Reflection four: Organizational culture We all want to work for Google David Owens-Hill Queens University of Charlotte

Introduction Admit it. You want to work for Google. Anyone who studies organizations would; their staff is ber-hip, their workspace is modern and furnished for fun as well as work, and the culture of the entire organization is one that encourages innovation in a business usually dominated by engineers and mathematicians. The first modern search algorithms created to crawl around the newly formed World Wide Web in the late 1990s and early 2000s were complex equations that processed and parsed dataa task that is difficult to make interesting for those not involved in the world of Information Technology. Its said that, from its very first days, Google has adhered to a one-sentence mission statement that summarizes the tone of their organizational structure: dont be evil. Googles operating mantra is as far from classical management as one can get. They see themselves as an organization rooted in systems theorythere is no one best way to do anything, and all activities are dependent on the activities of another in the group. The culture is one that is young and fun; Googles employees are overwhelmingly young and fun. Their workplace caters to the whims and desires of Millennials (those most likely to work for the company) and, in addition to catered meals and squat hierarchies, each employee is offered 20% time. Every programmer is asked to use twenty percent of their work time to develop projects that interest them and, if useful, these may become a Google offering. This is how both Google News and Google Reader entered the companys portfolio, and several philanthropic endeavors using technology have come out of this policy.

What can we learn from Google? When we study Googles organization with a cursory glance, we see that it looks like one Hell of a fun place to work (note that Im channeling Tom Peters sentiments here.) And, in fact, I would assume that it is a fun place to work. But we also see a furthering of the organizations interests. By hiring a primarily young and talented employee base, Google employees seem to often be unencumbered by familial responsibilities this means that they can work long hours developing products that are eventually launched into a highly competitive and fast paced field of technological products. I would venture to guess that, if the Googleplex (as the set of buildings housing the organization in California is known) were furnished with grey cubicles and employees were asked to tuck in their shirts, those long hours would feel burdensome. Because the young employees are used to long hours at top colleges, that particular atmosphere is familiar and welcomed. The result is a camaraderie among employees who work tremendously hard on projects for the company. The risk of a Google-like environment, and one that Google evaluates when they open new facilities, is that of loosing authenticity. Though costly, any company with the resources and time could replicate the physical nature of Googles environment. If you build a yoga studio, hire professional chefs to cater free lunches and offer scooters to traverse giant office buildings (as the Google Manhattan office managers recently did), you, too, could have a hip work environment. But if the attitudes of the management fall short of dont be evil and you dont encourage the freewheeling, multitasking Millennials to pusue their own interests while still working hard for your company, you

will not have replicated the jeune sequoi of this particular organization at this particular moment in time. The result of the Google work environment is greater than the sum of its parts. Its staff is hardworking and happy, and turnover rates are lower than the rest of silicon valley, but an outside observer wonders how long they can fiscally maintain this environment. Masseuses are expensive and providing one free of charge ultimately decreases the companies bottom line. The question of what we can learn from Google can be summarized in one small phrase: happy workers are more productive workers. Nothing new here. Human relations organizations said the same thing 30 years ago, but Google is pushing the extreme. They are making their employees happy not just with remuneration packages, but with benefits that encourage their intellectual and philanthropic interests. Their staff is rewarded for working on projects unrelated to the core mission, on the presupposition that nothing is irrelevant. Other leaders in the field Google is unique in the volume of their investment of employee satisfaction, but there are other, much smaller, companies who are also encouraging a more meaningful exploration of what their employees want as part of the new social contract. TOMS Shoes, who arguably make the ugliest shoe on the retail market, pledges to donate one pair of shoes to a developing country for every pair they sell. And then they do something magical: in addition to making the donation, they invest their employees in it. They encourage their staff to travel with the CEO and founder to developing countries to hand out the shoes and are always looking for new opportunities to share their

philanthropy. This comes not from a corporate mandate, but was the suggestion of the CEO and a few like-minded charitable co-workers. The lesson we learn from gargantuan Google the teeny-tiny TOMS is that the key to culture in an organization is not something that is pontificated in a mission statement or handed down from a board room. It is a current that runs through all activities in the organization. You cant speak culture into existence, rather it comes from like-minded people saying wouldnt it be great if and then doing whatever would be great. What can we learn from Google and TOMS? What can we learn from these organizations that classical management, human resources, human relations and all the others leave behind? Simply, we learn that workplace culture is two-way. It starts with authenticity from management in its desire to foster a productive and active culture. Its then reinforced by the worker in an active processthere is nothing passive about reinforcing culture. Because of the constant giveand-take of this reinforcement cycle (remember that not-reinforcing a culture shift is in the hand of the employees), culture is very fluid and cannot be prescriptive. Google returns 20% of its employees time so that they may work on whatever they want to and TOMS encourages philanthropy on a corporate and personal level. Its safe to say that neither of these approaches to managing employees was precedented , easy to implement, or completely cost effective, but all three make these two companies some of the most desirable employers in California.