Work Rules! – Laszlo Bock

 Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

You are a Founder

It is within anyone’s grasp to be the founder and culture creator of their own team.

  • Take responsibility for your environment.
  • Choose to think of yourself as a founder.
  • Now act like one.
  • Trust Your employees.
  • Give your work meaning.

Company Culture

If you give people freedom, they will amaze you.

A group’s culture can be studied in three ways:

  • By looking at its artefacts such as physical spaces and behaviours.
  • By surveying the beliefs and values espoused by group members.
  • By digging deeper into the underlying assumptions behind those values.

Attributes Of A Good Candidate

  • General cognitive ability. Smart people that can learn and adapt to situations.
  • Leadership. Emergent leadership.
  • Enjoys fun, intellectual humility.
  • Role related knowledge(the least important attribute).
  • Uses ‘We’ rather than ‘I’.

The Principles Of Quality Hiring

  • Set a high bar for quality. Before you start, decide what attributes you want and decide as a group what great looks like. 
  • A good rule of thumb: hire only people better than you.
  • Find your own candidates.
  • Assess candidates’ objectively. Include subordinates and peers in the interviews. Take good notes.
  • Give candidates a reason to join.

Mass Empowerment

  • Eliminate status symbols.
  • Make decisions based on data, not managers’ opinions.
  • Find ways for people to shape their work and the company.
  • Expect a lot.
  • Remember: The most talented and creative people cannot be forced to work.

Performance Management

  • Intrinsic motivation is the key to growth, while extrinsic motivations can start to shut down the willingness and ability to learn.
  • Improve performance by focusing on personal growth instead of ratings and rewards.
  • Avoid defensiveness and promote learning.
  • Set goals correctly and make them public.
  • Gather peer feedback.
  • Adopt a calibration process for evaluations.
  • Split reward conversations from development conversations.

It is okay to pay two people in the same job completely different amounts. The power-law distribution should be based on performance.

Good Managerial Attributes

  • Be a good coach.
  • Empower the team and do not micromanage.
  • Express interest and concern for team member success and personal well being.
  • Be very productive and results-oriented.
  • Be a good communicator, listen, share information.
  • Help the team with career development.
  • Have a clear vision and strategy for the team.
  • Have important technical skills that help advise the team.

Learn From Employees

  • Engage in deliberate practice. Lessons in small digestible pieces with clear feedback.
  • Have your best people teach.
  • Invest only in courses you can prove to be effective in changing people’s behaviour.behavior

Making Life Easy for All

  • Make life easier for employees.
  • Find ways to say yes.
  • The bad stuff in life happens rarely, be there when it does.
  • Recognize the difference between what is and what ought to be.
  • Run lots of small experiments.
  • Nudge, don’t shove.

Recommended actions for New joiners

  • Ask lots of questions.
  • Schedule regular one-on-one meetings with your manager.
  • Get to know your team.
  • Actively solicit feedback, don’t wait for it.
  • Accept the challenge. Take risks and don’t be afraid to fail.

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