How Google Works

by Eric Schmidt

it wasn’t Google’s culture that turned those five engineers into problem-solving ninjas who changed the course of the company over the weekend.

Rather it was the culture that attracted the ninjas to the company in the first place.

Smart creatives, though, place culture at the top of the list.

To be effective, they need to care about the place they work.

This is why, when starting a new company or initiative, culture is the most impo...

Most companies’ culture just happens; no...

That can work, but it means leaving a critical component of you...

culture is perhaps the one important aspect of a company where fai...

Once established, company culture is very difficult t...

early on in a company’s life a self-selection t...

People who believe in the same things the company does will be drawn to work there, whil...

The smart approach is to ponder and define what sort of culture you want at the outset of your company’s life.

And the best way to do that is to ask the smart creatives who form your core team, the ones who know the gospel and believe in it as much as you do.

Culture stems from founders, but it is best reflected in the trusted team the founders fo...

Then write down their responses.

Most companies neglect this. They become successful, and then decide they need to document their culture.

The job falls to someone in the human resources or PR department who probably wasn’t a member of the founding team but who is expected to draft a mission statement that captures the essence of the place.

The difference, though, between successful companies and unsuccessful ones is whether employees believe the words.

People’s BS detectors are finely tuned when it comes to corporate-speak; they can tell when you don’t mean it.

So when you put your mission into writing, it had better be authentic.

Employees always have a choice, so belie your values at your own risk.

for all employees—those values should clearly and plainly outline the things that matter most to the company,

Otherwise they are meaningless, and won’t be worth a damn

“No vision is worth the paper it’s printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.”

the arcane details of that IPO a decade ago are a matter of history,

but phrases like “long term focus,” “serving end users,” “don’t be evil,” and “making the world a better place” still describe how the company is run.

creating—and sustaining—a culture where a simple statement like “These ads suck” is all that’s needed to make things happen.

Smart creatives thrive on interacting with each other. The mixture you get when you cram them together is combustible,

so a top priority must be to keep them crowded.

Not a fan of this and would dispute this assertion! Love the way the Santa Fe Institute has private offices but a social hour mid-afternoon and plenty of common spaces to collaborate.

When no one has a private office, no one complains about it.

We think it’s particularly important for teams to be functionally integrated.

In too many places, employees are segregated by what they do,

smart-creative product managers need to find the technical insights that make products better.

These derive from knowing how people use the products (and how those patterns will change as technology progresses), from understanding and analyzing data, and from looking at technology trends and anticipating how they will affect their industry.

while offices can be crowded and messy,

they need to provide employees with everything they need to get the job done.

Be stingy with the stuff that doesn’t matter, like fancy furniture and big offices, but invest in the stuff that does.

This sort of serendipitous encounter will never happen when you are working at home.

Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion.

When it comes to the quality of decision-making, pay level is intrinsically irrelevant

experience is valuable only if it is used to frame a ...

Unfortunately, in most companies experience is the ...

We call these...

“tenurocr...

because power derives from tenure...

When you stop listening to the hippos, you start creating a meritocracy,

For a meritocracy to work, it needs to engender a culture where there is an

“obligation to dissent”.

If someone thinks there is something wrong with an idea, they must raise that concern. If they don’t, and if the subpar idea w...

In our experience, most smart creatives have strong opinions and are ...