Friction.
It’s all around us. You might say friction is what makes the world go ’round. A constant battle between irresistible forces meeting immovable objects. In the end, something gives.
Here in New England we see examples of friction each winter in the form of ice dams on the edge of our roofs. If the water has no place to go it backs up under the shingles and this results in a steady stream of water inside your house. This is not a good thing. I don’t wait for spring to remove the ice dam, I’m out there raking the snow off the roof. I will use calcium tablets to melt the ice, giving the water a place to go other than my bedroom.
Years ago a manager of mine remarked about how friction in the office often results in one of two things happening. The friction is either removed at one’s leisure or the friction builds until there is a catastrophic event such as an earthquake.
And sometimes, a little bit of both can happen. Such is the case of Bill Simmons.
I’m not going to go through all the details of Bill’s career here. But I will tell you that Bill Simmons is one of the reasons I enjoy writing. I’ve enjoyed his articles since he started as the Boston Sports Guy. Bill was a regular guy, just some blogger, someone with opinions, and his words would often be disrupting the status quo. He even had the big-name legitimate sportswriters troll him in their columns.
I was a fan, and still am today. I’ve even done some posts in a similar style to his, including one of my favorites where I compare the MVP Summit to the movie Fight Club. Reading his columns made me see that writing could be fun.
Bill was getting ahead in this world by creating friction. There are many people out there that will tell you creating friction, causing a disruption, is a good thing. It’s what moves us forward, like what Steve Jobs or Bill Gates did, and what Elon Musk is doing now.
But there’s a fine line between someone who is a disrupter, a causer of friction, and someone who is just being an asshat.
A disrupter that causes friction and inspires others to become something better than they already are is a leader. That’s how I saw Bill, and still do today.
A disrupter that causes friction by pushing people around, much like a bully on a playground, is an asshat. It doesn’t matter if you have fans or supporters. It shouldn’t be your life goal to have half the people in the room love you and the other half hate you. To lead is to serve, and if your friction is not seen as a service then you are not viewed as a leader.
I now see both sides of Bill Simmons. I see him as someone inspiring us to be where we needed or wanted to be with regards to sports entertainment. But there is a different Bill Simmons, someone who is pushing his way around. Even the name “Sports Guy” drew ire from some. I remember Dan Shaughnessy commenting about how a person could now become an astronaut by calling themself “Joe the Astronaut Guy”.
If Bill were a leader, he’d still have a job. He would have chosen his words carefully. He dared ESPN to fire him last week, and that’s what ESPN did.
And I completely understand why.
Let me explain.
When I was still playing basketball we would talk about how there was always someone a little bigger, a little quicker, and a little stronger than we were. And you could continue naming names until you got to the top which was, at the time, Michael Jordan (although there was always some debate about that). Last week Bill talked about Roger Goodell having the “testicular fortitude” to address the issue of Tom Brady and deflated footballs. (Is “ovarian fortitude” a thing? If not, it should be, and I bet it’s every bit as strong as testicular fortitude. But I digress).
When Bill made that remark he was showing his own testicular fortitude by doing so. I’m certain it felt good for him, too. Like he was disrupting things for all the right reasons.
But Bill forgot one thing.
He forgot that ESPN has more testicular fortitude than Bill Simmons.
Just as there is always a better player, there is always someone with more testicular fortitude. I’m certain I could write something on this blog that would create enough friction for me to lose my job at SolarWinds. Or perhaps lose my MVP status with Microsoft. Both of those entities have more testicular fortitude than I do and if I crossed a line they wouldn’t hesitate to act. Bad behavior should not go unpunished forever.
There is always a cost, benefit, and risk to anything in life. And when you create friction, you alter that equation. Sometimes it can be in your favor, and sometimes it is not. And in the case of Bill Simmons you could even argue that his pushing helped lead to the NFL penalties imposed upon Tom Brady. It’s more probable than not that the friction Bill created last week caused an earthquake for everyone.
So, yeah, thanks for that Bill. Nice job there.
But the #hardtruth here is that it pays to be an asshat. Bill Simmons was making upwards of $5 million a year. “Dicks get clicks” is how I refer to this, and I bet Don Henley is working on getting that phrase into an updated version of Dirty Laundry. Because it’s true, people crave such drama, such divisiveness.
And that’s why we have talking heads when we once had reporters. Dirty laundry. People pay for the drama. They pay to watch people bully others. They pay to let their thinking done by someone else.
They pay for friction.
Until they don’t.
Earlier this year I was doing a whirlwind tour of Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Along the way I came across a friend who follows me on Twitter. He commented on a conversation I had with someone else on Twitter, a conversation where I was arguing. He told me that it didn’t make either one of us look good.
Maybe the tide is turning, finally. Maybe ESPN is taking a stand here and showing that bad behavior will no longer be rewarded, or tolerated. Even the BBC stood up to Jeremy Clarkson for his awful behavior.
I can only hope we see more examples in the coming months and years of people standing up and saying “enough”. The world doesn’t need more friction. We’ve got enough already.
Then again, being an asshat does seem to pay pretty well.
Good points, but I think saying “It shouldn’t be your life goal to have half the people in the room love you and the other half hate you. ” is the wrong way to frame your argument. There are very few hyper-intelligent empathetic psychopaths that are capable of consciously achieving that effect on purpose. There are far more many people who behave a certain way, achieve personal success, and as a side effect, they polarize all those around them into love or hate camps.
Honestly, the later are the ones that need to be made aware of the situation, because they lack the emotional intelligence and empathy to realize they are doing it.
Thanks for the comment Justin, that’s an interesting thought and probably worth a debate. But I believe there are many people out there, mostly talking heads, that go out of their way to create polarizing statements that cause friction. I also believe it happens by accident, as you have noted, and that many of those people lack the social skills necessary to understand they are causing friction.
Apparently you can say ‘asshat’ 5 times.
Apparently. But it should be noted that wasn’t my first choice of words.
Your thoughts about there always being someone else who has more is something I describe to my kids when they learn to cross the street, ride a bike, and drive a car. We call it the “lug nut” rule.
If you are going through an intersection and another vehicle is coming, ask yourself which of you has more lug-nuts. Because that’s the guy who’s going to win.
Sure, you may have the right of way, but the person with the most lug-nuts is still going to win.
Oh my, that’s wonderful.
Interesting. I think the problem isn’t friction – as you say, some disruptions are good, some are bad. The problem with friction is if it’s in the wrong place, or happening all the time, it becomes a distraction.
The whole “be an asshat to get clicks” has been sucking the life out of some communities. The problem with that is some people will speak up, but 90% of people will just leave the community. I’m close to that now because I’m not sure I want to be associated with a group of people that are slowly being defined by their loudest asses. Their braying is covering up the voices of others, making it difficult to engage with others. For now I’m ignoring the frictioneers. But I worry that others see this as a way to be successful. That makes me sad
I don’t follow sports or ESPN, so I went over to the link about Bill Simmons and ESPN parting ways. It seems that he could have done the stirring up of emotion (that he seems to have been good at) without attacking people personally. I think that’s one of the things that delineates friction that is useful/helpful and friction that is destructive.
Connie,
Great point there, and it reminds me about a lesson I learned with humor.
It’s easy to ridicule someone else, but that doesn’t make it funny, nor you a funny person. And yet much of what passes for humor these days are acts that ridicule very specific people. We laugh, but we forget that there are people involved in the equation here.
Personal attacks will cause friction, no question.
nice read. Long time reader, first time commenter. I would agree with the majority of that. I’ve worked with asshats and I’ve worked with the friction people. But even the people who create the “good” friction end up having people who don’t like them. As they say, you can’t please everyone. Even the most liked person in the world still has enemies.
I think the trick is to know when to create friction and when not to… and to do your best to not piss off the bossman.
As for journalists in general, it is hard to find a good one. I watch the news sometimes and am finding it harder and harder to find good interviewers. One that sticks out in my mind (not going to name names) had said (paraphrased quote as I don’t remember it word for word) “so when your daughter was kidnapped, how did that make you feel?”. The person he was interviewing gave him the “are you stupid?” look and replied “upset. How would you feel?”. I changed the channel then and refuse to watch his show anymore.
Friction for the sake of drama is never good. Friction for the sake of getting emotion or information out of a story, that makes for a good read. Also, fake or misleading headlines drive me nuts too. I know CBC is bad for that… I mean titling your article “Harrison Ford to magician David Blaine: ‘Get the f–k out of my house'”… sure he said that, but you watch the video and it is VERY misleading.
Thanks for the good reads though. Really enjoy your articles.
The other reason I felt the need to comment was for the tags… “Things I Write While High on Bacon”. That’s awesome.
Brian,
Thanks for the comment, much appreciated. I agree that it is hard to find a good journalist these days. They all seem intent on being able to yell the loudest when all we really want is for someone to say something thoughtful, even if quietly.
What a timely blog. Lately at work it seems like in my inner being there is a lot of friction going on, and I know that my outward attitude is starting to reflect it, so I’m a crossroads where do I wait for that earthquake or just start causing some friction which will make things uneasy at first.
I’ll give you a concrete example. I’m busy on client A, B, C. Boss asks for a new server to be set up for some ‘little bitty’ work, after all it’s less than 10 data feeds and pretty small. I say i’m available in a few days, he gets someone else to do it cause he’s not worried about setting it up all elaborate, just a quick set up to import the data…. Well in my mind I’m thinking little bitty work always turn into major projects and doing a throw together sql server set up just cause will eventually be a big headache. But I sit there and look and him and think, you know if I say all that, then he’ll continue to stress this is just some small thing and give me reasons why it’s ok to just throw the server together. In the end I’ll look like the negative person, so I sit back and just say ok, you know what you want and you are the boss.
On topic of what you are blogging, nothing on TV is real. If you still believe that, then that’s a bigger problem.
Thanks for the comment. The scenario you describe sounds quite familiar, I suspect it is common in our industry. Like you said here, it’s hard to know which direction to head.