Google, a search engine developed by two computer graduate students in 1998, now stand as tech giant in the world of technology. Google as we all know has reached new heights and has a universal coverage. It has just been a journey of 20 years and google display its versatility in the field of technology. Google has developed all the possible features, facilities, options, applications, accessibility, information, data and technology from all over the world into one common interface which is available to any person from anywhere in the world.
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“ Google: Management, Leadership and Communication ”
It is so that google has reached on every domain of technology, it has touched upon all the possible aspects like news, entertainment, electronic mails, YouTube etc. that is now very hard to say what google is missing on. Kim Scott, the director of Google’s AdSense online sales and operations shares her experience and tells how the company had grown from 3000 employees in 2004 to approximately 17000 employees. She also tells how google had adopted informal work culture and how entrepreneurial the environment was.
Though the employees were offered higher salaries and better positions in other companies, they denied it as they were always given the freedom to be innovative, efficient and creative with their work. Google has taken numerous measurements to make sure the employees had an interactive/socializing environment and not just work. They always looked 360 developed rather than being only profit oriented. In the cover letter of the company they even shared their vision and how they would rather sacrifice their short-term goals to achieve the long-term goals.
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Due to the rapid growth of company it is very hard to maintain the same work culture, the managers of the company are trying hard to maintain the same pillars on which the company was built on. Even though Google had achieved so much their journey was not easy as it seems to be.
Main challenges: The tremendous growth of the company had got the company into an all new level and it had new challenges to face
Rapid employment growth: The number of employees had grown in many folds since 2004. Employing the right candidate was the first big hurdle for the company. The company had a very stringent methods to hire the candidate. They hired those who had the thirst for knowledge, growth and innovations. They looked for people who learned from the circumstances. Promotion was the next problem, as the employees increased, assessing and promoting the deserved candidate became difficult.
The organizational structures: The company followed a distinctive structure or flat structure, but the growth of the company forced it to reshape the structure as per needs. For example, the Page and Brin appointed the new CEO and named themselves as the presidents. Or in other case, the group AdSense which consisted 90 employees in 2004 increased to 200 in 2008.
To keep the company entrepreneurial: Google known for its innovation and technology couldn’t afford to miss on the any opportunities to develop the new ideas. In order to tap on such opportunities and develop more, it had to keep its environment very entrepreneurial which gave freedom to its employees to think better and faster.
Decision making: The company had consensus style of decision making i.e. all the board members came together to make a major decision or it was made by one of them and later informed to the board. This led to compromises and delayed the decisions.
Collegiality: When the structure of the company is cross functional companionship and cooperation between the colleagues was not very easy.
Employee visibility: As the company grew and became cross-functional getting task done became difficult. The workers were stationed in different builds and at times dint know whom to approach.
International consistency: Around 40% of company’s employees were outsiders. First it was difficult to cultivate original culture into new atmosphere and communication and consistency was a challenge. It was vital because as the rewards to an organization comes from customer satisfaction.
Causes
Google was run as a “triumvirate” and its flat structure did not favor the hierarchy and titles. This caused the decision in the company to be delayed and as it was consensus oriented, discussions were needed with each other.
No team work, the distinctive environment was not very common elsewhere, the concept of team work leads to interaction between the employees. Here they had to govern themselves, which caused trouble as many new employees were new to this concept.
Recruitment flaws, only the A graders were picked, sometimes even if the candidate fit in with all the requirements, they weren’t selected as the recruiter failed to see their cognitive skills.
Promotions, due to large employee in a flat structure and lack of different criteria to assess from. The company chose people’s manager, this is because they thought that a well-managed workforce would be more productive. This ideology was a drawback because the homegrown talent was only recognized for some workers only.
By-products of rapid growth, as the company grew over the globe, it was hard to maintain the original culture that gave the freedom for the employees to be innovative.
Multiple time zones and location. The growth of the company led to stationing of employees based on their work or specialization. This made it hard to find human resources from other departments. Moreover, due to time differences scheduling a meeting was a very tricky job.
Recommendations: In the world of management there no right answer or wrong answer, it all depends on the situation. There are few idea of how to deal with challenges and to ensure there is structure, breakdown of work, proper distribution of work and finally genuine documentation of the whole project/ work carried out.
The CEO and other board members of the company should come out with a strong hierarchical structure that gives space to all different types of employees (like manager, software engineer etc.). It should contain the minimum time period one needs to work in order to be eligible for promotion, it should define different ranks according to the reporting officers and more. This structure will help the company stay more stable even with larger intakes of employees in the future.
The managers and reporting office should have weekly or monthly “innovative talk” i.e. to have an innovation incubator. This will keep the innovative culture of the company, the pillars it built on and at the same time the ideas are exchanged.
The human resource department could develop new strategies for recruiting new employees, recognizing their cognitive skills, emotional intelligence etc. . This can reduce the possibilities on missing out the right candidates during recruitment.
Inspire the new comers to interact and socialize this creates a friendly environment and motivates the employees to work harder.
Google is not top-down organization. The employees prefer to be mentored, rather managed.
Help the new international recruits understand the new culture and impart it along.
