How Google Works

by Eric Schmidt

if you hire the right people and have big enough dreams, you’ll usually get there.

favorite question: What could be true in five years?

Start-ups don’t run on process, they run on ideas, passion, and a common set of goals. They don’t wait for the meeting to make decisions.

CUF (complex useless formula),

“a sequence of roofshots is a compelling innovation model that can produce both quick returns and sustained transformative results.”

“Go out there and have huge dreams, then show up to work the next morning and relentlessly incrementally achieve them.”

second reason product excellence is so critical is that the cost of experimentation and failure has dropped significantly.

smart creative has deep technical knowledge in how to use the tools of her trade,21 and plenty of hands-on experience. In our industry, that means she is most likely a computer scientist,

She is an expert in doing. She doesn’t just design concepts, she builds prototypes.

She is analytically smart. She is comfortable with data and can use it to make decisions.

She is business smart. She sees a direct line from technical expertise to product excellence to business success, and understands the value of all three.

they all must possess business savvy, technical knowledge, creative energy, and a hands-on approach to getting things done.

All you need is the insight that your industry is transforming at a rapid pace, the guts to take a risk and be part of that transformation, and the willingness and ability to attract the best smart creatives and lead them to make it happen.

It was practically impossible for an engineer or scientist to walk down the long halls without running into a colleague or being pulled into an office. This sort of serendipitous encounter will never happen when you are working at home.

as leaders (and accountants) became focused not on creating great products that generate actual revenue, but on optimizing a number at the end of an accounting formula.

As a manager, if you detect a knave in your midst it’s best to reduce his responsibility and appoint a knight to assume it. And for more egregious offenses, you need to get rid of the knave, quickly.

if you are a manager, it’s your responsibility to keep the work part lively and full; it’s not a key component of your job to ensure that employees consistently have a forty-hour workweek.

Give your smart creatives control, and they will usually make their own best decisions about how to balance their lives.

doing outdoor group activities (weather permitting) in a new place far enough from the office to feel like a real trip, but still doable in a day, and providing an experience that people couldn’t or wouldn’t have on their own.

When you’re a leader, everyone is watching, so it doesn’t matter that you dance poorly, it matters that you dance.)

venture capitalist will always follow the maxim of investing in the team, not the plan.

Bet on technical insights that help solve a big problem in a novel way, optimize for scale, not for revenue, and let great products grow the market for everyone.

What is the technical insight upon which those new features, products, or platforms will be built? A technical insight is a new way of applying technology or design that either drives down the cost or increases the functions and usability of the product by

a significant factor.

“combinatorial innovation.” This occurs when there is a great availability of different component parts that can be combined or recombined to create new inventions.

Another potential source of technical insights is to start with a solution to a narrow problem and look for ways to broaden its scope.

the twenty-first will be driven by global, open ones. There are platform opportunities all around us. The successful leaders are the ones who discover them.

Start by asking what will be true in five years and work backward. Examine carefully the things you can assert will change quickly,

smart people know a lot and can therefore accomplish more than others less gifted. But hire them not for the knowledge they possess, but for the things they don’t yet know.

But if you have a growth mindset, you believe the qualities that define you can be modified and cultivated through effort.

Great talent often doesn’t look and act like you.

We look for people who have a variety of strengths and passions, not just isolated skill sets. We

she has veto power but not hiring power. The hiring committee ensures that people don’t hire their friends, unless those friends happen to be superstars.

one-page summary with all the key facts, and comprehensive supporting material. The summary consists of hard data and evidence in support of the hiring decision, and the supporting material includes interview reports, résumé, compensation history, reference information (especially if the candidate was sourced via internal reference), and any other relevant material (college transcripts, copy of a candidate’s patents or awards, writing or coding samples).

successful athletes possess rare skills that are tremendously leverageable.

If you want better performance from the best, celebrate and reward it disproportionately.

The best way to retain smart creatives is to not let them get too comfortable, to always come up with ways to make their jobs interesting.

have a plan for how they can develop their career while staying. This demonstrates your commitment to their success, not just the company’s.

The most interesting industries are those where product cycle times are accelerating, because this creates more chances for disruption and so more opportunities for fresh talent.

Think about your ideal job, not today but five years from now. Where do you want to be? What do you want to do?

Write down the job description: If you saw this job on a website, what would the posting look like? Now fast forward four or five years and assume you are in that job. What does your five-years-from-now résumé look like? What’s the path you took from now to then to get to your best place? Keep thinking about that ideal job, and assess your strengths and weaknesses in light of it. What do you need to improve to get there?

No matter your business, learn how the right data, crunched the right way, will help you make better decisions.

Job seekers should also have an elevator pitch. This shouldn’t be a condensed version of your résumé, but should rather highlight its most interesting parts along with what you want to do and the impact you know you will have—the benefit to the customer and the company. What can you say that no one else can?

If the data is wrong or not relevant, you can’t fix it with fancy slides.

“Revenue solves all known problems.”) This applies to technical and product decisions as well.

Reaching this best idea requires conflict. People need to disagree and debate their points in an open environment, because you won’t get buy-in until all the choices are debated openly.

They’ll bobblehead nod, then leave the room and do what they want to do.

most important duty of the decision-maker: Set a deadline, run the process, and then enforce the deadline.

If you want to change people’s behavior, you need to touch their hearts, not just win the argument.

Good news will be just as good tomorrow, but bad news will be worse.