✦ Preface: A Guidance Counselor’s Nightmare: Building the perfect Google resume, in retrospect

My career path has been anything but straightforward. Looking back, it resembles what a guidance counselor might consider a nightmare.

My first job was at fourteen, teaching a summer debate class with my friend. Over the next twenty-eight years, my resume grew to include a deli, a restaurant, and a library. I tutored students, taught English in Japan, and even played a lifeguard on Baywatch. I helped start a nonprofit and worked at a construction manufacturer. I stumbled into executive pay consulting, then left for an MBA, thinking HR was stagnant. I joined McKinsey, avoiding people issues as much as possible, advising tech companies during the dot-com boom and bust.

By 2003, I was frustrated. Business plans failed when people didn’t believe in them. Leaders spoke of putting people first but treated them like replaceable parts. I realized I had two choices: improve my teams or influence entire companies. I chose the latter and decided to pursue a career in HR. My colleagues thought I was crazy, but I believed my training and background would help me find new solutions. I wanted to work at places where I could learn about HR, and Pepsi and General Electric were the best.

People matter, and It’s not right that the work experience should be so demotivating and dehumanizing.

✦ Why Google’s Rules Will Work for You: The surprising (and surprisingly successful) places that work just as we do

Google’s approach to people management isn’t some isolated phenomenon. It’s applicable across industries and organizational structures.

I’ve seen it work in surprising places. Wegmans, a regional grocery chain, shares similar principles. Despite being a family-run business with a largely local workforce, they empower employees to prioritize customer satisfaction and make decisions based on what’s right for their people, regardless of cost.

Brandix, a Sri Lankan clothing manufacturer, inspires its predominantly female workforce by encouraging them to embrace their potential. They provide comprehensive support, from healthcare to educational opportunities, fostering trust and driving positive change within their communities.

These examples contrast sharply with companies that prioritize profit over people. The collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh highlighted the devastating consequences of neglecting worker safety and well-being.

Google’s approach involves deliberately shifting power away from managers, empowering teams to make decisions collectively. This can be challenging for new managers accustomed to traditional hierarchies. However, it fosters fairness, trust, and more meaningful rewards.

Ultimately, Google’s success stems from its belief in people. By creating an environment of freedom and inspiration, organizations can unlock their employees’ potential and achieve remarkable results. While specific perks may vary, the core principles of trust, empowerment, and purpose can be replicated in any organization, regardless of size or industry.

✦ 1 Becoming a Founder: Just as Larry and Sergey laid the foundation for how Google treats its people, you can lay the foundation for how your team works and lives

Every great story begins with an origin. Google’s story, like those of Romulus and Remus, Superman, Edison, and Oprah, started with Larry Page’s family and Sergey Brin’s escape from the Soviet Union. Their Montessori education encouraged questioning and self-direction.

Larry and Sergey met at Stanford. Larry was intrigued by web page connections. In 1996, search engines ranked pages by text, which Larry found flawed. He believed user opinion mattered; useful pages get linked to. Sergey was captivated by the complexity of creating a program to track these links. They built BackRub.

Larry and Sergey aimed to create a company valuing meaningful work, employee freedom, and family care. This vision shaped Google’s practices: stock for all, dogs at work, and free meals, starting with cereal and M&Ms.

Before Google’s IPO, Sergey emphasized the importance of Googlers, promising good treatment. Talented individuals are drawn to Google because they’re empowered to impact the world.

While not the first, like Henry Ford and Milton Hershey, they sought to value their workers. Mervin J. Kelly of Bell Labs fostered interaction and freedom.

Larry and Sergey enabled others to be founders, like Susan Wojcicki, Salar Kamangar, and Marissa Mayer. Even now, Googlers act as owners.

Building a team starts with a founder. Being a founder means shaping your team’s culture, whether you’re starting a company or not. My goal is to ensure opportunities for all to have a meaningful impact. The greatest founders empower others. Think about your team’s origin story. What will it be? Choose to be a founder, not just an employee.

✦ 2 ”Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”: If you give people freedom, they will amaze you

We often post unusual letters from people wanting to join Google. One letter with the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast” struck me. Ed Schein explains a group’s culture includes the physical space, espoused values, and underlying assumptions. “Fun” is the word Googlers use most to describe our culture. We swapped our logo for Google Doodles, the first for Burning Man. Each year, we launch a Santa Tracker and have fun with our products. All this fun creates unguarded exploration.

To understand our culture, explore our mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This moral mission motivates constant innovation.

Transparency means “default to open.” New engineers get access to almost all of our code on day one. We share everything and trust Googlers to keep the information confidential. At our weekly TGIF meeting, Larry and Sergey host the company, where questions can cover any topic.

Voice means giving employees a say in how the company is run. In 2009, Patrick Pichette launched Bureaucracy Busters, where Googlers identify frustrations and help fix them. In 2010, our cultural cornerstones guided our decision to not censor our results in China.

Culture shapes strategy. If you give people freedom, they will amaze you.

✦ 3 Lake Wobegon, Where All the New Hires Are Above Average: Why hiring is the single most important people activity in any organization

Imagine winning the lottery and choosing to build a baseball team. You could hire the best players or assemble a ragtag team and mold them into winners.

The New York Yankees have won many World Series due to their strategy of paying top dollar for the best players. However, this approach is expensive and not always sustainable. CEOs often try to “acqui-hire” by buying companies for their talent, but it’s unclear if this is effective.

Most organizations pursue the “Bad News Bears” strategy, claiming to recruit the best and train them into champions. However, they often use the same recruiting methods and aren’t very good at interviewing. People think they’re great at hiring, but they don’t check if they are and don’t improve.

Companies spend more on training than hiring, but effective training is hard. It’s difficult to turn average performers into superstars through training alone. It’s better to hire top performers from the start. People approach hiring the way Garrison Keillor describes the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, where “all the children are above average.”

✦ 4 Searching for the Best: The evolution of Google’s “self-replicating talent machine”

The focus here is on how Google developed its innovative hiring process. Early on, the challenge was to find enough qualified engineers. It involved a shift where Google’s engineering leaders took ownership of sourcing candidates, making everyone a recruiter.

Google’s method included introducing employee referral bonuses, which tapped into the employees’ extended network. By leveraging these internal connections, it became easier to find exceptional people, making the recommendation program a part of the hiring strategy.

The need for leaders and managers to actively participate in the recruiting process is underscored. The idea that all employees were recruiters was emphasized.

It is important to note the candidate experience, which needs to attract more people to the company. A positive and engaging experience is crucial for drawing in quality people. Simplifying the hiring process is important. The intention is to increase the potential of the hiring process so that top performers are attracted to the company.

✦ 5 Don’t Trust Your Gut: Why our instincts keep us from being good interviewers, and what you can do to hire better

The notion of relying on one’s “gut feeling” during interviews to evaluate job candidates is explored here, challenging its effectiveness. The section emphasizes that instinctive judgments are often misleading and can lead to poor hiring decisions.

It delves into how interviewers tend to form initial impressions quickly, and subsequently seek to reinforce those biases, rather than remaining open to objective assessment. This “confirmation bias” leads to overlooking crucial details and making choices based on insufficient information. The issue of interviewers gravitating toward candidates who mirror themselves is raised, which hinders diversity and limits the infusion of new perspectives.

Also discussed is the common misconception that experience leads to improved interviewing skills. It highlights that seasoned professionals are equally susceptible to cognitive biases, questioning the assumption that extensive interviewing experience inherently translates to better hiring outcomes. It touches upon the ineffectiveness of unstructured interviews, where questions are asked without a clear plan, for predicting job performance.

In essence, this segment argues that acknowledging the limitations of intuition and embracing structured, data-driven hiring practices allows organizations to make sounder hiring choices, assemble more varied teams, and boost their overall effectiveness. It encourages a shift away from subjective impressions toward more evidence-based approaches in the hiring process.

✦ 6 Let the Inmates Run the Asylum: Take power from your managers and trust your people to run things

In this section, the argument is made for distributing power away from traditional managers and entrusting employees to take charge. I explore the idea of dismantling hierarchical structures, which might seem counterintuitive to many.

The main point is that employees closest to the work often possess the best insights and solutions. The segment discusses ways to transfer decision-making authority to teams and individuals, giving them greater autonomy over their tasks.

A key concept is that employees who feel trusted and empowered are more engaged, innovative, and productive. This can involve giving teams control over their schedules, budgets, or project selection. To take power from your managers, I suggest trusting people. I encourage leaders to relinquish some control and allow the inmates to “run the asylum” to some extent.

However, there is still a need for guidance and mentorship, not direct control. This allows the best ideas to rise to the surface, and allows the company to benefit from the collective intelligence of its workforce. Ultimately, I recommend that organizations can unlock hidden potential and achieve greater success by embracing this philosophy.

✦ 7 Why Everyone Hates Performance Management, and What We Decided to Do About It: Improve performance by focusing on personal growth instead of ratings and rewards

Here, the central idea is how traditional performance management systems are ineffective and disliked by both managers and employees. The system is viewed as time-consuming, subjective, and demotivating.

The argument is that annual reviews and ratings often fail to accurately reflect an individual’s contributions and potential. I discuss how these systems can foster unhealthy competition among employees, hindering collaboration and innovation.

The aim is to replace traditional performance evaluations with a focus on continuous feedback, coaching, and individual development. This involves providing regular, constructive criticism to help employees identify their strengths and areas for improvement. Frequent check-ins and conversations are far more useful than one-off annual reviews.

Google decided to minimize performance ratings, with more focus given to rewards and promotions that come from separate committees. This creates a fairer system, enabling everyone to focus on personal growth. Shifting from ranking employees helps to create a culture of trust, collaboration, and growth.

✦ 8 The Two Tails: The biggest opportunities lie in your absolute worst and best employees

The chapter is about how an organization’s most significant opportunities for improvement lie at the extreme ends of the performance spectrum, with both its worst and best employees. It challenges the common practice of focusing primarily on the average performers.

It’s explained how Google put in place a clear distinction of Google’s best employees by creating the “Founder’s Award” as a very transparent recognition of their value. This reward was used to reinforce the most positive behaviors. It’s about showing everyone in the company what success looks like. At the opposite end of the spectrum, those who struggle can take advantage of a culture that provides resources and support to improve.

It is essential to look into the factors hindering low performers, offering support and guidance rather than resorting to immediate termination. The argument suggests that focusing on clear expectations, constructive feedback, and targeted development can lead to significant improvements in many cases.

The point is that by addressing the needs and challenges of both the highest and lowest performers, organizations can unlock hidden potential, drive innovation, and create a culture of continuous improvement. It also suggests a better use of company resources. In short, both segments are a company’s opportunities.

✦ 9 Building a Learning Institution: Your best teachers already work for you.… Let them teach!

Okay, here’s a summary of the “Building a Learning Institution” section from “Work Rules!”, written as if by Laszlo Bock, minimizing “I,” and rephrasing the original words (approximately 200 words):

The central theme is leveraging internal expertise by tapping into the knowledge already present within the company. Rather than solely depending on external resources, it emphasizes creating a culture of peer learning.

Leaders can enable employees who are skilled in their respective fields to share their expertise with others. I believe that the most effective ways to facilitate this exchange are internal workshops, mentorship programs, and knowledge-sharing platforms.

There is also the need to formally acknowledge employees who help others learn, as that incentivizes people to share what they know. The intention is to highlight the benefits of a learning-focused workplace.

By tapping into internal talent, better workforces become more skilled. There’s a belief that it improves the company and helps it improve its operations. It creates an innovative environment, and enhances company expertise, which also builds value by creating a strong team and improving collaboration. Overall, a more innovative and collaborative work environment leads to greater success.

✦ 10 Pay Unfairly: Why it’s okay to pay two people in the same job completely different amounts

This section looks into compensation and explains how motivating Google’s employees comes from individual rewards rather than rewarding a whole group.

There is some research from Edward Lazear of Stanford that explains this thinking more clearly. In his experiment, he found that individual productivity rose 44% when that person was rewarded for their individual performance as opposed to group performance.

In this piece, the theory behind fairly is explored. It’s commonly thought that fairness in terms of pay, means everyone getting paid the same. But it is suggested that that is not the case, and that fairly paying is about recognizing individual performance and individual contribution. It also means recognizing someone’s potential.

By paying unfairly, it reinforces the idea that exceptional work is highly valued and that talent should be rewarded. The point is that a compensation system should recognize employee value, and inspire individuals to contribute to the organization, because their unique skills are valuable to the company. It also encourages them to come up with new and amazing innovations for the organization, because their talents are rewarded.

✦ 11 The Best Things in Life Are Free (or Almost Free): Most of Google’s people programs can be duplicated by anyone

I argue that many of the most effective ways to improve employee satisfaction and productivity don’t require significant financial investment. It’s about rethinking how work is structured and how people are treated.

One key point is the power of recognition. Simply acknowledging and appreciating employees’ contributions can have a huge impact on motivation. You don’t need to break the bank to reward people, because there are also simple, low-cost options that exist, such as verbal praise, written notes, or small tokens of appreciation. These gestures can be more meaningful than monetary rewards, because they demonstrate that the company values them as individuals.

The importance of creating a sense of community and belonging are reviewed. Organizing team-building activities, social events, or volunteer opportunities can help employees bond with one another and feel more connected to the organization.

By focusing on non-monetary incentives, you can create a workplace that attracts, retains, and motivates top talent, without placing a strain on the budget. A focus should be placed on the company culture and the value that the company places on its workers.

✦ 12 Nudge… a Lot: Small signals can cause large changes in behavior. How one email can improve productivity by 25 percent

I believe that hiring is the most important activity in any organization. Imagine winning the lottery and choosing to build a baseball team. You could hire the best players or assemble a ragtag team and mold them into winners.

The New York Yankees have won many World Series due to their strategy of paying top dollar for the best players. However, this approach is expensive and not always sustainable. CEOs often try to “acqui-hire” by buying companies for their talent, but it’s unclear if this is effective.

Most organizations pursue the “Bad News Bears” strategy, claiming to recruit the best and train them into champions. However, they often use the same recruiting methods and aren’t very good at interviewing. People think they’re great at hiring, but they don’t check if they are and don’t improve.

Companies spend more on training than hiring, but effective training is hard. It’s difficult to turn average performers into superstars through training alone. It’s better to hire top performers from the start.

✦ 13 It’s Not All Rainbows and Unicorns: Google’s biggest people mistakes and what you can do to avoid them

There’s a perception that Google is all sunshine and rainbows. However, like any organization, we’ve faced our share of failures.

One such instance was Google Health, launched in 2008 with the goal of empowering consumers by providing them access to and control over their health information. We believed that individuals would want to manage their medical records online. We aimed to create a system where people could consolidate their health data. However, despite our efforts, Google Health didn’t gain traction and was eventually shut down in 2011.

Another setback was Google Buzz, introduced in 2010 as a social networking tool integrated into Gmail. The intention was to make it easy for people to share updates and engage with their contacts. Unfortunately, it raised privacy concerns because it automatically connected users with their Gmail contacts without explicit consent. This misstep led to public outcry and legal challenges. Despite attempts to address the issues, Google Buzz was discontinued in 2011.

These failures taught us valuable lessons about the importance of understanding user needs and considering privacy implications. While not every endeavor succeeds, we embrace experimentation. We learn from setbacks and adapt our strategies to better serve our users.

✦ 14 What You Can Do Starting Tomorrow: Ten steps to transform your team and your workplace

I’ve shared a lot about how we approach work. Now, here’s how you can apply these principles starting tomorrow.

First, rethink your job as a calling. Connect with those you serve to deepen your sense of purpose.

Next, embrace transparency. Share information openly to foster trust and collaboration.

Give your colleagues a voice. Seek their input and empower them to shape the organization.

When hiring, prioritize quality over quantity. Implement structured interviews to reduce bias.

Strive for fairness. Ensure pay is equitable and performance evaluations are unbiased.

Don’t confuse “development” with coaching. Provide personalized guidance and support.

Recognize top performers. Celebrate achievements and reward excellence.

Be attentive to the worst. Address issues promptly and fairly.

Encourage learning. Promote curiosity and continuous improvement.

Manage the tails. Recognize both exceptional and underperforming employees.

Nudge a lot. Use subtle interventions to guide behavior and improve outcomes.

Remember, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. Embrace experimentation and learn from failures.

By implementing these strategies, you can transform your workplace into an environment that fosters purpose, freedom, and creativity.

✦ Afterword for HR Geeks Only: Building theWorld’s First People Operations Team. The blueprint for a new kind of HR

This is specifically for HR professionals. You might be wondering if any of this really matters, and I understand that skepticism. You’re likely facing pressure to cut costs, comply with regulations, and manage administrative tasks. Focusing on employee happiness might seem like a luxury.

However, I firmly believe that HR can be a force for good. We have the opportunity to create workplaces where people thrive, contribute their best, and find meaning in their work. This isn’t just about making employees feel good; it’s about driving organizational success.

The principles I’ve discussed – focusing on mission, transparency, and voice – are not just nice-to-haves. They are essential for attracting and retaining top talent, fostering innovation, and building a resilient organization.

It won’t be easy. You’ll face resistance, skepticism, and the temptation to revert to traditional HR practices. But I urge you to push forward. Experiment, learn, and advocate for a more human-centered approach to work.

Remember, HR is not just about policies and procedures. It’s about people. And by putting people first, we can create workplaces that are not only more productive but also more fulfilling.

For People

– HR Professionals

– Business Leaders

– Managers

– Entrepreneurs

– Employees

Learn to

– Innovative HR Practices

– Improved Employee Engagement

– Data-Driven Decision Making

– Enhanced Company Culture

– Effective Leadership Strategies