Work Rules! Quotes

“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.”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“  Have a role-and-responsibilities discussion. Match your Noogler with a peer buddy. Help your Noogler build a social network. Set up onboarding check-ins once a month for your Noogler’s first six months. Encourage open dialogue. And”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“Fourth, split reward conversations from development conversations. Combining”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“Third, for evaluation, adopt some kind of calibration process. We”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“Second, gather peer feedback. There”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“First, set goals correctly. Make them public. Make them ambitious.”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“If you are not promoted, the committee provides feedback on what to do to improve your chances next time. Seems”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“There’s just one other twist. Googlers working in engineering or product management can nominate themselves for promotion.”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“By now you’ll guess that promotion decisions, like rating decisions, are made by committees. They”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“We distributed these handouts to employees just”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“To make sure employees’ conversations with their managers were more useful, we developed a one-page handout for them to use during their performance conversation. Again,”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“Googlers are also free to solicit feedback on specific topics at any point in the year, rather than waiting for a single day.”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“Peer reviewers were then asked to rate (using a slider on the screen) how well they knew that particular project and how large the individual’s impact was, and to add any comments. Over”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“Now we asked them to list specific projects, their roles, and what they accomplished. We”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“Now we asked for one single thing the person should do more of, and one thing they could do differently to have more impact. We”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“When it’s time to conduct annual reviews, Googlers and their managers select a list of peer reviewers that includes not just peers, but also people junior to them.”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“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 necessary so people grow and improve.” 121 If you want people to grow, don’t have those two conversations at the same time. Make development a constant back-and-forth between you and your team members, rather than a year-end surprise.”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“They put more money toward the men to avoid what they feared would be a tough conversation.”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“And even if I don’t argue with my manager, he’s worried that I might. In”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“As long as ratings are directly linked to pay and career opportunities, every employee has this incentive to exploit the system.”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“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 raise, a higher rating—and learning shuts down. I”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“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. In”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“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 systems destroy that motivation. Almost”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“But once you have more than a few hundred people, employees are more comfortable trusting a reliable system than individual managers. Not”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“A manager’s assessments are compared to those of managers leading similar teams, and they review their employees collectively: A group of five to ten managers meet and project on a wall their fifty to a thousand employees, discuss individuals, and agree on a fair rating. This”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“Calibration adds a step. But it is critical to ensure fairness. A”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“By simply having more rating categories to choose from, Group B unconsciously, inadvertently, and incorrectly decided that they have almost no star performers. Without”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“to a 5-point rating scale: needs improvement, consistently meets expectations, exceeds expectations, strongly exceeds expectations, and superb. Similar”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“Experimentation was vital. In the absence of external evidence, we had to develop our own, working with the leaders of each part of Google to help them test their ideas. At”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

“The science on rating systems is inconclusive.115 There’s no strong evidence to suggest that having three or five or ten or fifty rating points makes a difference. Our”
― Laszlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead