Google’s Project Oxygen – 8 point plan to help managers improve their performance

Its all about staff engagement, innovation and increased productivity

A practical plan to help mangers be better?

Google have grown, so has their need to manage. This giga company has the time and resource like no other, and it is use some of that resource to invest not only in technology but inwards. As a part of that investment, the HR team embarken on some research using Google’s renound data analysis skills. Project Oxygen (so called as they see people as the life blood of the organisation) was designed to measure the impact of good managers and help the company make more of them.

The study found that a manager’s technical skills were far less valued by employees than people skills. However they are still on the list as being important.

Why do people leave their employer?

The work is based on testing the belief that people typically leave a company for one of three reasons.

1. They don’t feel a connection to the mission of the company, or sense that their work matters
2. They don’t really like or respect their co-workers
3. They have a bad boss — This being the biggest variable

“Project Oxygen is our attempt to verify here at Google the age-old HR statement that people leave organizations because of their managers,”.  ”We wanted to see whether there’s a huge variance in the quality of managers and if so, what kind of impact was it having on the company?” - Director of People Analytics & Compensation Prasad Setty.

Setty and his team examined the results from Googlegeist, the company’s annual employee survey, as well as performance-management scores and other data on managers to identify good performers and poor ones.

The work started in early 2009 and training from the results commenced in 2010.

The project set out to analyze the results from performance reviews, feedback surveys, nominations for top-manager awards and other available data. Then they correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints. The results were then prioritized by importance.

So what is in the 8 point plan to help managers improve?

Just the stuff you would expect – but it is about consistency and authenticity in the way they are applied. Unlike many competency approaches, Google just share the data and help individuals, managers and teams to make sense of it. They are not forced into change, they are educated and hope that individuals see what is expected of them and learn. If they don’t in the longer term.. well that is a different story.

The 8 point plan to help managers improve

You can see the original list as published

Stop the fad surfing

While many of us in the world of HR & Organizational Development strive to find the “new shiny” idea, this research clearly shows that we need to keep with the basics if we really want to succeed.

A note of caution – it will be easy for a company to adopt this as a list of things for them – such have 100s of firms in the past – but remember this is GOOGLE’S data – their culture is different, so while the issue may be similar, the outcomes may be very different!

NOTE, the fact that technical skills is still on the list is an important one. Employing “professional managers2 without some technical understanding can create tensions that do not need to exist.

Based on an article from NY Times

Diagnosing Organizational Culture

Today I read a thread on Diagnosing Organizational Culture, where someone was asking for recommendations on tools to use to undertake this task.

If you are only looking for isolated culture tools then the following should be considered (in no particular order):

• Diagnosing Organizational culture – Harrison
• Denison Organizational Culture Survey – Denison
• Corporate Culture Questionnaire – SHL
• The Creatrix – Byrd (http://www.creatrix.com/ ) looks at the culture for innovation and effective leadership
• Organizational Dynamics – Kotter (book with diagnostic)
• Diagnosing & Changing Organizational Culture – Cameron, Quinn (book with diagnostic)
• and many many more….

Many instruments will claim to be ‘normed’ – be careful of this – we know the difficulties in ‘norming’ personality psychometrics – well imaging that complication multiplied ten fold per person employed… each person acts and interacts with another in a different way – I would love to see the data to be verified for this – the psychometric publishers would love to have such technology!

Context based Cultural Review

There are many approaches to looking at culture and for each firm their will be an appropriate tool based upon:

• Current culture (ironically)
• Goals of undertaking the survey
• Desired outputs

I have been part of a team looking at what makes an effective firm for over 10 years now and have used many, many instruments from around the world looking at organizational culture. To my mind they all have one fundamental flaw – they assume there is a right way to run a business.

While there may well be a preferred approach of empowerments, engagement etc, I have worked with many firms that use an autocratic style very effectively, and when changed often people feel less secure and over time those firms fail to perform to the level they once did.

Change the culture at your peril

Having worked with over 700 firms in the last 10+ years I have discovered that the best culture to have is the culture that best suits the owner/ CEO and their natural style, then it is about getting consistency across the organization.

To change the culture without the TOTAL commitment from the CEO (and the CEO having appropriate one-to-one support to change their own style first) is pure folly. Change of culture must be led from the top if it is to be sustained and add value to the organization.

It’s more than just culture change

In addition, looking at culture on its own is meaningless – the systems, structure and processes need to be congruent with the culture, and just looking at culture in isolation is folly for short term feel good but little long term added value.

Any diagnostic process as part of an organizational development intervention needs to be as holistic as practical to avoid duplication of effort at a slightly later stage (clients get diagnostic’ed out)

Going truly Holistic

Many OD practitioners talk about holistic reviews – but are they truly holistic? Do they look at the way Finance, Marketing and Operations are run in the organization? are these put in the context of the culture and the stated/ desired goals of stakeholders?

The BIR (Business Improvement Review) not only looks at culture, style and values but puts it in the context of operations and the goals of the organization. It does not assume there is a ‘right’ or a ‘wrong’ to run a firm, nor does it assume a single management model. The BIR provides the coach or consultant to start a meaningful discussion based upon a common understanding. This creates ownership in the key decision makers and as a result has a high proportion of participants take meaningful action post diagnostic. They own the results and the reason for change.

If you would like more information on the BIR please visit www.rapidbi.com/bir or email me for further details.

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Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI, an organizational effectiveness consultancy. He has been involved in HR, OD and strategic development for over 20 years. He can be contacted via www.rapidbi.com/

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