Operating on the Edge of Chaos at Google
Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Google office in Toronto. The morning started off with a lovely presentation by Account Executive Sean Cunningham who gave an informative presentation of Google’s presence both internationally and in Canada.
He began by answering the question, “What do sales look like at Google?”. As a marketing major, I found this particularly interesting since sales is the backbone of every company and a crucial division of a marketing team. He noted that on a day-to-day level, sales at Google is focused on advertisements such as youtube display ads, but now they’re more focused on technology architecture and how to maximize a company’s ROI on data that Google collects to help develop their clients’ business.
Creating an All-Star Team
Afterwards, Sean spoke about the topic that was on everyone’s mind: hiring at Google. Sean noted that their key was to attract and retain talent. This essentially is a combination of attracting outstanding people and retaining them through perks which we’re all familiar Google offers such as food, having a daycare service, and a gym just to name a few. This helps employees focus on a work-life balance and promotes mental health while avoiding burnout at the office. A fun fact relating to the pros of working at Google is that you’ll never be more than 50ft away from food. He told us to envision Google like an all-star sports team. If you have great players, you’re going to go out of your way to keep them happy and this shows since Google has an attrition rate of less than 3% on an annual basis.
Now we all know Google’s a huge company, but what really put it into perspective is that 1.1M people apply to Google per year and they only take less than 10%. They’re very strategic with who they bring into their “all-star team” since 99 hire can be wiped out by one toxic hire. To ensure everyone at the company is living up to the all-star name, Google has compiled 8 data points on what makes a great manager and every manager is accessed publicly which covers both top-down and bottom-up accountability. Sean noted that with everyone keeping each other accountable for success teams that feel safe perform better.
5 Principles of Innovation
Afterwards, Sean spoke about Google’s 5 principles of innovation which was my favourite part of the visit.
Focus on the users and all else will follow: Google believes that it’s important to be customer centric.
10x thinking: Google loves thinking big and this is evident in their projects. A great example of this was “Project Loon” which helped deliver internet to developing countries through a giant balloon. Yes, it sounds crazy but that’s what makes the idea so amazing. You can watch the video explaining it here. Another project they have taken on is to create contact lenses which can check your insulin levels and deliver results straight to your smartphone
Fast is better than slow: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. It’s always better to get something done quickly and learn along the way than wait for a perfect idea or solution.
Ideas come from everywhere: You never know where you’ll have an “aha!” moment and oftentimes some of the best ideas come from mistakes.
Fail smarter: Don’t kill your projects. Morph them into something better and learn from your mistakes.
A Purposeful Panel
After Sean’s speech, he moderated a panel with Chris Adamkowski (Head of Industry Fintech), Nancy McConnel (Head of Agency), JP Gauthier (Head of Media Platforms) and Elana Chan (Head of Customer Marketing).
When asked what are the skill sets we should prepare for, Chris and Nancy agreed that curiosity is a trait that they look for, along with soft skills. Nancy emphasized that these soft skills are more important than ever. There’s a huge value that storytelling and being able to influence people has at work.
Afterwards, Elana led the conversation towards how Google “operates at the edge of chaos”. Despite what many people may think, chaos isn’t always a bad thing. It’s important for innovation. At Google, despite the chaos, everyone has an end goal to stay focused within their role and knows what the team’s mission is. Plus, it’s within the chaos that Google has birthed some of its best ideas. Another important point that Chris mentioned at work is to assume positive intent. In the workplace, things can get out of context but it’s important to believe people mean well since oftentimes they do.
Elana also answered an audience question on how Google keeps things fresh marketing wise. A key insight that she found is that the Google home mini is the access point for hardware they sell, meaning that once a user is introduced to that one product, it becomes a lot easier for them to cross sell from there. This shows the value of having an introductory product for consumers. She also mentioned that Google has narrowed down from 20 to to 8 KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to determine how success is measured on their team. With the large scale that Google operates on, machine learning is also more important than ever due to their accuracy and speed. Finally, she spoke on the importance of talking to your best customers. These are the people who know your product the best and who will want your company to succeed while giving you valuable marketing insights.
The panel ended off with leadership discussion at Google. Despite the company having close to 100K employees, the teams are big and wide rather than tall. Employees are also given clear metrics and expectations of what they must achieve. It’s up to the individual employee how to achieve them which gives everyone a lot of freedom and creativity. Finally, a great piece of advice they gave was to add value to conversations. Don’t expect people to go out of their way for you and think of how you can bring value to other to stand out.
I never would have imagined that I would be visiting the Google office during University. The Business Career Hub (BCH) did a phenomenal job and being able to visit Google truly reflects the hard work that the BCH does to ensure Ted Rogers School of Management students have wonderful opportunities to take advantage of. I had an amazing tour at Google and I look forward to seeing what event the BCH hosts next.