How Google Works
Two of Google's most senior executives explain how to attract, manage, and unleash 'smart creatives' to build products and companies that thrive amid the disruptive change of the Internet Century.
Drawing on more than a decade of relearning everything they thought they knew about management, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg reveal how Google built a company culture, strategy, hiring engine, and innovation environment fit for a world where information is free, connectivity is ubiquitous, and computing power is effectively infinite. The book argues that the key to success in the twenty-first century is to attract a new kind of employee—the 'smart creative' who combines deep technical expertise, business savvy, and creative energy—and then build an environment where they can do amazing things at scale. Through candid stories about Google's biggest bets and failures, the authors offer contrarian, practical principles on culture, strategy, talent, decision-making, communications, and innovation, showing leaders in any industry how to bet on technical insight over market research, default to open, think big, ship and iterate, and imagine the unimaginable.
The model it argues
A causal framework in which organizational design levers (culture, insight-based strategy, hiring, open communication, decision processes, innovation freedom) shape psychological and behavioral states among smart creatives, which in turn drive continuous product excellence and sustained business success in the Internet Century.
Key ideas
- Authentic Culture
- A deliberately defined and genuinely believed set of values and norms that shape everyday decisions and attract aligned talent.
- Insight-Based Strategy
- A strategy founded on technical insights that solve big problems novelly, optimize for growth/platforms, and default to open.
- Quality Hiring Process
- A peer-based, committee-driven, data-rich hiring system prioritizing learning animals and generalists and refusing to compromise quality.
- Open Communication
- A default-to-open regime sharing information broadly, making truth-telling safe, and optimizing information flow.
- Data-Driven Consensus Decision-Making
- A decision process using data, dissent, true consensus, and a decision-maker who knows when to decide, with disagree-but-commit norms.
- Innovation Freedom (Primordial Ooze)
- An environment offering freedom, big goals, resource allocation to speculation, and tolerance for failing well, letting ideas evolve.
- Smart Creative Attraction and Retention
- The extent to which the organization draws and keeps smart creatives who blend technical depth, business savvy, and creativity.
- Employee Empowerment and Engagement
- A psychological state of autonomy, trust, and motivation driving self-directed problem-solving.