Donnerstag, 19. April 2007
Heute am Flug nach Zürich ein sehr inspirierendes Interview mit Google CEO Eric Schmidt gelesen!
Erstens legt Autor Fred Vogelstein schonungslos und mit einem guten Schuß Selbstironie offen wie Journalisten eben bei der Arbeit ticken:
Eighteen months ago, in November 2005, I interviewed Google CEO Eric Schmidt for a story I was working on for Fortune Magazine. I left the magazine before I finished the piece, and in a classic case of old media thinking, I didn’t publish the interview. It seemed like a great piece of research for a bigger Google story in the future, so I squirreled it away hoping for a better time to use it. When I finished my most recent interview with Schmidt at the end of March, I decided I’d made a mistake - that I needed to post it.
Das Interview ist wirklich großartig zu lesen und eröffnet viele sehr spannende Einblicke in die Google Kultur und das Management vom kleinen Startup zum "Weltkonzern".
Meine Highlights:
[...] For example, we had an accounting system which was an Intuit based system designed for five users, and they were using it for 20 people. It was too slow to use, so I suggested that they implement an Oracle system. It was a huge crisis. We ended up spending $100,000 for this. Larry and Sergey nearly had a cow over it (because they thought it was so expensive). A hundred thousand dollars is the cheapest Oracle system ever implemented in history I think.[...]
Sergey gives this nice speech about what is the biggest cost to Google. And everybody assumes it's like engineers or something. He says, "Opportunity costs." My answer, by the way, is taxes.[...]
And there were a number of times when I frankly had no idea what to do. But the solutions didn't come as a result of me sitting in a room and inventing it. I don't think Larry and Sergey sat in a room by themselves either. It was an iteration that involved the interactions of five or ten people over a period of time. And the characteristic of such group decisions done right is enormous buy-in.[...]
As large as we can fit in a room - 20 people. And the reason is that in a culture which is consensus driven, people need to see the decisions being made. So I don't say, "David, let's take it offline." We make the decision right in front of him. And he may or may not care, but when somebody comes up to him and says, "Well, were you there when they made this decision about" X, David can say, "Yeah". And it was a really, really loud argument, and I didn't really understand it, but they really had a big row about it.” So he's going to be a great witness inside the culture.[...]
Most executives of your caliber would have had a hard time making a triumvirate like Google’s work. How have you done it?
There's a bunch of stuff. Again, this is the benefit of having been around for a while. The situation where the outsider is brought in to work with the founders always results, in my experience, in one of the founders or the CEO leaving. The CEO packs the board with his buddies and then it causes the founders to leave. So I knew this coming in, well before I showed up on my first day here.[...]
What I don't understand is that the basic problem with matrix management is that it requires a huge number of people to get a project approved but only one person to blow it up.
Right, and that is the classic reason why consensus-based management doesn't work. So that may befall us as the company grows. Again, I make no warranties for the current model scaling It's working well now. [...]
So you get a flatter organization -- flatness is not a function of reporting hierarchy, it's a function of information flow. And again it's clear that Larry deserves a lot of the credit here when he sort of came up with this.[...]
How do people actually do 20 percent time? How do people actually figure out a way to actually get 20 percent of their time for that without working on weekends?
They work on weekends.
Do you compensate them in a way that encourages them to come up with these projects?
Yeah, but remember the kind of people who we hire are not here for the compensation, they're here for the impact. And there's essentially an internal draft system, that helps redistribute talent which is complicated and quite clever.
Do you actually have to declare what your 20 percent project is going to be?
People are encouraged to do so as part of the snippets.
Okay. That's the incentive.
But it's encouraged, not required. Again, there's things you measure and require and there's things that you encourage. The 20 percent is a cultural thing.
So you're encouraged to come up with an independent project, and if you're an engineer it's part of being able to sit at the lunch table with your peers and be respected?
That's right. Your peers all have one, so what's yours? [...]
Thanx - I learned a lot!
Erstens legt Autor Fred Vogelstein schonungslos und mit einem guten Schuß Selbstironie offen wie Journalisten eben bei der Arbeit ticken:
Eighteen months ago, in November 2005, I interviewed Google CEO Eric Schmidt for a story I was working on for Fortune Magazine. I left the magazine before I finished the piece, and in a classic case of old media thinking, I didn’t publish the interview. It seemed like a great piece of research for a bigger Google story in the future, so I squirreled it away hoping for a better time to use it. When I finished my most recent interview with Schmidt at the end of March, I decided I’d made a mistake - that I needed to post it.
Das Interview ist wirklich großartig zu lesen und eröffnet viele sehr spannende Einblicke in die Google Kultur und das Management vom kleinen Startup zum "Weltkonzern".
Meine Highlights:
[...] For example, we had an accounting system which was an Intuit based system designed for five users, and they were using it for 20 people. It was too slow to use, so I suggested that they implement an Oracle system. It was a huge crisis. We ended up spending $100,000 for this. Larry and Sergey nearly had a cow over it (because they thought it was so expensive). A hundred thousand dollars is the cheapest Oracle system ever implemented in history I think.[...]
Sergey gives this nice speech about what is the biggest cost to Google. And everybody assumes it's like engineers or something. He says, "Opportunity costs." My answer, by the way, is taxes.[...]
And there were a number of times when I frankly had no idea what to do. But the solutions didn't come as a result of me sitting in a room and inventing it. I don't think Larry and Sergey sat in a room by themselves either. It was an iteration that involved the interactions of five or ten people over a period of time. And the characteristic of such group decisions done right is enormous buy-in.[...]
As large as we can fit in a room - 20 people. And the reason is that in a culture which is consensus driven, people need to see the decisions being made. So I don't say, "David, let's take it offline." We make the decision right in front of him. And he may or may not care, but when somebody comes up to him and says, "Well, were you there when they made this decision about" X, David can say, "Yeah". And it was a really, really loud argument, and I didn't really understand it, but they really had a big row about it.” So he's going to be a great witness inside the culture.[...]
Most executives of your caliber would have had a hard time making a triumvirate like Google’s work. How have you done it?
There's a bunch of stuff. Again, this is the benefit of having been around for a while. The situation where the outsider is brought in to work with the founders always results, in my experience, in one of the founders or the CEO leaving. The CEO packs the board with his buddies and then it causes the founders to leave. So I knew this coming in, well before I showed up on my first day here.[...]
What I don't understand is that the basic problem with matrix management is that it requires a huge number of people to get a project approved but only one person to blow it up.
Right, and that is the classic reason why consensus-based management doesn't work. So that may befall us as the company grows. Again, I make no warranties for the current model scaling It's working well now. [...]
So you get a flatter organization -- flatness is not a function of reporting hierarchy, it's a function of information flow. And again it's clear that Larry deserves a lot of the credit here when he sort of came up with this.[...]
How do people actually do 20 percent time? How do people actually figure out a way to actually get 20 percent of their time for that without working on weekends?
They work on weekends.
Do you compensate them in a way that encourages them to come up with these projects?
Yeah, but remember the kind of people who we hire are not here for the compensation, they're here for the impact. And there's essentially an internal draft system, that helps redistribute talent which is complicated and quite clever.
Do you actually have to declare what your 20 percent project is going to be?
People are encouraged to do so as part of the snippets.
Okay. That's the incentive.
But it's encouraged, not required. Again, there's things you measure and require and there's things that you encourage. The 20 percent is a cultural thing.
So you're encouraged to come up with an independent project, and if you're an engineer it's part of being able to sit at the lunch table with your peers and be respected?
That's right. Your peers all have one, so what's yours? [...]
Thanx - I learned a lot!
Am Dienstag gab es eine sehr wichtige Veranstaltung - aus zweierlei Hinsicht. Zum einen wurde die k-Werkstatt eröffnet - naja noch nicht so, dass man dort arbeiten könnte, aber unsere erste Veranstaltung dort fand statt.
Das Knallgrau Quarterly
Wir werden gößer, unübersichtlicher - das erhöht den Kommunikationsbedarf und die Anforderungen an Unternehmenskultur und Teambuilding. Deshalb haben wir die Idee der Knallgrau Quarterlys ins Leben gerufen. Vierteljährlich gibt es ein ausgedehntes (~ 1/2 Tags) Informations- und Kommunikationsevent. Da sollen Geschäftsführung, Teamleiter und andere dann von Zahlen, Zielen, Strategien, Projekten, Produkten und wichtigen Entwicklungen berichten. Und alle sollten viele Fragen stellen, diskutieren, Feedback geben. Damit Kontext entsteht, damit sich jede/r eingebunden fühlt und sieht wie er/sie Teil eines großen Ganzen ist.
Das ist ein riesengroßer und wichtiger Schritt für uns (die Geschäftsführung) und ich hoffe auch für die MitarbeiterInnen. Wir werden uns müssen uns mehr disziplinieren Aufwand in interne Kommunikationsarbeit zu stecken. Wir glauben das ist wichtig.
Ich finde es war ein guter Start - für mich persönlich gabs noch zu wenig Fragen, zu wenig Feedback, zu wenig Bewegung. Aber das kann werden bis zum nächsten Mal...
Das Knallgrau Quarterly
Wir werden gößer, unübersichtlicher - das erhöht den Kommunikationsbedarf und die Anforderungen an Unternehmenskultur und Teambuilding. Deshalb haben wir die Idee der Knallgrau Quarterlys ins Leben gerufen. Vierteljährlich gibt es ein ausgedehntes (~ 1/2 Tags) Informations- und Kommunikationsevent. Da sollen Geschäftsführung, Teamleiter und andere dann von Zahlen, Zielen, Strategien, Projekten, Produkten und wichtigen Entwicklungen berichten. Und alle sollten viele Fragen stellen, diskutieren, Feedback geben. Damit Kontext entsteht, damit sich jede/r eingebunden fühlt und sieht wie er/sie Teil eines großen Ganzen ist.
Das ist ein riesengroßer und wichtiger Schritt für uns (die Geschäftsführung) und ich hoffe auch für die MitarbeiterInnen. Wir werden uns müssen uns mehr disziplinieren Aufwand in interne Kommunikationsarbeit zu stecken. Wir glauben das ist wichtig.
Ich finde es war ein guter Start - für mich persönlich gabs noch zu wenig Fragen, zu wenig Feedback, zu wenig Bewegung. Aber das kann werden bis zum nächsten Mal...
The America's Cup is getting hot and BMWOracleracing is doing quite well trying to win the famous pot ;-)
The BMWOracleRacingTeam Blog was our first social media project for our client the BMW Group. The project is running now for almost 2 years! Back then (June 2005) we could convince Tom Ehman, head of External Affairs for BMW ORACLE Racing, to run this exclusive Blog. As an experienced Blogger he knew from the first moment what kind of behind the scene information the international sailing and America's Cup fans were waiting for.
The "sailing market" is a real niche market with enthusiasts around the world - therefore it was crucial to set up the project as international as possible. The Blog should also offer some valuable insights for the leading sailing sport magazines worldwide. Within the first 12 months the top 3 sailing magazines took quotes right out of the blog and mentioned it in articles - an unexpected PR strike! But what mattered more was, that we were able to keep our audience over time and as we can see traffic is growing as we are coming close to the final decision.
I think the BMWOracleRacingteam Blog is a perfect example how companies and brands can show their engagement with a high level of authenticity and credibility over a long period of time and thus create sustainable impact in a strong target group.
The BMWOracleRacingTeam Blog was our first social media project for our client the BMW Group. The project is running now for almost 2 years! Back then (June 2005) we could convince Tom Ehman, head of External Affairs for BMW ORACLE Racing, to run this exclusive Blog. As an experienced Blogger he knew from the first moment what kind of behind the scene information the international sailing and America's Cup fans were waiting for.
The "sailing market" is a real niche market with enthusiasts around the world - therefore it was crucial to set up the project as international as possible. The Blog should also offer some valuable insights for the leading sailing sport magazines worldwide. Within the first 12 months the top 3 sailing magazines took quotes right out of the blog and mentioned it in articles - an unexpected PR strike! But what mattered more was, that we were able to keep our audience over time and as we can see traffic is growing as we are coming close to the final decision.
I think the BMWOracleRacingteam Blog is a perfect example how companies and brands can show their engagement with a high level of authenticity and credibility over a long period of time and thus create sustainable impact in a strong target group.
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