In 2002 they experimented with a completely flat organization, eliminating engineering managers in an effort to break down barriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the collegial environment they’d enjoyed in graduate school. In their hearts they’ve long believed that management is more destructive than beneficial, a distraction from “real work” and tangible, goal-directed tasks.Ī few years into the company’s life, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin actually wondered whether Google needed any managers at all. As one software engineer, Eric Flatt, puts it, “We are a company built by engineers for engineers.” And most engineers, not just those at Google, want to spend their time designing and debugging, not communicating with bosses or supervising other workers’ progress. That skepticism stems from a highly technocratic culture. Since the early days of Google, people throughout the company have questioned the value of managers. Managers say that they’ve found their training to be invaluable, and managers’ ratings from direct reports have steadily risen across the company. Because these tools were built from the ground up, using the staff’s own input, they’ve been embraced by Google employees. In this article, Harvard Business School professor Garvin describes how Google has incorporated the detailed findings from the research into highly specific, concrete guidelines classes and feedback reports that help managers hone their essential skills. It also pinpointed exactly how, identifying the eight key behaviors of great Google managers. Mining data from employee surveys, performance reviews, and double-blind interviews, the team verified that managers indeed had a positive impact. Until recently, that was the case at Google, a company filled with self-starters who viewed management as more destructive than beneficial and as a distraction from “real work.” But when Google’s people analytics team examined the value of managers, applying the same rigorous research methods the company uses in its operations, it proved the skeptics wrong. High-performing knowledge workers often question whether managers actually contribute much, especially in a technical environment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2023
Categories |