What Can Managers Learn from Google?

What Can Managers Learn from Google Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt?

As Eric Schmidt returns the CEO title back to co-founder, Larry Page, he assumes the title of Executive Chairman at Google. After leading the company for the past decade, growing Google to the pinnacle of success, he now focuses his attention on external issues.

Schmidt Leadership Highlights

Few could dispute the success of Schmidt’s leadership. During his CEO tenure, Google compiled a superior record of incredible and steady, consistent growth, dramatic expansion, global influence, and prospered with his quirky, always innovative, leadership philosophy.

Annual revenue now approaches $30 billion, and the organisation has successfully diversified its income streams from just Internet search revenue. Purchasing the popular YouTube entity and developing the wildly popular Android operating system for smartphones are just two graphic examples of his creative, results-based management style.

Sometimes overlooked, his commitment to hiring the “best and brightest” talent remains the internal engine that drives the high-speed train called Google. Critical components to this action plan include encouraging this top talent to collaborate with other teams or individuals and permitting free-flowing, creative time and space to constantly think outside the box to invent new methods and ideas.

The dramatically unconventional Google workplace demands cutting-edge talent management and exceptional vision by company leaders. You would face significant challenges to find other organisations that have used this staff and workplace model. Yet, it has achieved unquestioned shorter-term success - possibly, as “unusual” as the unbounded performance as Google, itself.

Eric Schmidt’s Vision

Schmidt recently shared his views on business, technology, and social concerns with James Manyika, McKinsey Quarterly. Managers at all levels should consider his comments in light of their current responsibilities and career plans. One of the brightest business leaders and thinkers on our planet, Schmidt has some thoughtful suggestions on business, jobs, and, of course, technology.

• Hiring and managing talent. 
  While the Google model may not be “right” for every company, many components work so well for them, managers should consider ways to use these innovations in their area of responsibility. Hire the absolute best talent you can find and afford. Find those professionals who are internally driven to excel, whether or not they appear to “fit” your organisation. Don’t allow managers or others to hire their “friends.” Hire talented people that, if stimulated, will learn to blend with your staff.
  
  Schmidt and Google are known for not managing staff, but building consensus through a “discord and deadline” policy. Encourage employee challenges to management ideas and theories to generate new and honest opinions. Consensus without discord is generally useless in Schmidt’s expert opinion. However, generating consensus after addressing discordant ideas, and placing reasonable deadlines on achieving agreed-upon goals, usually results in superior performance.
  
  
• Employee freedom.  Consider adopting the Google 20-percent policy. The company gives all employees the freedom to work on whatever they want for 20 percent of their workday. This generates at least two employer benefits: First, employees are never “forced” to work on required projects for their entire workday, eliminating any subconscious resentment or dissatisfaction. Second, employees have the freedom to concentrate their creative talent on subjects of their choosing, much more productive than an extra “coffee break” or most other perks.
  
  
• Jobs.  As Schmidt so eloquently states, “Any country that doesn’t create meaningful jobs, particularly for young people, is an economy that is essentially dying.” When this opinion is married to the reality that the US educational system is geared to the adults who manage it, not to the children or the results of the system, Schmidt’s concerns make a strong statement on the true state of the future of American business and achievements. Managers should consider doing their part, however modest, to bring value to their employers and to the US economy, as a whole, to change this disturbing trend. The Asian “model” may be inappropriate for the United States, but the German approach is worthy of study.
  
  The fear of Schmidt and many other experts, that the healthcare field may be the only viable option for young talent and new jobs - because that is where the private and government money is targeted - could further damage US industry, is unfortunately a real concern. Managers and employers must step up to the plate for public or even selfish concerns about protecting their industries.
  
  
• Data.  The term “big data” is becoming more popular for good reason. The majority of new software applications are focused on the mobile (smartphone) market and cloud technology, not laptop or desktop computer systems. For example, Google is developing real-time language translation for live phone calls. The originator simply speaks into their mobile phone, their voice is digitised as it moves to the server, relatively simple voice-to-text software fires up, the text is then translated to the native language of the receiver, and a digitised voice transmits the sender’s words in the receiver’s language. This is just one example of using “big data” solutions to everyday business and personal issues.

What Managers Can Learn

Whether you agree or question Executive Chairman Schmidt’s opinions, managers should consider his observations. His track record is impossible to dispute. Google’s success, monetarily, globally, socially, and corporately, is factual and public information for all to see.

Consistent business success may not be easy, but is essentially quite simple. "Identify a need and fill it" is the proven success equation for all businesses, large and small. It has never changed.

Whether your responsibility encompasses a small team, a department, a division, or the entire organisation as a C-level executive, you can adopt a personal management strategy that works for you. You might find that the entire management fraternity is on the same page and driving your employer to successes it only dreamed about.

Source:  www.mckinseyquarterly.com/

June 2011