Seek friction, don't avoid it

But I’ve learned something different, something that runs counter to most traditional leadership advice: progress lives in friction.

There’s a reason nature doesn’t evolve in comfort. When everything is working, organisms don’t adapt - they don’t need to. As a matter of fact it’s discouraged, ‘seen’ as a waste of precious energy. Change comes only when something stops working or something else works better than you: when there’s failure, collision, pain.

In business, the same rule applies. When a process runs "smoothly," we rarely question it, focusing instead on the brighter fires elsewhere (and nobody could blame us for that, as fires light aplenty). But when things break, when there's tension between people, misalignments in process, or hard-to-swallow failures, those are the moments that hold the most valuable data.

Like a blade meeting a grindstone, it is only through intentional resistance that we get sharper.

Early in my tenure as a director overseeing multiple warehouse locations, I was warned about a particularly combative driver based in a satellite location. According to local leadership, this person had caused real tension and even threatened another employee.

Now, I’m not someone who seeks out conflict, I’m actually conflict-averse by nature. But I couldn’t act solely on what I was told, though I’ve never been an HR professional, by this point in my career I’d had plenty of trial-by-fire training. Instead, I met the driver at one of their stops and rode with them for hours, talking the entire way back to their home terminal.

This wasn't just about investigating a report, it was about showing both the driver and the local team that I wouldn’t confuse hearsay with truth. I learned far more about the culture, the interpersonal dynamics, and the power struggles within the team in that single ride than I could’ve from any stack of reports. The driver wasn’t blameless, but neither was the picture I’d been painted fully accurate.

That moment was pivotal for me: friction isn’t something you always have to solve. Sometimes, it’s something you have to sit inside to understand what’s real.

I’ve also used friction deliberately in operational settings, inviting it in to expose truths. At one dock, forklift operators were underperforming in manually weighing freight (a by now antiquated process at most trucking companies). The floor scales were placed awkwardly behind a supervisor’s shack, requiring drivers to make L-shaped approaches that disrupted flow. As a test, I had one scale moved directly into the main traffic path.

Within a week, weight compliance on that scale jumped 50%. It was clear: the original layout created friction that discouraged best practices. We couldn’t keep the scale in it’s new spot long-term, but the test revealed a critical insight: the environment was shaping behavior more than any policy ever could.

Friction, in this case, wasn’t a failure, it was a flashlight and helped us change the narrative away from ‘non-compliant employees’ to ‘broken environment’.

Over the years, I’ve made it a habit to encourage leaders around me to welcome friction. When something goes wrong, I ask: What did this teach us? Where is the blade being sharpened? Not every broken process needs a fix. Sometimes, it needs to be understood.

Whether it’s Newton’s Third Law or a workout in the gym, everything meaningful happens through resistance.

If you’re a nonprofit leader, a founder, or someone steering a mission-driven business, ask yourself this: where are you mistaking discomfort for dysfunction?

Not all friction is bad. Some of it is the exact pressure you need to grow sharper, smarter, and stronger.

Next time something breaks, don’t just fix it. Sit with it. Study it. Let the resistance tell you what’s really going on. Let the hate flow through…wait, wrong post.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll start seeking friction, not to cause chaos, but to uncover truth.

But yeah, I get it, sometimes it’s just bad and you gotta nuke from orbit, too.

~Jay