Eric Schmidt

Jonathan Rosenberg

Google Executive Chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg came to Google over a decade ago as proven technology executives. At the time, the company was already well-known for doing things differently, reflecting the visionary--and frequently contrarian--principles of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. If Eric and Jonathan were going to succeed, they realized they would have to relearn everything they thought they knew about management and business. Today, Google is a global icon that regularly pushes the boundaries of innovation in a variety of fields. HOW GOOGLE WORKS is an entertaining, page-turning primer containing lessons that Eric and Jonathan learned as they helped build the company. The authors explain how technology has shifted the balance of power from companies to consumers, and that the only way to succeed in this ever-changing landscape is to create superior products and attract a new breed of multifaceted employees whom Eric and Jonathan dub "smart creatives." Covering topics including corporate culture, strategy, talent, decision-making, communication, innovation, and dealing with disruption, the authors illustrate management maxims ("Consensus requires dissension," "Exile knaves but fight for divas," "Think 10X, not 10%") with numerous insider anecdotes from Google's history, many of which are shared here for the first time. In an era when everything is speeding up, the best way for businesses to succeed is to attract smart-creative people and give them an environment where they can thrive at scale. HOW GOOGLE WORKS explains how to do just that.

How Google Works

Omar Fernandez

This book was a very good read on management techniques used at Google. I work at BloomReach, a technology company in Silicon Valley, and have seen many of the same practices work well here. Our co-founder and CTO came from Google, so it's not an accident that many of the practices are familiar to me. 

Here are the key concepts I got out of the book. Most of these are not exclusive to tech, but rather to any growing company. To properly scale a company, you must be able to get rid of traditional hierarchical management techniques. Otherwise, you'll sooner or later stifle your company's growth with increasing bureocracy and decreasing innovation.

Concepts: 
1. Google seeks to hire what they call "smart creative types". Smart creatives are those who can succeed in understanding both technical and business concepts. 
2. Try to get out of the way of the smart creatives hired. You spend a huge amount of time on hiring them so that, once you have them on board, you can trust them to do the right things. 
3. Flatten the organization. Google follows an inverted rule of 7, each manager must have AT LEAST 7 folks reporting to them. This forces the organization to remain flat. 
4. Invest in what matters for people to be good at work, not on things that don't add value. For example, instead of spending on fancy furniture or offices, spend on computing power and rooms that allow for proper discussion on ideas. 
5. Build a data-driven decision culture in all aspects. Use data as much as possible to drive decisions. This applies both in product development, investment decisions, funding, team allocation, hiring, etc. More on that in various points below. 
6. Look for reasons to say YES to smart creatives' ideas. Build a culture of Yes and keep innovation going. 
7. Hire for good culture, but accept divas. Divas may think they are better than others, but produce great results and hold themselves to very high standards. From the book: "... remember that Steve Jobs was one of the greatest business divas the world has ever known!"
8. Give people ownership and flexibility. Smart creatives will work hard, they find passion in their work. Give them ownership and let them find their ways to accomplishing the work. You don't need to measure the hours they work, or establish rigid schedules. 
9. Cultural values are critical to have an open and empowered culture. For example, having a mantra such as "don't be evil" empower employees to pull the cord. This is similar to Toyota's production process in which line workers can stop production at any time. 
10. Hiring and being good at interviewing is everyone's job. Control for biases by standardizing the feedback forms and hiring by committee. At Google, all the information about a candidate MUST be in the written packet/forms for that employee. The folks that interviewed the candidate fill out the forms, but the decision-making of whether that candidate is hired is done by another committee separate from those who interviewed the candidate. That forces all relevant information to be written into the forms. 
12. Run data-driven meetings. Consider always having a screen up just for data supporting the decision or recommendation being made. 
13. All meetings must have an owner and remain effective. Be on time and mindful of meeting times. 
14. If something is important and strategic, meet daily on it. Forces faster decision making, evaluating all angles, and everyone is fresh on the topic. 
15. Share and overshare information. 
16. When innovating, think 10x. How can you accomplish results that are 10 times better than the competition. Focus on the end user and not on monetization when making such decisions. 
17. Give people flexibility, Google gives them 20% time for all employees to work on their own projects. Some employees even take a full month off regular work to focus on their 20% project only. 
18. Focus 70% of your resources on your core business. 20% for new bold ideas and 10% for crazy ones (such as Google X work).
19. Ship and iterate quickly. Don't ship bad products, but do ship products with limited functionality done well. 
20. Have a wow feature ready to launch after initial launch. 
21. Feed the winners and starve the losers. Make sure you read data on how products are doing and have a clear way to evaluate them. If a product is losing, reallocate resources from that initiative into one that's growing. 
22. Listen and adapt based on smart creatives feedback. Hold regular session and have mechanisms to know what they are thinking and care about.

Omar Fernandez's review of

How Google Works by Eric Schmidt

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