To help assess if an organization suffers from destructive competition and conflict—and to figure out how to fix it—we ask, “Who are the superstars here?” Followed by “Do people get ahead by doing great work and helping others succeed? Or doing great work while ignoring and even undermining colleagues?” When people are rewarded for helping others, many of the ugly dynamics that infected Microsoft—and so many other places—disappear.

9. Your Friction Project

“We wrote The Friction Project because organizations that are filled with people who make the right things easier and the wrong things harder are more humane, productive, and innovative.

The second leadership principle is that our project is powered by ownership and accountability for friction fixing. To paraphrase former Yum! Brands CEO David Novak, the idea is to build workplaces where accountability is a two-way street, where people feel “I own the place and the place owns me.” When it comes to friction fixing, skilled leaders are keenly aware that, all too often, making the right things easier and the wrong things harder are treated as orphan problems, obstacles and ordeals that everyone on a team or organization believes are important but that no one takes responsibility for averting or repairing.

Appendix

“We wrote a friction article for Gallup.com, “Too Many Teams, Too Many Bosses,” and for Times Higher Education, “Our To-Do Lists Can’t Grow Forever. It’s Time to Try Subtraction.

6: Prototyping

“Clara didn’t start out with a plan to work for the homeless. Knowing that she hadn’t found a specific mission to direct her steps, she carefully and thoughtfully crafted a series of small but illustrative experiences and involvements to design her way forward. Her path to “homeless champion” (which, by the way, has become her passion) was not a straight line, by any means. She designed the life she is living, step by step, by thinking like a designer and building her way forward by doing small experiments—prototypes. She trusted that if she kept giving herself carefully selected hands-on encounters, she’d find her way.

She took a class on mediation. She took the job in the juvenile justice system. She joined the women’s foundation. She learned about the world of nonprofits. She got involved in the board for the homeless center. By doing the work, meeting the people, and choosing to explore her options through hands-on experience, and not just spending her time reading, thinking, or reflecting in her journal about what she should or could do next, Clara found her encore career. It was only through life design that she was able to discover a future that had been not only unknowable, but also unimaginable. Clara did it, and you can, too.