Work Rules! – Laszlo Bock | Free Book Summary

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.