When it comes to company expansion, no company is more representative than Google. This article arranges Eric schmidt (Eric? Schmidt (former Google, now CEO of Alphabet) and Reid hoffman (Reid? Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) is in the Stanford Open Class. Eric will introduce himself from the personal and company levels. Expansion? Understanding of this concept.
First, early experience: fast and accurate
(hereinafter referred to as R): What did you learn from your management experience at Sun and Novell before Google?
Eric schmidt (hereinafter referred to as E): For everyone, the first few years in the workplace are very important for the long-term development in the future. At this stage, everyone will accumulate experience from technology to management, and finally form their own management style.
For Eric Suen Yiu Wai, he has accumulated a lot from Sun and Novell? Negative? Experience. In Sun's place, he realized the great influence of the company's lack of innovation and chaotic organization. When he found that the system produced by Sun would not be cheaper than PC in any case, Eric chose to leave. When he came to Novell, he found that everything was not as expected, customers were in arrears and employees lacked enthusiasm. At this time, Eric went to great lengths to solve some problems temporarily and retired to Google.
R: If you sum up this experience before joining Google into one experience, what will it be?
E: Do things quickly and make fewer mistakes. Fast and accurate. When people look back on the past, they always say that they knew this problem had been solved and this person was fired. So, when we have an idea, why not act quickly?
Second, airborne CEO needs to be cautious and low-key
Reporter: How big was this company when you joined Google?
E: There were 150 people, Larry and Sergey (Sergey? Brin and Larry? Page (founder of Google) has just received $25 million in financing. Investors joked that they were crazy or even unreliable, so they needed a CEO.
Therefore, Larry and Sergey openly recruited the CEO on the condition that they would conquer them in a weekend. At that time, there were too many applicants. Some people took them boating and others took them riding. As soon as Eric met these two people, he gave them a list, which is what Google will do next. This list includes global business development plan, sales plan, audit, inventory management, product development plan and so on, which were not available at Google at that time.
At that time, this was Google's culture, which was passed down from Stanford Graduate School. When you ask him about the sales plan, he will give you one on the spot. Not bad, but you still need a CEO to regulate the whole company.
R: As the airborne CEO and the original founder team, will there be acclimatization?
A famous example of failure is john sculley and Steve Jobs. I am very careful and low-key when dealing with this problem, always reminding myself that this is their company and I should not show my face.
Eric helped and guided Larry and Sergey like parents. When they can do it well, Eric will go behind the scenes; Eric will stand up when he encounters difficulties. Once, because of an interview with Playboy, Larry and Sergey almost ruined Google's IPO plan, so they found Eric like children who made mistakes. After the three men worked hard to deal with things, Larry and Sergey never gave any media interviews again.
Eric is to Google, sheryl sandberg is to Facebook, and meg whitman is to Yi Bei, all of which are airborne senior managers, and eventually become stories of Silicon Valley.
Third, the standard of product maturity is that users can't stop.
R: When you first joined Google, there were only 65,438+050 employees. Now there are 60,000 employees, and the number of employees tripled in 2004-2005. Is this a classic? Expansion? Keith.
It's easy to double it every year, but difficult to quadruple it. I think one of the rules of expansion is that it is easy to double every year and difficult to quadruple every year. It is hard to imagine what impact so many new people will have on the existing company structure.
R: Google has many innovations in enterprise management, for example, the management has to look at everyone's resume, 20% of the time and so on. Are these important factors for Google's successful expansion?
E: What I want to say is that expansion lies in mature products. After a period of accumulation and running-in, when the product is truly mature, users, profits and companies will expand rapidly.
In general, people always put pressure on product teams and engineers to launch new products as soon as possible, and the result is to drive ducks to the shelves and produce a barely useful product. Just like the first generation of iPod and iPhone, it was not successful, but the continuous improvement later created the company with the highest market value. There is a product called Google Wave. At first, we tested it on a small number of people. These people are all brain-dead powder of Google, so the effect is very good. However, when we tried to promote it to a slightly larger market, we found that the response was not strong, so we decided to give up further promotion.
Generally speaking, the success of a product probably needs to wait and see the market for about 6 months. Really successful products, after the initial explosive growth, still have the motivation to carry out stable user growth, although there may be twists and turns.
R: So how do we know when a product will mature?
E: An interesting phenomenon is that a product must first bring convenience to its original developers, which is a prerequisite for the success of a product. For Uber, it was originally a small-scale private car sharing platform. Google was originally a search engine in Stanford, and the server was built in the student dormitory.
R: So, the sign of maturity is the demand?
E: A misunderstanding that we should avoid is that technicians always think that the products are mature enough to be put on the market. At this time, if the sales team and management team believe it without thinking, it is likely to be disastrous. Another sign to measure the maturity of a product is that people who have used it can't stop. You see who is using Google Wave around us and how many people are wearing Google Glass, so these two products are not mature.
Fourth, only recruit students with high GPA.
R: When we see that the product fits the market perfectly, are there any other factors that will affect or hinder the expansion of the company?
E: recruitment. We once wrote a book? How does Google work? One third of the space is about recruitment. Regarding the recruitment of Google, our principle is: we never want to recruit students from second-rate schools, only students with high GPA. (Note: This conversation was held in Stanford, which is a little flattering. Although today's Google has relaxed some recruitment requirements, this recruitment system has ensured that Google can recruit the best talents in the world for so many years.
The other thing is that we don't need it? Sticky? These people wander between departments to create a harmonious team atmosphere, but the fact is that they have done nothing. So we keep firing people like Google.
R: With so many people recruited, the problem is how to manage them. Do you have any experience to share?
E: Larry, Sergei and I have had some failures in the management team? Plan? . For example, it is agreed to hold an hour-long meeting every Monday morning to discuss the weekly plan. You can't use your mobile phone or computer during this hour. In practice, they always can't do it, and they will blindly play blueberry phones under the table. For example, Google has too many projects. Every Tuesday morning, we will have a meeting to discuss the progress of one or more projects. In fact, teams of engineers often? Hide? They are afraid that I will veto their ideas, and Larry and Sergey often sneak around my project to support them. However, the results are amazing. Chrome and Android were originally made or matured without my knowledge.
But my consistent principle is that Larry and Sergey will take control of the company and I will deal with the problems and chaos. When there is a big problem, the three of us Qi Xin work together and never quarrel in front of outsiders.
V. Google's talent training program
E: E: What is Google's mode of cultivating management talents?
R: One of Google's very successful projects is the APM project, which was put forward by Marissa Mayer (now CEO of Yahoo) at Google. When Marisa first came to Google, she was one of only three product managers. She thinks it is necessary for us to train product managers from existing employees, so that we can know more about the company's products and culture than those hired from outside.
So we recruited a large number of graduates with technical background, and wanted to engage in product-related work, let them participate in this project, and establish a tacit understanding between them through various friends and activities. It must be said that the talents trained by this project have a dual vision of technology and products and are the mainstay of Google in the future.
E: Is there anything we need to avoid in the process of expansion?
R: Maybe this answer will surprise you, but my answer is no, ambition is infinite, and any idea or practice is likely to succeed. I think one should not limit one's interests, thoughts or actions, but should try all kinds of things on a larger scale.
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