Upon reading this note on Marissa Mayer,I wrote, Businessweek has done disservice to Google by writing such a trivial article on the inside workings of Google. Google is really onto something big as this listing key work being done within Google shows. Google's startup culture would find this process too boring - as an engineering led company and with a constellation of talent, Google sure must have a more rigorous mechanism and definitely a much more sound plan to conquer the world. The very fact that Google's announcements shows a method proves contrary to the marketing claims made in the article. If on the other hand, if this is what is really happening inside google( which i hope not), it would clearly undermine google's ability to sustain its leadership and support the marketcap. As if to position Google as a sustainable organization and that there is a method behind that binds the organization Eric Schmidt along with Hal Varian write about Google’s internal organizational policies.
In the recent past, we have seen good references to Google’s startup culture and its fabled voluntary project initiative. The duo write here that Google Inc believes in Drucker's words that smart businesses will "strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers' way." Those that succeed will attract the best performers, securing "the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years." He lists key principles that Google uses to make its employees more effective:
• Good Hiring practice, Good support facilities, building camaraderie by making people share office besides eating own dog food – using the company's tools intensively. Google believes that one of the reasons for Gmail's success is that it was beta tested within the company for many months besides key principles like:
• Focussing on consensus - the role of the manager is that of an aggregator of viewpoints, not the dictator of decisions. Building a consensus sometimes takes longer, but always produces a more committed team and better decisions
• Data drive decisions. At Google, almost every decision is based on quantitative analysis. A raft of online "dashboards" for every business Google works in that provide up-to-the-minute snapshots of where we are.
• Communicate effectively. Google has remarkably broad dissemination of information within the organization and remarkably few serious leaks. Contrary to what some might think, Google believes that it is the first fact that causes the second: a trusted work force is a loyal work force.
My Take: Google is certainly trying to create a new image makeup - One is in terms of building an organization on principles – certainly needed as Google’s scale up is indeed impressive and going by the list of new initiatives and more planned future initiatives like this – which bring in added dimension of scale , distributed location, more heterogeneity in the workforce. I also think that Google should actively encourage lot of its employees to blog and Eric Schmidt & the founders should set precedent and set up their own blogs and publish frequently therein.But now its time Google outlines its vision. Like in any other industry the responsibility of pioneers and leaders are lot more than just looking after themselves - they are trendsetters and rolemodels in the industry.
Category :Google
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