Now gradually this has been scaled back a little bit.
It's not quite so
much a, a part of the day-to-day work, as perhaps used to be the case.
But it's still very much in the ether that individuals should be encouraged to dabble
in their own projects, as well as working on whatever they've been assigned to.
Third, teams are very small project teams are often literally one or
two people, perhaps half a dozen.
Why is that important?
Because it means they can work much more collaboratively, much more efficiently.
They can get ideas out much quicker.
They can get into the cycle of prototype, can get tested, and
refined using users much more quickly than,
if they have an enormous team trying to create the perfect product.
So, rapid approach strategies will be part of the model.
And then, in order to make sure that people know what each other are doing,
they've got various mechanisms for collaboration, for sharing.
And one of them is the, the weekly meeting, whereby the founders, Larry and
Sergey stand up and talk about what the company's doing, and
they answer any and all questions from employees.
Now, obviously, in the early days, when it was, let's say,
50 employees, that was dead easy to organize.
How on earth do you scale that?
Well, they continue to have the model, whereby, once a week, there is some sort
of opportunity for employees all around the world, to dial in to essentially
a webinar where Larry and Serge are talking about what's happening that week.
So obviously you can't scale it exactly, but they've continued with this
notion that all information about the company should be shared.
Finally, it's important to note that the founders, Larry and
Sergey, continue to exact, roughly speaking, control over the company.
They've split the company into company shares into voting and nonvoting shares,
and between the two of them, they control most of the, the voting shares.
And what that means, of course, is that they can continue to call the shots,
even though it's a limited liability company with, with external shareholders.
So what they said at the time of their initial public offering,
they said we're not an ordinary company, we don't intend to be, become one.
You know, if you buy into Google shares, you're doing it because you're
betting on us, and as long as we're in control, we're going to do it our way.
And over the next, you know, decade or
so, the company has grown significantly, it's 50,000 or so employees.
Obviously as a company that size,
there is some level of formal processes and procedures.
But they've done their utmost to continue to con, to, to manage with all of
these informal ways of working that, that were, that were baked in at the outset.
So, they are desperately trying to insure that their model,
their management model which has really been a big driver of their success,
continues to enjoy even though its now quite a large company.
Julian BirkinshawProfessor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship
