I continue to enjoy the book "Work Rules" the inside look at Google. Part 3 of my read this summer.
As Google grew in size to 20,000 employees in 2009, it doubled in one year. It was becoming harder to get things done. Rather than announcing a top down corporate initiative, the CFO launched Bureaucracy Busters, an annual program where Googlers identify their biggest frustrations and help fix them.
If you give people freedom, they will amaze you. Another tool in use are Culture Clubs, teams of local volunteers that are charged with maintaining Google's culture in each of the 70+ offices. They have modest budgets ($1-2K) per year. Anyone can apply and take charge of local events and be vocal. Google wants you to think and act like a founder. Give people slightly more trust, freedom and authority then you are comfortable giving them. If you're not nervous, you haven't given them enough!
If you believe people are good, you must be unafraid to share information with them. "Default to open" is a phrase used in the open-source technology community. Restricting information should be a conscious effort and you better have a good reason to do so. In open source it's countercultural to hide information. A new software developer at Google is able to access almost all of their code on the 1st day.
A weekly Q&A session is key at the company. Any question can be asked from the trivial to the technical. The benefit of so much openness is that everyone in the company knows what's going on. Large organizations often have groups doing redundant work without knowing it, wasting resources. Information sharing allows everyone to understand differences in goals, avoiding internal rivalry.
Google's focus on culture and maintaining an open dialogue leads to their mission statement: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful".
As Google grew in size to 20,000 employees in 2009, it doubled in one year. It was becoming harder to get things done. Rather than announcing a top down corporate initiative, the CFO launched Bureaucracy Busters, an annual program where Googlers identify their biggest frustrations and help fix them.
If you give people freedom, they will amaze you. Another tool in use are Culture Clubs, teams of local volunteers that are charged with maintaining Google's culture in each of the 70+ offices. They have modest budgets ($1-2K) per year. Anyone can apply and take charge of local events and be vocal. Google wants you to think and act like a founder. Give people slightly more trust, freedom and authority then you are comfortable giving them. If you're not nervous, you haven't given them enough!
If you believe people are good, you must be unafraid to share information with them. "Default to open" is a phrase used in the open-source technology community. Restricting information should be a conscious effort and you better have a good reason to do so. In open source it's countercultural to hide information. A new software developer at Google is able to access almost all of their code on the 1st day.
A weekly Q&A session is key at the company. Any question can be asked from the trivial to the technical. The benefit of so much openness is that everyone in the company knows what's going on. Large organizations often have groups doing redundant work without knowing it, wasting resources. Information sharing allows everyone to understand differences in goals, avoiding internal rivalry.
Google's focus on culture and maintaining an open dialogue leads to their mission statement: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful".
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