9 rules of innovation from Google

9 rules of innovation from Google

March 11, 2008

Rediff.com

1. Innovation, not instant perfection

"There are two different types of programmers. Some like to code for months or even years, and hope they will have built the perfect product. That's castle building. Companies work this way, too. Apple is great at it. If you get it right and you've built just the perfect thing, you get this worldwide 'Wow!' The problem is, if you get it wrong, you get a thud, a thud in which you've spent, like, five years and 100 people on something the market doesn't want."

"Others prefer to have something working at the end of the day, something to refine and improve the next day. That's what we do: our 'launch early and often' strategy. The hardest part about indoctrinating people into our culture is when engineers show me a prototype and I'm like, 'Great, let's go!' They'll say, 'Oh, no, it's not ready.

It's not up to Google standards. This doesn't look like a Google product yet.' They want to castle-build and do all these other features and make it all perfect."

"I tell them, 'The Googly thing is to launch it early on Google Labs and then iterate, learning what the market wants--and making it great.' The beauty of experimenting in this way is that you never get too far from what the market wants. The market pulls you back."

2. Ideas come from everywhere

"We have this great internal list where people post new ideas and everyone can go on and see them. It's like a voting pool where you can say how good or bad you think an idea is. Those comments lead to new ideas."

3. A license to pursue your dreams

"Since around 2000, we let engineers spend 20% of their time working on whatever they want, and we trust that they'll build interesting things. After September 11, one of our researchers, Krishna Bharat, would go to 10 or 15 news sites each day looking for information about the case. And he thought, Why don't I write a program to do this? So Krishna, who's an expert in artificial intelligence, used a Web crawler to cluster articles."

"He later emailed it around the company. My office mate and I got it, and we were like, 'This isn't just a cool little tool for Krishna. We could add more sources and build this into a great product.' That's how Google News came about. Krishna did not intend to build a product, but he accidentally gave us the idea for one."

"We let engineers spend 20% of their time working on whatever they want, and we trust that they'll build interesting things."

4. Morph projects don't kill them

"Eric [Schmidt, CEO] made this observation to me once, which I think is accurate: Any project that is good enough to make it to Labs probably has a kernel of something interesting in there somewhere, even if the market doesn't respond to it. It's our job to take the product and morph it into something that the market needs."

5. Share as much information as you can

"People are blown away by the information you can get on MOMA, our intranet. Because there is so much information shared across the company, employees have insight into what's happening with the business and what's important."

"We also have people do things like Snippets. Every Monday, all the employees write an email that has five to seven bullet points on what you did the previous week. Being a search company, we take all the emails and make a giant Web page and index them."

"If you're wondering, 'Who's working on maps?' you can find out. It allows us to share what we know across the whole company, and it reduces duplication."

6. Users, users, users

"I used to call this 'Users, Not Money.' We believe that if we focus on the users, the money will come. In a truly virtual business, if you're successful, you'll be working at something that's so necessary people will pay for it in subscription form. Or you'll have so many users that advertisers will pay to sponsor the site."

7. Data is apolitical

"When I meet people who run design at other organizations, they're always like, 'Design is one of the most political areas of the company. This designer likes green and that one likes purple, and whose design gets picked? The one who buddies up to the boss.'

Some companies think of design as an art. We think of design as a science. It doesn't matter who is the favorite or how much you like this aesthetic versus that aesthetic. It all comes down to data. Run a 1% test [on 1% of the audience] and whichever design does best against the user-happiness metrics over a two-week period is the one we launch. We have a very academic environment where we're looking at data all the time.

We probably have somewhere between 50 and 100 experiments running on live traffic, everything from the default number of results to underlined links to how big an arrow should be. We're trying all those different things."

8. Creativity loves constraints

"This is one of my favorites. People think of creativity as this sort of unbridled thing, but engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of that little box: 'We know you said it was impossible, but we're going to do this, this, and that to get us there.'"

9. You're brilliant? We're hiring

"When I was a grad student at Stanford, I saw that phrase on a flyer for another company in the basement of the computer-science building. It made me stop dead in my tracks and laugh out loud."

"A couple of months later, I'm working at Google, and the engineers were asked to write job ads for engineers. We had a contest. I put, 'You're brilliant? We're hiring. Come work at Google,' and got eight times the click rate that anyone else got.

"Google now has a thousand times as many people as when I started, which is just staggering to me. What's remarkable, though, is what hasn't changed--the types of people who work here and the types of things that they like to work on. It's almost identical to the first 20 or so of us at Google."

"There is this amazing element to the culture of wanting to work on big problems that matter, wanting to do great things for the world, believing that we can build a successful business without compromising our standards and values."

"If I'm an entrepreneur and I want to start a Web site, I need a billing system. Oh, there's Google Checkout. I need a mapping function. Oh, there's Google Maps. Okay, I need to monetize. There's Google AdSense, right? I need a user name and password-authentication system. There's Google Accounts."

"This is just way easier than going out and trying to create all of that from scratch. That's how we're going to stay innovative. We're going to continue to attract entrepreneurs who say, 'I found an idea, and I can go to Google and have a demo in a month and be launched in six.'"

How to develop good managing skills

How to develop good managing skills

Harvard Business School Press

December 12, 2007

Good managers use coaching skills as part of their repertoire. The focus is on cooperation and facilitation of the other person's development. Coaching involves crating a comfortable environment where action plans can be developed together.

To become the most effective coach possible, work on mastering the following skills:

• Listing actively
• Asking the right questions
• Advocating your opinions
• Giving feedback as a coach
• Receiving feedback as a coach
• Building agreement

"I never could figure out why people didn't seem to follow my advice much. When I started to learn about the true art of coaching, it became painfully clear that my brilliance was failing on deaf ears because I hadn't done a bit of inquiry to learn what they were thinking, what they'd already tried, what their biggest priority was. Inquiry has made all the difference. It turns out most people want less advice but more opportunity to explore their own thinking with a caring coach who is paying attention." -- PattyMcManus, consultant, Interaction Associates

Tip: Those who coach regularly, coach better. Find opportunities to develop your coaching skills

Listen actively

As a coach you need to be tuned into the other person's feelings and motivations. You do this through active listening. Active listening encourages communication and puts other people at ease. Active listening also clarifies what's been said to avoid misunderstanding. As an active listener, give the coachee your full attention by following guidelines:

• Maintain eye contact with the coachee.
• Smile to put the other person at ease.
• Avoid anything that will distract your attention. For example, don't answer the telephone. Only take notes if necessary.
• Be sensitive to body language such as posture and arm position. Is the person tense or relaxed?
• Listen first and evaluate later.
• Do not interrupt the other person except to ask questions to clarify and to encourage him to continue.
• Repeat in your own words what you think the other person has said.
• Wait until after he has finished talking to plan your responses.

What Would you Do? No Sign of Change

As Paula Sat through Tony's presentation, bored as a rock, the sad truth slowly dawned on her. He was making the same mistakes now that he had been making six months ago! His nose was buried in his notes. He was droning on and on, and he had not incorporated a single visual into the entire presentation! Yet they had spoken about his need to work on this very skill.

Tony had told her that public speaking was something he just couldn't do. Paula had assured him that with hard work and practice he could do it. He believed her and he kept trying. So why, then, was he still so bad at it? Was there something more she could do to help him improve?

Tip: Coach your direct reports; don't play psychologist. It's not appropriate and you are probably not qualified.

Ask questions

Asking questions is a valuable tool for understanding the other person and determining his or her perspective. Use both open-ended and close-ended questions. Each yields a different response.

Notice how this manager asks open-ended questions to uncover the employee's perspectives, listens actively to what is said, and then checks for understanding.

Ilka: Gonzalo, how do you feel the project is going?

Gonzalo: Pretty well. We're on schedule.

Ilka nods her head.

Gonzalo: But it's tight. There's no room to spare.

Ilka: Because�?

Gonzalo: Because when Jenna left, no one was hired to replace her.

Ilka: And because you've lost one person�?

Gonzalo: It's going to be really hard to meet the deadline.

Ilka: Are you saying that you'll deliver on time, but it will be difficult? Or that you may not be able to meet the deadline?

Gonzalo: Well, I think we can make the deadline, but there is a chance we might miss it.

Ilka: And if we want to be sure to finish on time�?

Gonzalo: We'd need more help.

Ilka: Perhaps we could look into getting some temporary help.

Tip: Ask a lot of open questions

Most managers ask too few.

Ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions invite participation and idea sharing. Use them to:

• Explore alternatives: "What would happen if�"
• Uncover attitudes or needs: "How do you feel about our progress to date?"
• Establish priorities and allow elaboration: "What do you think the major issues are with this project?"

When you want to find out more about the other person's motivations and feelings, think of open-ended questions. Though this type of questioning you can uncover your coache's true concerns. This, in turn, will help you formulate better advice and ideas about how you can help her.

Use close-ended questions carefully. Close-ended questions lead to "yes" or "no" answers. Use them to:

• Focus the response: "Is the project on schedule?"
• Confirm what the other person has said: "So, the critical issue is cost?"

Advocate for your opinions

Effective coaches offer their ideas and advice in such a way that the person receiving it can hear them, respond to them, and consider their value. It is important to advocate for your opinions in a clear and balanced way.

• Describe the individual's situation as you see it.
• State your opinion about the situation.
• Make the thoughts behind your opinion explicit, and share your experiences.
• Encourage the other person to provide her perspective.

Your collaboration with the coachee will be most successful if you use both inquiry and advocacy in your communications. Over-reliance on inquiry can result in the participants' withholding important information and positions. Conversely, if you emphasize advocacy too heavily, you create a controlling atmosphere that can undermine the coaching partnership.

Give feedback as a coach

Feedback differs from advocacy in that you are responding to a specific behavior or action rather than presenting and arguing your position on the overall problem or need for change. Giving and receiving feedback is a critical part of managing in general, but it is an especially important part of coaching. This give-and-take goes on throughout the coaching process as you identify issues to work on, develop action plans together, and assess the follow-through.

When giving feedback -- whether positive or negative -- try to do the following:

Focus on behavior -- not character, attitudes, or personality: Describe the other person's behavior and its effect on projects and/or coworkers. Avoid judgmental language, which only makes people defensive. For example, instead of saying, "You're rude and domineering," say, "I observed that you interrupted Fred several times during each of our last three meetings."

Be specific: Avoid generalizations. Instead of saying, "You did a really good job," you could say, "The transparencies you used for your presentation were effective in getting the message across."

Be sincere: Give feedback with the clear intent of helping the person improve.

Be realistic: Focus on factors that the other person can control.

Give feedback early and often in the coaching process: Frequent feedback that is delivered soon after the fact is more effective than infrequent feedback.

"Good coaches have coaches of their own. I can remember one time when I received timely and exquisite coaching. My boss gave me feedback about a self-defeating communication habit I'd gotten into. Because she was compassionate, caring, and clear as a bell in her description, I was able to see exactly what she was talking about and explore why I was caught in this pattern. I was then able to shift my style and get the kind of results I intended."

-- Patty McManus, consultant

Receive feedback as a coach

You also need to be open to feedback on how effective you are as a coach. Coaches who are able to request and process feedback about themselves learn more about the effectiveness of their management styles and create greater trust among members of their groups. To improve you ability to receive feedback:

Ask for specific information. For example, "What did I say that made you think I wasn't interested in your proposal?" or "How were my suggestions helpful to you?"

When you ask for clarification, do so in a way that doesn't put the other person on the defensive. Instead of saying, "What do you mean I seemed hostile to your idea?" say, "Could you give me an example?"

Be willing to receive both negative and positive feedback.

Encourage the other person to avoid emotion-laden terms. For example, "You said that I am often inflexible. Give me an example of things I do that give you the sense that I am not flexible."

Don't be defensive. Only justify your actions if asked. Tell the other person when you've gotten all the feedback you can effectively process.

Thank the person for being willing to share feedback with you, both positive and negative. This will improve trust and model productive behavior to the person you are coaching.

Building agreement

Agreements are the foundation of coaching. You build agreements in the beginning as you commit to working together, and throughout your relationship as you pursue the coaching objectives. The agreement process includes all the above activities from initially recognizing the need for coaching to observing to listening actively to one another and collaboratively coming to agreement about the issues and resolutions.

There has to be agreement between the coach and the coachee for the coaching process to work. However, agreement can range from skeptical acceptance to wholehearted involvement. When your coachee sees progress being made on changing behavior or building skills, then agreement will become easier to achieve.

Extracted from

Coaching People. Price: Rs 195.

Copyright 2006 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.

What makes an effective leader

What makes an effective leader

The cult of the heroic leader remains strong.

-- Loren Gary, editor

Effective leaders are not born with the gift of knowing how to lead. Rather, they gain experience, they absorb knowledge, they see and listen to the world around them - both inside the organization and beyond. Effective leaders are also capable of assuming the leadership qualities needed for specific situations. There are many kinds of effective leaders -- among them are�the charismatic leader, the transformational leader, and the pragmatic leader -- but these distinctive qualities can blend together in one person in different ways at different times.

Charismatic leaders seem to shine

A charismatic leader may seem to be born with a gift to inspire. Particularly during a crisis, people turn to this powerful voice for a grand vision and hope for solutions. Such a leader can clarify the situation for his people and instill the confidence they need. People feel safe handing off a problem to this type of leader.

What makes charismatic leaders such champions? They differ from the norm in greater self-confidence, energy, enthusiasm, and unconventional behavior. Charismatic leaders tend to:

• Have a clear, fresh, new, and creative vision
• Be completely devoted to their vision
• Make great sacrifices to achieve their vision, taking personal risks - financial, professional, social
• Create a sense of urgency among their followers
• Gain the absolute trust of their followers (and also fear)
• Use persuasion rather than forceful commands or democratic appeals for consensus to influence their followers

A charismatic leader is most successful during a crisis. For example, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a charismatic leader who led the United States out of the Great Depression and readied the nation for World War II. On the other hand, Adolf Hitler was also a charismatic leader who gave his defeated nation a new vision of power and might. Thus, charismatic leaders can have great power and influence, but how they use it determines whether their inspiration works for good or not.

However, most organizations are not in a continual state of peril. A lofty vision for achieving a grand mission may not be attainable, and the value of inspiration may dissolve into a need for everyday, step-by-step progress. Thus, charismatic leaders are not always the best type of leader.

"[The charismatic leader is] supposed to have the 'gift of tongues' with which he [can] inspire employees to work harder and gain the confidence of investors, analysts, and the ever skeptical press."

--- Rakesh Khurana, professor

Transformational leaders focus on the people and the task

Unlike charismatic leaders, transformational leaders remold an organization not through the force of their own personality but by appealing to their people, gaining their trust and respect. Transformational leaders achieve results by paying close attention to their group or team as they

• articulate a clear and compelling vision
• clarify the importance of the vision's outcome
• provide a well-defined path to attain the vision
• use symbols to realize their vision
• act with confidence, optimism, and self-determination
• encourage their people to work as a team rather than as individuals to reach the organization's goals
• empower people to make good decisions for the benefit of the whole

What makes transformational leaders effective is their ability to make their vision a clear, identifiable goal that can guide their team's actions to meet the goal. They trust their people, provide the resources they need, and encourage them to move forward.

Pragmatic leaders -- from the ideal to the real

The most apparent characteristic of pragmatic leaders is their focus on the organization rather than on people. Pragmatic leaders face the realities of business environment; they listen to and understand the truth, whether good or bad, hopeful or daunting. They are effective because they

• have a vision that is recognizable as a variation of the status quo
• listen carefully to their people
• make realistic decisions for the good of the organization
• manage by the numbers
• put the right people in the right positions to get the job done
• delegate responsibilities to people they can trust

Pragmatic leaders may not be as flamboyant or exciting as other types of leaders, but they get the job done. Pragmatic leaders are most effective when an organization is going through rough times or when the business environment is too turbulent to see far ahead, when a short-term, familiar vision is necessary.

After all, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were successful in attaining the goal of their Northwest journey. When they reached the Pacific Ocean in April 1805, Lewis wrote that he was "much pleased at having arrived at this long wished for spot."

Effective leaders are future-focused

In general, leaders who are effective now and in the future have learned how to be:

Future-focused: They create a vision, articulate it to their group, and stick with it. They understand how their unit or organization fits into the larger picture, and they organize short-term tasks according to long-term priorities.

Comfortable with ambiguity: They are willing to take calculated risks, can handle a certain level of disruption and conflict, and are willing to change their minds when new information comes to light.

Persistent: They can maintain a positive, focused determination in pursuing a goal or vision, despite the obstacles.

Excellent communicators: They know how to write clearly, listen closely, run meetings, make presentations, negotiate, and speak in public.

Politically astute: They have acquired a solid sense of their organization's power structure, listen carefully to the concerns of its most powerful groups, and know where to turn for the support and resources they need.

Level-headed: They know how to stay calm in the midst of turmoil and confusion.

Self-aware: They know themselves enough to realize how their own patterns of behavior affect others.

Caring: They have a demonstrated ability to empathize with other people's needs, concerns, and professional goals.

Humorous: When the situation warrants it, they know how to inject a little mirth to relive tension within a group.

Tip: Be the change you want to bring about -- model the behaviors you're trying to encourage.

Excerpted from:

Leading People�

Copyright 2006 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.� Price: Rs 195.�Reprinted by permission of�Harvard Business School Publishing.�All rights reserved.