ITB435 GLOBAL LEADERSHIP COURSE

CASE STUDY

Larry Page and His Leadership Style

by
Kazım Bayram
1203041004

Ankara
2016
Introduction
Leadership is one of the most important characteristics and necessity of human life. Since the

Paleolithic era, some people need someone who leads and advances them. For this reason, some

people lead to these people. And people who lead to communities and organizations are called

"leaders". Leaders are very important for a community, organization and business. The success

of an organization mostly depends on the leader of the organization. Like communities and

people, companies have leader(s). As an organization, Google has an effective and effective

leader: Larry Page. In this article, an analysis of Larry Page's leadership style and how that

leadership affected Google before 2015 is discussed.

About Larry Page

Born in Michigan in 1973, Larry Page's parents were both computer experts, so it was no

surprise that he studied computer engineering at Stanford University. That's where he met

Sergey Brin. Together, Page and Brin developed a search engine that listed results according

to the popularity of the Page’s, calling it "Google." Since launching Google in 1998, the

company has become the world's most popular search engine, averaging nearly 6 billion

searches daily in 2013. (Biography.com Editors, 2015)

On August 10, 2015, Page and Brin announced the creation of a new parent company called

Alphabet to oversee Google and other subsidiaries. Page and Brin were set to serve as the new

company's CEO and president, respectively. (Biography.com Editors, 2015).

Larry Page is ranked 8th at the Forbes Powerful People 20161.

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https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-page/

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Larry Page and Leadership Styles
Larry Page was Google's CEO before 2015, one of the world's best internet companies. Also,

he is an innovation leader. Those individuals who lead a new product or service through

ideation, design, development, market launch and implementation (Hunter, et al., 2012). As

per of Forbes, Google and its services created sole by Larry Page and Sergey Brin only assisted

Larry Page in structuring the company. In addition, leadership skills in innovation, patience

and situational approach to employee empowerment have helped Larry Page successfully

design Google's governance structure (Elmer, 2011).

In Page’s second term (2011-2015), he restructured a plateauing organization. Before Larry

Page resumed control of the company in 2011, Google had sort of fallen into a "left hand didn't

know what the right hand was doing" situation, a former Google employee tells us (D'Onfro,

2014).

Google’s success depends on the following leadership strategies of Larry Page (Elmer, 2011):

 To pay attention to the innovative ideas and use the best opportunities to implement
them
 To concentrate on team work
 To avoid use of bureaucracy
 To adopt a quick and concise work structure
 To recognize the importance of small changes within the organization.

With these strategies, Google Inc. has announced the best workplace by Fortune in 2016.

Google has implemented independent thinking for employees. The implementation of the 70-

20-10 norm in the organizational model helped Larry Page reduce the employees' turnover to

0%. The broader employee rights, the existence of Transformational leadership and the

absence of any audit technique at Google. have made it the most preferred company for all

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individuals with creative ability. Larry Page and his employees are not paying attention to their

opponents. They only focus their operations.

Transformational Leadership
Transformational leaders believe that transformation will make their companies successful in

the industry. In general, to do something is to offer a new way. It finds a new way to connect

with music or online people, these leaders are literally innovative. Larry Page recently said,

“We still feel computers are pretty bad,” and there can be more work done to make it better.

They most common strength is finding the better way to do something. In addition, they have

better performance in the niche markets. On the other hand, they can put anything at the risk

and only focus their jobs. Therefore, they not interested in what their competitors do.

Individuals exhibiting transformational leadership styles, designs vision based on changing

transformations in the organization and motivates employees to create innovative strategies.

(Binsiddiq & Alzahmi, 2013). Page has adopted four steps of transformations leadership

namely idealized influence, inspirations and motivations, brain stimulation and

individualized considerations.

Larry Page say that “Ideally, if you have more people and more resources, you can do more

things, get more things solved. We've kind of always had that philosophy.”2 . Also, it supports

him transformational leader profile.

Larry Page is a leader that is working, not only one, but also many steps at a time to make sure

that he can provide what's best for Google and his employees and that is what makes him not

just Google's CEO, but definitely increase Google's services and protect employee happiness.

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http://larrypage.weebly.com/larrys-leadership-style.html

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At Google, Larry Page introduces mail systems that ask for summaries of projects they're

working on, so they have an idea about current work on Google. Larry Page brought 70-20-10

model3 giving 10% of their time to spend in their personal activities to increase their inspiration

and motivation.

Page, also designed the vision to inspire Google's employees. To increase the intellectual

abilities of employees, Page suggested that managers should stop working on their laptop

computers and work on paper or other materials that fuel innovation. Page instructed top-level

managers to work with employees to interact with them daily to create a comfortable working

environment for them to apply their personal thoughts for employees.

Leadership traits and skills

Not only transformational style is suitable for the Larry Page. Also, leadership traits and skills

are indispensable features of a leader. Charismatic style of Page is making the employees over

dependent. However, keeping the traits of open communication and innovativeness.

In addition, according to leadership traits and skills of the Page, the employees can be

motivated effectively with the help of non-monetary benefits rather than only monetary

benefits. According to people skills, Page shows empathetic nature towards the needs of the

employees because he believes that treating employees like a family member will increase their

productivity. The company has introduced “no smoking initiatives” and “increased health

benefits” to enhance the health conditions of the employees.

The introvert nature of Page makes him the appropriate leader for Google and helps him to

focus on the product innovation rather on the competitor analysis. The employees find him

more consternated to the teamwork rather than being judgmental and dominating in nature.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/70/20/10_Model

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Because, introvert nature of a leader, may act as an added advantage especially for proactive

employees. This triggers the future growth of Google.

Lastly, Visionary skills of the Page necessary for the growth and future of the company. Page

demonstrates high visionary skills in setting S.M.A.R.T. goals for his engineers. Qualities like

self-inspiration, high level of optimism, personal responsibility of organization’s actions,

action orientation, skills of integrity and honesty and considering all adverse situations as a

winning circumstance, makes Page a good visionary.

Conclusion
I think transformational leaders are more effective than transaction leaders in building good

relationships with employees and developing an organizational strategy. Like Larry Page,

motivate employees encourage and encourage employees, respect their employees and increase

their job satisfaction and enthusiasm. On the other hand, transactional leaders like Steve Jobs,

do not focus on the process of doing a task, they just concentrated to the result of one task. It

won’t be good for the employees to create and innovate if they are working under the pressure.

If I was an employee, I would choose to work for leaders like Larry Page as I would be felt

more valued than work for Steve Jobs. So, I think there is a connection between the innovation

capability of an organization and the behaviors of a leader.

Merely, we cannot decide which one of the specific leadership styles is better or worse. Leaders

tend to use a style of leadership that is best suited to the organization and is best suited to

achieving the best work of employees, just as they have their own personalities and styles to

manage people.

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Bibliography
Binsiddiq, Y. A. & Alzahmi, R. A., 2013. Work Engagement and Group Dynamics in Diverse
and Multicultural Teams: Critical Literature Review. Review Of Management Innovation &
Creativity, Volume 6, pp. 121-133.

Biography.com Editors, 2015. Larry Page Biography - The Biography.com website. [Online]
Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/larry-page-12103347
[Accessed 12 12 2016].

Cossin, P. D. D. & Caballero, D. J., 2013. Transformational Leadership: Background

Literature Review, s.l.: IMD.

D'Onfro, J., 2014. Here's How Google Changed When Larry Page Became CEO Again.
[Online]
Available at: Here's How Google Changed When Larry Page Became CEO Again
[Accessed 14 12 2016].

Elmer, V., 2011. What would Larry Page do? Leadership lessons from Google's doyen.
[Online]
Available at: http://fortune.com/2011/04/18/what-would-larry-page-do-leadership-lessons-
from-googles-doyen/
[Accessed 14 12 2016].

Hunter, S., Steinberg, P. & Taylor, M., 2012. Shifting to a Strategy of Innovation: The Key
Role of Leadership in Consumer Packaged Goods. Penn, Penn State Executive Program.

Keskes, I., 2013. Relationship between leadership styles and dimensions of employee
organizational commitment: A critical review and discussion of future directions. Intangible
Capital, pp. 26-51.