Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... And Learn from the Worst

If you have a job, chances are you have a boss. Indeed, everybody has a boss, whether it's someone at the supervisory, managerial, or executive level.

And if you're like everybody else, you know that keeping the boss happy with your performance is a major focus of your daily corporate life and career.

Problem is - and as Bob Sutton made clear in his classic THE NO ASSHOLE RULE - too many of us work for bosses who are jerks. And that's the starting point of BOSS. Based upon the thousands of letters, emails, and conversations Sutton has received since the publication of NO ASSHOLE RULE, he now focuses his common sense approach to what it is that delineates the great bosses in our world from the ones who are just good, so-so, or even worse.

Using real-life case studies, psychological research, and a thorough scan of the pertinent literature, Sutton delivers a pinpoint accounting of what the best bosses do. In short, Sutton delivers a blueprint manifesto for anyone who has been elevated into a position of authority, or would like to be.

Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School. Sutton studies the links between managerial knowledge and organizational action, innovation, and organizational performance. Sutton is author of Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ? Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation (Free Press, 2002) and co-author (with Jeffrey Pfeffer) of both The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge Into Action (Harvard Business School Press, 2000) and of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (Harvard Business School Press, 2006).