Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao distinguish good friction from bad, using Theranos and an FDA-approved tampon startup as examples. They explore how regulatory oversight, psychological safety, and personal courage shape whether people push back against powerful figures like General Mattis.
Chapters
We've been talking about bad friction, but I want to talk about good friction, and the comparison I'm loving to make these days is, of course, we all know the dropout Elizabeth Holmes, who was briefly on campus here, and you also probably all know that she tried to push through that machine, that blood testing machine which didn't work, I think it's called Edison. It did not get FDA approval, and there was sort of a— if you read you know, the bad blood, John Carreo's book about it, there's sort of a moment where she tried to get it on U.S. Army helicopters to blood test, and she had Mad Dog Mattis, a 4-star general, pushing on her behalf, and some sort of lowly bureaucrat pushed back against her. And one of the reasons was she didn't have FDA approval. And I like comparing Elizabeth Holmes to 2 more recent graduates, Greta Meyer and Amanda Calabrese, if I'm pronouncing her name right, they started a company called Sequel. They went through, by the way, just about every entrepreneurship class that we have at Stanford. Sequel is reinventing the modern tampon. Both of them graduated, they got $5 million worth of venture capital and just got FDA approval in August. So to me, there is bad friction and there is good friction. I don't use a tampon, you probably guessed that, but if I was sticking one of those things in my body, I would want FDA approval. So, so, so that's a case where I think that friction was a good thing. And I think it's also cool they both graduated, by the way.
I have a follow-up question that doesn't have anything to do with tampons, but going back to Mad Dog Mattis, I have met Mad Dog Mattis, and I'm actually curious, for the individual that you wrote about— actually, no spoilers, go read the book— who did push back successfully, how does one have the backbone to do that? What kind of encouragement do you have for an individual?
Well, so this guy was sort of a lowly Defense Department, he was like a Lieutenant Colonel, and when he retired they gave him all sorts of awards for fighting back to Mad Dog Mattis. And if we want to talk about fighting back, this is the problem with psychological safety. So either you need to be in a place that's safe, you need to have an exit option. I always say this to my students, I've got an asshole boss, I want to quit immediately, And I say, how big is your mortgage? Who do you have to support? And so forth. So a lot of it depends on the option. And then there's some people who are simply so brave that they're kind of suicidal, and bless you. But I don't want to be the child who depends on your rent, for example.
Hang on. One thing that you started with that's quite interesting is incentives, right? So the fact that this person, when he retired, was awarded all these things—
By his co— by his colleagues.
OK, by his colleagues. But the incentives have to be right for this kind of— Friction fixer.
Well, to Mattis's credit, Mattis sort of made the guy fly down to him and talk with him. And Mattis sort of argued with him for an hour and raised his hands and said, you're right. So Mattis didn't just bulldoze him. This guy had the backbone to argue with Mattis. And Mattis said, you're right. So in that case, everybody kind of did the right thing.
