FRICTION: The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage

CHAPTER

9

Friction Within Your Business

Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.

—James Boren, American Humorist and Writer

Friction doesn’t only happen when businesses interface with customers. Internal friction—red tape, wasted effort, pointless meetings, and so much else—all combine to raise costs, reduce productivity, and slow progress to a crawl. In this chapter, we’ll look at some of the sources of friction inside organizations and how to reduce, if not eliminate, it.

THE SLOWING PACE OF BUSINESS

In this high-tech era where business conversation is dominated by talk of failing fast and the rise of billion-dollar unicorns, it would be easy to assume that businesses are moving faster. There’s evidence to the contrary: ...