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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Laszlo Bock
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April 2 - July 10, 2021
A billion hours ago, modern Homo sapiens emerged. A billion minutes ago, Christianity began. A billion seconds ago, the IBM personal computer was released. A billion Google searches ago … was this morning. —HAL VARIAN, GOOGLE’S CHIEF ECONOMIST, DECEMBER 20, 2013
“Managers serve the team,” according to our executive chairman, Eric Schmidt. Like any place, we of course have exceptions and failures, but the default leadership style at Google is one where a manager focuses not on punishments or rewards but on clearing roadblocks and inspiring her team.
All it takes is a belief that people are fundamentally good—and enough courage to treat your people like owners instead of machines. Machines do their jobs; owners do whatever is needed to make their companies and teams successful.
Our policy of welcoming dogs at work originated with our first ten people. (As did our position on cats, which is enshrined in our code of conduct: “We like cats, but we’re a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out.”
“I think about how far we’ve come as companies from those days, where workers had to protect themselves from the company. My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we’re doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow.”
Adam Grant has an answer. In Give and Take, he writes about the power of purpose to improve not just happiness, but also productivity.50 His answer, like many brilliant insights, seems obvious once it’s pointed out. The big surprise is how huge the impact is.
Having workers meet the people they are helping is the greatest motivator, even if they only meet for a few minutes. It imbues one’s work with a significance that transcends careerism or money.
We all want our work to matter. Nothing is a more powerful motivator than to know that you are making a difference in the world.
If you believe people are good, you must be unafraid to share information with them
“Assume that all information can be shared with the team, instead of assuming that no information can be shared. Restricting information should be a conscious effort, and you’d better have a good reason for doing so. In open source, it’s countercultural to hide information.”
One of the serendipitous benefits of transparency is that simply by sharing data, performance improves.
The way we solve the “backstabbing” problem, for example, is that if you write a nasty email about someone, you shouldn’t be surprised if they are added to the email thread.
Voice means giving employees a real say in how the company is run. Either you believe people are good and you welcome their input, or you don’t. For many organizations this is terrifying, but it is the only way to live in adherence to your values.
There’s ample data showing that most assessment occurs in the first three to five minutes of an interview (or even more quickly),70 with the remaining time being spent confirming that bias;
How can you tell if you have found someone exceptional? My simple rule of thumb—and the second big change to make in how you hire—is: “Only hire people who are better than you.”
As Olivier Serrat of the Asian Development Bank wrote, “Micromanagement is mismanagement. … [P]eople micromanage to assuage their anxieties about organizational performance: they feel better if they are continuously directing and controlling the actions of others—at heart, this reveals emotional insecurity on their part. It gives micromanagers the illusion of control (or usefulness). Another motive is lack of trust in the abilities of staff—micromanagers do not believe that their colleagues will successfully complete a task or discharge a responsibility even when they say they will.”
In 1999 we were serving a financial services company and doing one of the first e-commerce projects our firm had ever done. (Remember “e-commerce”?) I brought a draft report to him and instead of editing it, he asked, “Do I need to review this?” I knew deep down that while my report was good, he would surely find some room for improvement. Realizing this, I told him it wasn’t ready and went back to refine it further. I came back to him a second time, and a second time he asked, “Do I need to review this?” I went away again. On my fourth try, he asked the same question and I told him, “No. You
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What managers miss is that every time they give up a little control, it creates a wonderful opportunity for their team to step up, while giving the manager herself more time for new challenges. Pick an area where your people are frustrated, and let them fix it. If there are constraints, limited time or money, tell them what they are. Be transparent with your people and give them a voice in shaping your team or company. You’ll be stunned by what they accomplish.
“If you set a crazy, ambitious goal and miss it, you’ll still achieve something remarkable.”
The biggest opportunities lie in your absolute worst and best employees
What most organizations miss is that people in the bottom tail represent the biggest opportunity to improve performance in your company, and the top tail will teach you exactly how to realize that opportunity.
Atul Gawande has written persuasively in The New Yorker and in his book The Checklist Manifesto about the power of checklists. I first encountered his writing in the 2009 article “The Checklist,” 139 where he described the test flight of the Model 299, a next-generation long-range bomber developed by the Boeing Corporation in 1935. It could “carry five times as many bombs as the Army had requested … fly faster than previous bombers, and almost twice as far.” The only problem was that it crashed.
Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform. Consider for a moment the possibility of your putting on a series of four lectures for members of your department. Let’s count on three hours of preparation for each hour of course time—twelve hours of work in total. Say that you have ten students in your class. Next year they will work a total of about twenty thousand hours for your organization. If your training results in a 1 percent improvement in your subordinates’ performance, your company will gain the equivalent of two hundred hours of work as the
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“The money doesn’t seem real,” Noyce would later tell his father. “It’s just a way of keeping score.” 161 The ethos in the Valley has long been “Work hard, but don’t show off.”
“At Microsoft in the ’90s, engineers and marketers took to wearing buttons around the office that said ‘fuifv.’ You can guess what the first two letters stand for. The last three meant ‘I’m fully vested.’”
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. “Pooh?” he whispered. “Yes, Piglet?” “Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s hand. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”
I hosted a talk on mindfulness meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn, which has been watched 1.8 million times the last I checked. One viewer emailed me to tell me that video saved his life. He was about to kill himself. He randomly chanced upon that video … and started practicing mindfulness. His depression went away, his addiction was cured, he found a job he loved, had six promotions in six years after that, and is now in a fulfilling relationship. He emailed me six years after watching the video to let me know.
It turns out that in this case, seeing is believing. Our assessment of how much we eat and our satiation are heavily shaped by the size of the serving dish. The bigger the dish, the more we eat and the less satisfied we feel.
Each time we make changes to Google’s performance management system, two truths become self-evident: No one likes the system. No one likes the proposed change to the current system.
It’s why achieving 70 percent of our OKRs each quarter is pretty good. And it’s why Larry believes in moon shots, which cause you to achieve more in failure than you would in succeeding at a more modest goal.
Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Nature, argues that the world has become a better place over time, at least when measured by incidences of violence.
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.
Whatever you’re doing, it matters to someone. And it should matter to you. As a manager, your job is to help your people find that meaning.
