Google, Do Not Choose Micro Management.

If your company has just announced a 27% increase in revenue in the market, you may be very happy or even lose your head. And you think the market will be equally happy. But for Google, analysts are obviously not very happy. Commentators, critics, almost everyone is publishing blogs, pointing out what new strategies Google should adopt (social networking! Mobile! No, don't socialize, just do the search better. And so on.

This is the time when Larry Paige (Larry Page) replayed the seal. Google The situation.

Like many other companies with core product lines, Google is trying to find the next market. Over the past 10 years, I have been helping many high-tech companies to find the next market, so I know a lot about this. The main challenge facing Google is whether it has a framework and culture that can drive growth. Although I only talk about Google here, I think all leaders can get some inspiration from it.

Just like leaves floating on the river, we can look at the leaves and say, "Wow, that thing is moving." or we can look at the river itself, and it is the flow of water that drives the leaves. We often measure and manage the latest "what" - the leaf, in the enterprise, but what creates high performance growth is behind the "how" - that is, the river. So I say that the key challenge facing Google is culture. "No, no, no," you may be thinking, "how to retain employees, how to innovate, how to ensure the normal operation of enterprises, or..." My view is that when you have an innovative culture, employees will stay, products will be sold, and performance will flourishing. Pay attention to "how" can get you "what", but if you only focus on "what", once employees change or sell products, enterprises will often fall apart. For the sake of discussion, I assume that the core competence of an enterprise is known as "why".

Google has built an excellent performance from the very beginning. Innovative culture 。 Google founder knew before they founded the company that they wanted to enter a highly competitive market. At that time (feeling is another era), AltaVista, YAHOO and other companies have well known mature search products. Google's founders should think that improving search algorithms can bring enough sustainable competitive advantage, but they have not done so. They know that they are entering a rapidly developing space. Today's "king of the hill" may become tomorrow's "fatal journey" (road kill). How can we innovate faster and better than all other companies? Not only the large (now rigid) Internet Co, but also the many enterprising companies led by the talented young generation. Can they manage microscopically the enormous creativity they release? No. So how do they grasp the direction of innovation? They decided to boldly try a completely new way. Google decided to make open information flow an important feature of the company.

Google makes talented, principled and creative employees perform their due value, rather than treating them as idiots and distrust them. Google explains to every employee the direction of the company's development. All employees not only understand the company's strategy and priorities, but also need to know what is most important to the company. The company releases and updates these contents regularly, as well as various comments and questions. As far as I know, employees at all levels of the company can still see this information on the intranet.

Guess what happens in this situation: employees really understand the relevance of their projects or products to the company strategy. This gives Google two strategic advantages: first, every employee must understand strategy, which helps companies recruit talented technicians and business people, because visionary practitioners want to be able to exert their influence. The second advantage is that an open strategy gives decision-making power to those who need to make decisions. In addition to its clarity, the open strategy culture has also increased the cost of ownership. Once the employees have clarified their responsibilities, the same will be achieved.

Therefore, over the years, all kinds of talents have been joining Google because they have clear responsibilities and have the power to create. This has brought about highly coordinated innovation and amazing results. But there are other challenges to innovate with 25000 employees. Today, the biggest complaint about Google is that although many projects have done many things, they rarely see the progress of the business itself. On the contrary, Google is likely to become the modern version of Xerox Parc. Although innovation is born there, it is impossible for Parke to make money for himself. This has to be changed. As Rita McGrach (Rita McGrath) points out in Discovery Driven Growth, most companies allow employees to self manage and make decisions. Their ideas are incremental rather than groundbreaking.

In order to understand cultivation Breakthrough ideas In this case, Mr. Paige asked all managers to describe all kinds of projects in 60 words. The purpose now is to be more clear about what is going on, which seems indisputable. He may even abandon the strategy of "letting flowers bloom" to concentrate on training a small bunch of giant solitary flowers.

This impulse is a natural response. Learn more, make difficult trade-offs, and make decisions. All these are things that CEO should do. This also reflects some decisiveness that Wall Street appreciates. Therefore, finding more information is only a small part of this message.

But that's not right either. This is what managers will do in the last century. Letting information flow down the hierarchy chain of command will only delay things. This is the old-fashioned way. Once Larry Paige does this, she puts herself in the position of Chief of Answers. In my first book, I use this word to describe leaders who try to be the smartest people in the room. The problem with this concept is that it makes everyone else "Tribe of Doing Things". This is not encouraging but preventing employees from CO creating and turning power from employees to leaders.

This is not appropriate, nor is it the style of Google. Google's employees are smart people, and they can understand things. Leaders in twenty-first Century should say, "this is what you need to know, so that you can make more decisions" instead of "I need to know more".

The establishment of a culture that encourages innovation through distributed decision-making and ownership should be like this:

1. there should be a set of standards for what innovation you want. The most commonly used model is the financial return (you may want to see the possible idea of entering the $2 billion market), or the specific target market, or the area you want to serve. This will not only help employees create creativity, but also eliminate creative ideas that are not up to standard.

2., establish an investment method to enable new ideas to be hatched and developed, and at the same time, new resources will be acquired steadily when the nodes are completed. Remember, all innovations require more advice than responsibility in the early stages, but the scarcity of responsibilities and resources is still important in innovation. It encourages people to make trade-offs and make progress.

3. organize seminars for employees to ask sharp questions. Hold a forum, ask employees to put forward various ideas, and then vote to decide which ideas have greater opportunities. Let them combine various projects for greater opportunities. Improve the creativity of the organization and share responsibility for the results.

Google has shown us the power of distributed data. They led the management in twenty-first Century. Now, Google must try to expand that concept and push ahead with rapid innovation. If Larry Paige still uses the usual management style of big companies and thinks CEO is the chief answer, he can't do that.