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

by Laszlo Bock

We enjoy a constant paranoia about losing the culture, and a constant, creeping sense of dissatisfaction with the current culture. This is a good sign! This feeling of teetering on the brink of losing our culture causes people to be vigilant about threats to it.

Give people slightly more trust, freedom, and authority than you are comfortable giving them. If you’re not nervous, you haven’t given them enough.

The presence of a huge training budget is not evidence that you’re investing in your people. It’s evidence that you failed to hire the right people to begin with.

the top performers in most industries aren’t actually looking for work, precisely because they are top performers who are enjoying their success right where they are. So your odds of hiring a great person based on inbound applications are low.

“Only hire people who are better than you.”

The lesson of “The Talent Myth” was not “Don’t hire smart people.” It was “Don’t hire exclusively for smarts.”

Breaking down a huge question (“Do you know anyone we should hire?”) into lots of small, manageable ones (“Do you know anyone who would be a good salesperson in New York?”) garners us more, higher-quality referrals.

Get the best referrals by being excruciatingly specific in describing what you’re looking for.