Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

by Laszlo Bock

Just as important, it created a language and cultural norm gu...

You can sense that even after reducing the frequency of our rating cycles and simplifying the scale we use to rate people,

we still invest substantial time in the process.

a calibration session can take three hours or even longer.

Not every individual is discussed. Some time is spent making sure the calibrators are themselves calibrated, comparing individuals who are well known to more than one manager, so that they can then use that person as an anchor or benchmark. Calibrators also look at the distributions of ratings across different teams, not to force a single distribution but to understand why some teams might have different distributions.

Most of the time is then spent discussing cases that stand o...

When lots of other companies are abandoning ratings altogether, why do we stick with the system? I think it’s about fairness.

Ratings are tools, simplifying devices to help managers make decisions about pay and promotion.

As an employee, I want to be treated fairly. I don’t mind someone being paid more than me if they are contributing more. But if we’re doing the same work and they’re...

A just rating system means I don’t have to wo...

It also means that if someone does exceptional work, they’ll be seen not just by their manager, but by lots of managers in the calibration meeting, who together create and prom...

Ratings also make it easier for people to move ac...

As a manager, I can trust that someone who “strongly exceeds expectat...

As an employee, I can have confidence that people are being promoted based ...

For a small team, you don’t need this infrastructure—...

But once you have more than a few hundred people, employees are more comfortable trusting a reliable sy...

A fair process for ratings gets you only so far. As a manager, you want to tell people not only how they did, but also how to do better in the future.

The question is: What is the most effective way to deliver those two messages? The answer: Do it in two distinct conversations.

Intrinsic motivation is the key to growth, but conventional performance management system...

But introduce extrinsic motivations, such as the promise of promotion or a raise, and the willingness and ability of the apprentice to learn starts to shut down.

the introduction of an extrinsic reward caused people to think of their work differently from that point on by reducing intrinsic motivation.

They went on to demonstrate that intrinsic motivation drives not just higher performance, but also better personal outcomes in terms of greater vitality, self-esteem, and well-being.

Workplaces that permit employees more freedom tap into that natural intrinsic motivation, which in turn helps employees fee...

A similar dynamic exists when managers sit down to give employees their annual review and salary increase. The employees focus on the extrinsic reward—a rais...

In fact, employees have every reason to devote tremendous energy to arguing for higher ratings.

As a manager, my incentive is to rate my employees fairly and honestly, so that the company’s systems work. As an employee, my incentive is certainly to perform well,

but it’s also rational for me to argue, argue, argue with my manager ...

It costs my manager nothing, save perhaps a little integrity (alas), and for me as an employee a higher rating m...

And I can afford to spend several hours a week preparing my arguments, while my manager not only doesn’t have the time to do so for each of his employees, but will never have as much in...

As long as ratings are directly linked to pay and career opportunities, every employee has this inc...

And even if I don’t argue with my manager, he’s worr...

The managers—of both genders—had given more to the men because they assumed women would be mollified by the explanation of the company’s performance, but that the men would not.

They put more money toward the men to avoid what they feared would be a tough conversation.

We have an embarrassingly simple solution. Never have the conversati...

Annual reviews happen in November, and pay discussions ha...

“Traditional performance management systems make a big mistake. They combine two things that

should be completely separate: performance evaluation and people development.

Evaluation is necessary to distribute finite resources, like salary increases or bonus dollars. Development is just as nec...

If you want people to grow, don’t have those two conversation...

Make development a constant back-and-forth between you and your team members, rather ...

Sam also had strong incentives to flatter me, represent his work in glowing terms, and denigrate the work of those around him so that he would look better in comparison. And he did all those things.

It became almost impossible for me, as a manager, to have a perfect understanding of Sam’s contribution.

His peers, however, saw the real Sam. They found him to be political, combative, and a bully. And I learned what they thought because once a year every Googler receives annual feedback not ...

When it’s time to conduct annual reviews, Googlers a...

select a list of peer reviewers that includes not just peers, but also ...

This feedback can be ...

we’d had the same format for many years: List three to five things the person does well; list three to five things they can do better.

Now we asked for one single thing the person should do more of, and one thing they could do differently to have more impact.

if people had just one thing to focus on, they’d be more likely to achieve genuine change than if...

We used to ask individuals to list any and all accomplishments from the past year ...