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

by Laszlo Bock

It’s important to have both a quality and an efficiency measure, because otherwise engineers could just solve for one at the expense of the other. It’s not enough to give you a perfect result if it takes three minutes. We have to be both relevant and fast.

“If you set a crazy, ambitious goal and miss it, you’ll still achieve something remarkable.”

We adhered to one of the core tenets of medicine: Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.

And reducing the stigma of being in the bottom performance category made it easier for managers to have direct, compassionate conversations with their struggling employees about how to improve.

If I had a great meeting with someone this week and then go into a calibration session where he is reviewed, I’m likely to inflate my estimate of him because I subconsciously lean on the recent, positive interaction. We

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 systems destroy that motivation. Almost everyone wants to improve.

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.119 Workplaces that permit employees more freedom tap into that natural intrinsic motivation, which in turn helps employees feel even more autonomous and capable.

As long as ratings are directly linked to pay and career opportunities, every employee has this incentive to exploit the system.

Never have the conversations at the same time. Annual reviews happen in November, and pay discussions happen a month later. Everyone at Google is eligible for stock grants, but those decisions are made a further six months down the line.

WORK RULES…FOR PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT Set goals correctly. Gather peer feedback. Use a calibration process to finalize ratings. Split rewards conversations from development conversations.

The 8 Project Oxygen Attributes Be a good coach. Empower the team and do not micromanage. Express interest/concern for team members’ success and personal well-being. Be very productive/results-oriented. Be a good communicator—listen and share information. Help the team with career development. Have a clear vision/strategy for the team. Have important technical skills that help advise the team.

WORK RULES…FOR MANAGING YOUR TWO TAILS Help those in need. Put your best people under a microscope. Use surveys and checklists to find the truth and nudge people to improve. Set a personal example by sharing and acting on your own feedback.

He finds evidence that people who attain mastery of a field, whether they are violinists, surgeons, athletes,144 or even spelling bee champions,145 approach learning in a different way from the rest of us. They shard their activities into tiny actions, like hitting the same golf shot in the rain for hours, and repeat them relentlessly. Each time, they observe what happens, make minor—almost imperceptible—adjustments, and improve.

deliberate practice: intentional repetitions of similar, small tasks with immediate feedback, correction, and experimentation.

It’s a better investment to deliver less content and have people retain it, than it is to deliver more hours of “learning” that is quickly forgotten.

In the minutes before every client meeting, he would take me aside and ask me questions: “What are your goals for this meeting?” “How do you think each client will respond?” “How do you plan to introduce a difficult topic?”

For the learner, having actual practitioners teaching is far more effective than listening to academics, professional trainers, or consultants. Academics and professional trainers tend to have theoretical knowledge. They know how things ought to work, but haven’t lived them.

mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, defines it as “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

For the past forty-plus years, HR professionals have measured how time is spent, asserting that 70 percent of learning should happen through on-the-job experiences, 20 percent through coaching and mentoring, and 10 percent through classroom instruction.

As a pragmatic matter, you can accelerate the rate of learning in your organization or team by breaking skills down into smaller components and providing prompt, specific feedback.

“the best way to learn is to teach.”158 He was right. Because to teach well, you really have to think about your content. You need mastery of your subject and an elegant way to convey it to someone else. But there’s a deeper reason to have employee-teachers. Giving employees the opportunity to teach gives them purpose. Even if they don’t find meaning in their regular jobs, passing on knowledge is both inspiring and inspirational. A learning organization starts with a recognition that all of us want to grow and to help others grow. Yet in many organizations, employees are taught and professionals do the teaching. Why not let people do both?

It came down to four principles: Pay unfairly. Celebrate accomplishment, not compensation. Make it easy to spread the love. Reward thoughtful failure.

If a child misses a question on a math test, they can try the question again for half credit. As their principal, Wanny Hersey, told me, “These are smart kids, but in life they are going to hit walls once in a while. It’s vital they master geometry, algebra one, and algebra two, but it’s just as important that they respond to failure by trying again instead of giving up.”

If your best person is worth ten of the average people, you must pay “unfairly.” Otherwise, you’re just giving them a reason to quit.

If your goals are ambitious and crazy enough, even failure will be a pretty good achievement.

WORK RULES…FOR PAYING UNFAIRLY Swallow hard and pay unfairly. Have wide variations in pay that reflect the power law distribution of performance. Celebrate accomplishment, not compensation. Make it easy to spread the love. Reward thoughtful failure.

Ronald Burt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, has shown that innovation tends to occur in the structural holes between social groups.

People with tight social networks, like those in a business unit or team, often have similar ideas and ways of looking at problems. Over time, creativity dies. But the handful of people who operate in the overlapping space between groups tend to come up with better ideas. And often, they’re not even original. They are an application of an idea from one group to a new group.

WORK RULES…FOR EFFICIENCY, COMMUNITY, AND INNOVATION Make life easier for employees. Find ways to say yes. The bad stuff in life happens rarely… be there for your people when it does.

The common theme here is that we are far less consistent, objective, fair, and self-aware in how we navigate the world than we think we are. And because of this, organizations can help people make better decisions.

define a nudge as “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.…

‘I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.’ He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. ‘You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.’ ”221

WORK RULES…FOR NUDGING TOWARD HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS Recognize the difference between what is and what ought to be. Run lots of small experiments. Nudge, don’t shove.

I’m advocating in this book, is not whether it delivers perfection. It’s whether we stay true to our values and continue to do the right thing even when tested. And whether we come through those challenges with a more refined commitment, shared among all Googlers, to our beliefs.

Innovation thrives on creativity and experimentation, but it also requires thoughtful pruning.

The key to balancing individual freedom with overall direction is to be transparent. People need to understand the rationales behind each action that might otherwise be viewed as a step down the slippery slope that leads you away from your values.

WORK RULES…FOR SCREWING UP Admit your mistake. Be transparent about it. Take counsel from all directions. Fix whatever broke. Find the moral in the mistake, and teach it.

If people are good, they should be free.

Work is far less meaningful and pleasant than it needs to be because well-intentioned leaders don’t believe, on a primal level, that people are good.

if you want to become a high-freedom environment, here are the ten steps that will transform your team or workplace: Give your work meaning. Trust your people. Hire only people who are better than you. Don’t confuse development with managing performance. Focus on the two tails. Be frugal and generous. Pay unfairly. Nudge. Manage the rising expectations. Enjoy! And then go back to No. 1 and start again.

even a small connection to the people who benefit from your work not only improves productivity, it also makes people happier. And everyone wants their work to have purpose.

we’ve built People Operations around four underlying principles: Strive for nirvana. Use data to predict and shape the future. Improve relentlessly. Field an unconventional team.

in People Operations we need people who can solve problems and also develop deep rapport with a wide range of people across the business. People with higher emotional intelligence also tend to be more self-aware, and hence less arrogant.

By applying our three-thirds model, we recruit a portfolio of capabilities: