Google

Google was awesome! The guy was an American from Utah who is actually leaving the company in a few months to take over his family’s business, but he definitely loved Google. Some of my key takeaways from the presentation were:



• The impossible is elastic.

o You should always try to push what is believed to be impossible. After pushing hard enough, you will find that was once impossible is now possible. Therefore, the impossible is elastic.

• Certainty is a sign of a closed mind.

o Anyone that is dead-certain about something is someone that has a closed mind. You should never be 100% certain about anything because it is a sign that you are not willing to listen to diverging opinions.

• Looking ahead to induce patience.

o Sometimes when you see a failing project that you are not directly working on, it is best to let it fizzle out on its own instead of pushing your ideas on them that it is a bad project. The people working on the project will realize eventually, and usually before spending too much money, that it isn’t working out.

o In companies such as Google, you can show data on whether or not a project is a successful one. Data speaks louder than opinions.

• No tailgating – lead, don’t follow

o Google rarely looks at their competitors to see what they are doing. The last thing they want to be doing is getting into the ‘me too’ mindset. They are constantly innovating to come up with ideas to improve their users’ lives. They actually have a lot of innovation and failed projects that are all paid for with their ads.

• Lead from the details

o Most, if not all, times the best boss is one that understands his/her subordinates well enough to do their job. For example, the manager of Google Earth can sit down with the person on the lowest rung and troubleshoot coding issues with them. Knowing your job at the lowest level like this enables you to make the best managing decisions for your company. If you were 100% certain how things worked, there would be no reason to work with the person at the lowest rung. But this is never the case.

• Data as your compass

o “You got data? We’ll use data. You got an opinion? We’ll use mine!” This was a quote given by a manager at Google. Instead of saying that project is successful, you can always pull data to show how successful it is, such as traffic. This type of argument is much more convincing than never showing any data.



After the presentation, I learned that he was not originally planned to speak to us, and the 20 minutes that we waited in the conference room was because he was putting together his slide presentation. I was so impressed by this person’s presentation, and then to learn that he did it all in 20 minutes was amazing!