Google

Have enough data and computing power to solve any challenge facing humanity

Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful

Create values that focus on doing the right thing

• Focus on the user and all else will follow.
• It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
• Fast is better than slow.
• Democracy on the web works.
• You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
• You can make money without doing evil.
• There’s always more information out there.
• The need for information crosses all borders.
• You can be serious without a suit.
• Great just isn’t good enough.

Provide unbiased, accurate, and free access to information regardless of the user's location, language, or background

The smart, creative, and optimistic sage

These sages see themselves as both "smart creatives" and "technology optimists" who believe in the power of technology and shared information to make the world a better place.

As technology optimists, "where others see a dystopian future like The Matrix, we see Dr. Leonard McCoy curing the Saurian virus with a wave of his tricorder...We see most big problems as information problems, which means that with enough data and the ability to crunch it, virtually any challenge facing humanity today can be solved. We think computers will serve at the behest of people—all people—to make their lives better and easier."

As smart creatives, they are analytically smart, competitive, and know that greatness doesn't always happen between 9 and 5. They are not afraid to fail, and are always questioning the status quo. They are empathetic and value collaboration. Fundamentally, they all possess business savvy, technical knowledge, creative energy, and a hands-on approach to getting things done.

Conversational, friendly, and respectful

With a global audience in mind, Google looks to craft their voice so it is clear, precise, and unambiguous. However, they don't want to come off cold or unnatural. Instead, they try to "sound like a knowledgeable friend who understands" the user.

Information access

In their open letter to shareholders, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page explain their belief on the importance for "everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see." For Sergey and Larry, it is Google's responsibility to the world to provide "free and unbiased access to high quality information."

The quality and accessibility of the information is measured along five axes:

• Speed: How fast is the information provided?
• Accuracy: How relevant is the information to the user?
• Ease of use: Can it be accessed and easily understood by everyone?
• Comprehensiveness: Is all information being taken into consideration?
• Freshness: How up-to-date is the information?

Sergey and Larry's focus on free information access extends beyond Google Search and is integrated into all of Google's information services, like Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Maps, Translate, Scholar—and the list goes on.

User-centered design

Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page believe that for Google to be successful, they had to put the user at the center of their business. Focusing heavily on collecting user data, analyzing technology trends, and A/B testing ideas, Google develops key technology insights and turns them into user-centered products. These insights have been at the core of Google's most successful products:

• Search used links to determine the importance of web pages, rather than the content on the page.
• AdWords ranked and placed ads on a page based on their value to the user, rather than just by who was willing to pay more.
• News grouped stories by topic, not sources.
• Chrome was developed to be a faster browser to accommodate the growing complexity and power of new websites.

Innovation

When looking for a new market to enter into, Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg recommend not looking for an empty space where there is no competition. Instead, Google differentiates themselves by innovating within a market that is or will be large, like they did with search.

In order to determine if an idea is innovative enough for Google to pursue, it has to:

• Address a big challenge or opportunity that could impact millions, if not billions, of people
• Have a solution that is radically different from anything currently in the market
• Be based on technologies that are at least feasible and achievable in the not too distant future

Google's Project Loon is an example that meets all three criteria as it hopes to provide broadband internet access to billions of people, who don't have it yet, by using helium balloons.

Leave markets if they don't share your values

In 2006, Google entered the Chinese market with a localized Chinese site, Google.cn. Founder, Sergey Brin, protested this move because it meant that they would have to abide by the Chinese government's censorship policies. However, other leaders felt that the most ethical option was to offer this large market censored information and work on "helping change government censorship practices."

But in 2010 after cyberattacks targeted Google's intellectual property and the Gmail accounts of human rights activists, Google's leadership changed their minds. They felt that the "behavior [they] were seeing was evil" and conflicted with their values. Instead of continuing to comply with the government, Google stopped their search service in China completely.

Prioritize innovation by using the 70-20-10 rule

Google uses the 70-20-10 rule to ensure that their time and resources are spent on improving their core products but also on growth and brand new innovations.

How Google allocates their resources:

• Spend ~70% on incremental improvements to your core product that can be done in a year. This ensures that the core business always gets the majority of the resources. Think 'ship and iterate.'
• Spend ~20% on expanding products into new markets. These projects can take up to 3 years to implement but ensures that you allocate resources for growth and expansion.
• Spend ~10% on completely new ideas that have a high risk of failure but can be groundbreaking. This allows moonshot ideas to have a chance without fear of getting their budgets cut.

Google's top 100 projects are managed on a spreadsheet and then organized into these three buckets. The prioritization of the list is reviewed and adjusted semi-quarterly and is always available for staff to see on the company's intranet.

Test and measure everything

Anything Google does more than once is measured and then improved upon. For Google Search alone, they will conduct over 8,000 A/B tests and more than 2,500 one-percent tests in a given year. That averages out to roughly 30 experiments a day so that they can better understand what works best for their users.

All testing is done in-house as Google finds using consultants to be too costly. They also don't want to run the risk of missing out on any insights that might have been overlooked by non-Googlers.

Measure user experience with HEART

Without being able to effectively measure the success of your products or services, it will be impossible to know if your choices were right, wrong, or somewhere in the middle. To solve for this, Google measures the quality of the user experience using the HEART method:

• Happiness: How satisfied are users with your product?
• Engagement: How how long do users engage with your product?
• Adoption: How many users subscribe, enroll, or sign up for your product?
• Retention: How many users consistently come back to your product?
• Task success: Can users accomplish their goals quickly and easily?

How to use the HEART method:

• Step 1: Set goals. When setting goals, Googlers will ask themselves: "What do we want a customer to say after using our product?”
• Step 2: Define signals. Map your goals to related user actions, behaviors, or attitudes.
• Step 3: Choose metrics. Based on your signals, create measurable and trackable metrics.

See an example of the HEART method in action.

Google HEART Framework Example

Set goals with Objectives and Key Results

At the beginning of each quarter, Google leadership sets clear company-wide goals called OKRs, Objectives and Key Results. Based on these corporate OKRs, staff create personal OKRs that align with the organization's. Everyone's OKRs are then posted publicly on the intranet, right next to the person's phone number and office location.

How OKRs work

• Objectives are qualitative descriptions of what you want to achieve. They should be short, motivational, and challenging. To avoid overextension of your teams, only pick three to five Objectives.
• Key Results are quantifiable ways to track your progress towards an Objective. They must be tangible, measurable, and unambiguous. Choose around three Key Results for each Objective.

Each Key Result is graded on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 and then averaged together to determine the final score for the Objective. The "sweet spot" score is around 60-70%. Google has found that allowing this much room for failure, empowers employees to set stretch goals that help keep the company innovative and advancing forward.

View OKR examples

Create an amazing playground for the world's smart creatives to solve big problems

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to create a company where people can "do cool things that matter." To accomplish this, they focused on hiring smart and creative people, giving them as much freedom as possible, and creating a culture around them that was based on four cornerstones:

• Mission: Create a clear mission that has the potential to impact many lives and empowers staff to help achieve it.
• Transparency: Build trust by setting your default assumption to: All information can and should be shared with coworkers.
• Voice: Give everyone a real say in how the company is run by providing platforms to offer input, give feedback, or present ideas.
• Space: Provide a physical environment that inspires creativity and that takes care of life's everyday needs so employees don't have to worry about little things.

Have staff give feedback to their managers

At Google, employees provide feedback to their managers on a semi-annual basis through an anonymous survey called the Upward Feedback Survey. The questions were developed using data from annual surveys and performance evaluations that helped Google define the 10 behaviors that made quality managers.

The aggregated results are shared with the manager and managers are then encouraged to:

• Choose the most important theme and create an action plan on ways to improve
• Discuss the results and action plan with the team
• Follow up with clear commitments to action

The goal of the survey is not to directly impact a manager's performance rating or compensation, but to provide them with valuable developmental feedback.

Have no less than seven direct reports

When it comes to organizational design, Google's rule is to keep it as flat as possible.  At Google, there are only four levels of employment: individual contributor, manager, director, and vice president. For a while, Google experimented with having no managers at all but then landed on the guideline that managers should have no less than seven (7) direct reports.

While this is the complete opposite of most servant leadership practices, Google believes that their philosphy:

• Makes it nearly impossible for managers to micro-manage
• Increases employee freedom
• Gives all staff direct access to decision-makers

Share everything at weekly town hall meetings

Attending Google's TGIF weekly company-wide town hall meetings is like "scoring a Willy Wonka golden ticket. [Google] puts it all out there, sharing stuff that in most companies would stay carefully hidden."

After 30 minutes of demos, coming attractions, and screenshots of products under development, employees are encouraged to ask tough questions and voice their disagreement on company strategy and social decisions. Leadership are than held accountable by staff to answer every question honestly and authentically.

How questions are answered during the Q&A

• Questions are submitted on the intranet (or in person) for everyone to see
• Staff vote on the questions that they want answered
• The questions with the highest votes are answered first
• Staff vote on the quality and transparency of the answer with red and green paddles

In the company's first twenty years, with an average 80% attendance rate, Google suffered roughly one major leak each year. Each time, there was an investigation, and whether the leak was deliberate or accidental, that person was fired.

Watch a full TGIF town hall meeting

Be frugal and extra generous with benefits

When introducing new benefits, Google wants to ensure that any benefit will help their employees in at least one of three ways: Improving efficiency, building community, and driving innovation.

And while most of these benefits and perks cost nothing, except for the time it takes to set them up, Google does think it is important to be extra generous during times when employees need their employers most—especially when it comes to:

• Life insurance: If an employee passes away, the surviving partner will receive 50% of the Googler's salary for the next 10 years. If there are children, the family receives an additional $1,000 each month until the child turns 19, or 23 if they are a full-time student. While very generous, the cost runs about 1/10th of 1% of payroll.
• Paternity leave: Parents receive their full salary, bonus, and stock vesting for the time they are on leave, which ranges from 18 to 24 weeks. New parents also receive a $500 bonus to spend on home delivery meals for those first few extra tiring weeks.

View Google's benefits

Create opportunities for staff to share their ideas

At Google, employees are given many different opportunites to share their work with anyone that is curious:

• Employees can call informal meetings or host a Tech Talk to share what they are working on.
• Gong Show-like presentations are held where staff present their ideas until they are gonged off stage. The better the idea the longer the person is allowed to present.
• 'Beer and Demos' nights take place every Friday for employees to have a drink, watch tech demos, and then vote on the best demos by placing marbles in jars.

As Google sees it, "all of these opportunities create an atmosphere of constant, bubbling creativity and stimulation, while also giving people a break from their day-to-day work to recharge their imaginations."

Create moments of serendipity to spark creativity

To maintain an innovative culture, Google orchestrates serendiptous moments where staff can come together in unexpected ways to have interesting conversations. A few examples include:

• Managing the length of cafeteria lines to increase 'casual collisions' between people
• Placing microkitchens between departments to draw different groups together
• Setting up Random Lunches between employees who have never met
• Hosting more than 2,000 email lists for employee run clubs
• Creating common areas for games and activities
• Hosting Google talent shows

While some of these cost money, most "cost almost nothing but the time spent dreaming them up and the snacks and drinks provided."

Pay unfairly

Google knows from experience that two people doing the same work can make drastic differences in impact. For this reason, compensation is determined by impact—not tenure or title. This results in higher performing employees receiving much larger bonuses than less impactful employees.

However, to avoid a culture of jealousy and resentment, Google ensures that impact is measureable and employees have a clear understanding of ways they can improve. In order to do this, managers:

• Set clear objectives with measurable results for each job role
• Provide regular check-ins to give staff an understanding of where they are in their progress
• Have staff fill out self-assessments each year
• Have peers provide 360-degree feedback on the employee's strengths, weaknesses, and contributions to specific projects

Managers then hand over this data to a committee to make the final decision on compensation. By using committees, Google has found that this helps to avoid bias and also removes any frustration being targeted directly at the manager by underperforming employees.

Allow staff to use 20% of their time to explore new ideas

A non-formalized and unenforced policy at Google is to give engineers the freedom to spend 20% of their time on ideas that aren't core to their jobs but are still related to Google's work. This policy has resulted in the creation of popular products like Gmail, Google Now, and AdSense. And even though not all projects end up launching, Google believes this is the "best educational program a company can have."

Create weekly status reports

At the end of every week, Google employees take 10 minutes to jot down their accomplishments and challenges of the week and what they plan to achieve the following week. These 'snippets' are then uploaded to Google's intranet for everyone to see. As a result of these updates:

• Staff are able take time to reflect on their accomplishments which has shown to increase happiness and reduce burnout
• Managers can identify challenges before they get out of hand
• Staff are equipped with evidence of their impact come review time when they want to ask for a raise or promotion
• Transparency is increased as all co-workers are aware of their peer's work
• Time is saved by removing long 'status update' meetings from everyone's calendar

Give experience awards, not cash awards

It is well known and accepted by Google staff that top performers receive much higher compensation than average employees. Any jealousy is reduced because salaries are a private matter and not shared. However, Google's large end-of-year cash awards given to top performers are very public.

After receiving criticism from staff, Google ran experiments to see if employees would be happier with experiential awards instead. Google created a control group of staff who were given cash, and experimental groups who were given trips, team parties, and other gifts of the same value as the cash awards.

When surveyed, staff found experiential awards to be "28% more fun, 28% more memorable, and 15% more thoughtful." Five months later Google surveyed winners again only to find that the happiness of cash recipients dropped by 25%, while the experimental groups were even happier about the experiential award than when they received it. Google has given out experiential awards since.

Nudge employees to make better decisions

Google constantly looks for ways to improve the quality of their employees' lives through small and simple interventions throughout the day called nudges. Nudges are designed to change behavior in a positive and predictable way by influencing choice—not dictating it. Through nudges, Google has been able to:

• Increase the amount employees contribute to their 401k. Anyone who has not contributed or is not on track to max out their 401(k) contributions receives an email noting their year-to-date contributions.
• Reduce the consumption of unhealthy foods. Healthier foods are placed in open counters and at eye level. Less healthy snacks are placed on lower shelves or in opaque containers.
• Increase portion control for meals. Smaller plate options were introduced in the café accompanied by informational cards and posters referencing data on how people who ate off smaller plates on average consumed fewer calories, but felt equally full.
• Improve security. After many failed email attempts to stop staff from holding doors open for others without checking ID badges, Google placed a silly cartoon sticker of a half man, half aligator on every door reading: Anyone can be a tailgator. Its absurdity became an ice breaker and helped make it okay for people to check IDs.

Send a reminder to managers on how to onboard new hires effectively

On the Sunday before a new hire starts, managers at Google receive a just-in-time email outlining the five most important steps to take with their Nooglers:

1. Have a role-and-responsibilities discussion that answers these questions:
   • What are the goals and measurable results that your Noogler will need to achieve in their first quarter?
   • How does your Noogler's role connect with Google's business goals? The team's goals?
   • When will your Noogler's first performance management conversation be, and how will their rating be determined?
2. Match your Noogler with a peer buddy.
3. Help your Noogler build a social network.
4. Set up onboarding check-ins once a month for your Noogler's first six months.
5. Encourage open dialogue.

The email is specifically sent at this time and kept short and simple, so that it is easier to remember and is more likely to be executed on correctly. Managers who did take action on these five steps had their new hire become fully effective 25% faster than their peers.

Survey staff on more than engagement

Google believes that engagement surveys alone "don’t tell you precisely where to invest your finite people dollars and time." Instead, Google's annual employee survey, Googlegeist, asks employees 100 questions around three key categories:

• Innovation: Is Google's culture focused on taking enormous, visionary bets and does their strategy value the improvement of products?
• Execution: How do employees feel about the quality of Google products?
• Retention: Are employees engaged and do they feel valued?

Questions are scored on a five-point scale with some free-response follow-up questions. Employees choose whether their responses are completely anonymous or confidential, where only general information is collected.

All data is shared with the entire company within one month of the survey, and every manager with more than three respondents receives an indvidualized report. Individualized reports of vice presidents, that had over 100 respondents, are shared with the entire company.

Limit the number of interviews, and keep them short

Google believes that if you research a candidate thoroughly and ask the right questions, there is no need to have an interview last longer than 30 minutes. A shorter interview limits the time for small talk, removes meaningless questions, and "forces people, including (especially!) you, into a substantive discussion."

While candidates can interview several times during the recruitment process, Google put a limit on the number of interviews for each candidate. After analyzing the data, Google discovered that after one interview, hiring staff were ready to make a decision about 75% of the time. By interview four, the confidence to make a decision rose to 85%. After that, the ability to make a decision plateaued. Google then rounded the number up, limiting the number of interviews to five—a nice prime number.

Hire by committee

Managers at Google can say 'no' to any candidate, but if they find someone that they want to hire, they need the candidate to be approved by a committee first. This is to offset any over eagerness the hiring manager may have to just fill the position with a warm body, rather than find the right person for the role and the company's culture.

The committee is made up of five people from a variety of levels and departments. Together they review a 'candidate packet.' This 50+ page document is developed by the hiring manager and includes:

• A one-page summary with the key facts of the candidate
• The candidate's resume in its original format with any typos or bad formatting in place
• The interview questions and responses with the best and worst responses highlighted
• Additional information including compensation history, reference information, awards, and writing or coding examples

The comittee makes a decision by consensus, not by majority vote. They either vote to hire, not hire, or to request more information. After they make their final decision, they also provide feedback to hiring managers on how they can improve their interview skills and offer training or shadowing sessions.

Use structured interviewing

To avoid unconscious biases, Google uses the same interview questions and same grading scale for each role to ensure hiring decisions are based on consistent, predetermined qualifications. Structured interviews have increased Google's ability to indicate who will do well at the job, shortened the interview process, and has left both candidates and interviewers happier.

Structured interviewing process:

• Use vetted, high-quality behavioral and hypothetical questions that are challenging and relevant to the role. Avoid brain teasers.
• Record comprehensive feedback of candidate answers so hiring committees can easily review responses.
• Score the candidate using standardized guidelines to ensure reviewers are aligned in knowing what is good, mediocre, and poor responses. See Google's grading rubric.

Create an employee-to-employee learning culture

Rather than relying on academics, consultants, and professional trainers to train their staff, Google has their top performers do it instead. By doing this, "you not only have a teacher who is better than your other salespeople, but also someone who understands the specific context of your company and customers." While this does detract the time your top salesperson has to sell, Google has found that the total number of sales goes up across the team.

Google also has a G2G (Googler-to-Googler) program that allows any employee to hold a teaching seminar on any topic. Topics range from "highly technical (search algorithm design; a seven-week mini-MBA) to the simply entertaining (tightrope walking; fire breathing; history of the bicycle)." In fact, "80% of all tracked trainings" are run through this program.

Nudge your new hires to be proactive

During orientation, Google sets aside 15-min to explain to Nooglers the benefits of being proactive, and provides them with five specific actions to take:

1. Ask questions, lots of questions!
2. Schedule regular 1:1s with your manager
3. Get to know your team
4. Actively solicit feedback—don't wait for it!
5. Accept the challenge (ie. take risks and don't be afraid to fail...other Googlers will support you).

As an experiment, two weeks after orientation, some Nooglers received a follow-up email reminding them of these five actions. Those who received this nudge were "more likely to ask for feedback, became productive faster, and tended to have a more accurate sense of their own performance than" those who didn't receive the email. Google now sends this reminder to all Nooglers.

Promote by committee

Besides not having final say on who to hire, Google managers are also not allowed to promote any of their staff without committee approval. This allows promotions to be evaluated equally across the company as managers might define their "best people" differently.

Managers can, however, nominate their employees for a promotion, or individuals can nominate themselves. The promotion committee will then review a promo packet that contains:

• Recommendations from colleagues
• Examples of work, and
• Data showing how the impact you have made merits a promotion

These documents are then compared to a set list of pre-determined criteria and an Unbiasing Performance Review Checklist to ensure fairness. The process takes two to three days, and if rejected, the employee can be nominated again in six months.

Keep your products simple and focused

While competitors focused on building multi-media news portals where search was one of many features, Google focused on creating a portal where search was the only feature. Google's clean, uncluttered search page was a result of the prevailing belief that users just wanted a single portal to all of the internet where what they were looking for instantly appeared before them with one click.

Google's portal was so simple and clean that, at first, users would not type anything into the search field, thinking that the page had to finish loading. To remedy this, Google added a copyright at the bottom—not because they had to, but just as a nudge to say that the page was finished loading.

Challenge internal taboos

Parisian Love was Google's first ever TV spot created by Special Guest. Conventionally, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were opposed to big television campaigns, as they saw them as a waste of resources that could be better spent on hiring more engineers. But this cultural norm was the exact reason why they ended up creating the ad. As Larry Page described it, the ad "sort of violates every known principle that we have, and every once in a while, you should test that you really have the right principles. You don't want to end up too rigid."

In the end, Ad Age called it "one of the best campaigns of the 21st century," and Time put it on its list of the "19 Best Super Bowl Ads of all Time.”