Talking about capability and people – Laszlo Bock
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by
progturnaround
in Uncategorized
Google are in the news a lot and much of the press recently has been negative. James Damore, a Google employee, claimed there is a bias against some staff based on their political views. There has been much criticism of content “censorship” on YouTube, with some prolific contributors having their videos demonetised. In the world of GDPR, the upcoming Europe-wide data protection legislation, Google to some represent the greatest threat to personal data privacy. As for their tax arrangements, well let’s just say they are efficient.
And yet they have truly been the business success story of the 21st century. In his book “Work Rules”, Lazlo Bock who was a senior HR VP there, gives a fascinating account of how Google created a very powerful people-centric culture. It describes the three components of that culture being vision, transparency & voice. He sums up their approach as follows:
“Give people slightly more trust, freedom, and authority than you are comfortable giving them. If you’re not nervous, you haven’t given them enough”
However only some people can thrive and prosper in that kind of environment and people selection is therefore key. There is a powerful and perhaps controversial case here that companies should increase their spend on recruitment relative to training; if you take more time (and effort and cost) to get the right people, they will not need quite so much expensive development to make them great. That said, the case of Mr Damore shows that even Google don’t always get it right.
Here is a maxim that I love: “Only hire people smarter than you”
With freedom & autonomy must come accountability and that needs decisive performance management, focussing effort on developing the best and taking swift action to address issues with under performers. Bock cut his HR teeth at GE, fabled for their annual cull of the bottom 10%, and you can read echoes of that here. That may be harsh but I have never regretted acting promptly to deal with weak performers or helping people in the wrong roles finding something else they can excel at.