Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I usually don't read business books, but I was intrigued by the the subject of this book. Who wouldn't want to know about how Google achieved market domination, became one of the largest companies on the planet, and has vowed to "don't be evil?" (Do other companies say, we won't be evil unless it suits our purposes?)
The book was written by Bernard Girard, a French management consultant who has been observing the Google "phenomenon" for years.
It is divided into an introduction, and three sections. The sections talk about current management, putting users first, and sustainability of the current model. Business history of rife with stories of companies that dominated their market niche, but weren't able to sustain their positions. General Motors is the current example that comes to mind, but there are many.
I work in the medical area, and have run or been involved in small medical businesses for many years. I found the descriptions of the Google way to mesh with what I've have found to work in small businesses of 10 to 20 employees. I was surprised to learn that general management theory subscribes to a different set of rules for larger business. Google hasn't followed many of these bromides.
Here are the author's main points about the current Google business model:
There is a triumvirate management. This provides checks and balances, and a wider, more democratic information flow so that decisions are made on the basis of more information. It doesn't allow one person to go off on a personal tangent and take the company with him.
Every effort is made to recruit the most qualified people, particularly people with graduate degrees.
Google allows employees to spend 20% of their time on a project not approved by the company. They "trust" the employee to do something good for Google with this time, but leave much of the decision making to the employee. I would call this a form of employee empowerment.
Peer review is encouraged (democratization of the work force)
Encourage innovation. Many examples of concrete ways to implement this are given in the chapter.
Be like a Swiss Army knife. Try to make a complete tool set for most jobs that internet savvy folks will pursue.
Measure everything. Development mathematical formulas that model the real activity of the business, and monitor their outcomes on a regular basis.
Keep teams small. This improves intra-team communication, and is more efficient.
Create tools that allow teams and divisions to easily communicate (think blogs, twitter-like apps, etc.)
Learn to use simple tools in concert to accomplish big tasks (think thousands of linux blade servers running custom software to accurately model the internet, and use that model for very quick and accurate searches)The rest of the book talks about more intangible issues, making the users first, various issues related to how the internet functions, copyright issues, sustainability of the enterprise in its current form, and others.
People who run small businesses will recognize most of these principles, and in fact already have implemented many of them. I suspect that Sergey Brin and Larry Page intuitively knew what would work best with the bright people they planned to hire for their company. They created a company that in many ways modeled a graduate school environment. Google has been successful in part because it has empowered (given responsibility to) its employees, creates tools that are used by both employees and customers, and has kept bureaucracy to a minimum. If only our government could learn the same lesson.
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