Work Rules!

: Insights from Inside Google

That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

Chapter 3 Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

Talking about culture, the writer talks about Google’s culture that always creates
something fun. Culture in google consists of three aspects: mission, transparency, and voice.
First, the mission of Google is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally
accessible and useful.” The mission is not talking about consumer, profit, market or user. This
kind of mission gives individuals’ work meaning, because it is a moral rather than a business
goal. The most powerful movements in history have had moral motivations, whether they were
quests for independence or equal rights. Second, transparency in Google gives a benefit that
everyone in the company knows what’s going on. Information sharing allows everyone to
understand the differences in goals across different groups, avoiding internal rivalry. Third, voice
means giving employees a real say in how the company is run. Either you believe people are
good and you welcome their input, or you don’t. The writer concluded that the three aspects of
culture in Google, mission, transparency, and vision anchor them in tackling difficult and divisive
issues, debating them, and resolving them into clear strategies: Our culture was shaping our
strategy, and not the other way around.
Chapter 4 Lake Wobegon, Where All The New Hires Are Above Average
In this chapter, the company faces the options in hiring an employee. First, they can hire
the best candidate that is more costly or hire an average candidate then train them. The two
options have been tested. And the result is, if you hire the best candidate it doesn’t guarantee
you the candidate will perform their best in the next year. Hiring the best one with a higher wage
just means you get more applicants, not that you get better applicants or can better sift the great
from the mediocre. And if you hire the average candidate, you must train them which is the cost
of training sessions. And training doesn't guarantee you the average person will become the
best one. So, what is the best way to hire employees? The answer is ‘hire someone who is
better than you’. We can take the lesson from The Talent Myth, that “Don’t hire exclusively for
smarts.” Superb hiring isn’t just about recruiting the biggest name, top salesperson, or cleverest
engineer. It’s about finding the very best people who will be successful in the context of your
organization, and who will make everyone around them more successful.
Chapter 5 Searching for The Best
In many years, the best source to hire someone was referrals from existing employees.
In 2009, the rate of referrals declined. So, the simplest way to encourage the referrals is to
increase the rewards for the successful referrals. But it doesn’t help. Because even though the
rate of referrals was increasing, Google only hired below 5%. So, Google reduced the number
of interviews each candidate went through. They also developed a white-glove service for
referrals. Now, as the technologies are more developed, recruiting the match candidate is
easier. We can find people at different companies more straightforward. And now, it’s possible
to identify virtually every person working in a particular company. And last, in recruiting
candidates, don’t be afraid to try a crazy idea to get attention from best candidates. The unique
one is more powerful.