The Art of Friction

Why It Matters

The idea reframes operational design: pruning bureaucratic ‘bad friction’ and inserting thoughtful barriers can boost customer satisfaction, employee curiosity and organizational resilience, making scaling more sustainable and effective.

Summary

The video explores the concept of “friction” in organizations—obstacles that can either harm or help performance—framing it as analogous to cholesterol with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ varieties. Using airport examples (San Francisco’s Terminal 1 and Houston) it shows how adding deliberate friction—like a slightly longer walk to baggage claim—can reduce perceived waits and improve customer experience. Stanford professor Huggy Rao argues leaders should remove confusing, exhausting procedures while introducing targeted friction to curb overconfidence and myopia. He emphasizes that successful scaling requires smart subtraction of processes (e.g., rethinking meeting practices at companies like Dropbox) rather than mere growth.

Original Description

“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 [e-mail].

Related Content:

Huggy Rao faculty profile: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/hayagreeva-rao

The Friction Project: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284426/thefrictionproject/

Career Advice: How to Become a “Friction Fixer”: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/career-advice-how-become-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

If/Then, from Stanford GSB, features conversations with faculty that explore how their research deepens our understanding of business and leadership.

Find out more about If/Then: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/if-then

Listen on:

🔊 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-then/id1725380194

🔊 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1v7V6LGUxfplMByTpVwk7h?si=38f353685fec4dd5

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