Notes – Google’s quest to build a better boss

By -

Source: Google's quest to build a better boss.

Even though I have been very lucky to always have exceptionally good managers and great colleagues; I thought it'll be great to write my views (in italics) on the article, as part of "a new dimension".

People leave companies for the following three reasons or a combination of them:

  1. They don't feel a connection to the mission of the company or sense that their work matters.
  2. They don't really like or respect co-workers.
  3. They have a terrible boss. As per the article this is the biggest factor.
There are cases with personalities where they are not necessarily realizing they need a course correction. So it's just about being clear & saying, "OK, I understand what you are doing here, but let's talk about the results & this is the goal."

The point of collating data is not to develop an algorithm for successful management. The point is to make people aware of it, so that managers can understand what works & just as important, what doesn't. The traps show up in hiring. Managers often want to hire people who seem just like them.


This I believe is the biggest fault of the hiring process; especially in today's world where the learning curve (thus skill development time) has drastically reduced due to availability of instant information. Which leads to paradoxes like this:



I think that rather than focusing on the experience of the applicant, the focus should be finding answers to following questions:

  1. How well does the applicant know about his subject? Can he show me something valuable that points not only to his ability(which takes care of the experience part) but potential as well?
  2. How well does the applicant deal with people situations? Give problem scenarios.
  3. How can I test the learning capability of the applicant? Learning fast should be given the same importance as learning well.
  4. How good are the applicant's coaching skills? Does the applicant show demonstrable experience in this?


We do everything to minimize the authority & power of the manager in making a hiring decision.


I also liked the concept of cognitive bias – defined as a single personality trait that skews someone's perception of a colleague's performance. This was a fascinating discovery for me. I have been on both sides of the table.


Takeaway

If I am a manager & I want to get better, I'll want more out of my people and most importantly I want them to be happier. To ensure this I will need to do two things:

  1. I have some time for them.
  2. I am consistent.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Few thoughts on New York Times article

By -
Brilliant article in New York times today: From 'End of History' Author, a Look at the Beginning and Middle Key points I found interesting : Institutions are the rules that coordinate social behavior. Without taking human behavior in account you misunderstand the nature of political institutions. Such behavior especially the faculty for creating rules are the basis for social institutions, even though the content of institutions is supplied by culture.   My take: This at a wider level relates to the three most important institutions in the 21 st   century; Religion, Financial system & Democracy. Same principle can be applied to the evolution of language.     Societies are not trapped by their past nor are they free in any given generation to remake themselves. Building institutions is as difficult as changing them. Poor countries remain poor because of the absence of a strong law.   My take: Even though we continue to criticize our system, what we must underst
Read more

Notes on – Demo conference

By -
Source: Meet Google's human search engine for innovation and www.demo.com There are several levels when we see companies: As partners – can they build applications on our platform & make the platform more valuable. Business development or licensing type of deal Acquisition Ventures – Find companies to invest in The sweet spot is mobile, location based services, social & e-commerce. " IBM, Digital, Sun, Apollo and Microsoft had their time. Now cloud based systems like Google, Facebook & others will have their time. It's a natural progression of business. Microsoft had a hell of run for 30 years. They're still a very powerful company. Very profitable, growing very well. So I wouldn't say they're going to go down; I would say the market has moved. " I think Kinect is a game changer and probably the most important hardware innovation of the decade. " Tablets are for consumption not for creation . " Agree but not entirely tr
Read more

On Digital Marketing

By -
Being in digital marketing for the last 10 years, I get a lot of queries from fresh graduates on how to start their career in this domain. This post is for them. This is how I think about digital marketing.  The first step is to understand that digital marketing is not a radically new discipline but an extension of traditional marketing. The goal of marketing is to connect the sellers with the buyers and provide value to the buyer whilst making a profit for the seller. There are two major differences in traditional marketing(TM) and digital marketing(DM). 1. Reach 2. ROI With digital you can reach only a small % of the overall population as not everyone is on digital mediums viz. online, mobile & social networks.  For e.g. internet penetration in India is only 26%. So, if your Target Audience is digital only then can you expect to reach them via DM. To reach others you will need to use the traditional channels such as radio or TV. Measuring ROI is much simpler in d
Read more