Schmidt - How Google Works

How Google works

2 initial principles at Google

1. Focus on the user (for us that's students!)

2. Hire talent. 

Hire the very best and then get out of the way. Give freedom. Employees are everything.

"When we contrast the traditional knowledge worker with the engineers and other talented people who have surrounded us at Google over the past decade plus, we see that our Google peers represent a quite different type of employee. They are not confined to specific tasks. They're not limited in their access to the companies information and computing power. They are not averse to taking risks, nor are they punished or held back in anyway when those risky initiatives fail. They are not hemmed in by role definitions or organizational structure; in fact, they are encouraged to exercise their own ideas. They don't keep quiet when they disagree with something. They get bored easily and shift jobs a lot. They are multidimensional, usually combining technological depth with business savvy and creative flair. In other words, they are not knowledge workers, at least not in the traditional sense. They are a new kind of animal, we call a "smart creative," and they are the key to achieving success and the Internet century." -- 

The above is a description of the type of learner and professional we need to be developing!

During the Industrial Revolution, operating processes were biased toward lowering risk and avoiding mistakes. These processes, and the overall management approach, resulted in environments that stifled creative people. Now, the defining characteristics of successful companies is the ability to continually deliver great products. The only way to do that is to hire creative people and create an environment where they can succeed at scale.

Google has a culture of problem solving ninjas. It's a culture that attracts more problem solving ninjas

Google values experimentation and the virtues of failure 

If a company believes in a culture where everyone gets a say and decisions are made by committee, it will attract like-minded employees. But if that company tries to adopt a more autocratic or combative approach, it will have a very hard time getting employees to go along with it.

The difference between successful and unsuccessful companies is whether employees believe the words.

Be aware of the HiPPO effect - always accepting the opinion of the highest paid person (highest paid person's opinion)

Meritocracies need dissenters

Your title makes you manager; your people make you a leader.

Once you identify the people who have the biggest impact, give them more to do. If you want something done, give it to a busy person.

Burn out isn't caused by working too hard, but by resentment at having to give up what really matters to you.

Is altruism a value for teachers? Is it understood?

A Workforce of great people not only does great work, it attracts more great people. The best workers are like a herd: they tend to follow each other.

When you put great people with great people, you create an environment where they will share ideas and work on them. This is always true, but particularly in an early stage environment.

The hallmarks of passion are persistence, grit, seriousness, all encompassing absorption.

Look to hire people that are smarter than you. Hire them for the things that don't yet know if their is evidence that they will learn them.

Intelligence is the best indicator of a person's ability to handle change but it's not the only indicator. 

Henry Ford said that "anyone who stops learning is old, whether 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays Young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young"

Ideal candidates for hire are the ones that prefer roller coasters, the ones who keep learning. These "learning animals" have the smarts to handle massive change & the character to love it.

If you have a growth mindset you believe that the qualities defining you are malleable. You can change yourself; you can adapt; in fact, you're more comfortable and do better when you were forced to do so

Most people, when hiring for a role, look for people who have excelled in that role before. This is not how you find a learning animal. Pursue virtually any job listing and one of the top criteria for position will be relevant experience. If the job is for chief widget designer, it's a given that high on the list of requirements will be 5 to 10 years of widget design and a degree from Widget U. 

"The world [of education] is changing so fast that the role for which you're hiring has to change with it. What you need is a learning animal."

Specialist vs learner

The specialist brings an inherent bias to solving problems that spawns from the very expertise that is his/her putative advantage, and s/he may be threatened by a new type of solution that requires new expertise. This is not true of learning animals.

To find out if a candidate is a learning animal, ask them to reflect on a  past mistake

Characteristics for hiring

Passion

Learner

Intelligence

Character

Happy/healthy

Someone who is interesting

Judge candidates based on trajectory not experience

Schedule interviews for 30 minutes.  Most interviews end in a non-hire. You can usually tell within 30 minutes whether or not the person is right for the job.

Don't let good people get comfortable; come up with creative ways to make their job interesting

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Decisions – the true meaning of consensus

Google's decision – making process: identify the issue, have the argument, set a deadline.

Step one – decide with data

A problem well put, is half solved

Don't seek to convince by saying "I think", convince instead by saying "let me show you [the data]."

Beware of the bobble head yes

Consensus literally means to think or feel together. It's not about getting everyone to agree; it's about coming to the best idea [for the school] and rallying around it.

To achieve true consensus you need dissent & conflict.

Leadership should not state their position at the onset of a meeting or discussion.

If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking.

One technique against the bobble head yes is to throw out "stupid softballs" that let people dip their toe in the water of disagreeing with the boss.

Be interested in finding the best way, not in having it your way.

Know when to ring the bell

There's a point at which more analysis won't lead to a better decision. Set a deadline. Ring the bell. Make a decision or break the tie. 

Make fewer decisions

The tendency [of a principal, in particular a new principal], is to try to make too big an impact. It's hard to check your ego at the door, and let others make decisions, but that is precisely what needs to be done. In general, when you [are a principal], you should actually make very few decisions.

Instead it's your role to intervene when someone else making the decision is making a very bad call (or a call that does not align with well with the vision).

Meet every day

If the decision is big enough you should meet every day to determine the best possible solution/outcome.

You're both right

If you want to change people's behaviors you have to speak to their heart.  After a debate in which someone loses, use the words "you're both right". In order for people to commit to a decision for which they didn't agree, they have to know that their opinion was not only heard, but valued. "You were both right" accomplishes this.

Two things happen after a heated debate, both sides commit to the solution or one of the parties leaves & escalates the situation publicly.

Depending on the situation, allow people to take & escalate the situation publicly because if you don't, they're going to do it anyway. Leaders need to ask that dissenters say what it is they object to in the meeting & acknowledge that they're going to take their dissent out of the meeting and be public about it.

Every meeting needs an owner

Google's rules for meetings:

Meetings should have a single decision maker/owner. The [principal] is the tiebreaker

The decision-maker should be hands-on. S/he should call the meeting, and ensure the content is good, set the objectives, determine the participants. After the meeting, the decision-maker should summarize decisions taken and the action items via email to at least every participant as well as any others who need to know within 48 hours.

Meetings should be easy to kill

The decision-maker needs to ask the hard questions: is this meeting still useful? Is it too frequent/not frequent enough? Do people get the information they need?

Meetings should be manageable -  no more than 8 to 10 people. Everyone in the room should be able to give their input. 

Timekeeping matters.  Begin and end on time. Make sure there's enough time at the end to summarize findings and action items.

If you attend a meeting, attend the meeting. Multitasking doesn't work. Put your devices away.

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Communications – be a damn good route

 Power comes not from knowledge kept but from knowledge shared.

Leaderships' purpose is to optimize the flow of information throughout [the school], all the time, every day. This is an entirely different skill set

Your default should be to always be open.

Establish a culture of OKR - objectives and key results. If you ask a teacher what's going on with your job right now? They should be able to respond "here are the objectives I'm working on" and "here are the key results I am looking for my students to achieve."

It must be safe to tell the truth!

Google talks about a "climb, confess, comply" model for making it safe to tell the truth.

When someone comes to the leader with bad news or a problem, they are in climb, confess, and comply mode. They've spent a lot of time considering the situation and you need to reward their transparency by listening, helping, and having confidence the next time around that they will nail it.

How to over communicate according to Google:

Does the communication reinforce quarter themes that you want everyone to get?

Is the communication effective? You need to have something fresh to say.

Is the communication interesting, fun or inspirational? 

Is the communication authentic?  If it has your name on it, it should have your thoughts in it.

Is the communication going to the right people?

Are you using the right media?  Say yes to all forms of communication. 

if the message is important, use all the tools available to get your message across: email video, social networking, meetings and video conferences (even flyers or posters taped to the Wall of the [teacher lounge])

Tell the truth, be humble, and bank goodwill for a rainy day.  When you screw up, communicate that story with truth and humility. You may drive down that balance of goodwill, but not completely.

The principal needs to be the CIO – chief innovative officer and operate with the mindset that innovative people do not need to be told to be innovative, they need to be allowed to be innovative.

Optimism is an essential ingredient for innovation

Hire people that are intelligent enough to come up with new ideas and crazy enough to think they just might work. You need to find and attract optimistic people, and give them the place to create change and adventure.

Focus on the user (students)

Serving our students is at the heart of what we do and remains our number one priority.

Focus on the user (the learner) and achievement will follow.

to innovate, you must learn to fail well. Learn from your mistakes.

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Imagine the unimaginable

The question to ask when thinking about the future is not what will be true, but what could be true. Asking what will be true entails making a prediction, which is folly in a fast-moving world. Asking what could be true entails imagination: what thing that is unimaginable when abiding by conventional wisdom is in fact imaginable?

Forgo conventional wisdom and ask yourself what could happen in education in the next five years. What could change most quickly, and what will not change at all? 

Technology platforms in education will help students realize their individual strengths and weaknesses with greater precision, and provide all learners with educational options customized to what they want to do. As the purveyors of public education, governments can aggressively pursue this model of customized, flexible, lifelong education particularly for post high school teens and adults.