Bob Sutton

Organizational Psychologist and Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University

Robert Sutton is a top organizational change keynote speaker, Stanford Professor, and the New York Times bestselling author of Scaling Up Excellence, Good Boss, Bad Boss, and The No Asshole Rule. He also speaks about and is working on The Friction Project. It focuses on why organizations make the right things too hard to do, the wrong things too easy, and how skilled leaders and organizational designers can avert and overcome these obstacles.

  • Bob Sutton Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type

    Please Inquire

  • Languages Spoken

    English

  • Travels From

    California, USA

  • Bob Sutton Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type

    Please Inquire

  • Languages Spoken

    English

  • Travels From

    California, USA

Suggested Keynote Speaker Programs

The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder—Without Driving Everyone Crazy

Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

The Fundamentals of Modern Leadership

A Conversation with Bob Sutton

About Keynote Speaker Bob Sutton

Bob Sutton is an organizational psychologist and co-author of the forthcoming book The Friction Project with Huggy Rao. Drawing on the duo’s seven years of hands-on research, Sutton teaches audiences 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 — dealing with the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get anything done. On the book, Harvard Business School Professor Amy C. Edmondson says: “Sutton and Rao have given us a thousand gems, each an invaluable insight on its own, reinventing management as the art of ensuring that things get done as they should without unnecessary struggle. Marshalling the crucial insights from classic works, as well as from the very latest studies, they make a convincing case for friction as a vital focus and offer countless practical suggestions that you can apply in your work. I guarantee that their profoundly humane arguments will win your hearts, change your behavior, and transform your companies.”

Sutton also speaks on leading at scale and the fundamentals of modern leadership — on how to lead teams and organizations that are innovative, productive, and humane. During the past 15 years, Bob’s research, writing, teaching, and advising on leading at scale focuses on how to grow high performing teams and businesses (“up”), how to spread good norms, practices, and behaviors throughout organizations and stymy bad ones (“out”), and how to design and lead organizations as they become larger, more complex, and older (“big”). Bob’s speeches on the fundamentals of modern leadership draw on his more than 30 years of academic and practical research on how leaders can spur people to do great work and do it without damaging their zest for life or health.

More about Bob Sutton

Robert I. Sutton is an organizational psychologist and Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He studies leadership, innovation, organizational change, and workplace dynamics. His main focus over the past decade is on scaling and leading at scale — how to grow organizations, spread good things (and remove bad things) in teams and organizations, and enhance performance, innovation, and well-being in organizations. In addition, Sutton studies, speaks about, and advises organizations on the fundamentals for great leadership, innovation, and how to build workplaces that are free from destructive workplace dynamics (especially from the antics of temporary and certified assholes).

Sutton received his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from The University of Michigan and has served on the Stanford faculty since 1983. Sutton is co-founder and former co-director of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization, co-founder of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and co-founder of the “Stanford d.school,” a multi-disciplinary program that helps people reach their creative potential.

Sutton has published seven books and two edited volumes. These include The Knowing-Doing Gap and Total Nonsense (both with Jeffrey Pfeffer), Weird Ideas That Work, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, The No Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss (both New York Times bestsellers), Scaling-Up Excellence (with Huggy Rao, a Wall Street Journal bestseller) and The Asshole Survival Guide.

Sutton and Huggy Rao just completed The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder for St. Martin’s Press. This book unpacks insights from the duo’s seven-year project using academic research, case studies, classes and workshops, and ongoing dialog with scholars, executives, and innovators to learn how smart organizations make the right things easier and the wrong things harder and do it without driving employees and customers crazy. The book will be published on January 30, 2024.

Testimonials

“Bob was fantastic. He has an energy level that is off that charts and backs it up with real passion. He connected with the audience perfectly. The content was interesting to the partners and all the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. He had a real impact on the event.”

Better By Design

 

“Bob did an amazing job of reaching our audience by relating personal experiences and examples from across various industries that held relevance for an industry that is centuries old and is driven by relationships, new products, news and fun.”

Anheuser Bush

 

“Bob was great! He was so easy to work with and made a real effort to customize his content to our business needs. He was accessible, flexible, and spot-on in his delivery.”

Microsoft

 

Bob was engaging and the team loved him. He incorporated some small group breakouts for discussion and share-outs, which was great for the team to interact and present ideas. We received a lot of positive feedback from the attendees about Bob’s presentation.

Chime

 

Media

Article

Sep 27, 2022

Less is the key to success: Minimizing Needless Complexity at Work

Do you often feel like your work day is cluttered with too many steps, processes, meetings, messages, rules, trainings, software...

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Article

May 13, 2022

Work Smarter Not Harder with Change Management Speaker Robert Sutton

Is your to-do list overflowing? How much time do you spend on meaningless tasks every day? If it feels like...

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Article

Jul 27, 2020

Robert Sutton on Leadership Amidst the COVID-19 Crisis

In the world that we cohabitate with the novel COVID-19 virus, corporate leadership has become increasingly important. BigSpeak Exclusive Speaker...

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Article

Jul 12, 2019

Use Mental Time Travel to Help You Lead Your Team Through Challenging Situations

Changes in your business can make you mad. Whether the change was forced on you by the market or initiated...

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Article

Aug 22, 2018

Robert Sutton on How Bosses Waste Time

If all leaders want what’s best for their company then why do so many people hate their bosses? Part of...

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Article

Feb 15, 2018

3 Steps Towards Living an Asshole-Free Life

In an interview with organizational change expert, Robert Sutton, Business Insider uncovered his three steps for living an asshole-free life....

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Podcast

Feb 1, 2018

Robert Sutton

In this episode, BigSpeak features Bob Sutton, organizational change keynote speaker, Stanford Professor, and New York Times bestselling author. Sutton’s...

Listen

Article

Jan 10, 2018

BigSpotlight on Robert Sutton, BigSpeak's Newest Exclusive Speaker

We’d like to welcome our newest exclusive speaker, Robert Sutton—an organizational change expert, Stanford professor, and New York Times bestselling...

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