“Friction for us has to do with obstacles,” says Hayagreeva “Huggy” Rao, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Obstacles can disable you. Obstacles can enable you.”

Rao compares friction to cholesterol: Some is good, but some is bad. “Good friction actually slows you down, gets you to pause, and most of all, gets you to reflect,” he explains. “But there’s also friction that overwhelms you, exhausts you, confuses you.”  

On this episode of If/Then, Rao explores how to cultivate the productive kind of friction, reduce the unhelpful kind, and manage your team’s most precious resource. “Great leaders are people who think of themselves as trustees of other people's time,” he says. 

Do you have any favorite examples of good or bad friction? Share one with us at [email protected].

Related Content:

• Huggy Rao faculty profile 
• The Friction Project
• How to become a friction fixer

Chapters:

00:00:00 Airport baggage claim, waiting, & good friction

00:03:20 Introduction

00:03:48 What friction means in organizations

00:05:42 Where friction comes from

00:07:52 Scaling through smart subtraction

00:08:24 DropBox’s approach to meetings

00:10:45 The problem with meetings

00:13:53 What good friction looks like

00:16:56 Friction, trust, & institutional legitimacy

00:19:31 Why Huggy Rao started studying friction

00:22:20 Conclusion

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