Management Lessons fm Google #2
from BusinessInsider.com 5/12 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4.biz
5. Make sure everyone is on board with Decisions. “My biggest lesson from Google was Consensus Building. It’s very much a democracy at Google, and it’s vital to have the “buy-in” of stakeholders across the company to accomplish business or product changes. So the skills of developing & presenting a well reasoned argument and reaching out to people to get their feedback & buy-in is essential,” says Jon Steinberg, who was Strategic Partner Development Manager on Google’s SMB (Small Medium Business) Partnerships team.
6. Give people the chance to Grow within the company. From company culture perspective, I learned the importance of creating on-going opportunities for both perks/fun & growth opportunities. Asking people what they want to do & where they want to go with there careers, then creating learning opportunities.”
7. Be Transparent with employees. “We also have a culture of transparency at BuzzFeed, which was always a big part of Google. We present what’s going on at the company at a bi-weekly “BuzzFeed Brews,” where anyone can ask questions. We even use Google Moderator for this, so people can submit anonymously, which was used at Google for Friday TGIF all-hands.”
8. Take HR seriously. Starting with hiring, where there’s always been criticism of the legendary Google interview process. Like it or hate it, there is a process, and it is documented, measured, & evaluated for success. Interviewing candidates is an explicit goal of all employees and they are evaluated on the number & quality of their interviews. The interview questions and methodology is trained into all new employees. Results of interviews are documented in notes – that are actually read by hiring managers & HR — I was scolded on a number of occasions for insufficient detail in my notes. Candidate “packets” of all the interview notes are reviewed at the highest levels of the company and rigorous standards are applied before offers are made.
9. Evaluation is Disciplined. For employee reviews somewhere between 5 and 10 peers are asked to provide detailed feedback in writing and that feedback is reviewed by the manager & the promotions committee for evaluating salary, bonus, etc. Overall employee ratings are proposed by managers but then are “calibrated” against all similarly-leveled employees and forced into an approximately bell-curve distribution, thus reducing manager bias (ie. easy grading) and making the very best performing and worst performing employees obvious in the rankings.
(#10-13 continued on Premium Content)