put your hands together and please
welcome last lowball let's go come and
join me please thank you thank you very
much
fair to say I've been waiting to do this
for years having spoken about Google and
its culture for many many years I'm
really keen to find out this can't all
be true can it I think you know I think
from the outside and I get this question
all the time I add from the outside it's
all bean bags and lava lamps and free
food right people say like you know do
they get any work done what's going on I
got a call F maybe a year or two after I
got the job from a colleague who who
said you know our CEO wants to be as
innovative as Google listen okay
and they said what do we need to do and
I said well why don't you try actually
being more transparent and maybe record
the CEO staff meetings and let anybody
in the company watch them so they know
what's happening well he wouldn't like
that what if you have junior people in
the room to kind of take notes and then
be sort of emissaries and explain how
decisions get made no no it's very
confidential what if what if you do an
all-hands meeting where anyone can ask
questions mmm what if it's a dumb
question and he get now we couldn't do
that and we go down the list and down
the list down unless the suggestion box
no wouldn't like it and finally I said
you know good luck with the beanbags
because what what makes Google work is
not all that stuff it's a mission that
people can aspire to and there's a
tremendous amount of it high quality
academic research that says when you
give people a mission and people find
meaning in almost any job janitorial
jobs housekeeping people find meaning in
any kind of job it's possible and
connect that to the work they do they're
more productive they're happier they
stay with you longer so having a mission
change what is the mission of Google at
the moment so the mission is organize
the world's information and make it
universally accessible and useful I
remember my first meeting with Eric
Schmidt so I had all the good G training
and so I sit down with Eric who's our
CEO and you know he says what do you
think we should do and I said well you
know two years out of the IPO so we have
a bunch of people who are economic
volunteers and they're just here because
they want to be we need to plan for
succession we need to look at because
somebody might decide to just retire
tomorrow we needed to think about you
know what do we need to lock people in
if they've had this historic thing and
he looked at me and he said I think
you're completely wrong I don't think
any of that stuff matters I think we
should focus on hiring the best people
and building the best
well teams and not worry about retention
and succession planning if we have to do
succession planning something's gone
wrong and I thought I have gotten off on
the wrong foot so I cross your mind to
say I'm at the wrong place no no it
didn't
now it was quite the opposite actually
yes so his vision yeah
his dream which is quite a clear one
yeah but let me say quite an odd one yes
we've part of your role was to realize
that yeah as Juergen ization grew
yeah well this was this was a big lesson
for me because you know in consulting
you're taught you go and you solve the
problem in in your careers you're
successful because typically there's
some problem you go in you figure it out
and you go solve it right and you know
there's all this literature about and
you need a 30 day plan when you're in a
new job and and the big lesson for me
was you got to release your agenda you
know when you come into a new role like
that particularly coming like Google you
have to focus on what the people around
you think is important first even if
it's not the right stuff because you
have to build that credibility and
coming in you know they like my
background and they liked me but if I
were to say we need to focus on this
problem Eric explicitly said you are
wrong and that was a beautiful part of
the culture too right like he wasn't
being mean he wasn't being cruel he's
just being honest and so I had to find a
way to build that credibility over time
and I did it by focusing on okay what's
the most important thing while
recruiting okay
so my first year was probably 70 or 80
percent on recruiting issues and how to
make recruiting better and from there
slowly slowly I was able to build kind
of relationships and credibility you
talk about googliness yeah how would you
define googliness this intangible thing
you look for ugliness well so I try not
to say the word because it's kind of
like it's weird awful like everything
has to be Google everything but it's a
couple things when we went from a
recruiting perspective and when I talked
about it and everyone has a little bit
of a different definition there's kind
of three components one is do you bring
something different to the party so when
we talk about our culture and wanting
people to fit in we don't want people
who are like us there's enough tech
companies where everyone's the same and
everyone's kind of
grammar and they have their own way of
doing things that it's the same we don't
want that we have people to bring
something new to the party
second thing is we want intellectual
humility not regular humility we have
people with pretty big egos and you know
some of it can get a little obnoxious
and yeah because there are they're
people and that's what happens
but intellectual humility is the ability
to recognize when you're wrong the
ability recognized when you're presented
with new facts that your views of the
world should change in light of those
new facts you know I was I was delighted
when I came across research that said
you know in any job you can connect to
meaning right there's hope this is great
story about a guy in in New York City
and he works in a deli and his job this
guy's been doing this for 10 years his
job is to slice LOX do you call it locks
here yes smoked salmon I'm still
learning my language and that's what
he's been doing for a decade in New York
City and his name is chop Tichina a
Sherpa his last name is Sherpa because
until he was sort of like 20 years old
he was in Tibet and he was a Sherpa and
he started at age 11 you know sort of
slapping stuff up and down Mount Everest
and the journalist who interviewed him
said your job used to be helping people
summit Everest like achieve this
incredible epiphany this lifelong goal
you've been cutting fish for 10 years
surely that's a step down surely that's
a narrowing of scope and he said it's
exactly the same thing because in both
cases I'm serving people and trying to
find that connection and then trying to
have the science that says here's how
you do it if you've got this kind of
business problem this is a proven way to
fix that problem to make people feel
excited about what they do or to take
bias out of your recruiting system or to
pay people in a way that makes more
sense and makes your best people feel
even better that's what I wanted to do
it and you've done it fantastically
please please please put your hands
together