 20 question BRASS (Boss Reality Assessment Survey System).

I took the ARSE and it declares that I am not an asshole.  So you can trust me: This is a website you will want to visit frequently.  There is so much to explore. Go now!  Go often!!!

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.