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- [00:00]
Sarah
Welcome to Manager Tools. This is Sarah and I'm Mark. Today's Google's Project Oxygen.
- [00:07]
Mark
Part 1 of 1 this cast answers these questions. What the heck is Google's Project Oxygen? What did Google learn about managing from Project Oxygen? Obviously. And how important are one on one's feedback, coaching and delegation?
- [00:25]
Sarah
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening, looking to sharpen your leadership skills face to face. The Manager Tools conference is coming to Atlanta and this is your chance to learn proven management strategies. Join us there September 23rd and 24th. You can sign up today online at manager-tools.com forward/training. All right, frog in my throat to get us started.
- [00:51]
Mark
Yeah, but, but I have a reason for frog in my throat. We just finished the 22 days of the effective executive conference here near us in Monterey, California. 21 executives from all over the country. I don't think we have any international.
- [01:05]
Sarah
We did. Paraguay.
- [01:07]
Mark
Oh, that's right. Yes. And I was facilitating for two full days, eight to five both days, and then having dinner and drinks afterwards and trying to yell over the den as I answered questions.
- [01:18]
Sarah
So yes, little scratchy, little scratchy, little scratchy. Oh well, it is what it is. And here we are today to talk about Google's Project Oxygen and this idea, this, this organizational structure. Google and other really big name technology companies and many other organizations that we've worked with over the years, frankly have always had, at least according to the common wisdom, this different or new or agnostic, if you will, relationship with management and managers. And the idea of not having managers, I should say is seductive. That is, we're a new and we're a different type of company. Nobody has ever really managed engineers before, which is kind of slightly hilarious, but whatever.
- [02:09]
Mark
Yes.
- [02:10]
Sarah
And because of the nature of our work and our mission and our personalities, we don't really need to be bound by the rules of management. We're different, we're better than that.
- [02:21]
Mark
Yeah. What's funny about that though, Sarah, is that's what people at Google told me. Will reveal our tangential relationship to Project Oxygen in a minute. But that was told me. Oh, we don't need to be bound by the rules of management. Well, when you say it like that, rules of management, most people are like, yeah, I want to be associated with something that isn't bound by the rules.
- [02:42]
Sarah
Yeah, I want to be used.
- [02:44]
Mark
Right, exactly. But here's the thing. If you. It's not management that's the problem. It's Organizational Theory 101. It's the fundamental principles of Human organizations. It's not about management. It's not about the behaviors that connect everybody and whether managers do those well or much more likely poorly. It's organizational theory. Now, the unfortunate thing for organizational theory, for most people is if you took a class in business on organizational theory, you weren't taught anything of interest. You were taught matrix organizations, because that's a thing, but it's a dying thing, luckily. And you were taught about hierarchy and span of control and labor unions and so on, but you were never taught the fundamental purpose of an organization, how they're supposed to be structured, why they're structured that way, what behaviors become necessary, but based on the structure. Right. Sort of form follows function. And then after you have form, you have function again. Yeah. So they didn't like the rules of management, but they weren't arguing against the rule of management.
- [03:50]
Sarah
They didn't know those rules.
- [03:51]
Mark
Rules of organization. Yeah. And they didn't know either one of them.
- [03:54]
Sarah
Exactly. Now, obviously, as, as you just heard, Google's wrong. And Google learned to their credit and acted incredibly well upon what they learned when they went through the, the deep dive, the figuring out, are these managers really even necessary? Really?
- [04:13]
Mark
Yeah.
- [04:14]
Sarah
And they were wrong before Project Oxygen, as everybody else who's ever gone down this path always has been. About what kinds of things that are important.
- [04:27]
Mark
All kinds of things.
- [04:28]
Sarah
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What management's about, what managers do and why good managers are valuable and why bad managers are toxic.
- [04:36]
Mark
Yeah. And you know when you say good managers valuable, everybody goes, well, yeah. You know, high quality cars are valuable. Right. It's, it's, it's almost a tautology that you're just saying. Yeah, but the. But the key word in there is why people don't understand why. It's known why, but people have never studied it. Like the vast majority of the people in the world don't study nor obviously understand calculus, one of the greatest mathematical inventions of all time. And yet calculus underpins virtually every part of our life all the time. I often tell people, hey, they, they say they're an engineer. I'm like, okay, solve this differentiation problem. What's the differential? And either they know it or they don't. Well, engineers use that stuff all the time. Right. And other people don't. And it's just something that people don't know. And we've been doing this long enough now, close to 100 years. Large organizations, depending upon how you count it. And more people. I don't know it, let's put it that way. Okay, so our outline is really simple. We're going to talk a little bit more, give you a little bit more clarity about Google and other companies before Project Oxygen. Then we're going to talk about what Google did during Project Auction, what it was and how they went about it, and then we'll talk about the results. And yes, we'll also mention how we were there when it happened.
- [06:10]
Sarah
Yeah, the before, the during and the after. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So we'll start with the before. And you probably get to read periodically about companies again going flat or eliminating managers or becoming more flat generally in their structure and these kinds of changes. They're always popular when you read them in the business press and even more broadly, there is, in my experience, a desire for individuals within organizations. Again, to your point earlier, Mark, not knowing, better to think, oh gee, wouldn't it be better, Wouldn't it be cooler to work in an organization where it was more flat, where I was closer to the top, if you will. And there's always fanfare associated with this new, different and even edgy kind of organizational move. And as if it's, it's new and it's cutting edge and it's something that we should all desire to be part of.
- [07:06]
Mark
Yeah. I'll tell you if you told a scientist what has happened over the years in modern management, let's say in the last 40ish years. 50, maybe 50, maybe in the 1970s we started hearing companies going managerless or flat or you know, tech CEOs now, like, oh, we're going to be totally flat. I said, well, if everybody reports to you, you're going to hate it really fast, dude, but whatever. And here's the logic. I don't like what my boss does. Now, by the way, when you unpack that. When you unpack, I don't like what my boss does. Some say they're a micromanager, which is ludicrous. They're not. Some say they don't care about me. There's all kinds. Depends on what their disc score is, what they like and don't like about their boss. But, but anyway, let's say a researcher was told, I, I don't like what my boss does. Okay. The researcher, by the way, doesn't know anything about the fact that that person was promoted to manager for the wrong reason. Yep. Because the company doesn't know, doesn't have a framework for managerial behavior. So can't assess whether or not in an interview or in a promotion process whether or not that manager has those behaviors. I mean, think about it, guys. The single best interviewing technique in the world is behavioral interviewing. You ask about behaviors people have used in the past and see whether or not they can use them in the future. Has that ever happened in the history of humankind? About a manager going from an individual contributor to manager? And the answer is, no, it has not. Okay? And that person is going to play a singular role, the most significant role for all the people who report to her, whether it's 2 or 5 or 20. And we are not doing a good assessment of that person's behavioral characteristics anyway. So we're. We hear from some individual contributor or even some manager about their boss. Oh, I don't like my boss. And that person goes, okay, let's restructure the company. No researcher in the world would ever get paid a nickel for that kind of research. The first thing it would say is, well, why don't you like them? Let's figure that out. Anyway, all right, so you mentioned about it becomes popular. There's a company years ago, the Morningstar Company. It's a California tomato packing company, which I've actually driven by their trucks before here in California. And it went somewhat manager less. They're like, we're going to reorganize around topics or around things that need doing and so on. And if you've read widely about management, you've heard of the Morningstar company, please don't confuse it with Morningstar Farms, which is a multibillion dollar AG company as well. And to their credit, guys, they are still similarly managed as relatively flat. But, you know, all things connect with all other things. And it is a completely private company and it is owned by one owner who had the idea. And that should tell you something about this managerial ideas, portability.
- [10:08]
Sarah
Yeah, most of us don't work in organizations that fall into those criteria.
- [10:13]
Mark
Right, exactly.
- [10:14]
Sarah
And I think probably an example that will resonate with those of you, even if you're not familiar with the the Morningstar company is Zappos Zappos Shoes. Yeah, it was hugely famous for its move away from managers towards a holacracy. And there was a series of cascading circles of activity. It was a darling in the press. People were super impressed with Zappos and their new structure. And that company unfortunately soon fell apart after and was ultimately acquired by Amazon, whom we are not really sure had a love for their unaccountability circles. But yes, Zappos was one of the ones in the news and we see how that went.
- [10:58]
Mark
Yeah, exactly. And so we use those couple as example to lead up to Google because Google followed a similar path and other technology companies have as well. Because we're new, we're different. Modern man is different. No, just for the record, the smartest sociologist in the history of humanity said 25 years ago actually in a Wall Street Journal article about the changing to the 21st century he said there is no evidence humanity has changed. Human, humankind sorry has changed in the last few years and in fact no evidence that it's changed in the last 10,000 years. So in Google's case they were heavily staffed with engineers. Engineers naturally have a bit of a disdain, some quite a bit of disdain for management and managers. That's in part because they think to themselves I could do his job but he couldn't do mine. That's when a manager gets put above them and he doesn't, he or she doesn't have the technical expertise right to, to be capable of writing code or, or designing systems or those kind of things. And so Google was like let's not have any managers. Right. We'll just sort of where they weren't exactly self organizing but they just cut out a lot of managers and they had very control. Yeah. And again this was kind of a wisdom of the crowds kind of thing because there were so many engineers. Well we all don't like managers so therefore we'll get rid of them. And by the way, when people don't like things, this is what's important or this is a linkage. People talking about I don't like my boss and so they don't value the system. But that's because the boss isn't doing what the system suggests in order for the organization to work that boss should be doing and so the boss is terrible. So we don't value them. Now by the way, if you don't value something in an organization you shouldn't do it. And by the way not doing it is a lot cheaper than doing something.
- [13:07]
Sarah
I was going to say it's pretty expensive to do something that isn't working and no one likes.
- [13:11]
Mark
Yeah. So the idea was to leave the incredible technical skills. And I will tell you, I have met a lot of people at Google and they are exceptionally smart. I was in one meeting once and I was the only non PhD in the meeting and I could feel them patting me on the head and I, in a way I deserved it. But I was fascinating watching. Basically what happened was when you needed a manager, if you were, you know, span of control, basically the person with the best technical skills was the one who got promoted. That's just like the best salesperson often gets promoted to be a sales manager. These are very bad ideas. But it follows logically from someone who doesn't understand how organizations are structured, what the organization's purpose is, what has to happen internally to connect the individual contributor, the CEO, and all that other stuff.
- [14:04]
Sarah
And I think it also follows logically, Mark, from again, the idea that in this context, the reason, in part that engineers don't necessarily always respect management or the management role is due to lack of technical chops. And therefore the thought being, well, the person we can inherently respect is the person with the most technical chops. So why wouldn't they be the one that ought to lead the team? There's a lot of logic in the idea of let's get rid of managers. We respect the choice of them getting rid of managers because the vast majority of of managers don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it. Frankly, they have no idea. So why not get rid of a broken system? Why not save the money and the time and the effort when it's not being done well or correctly to begin with? And frankly, virtually all companies think that managers aren't that valuable because again, this isn't an engineering problem in almost all organizations. We know, this is why we exist, folks. Managers do not know what they're doing. They don't know. So keeping them around to not do something valuable doesn't seem like it makes a ton of sense.
- [15:27]
Mark
Yeah, and basically I would argue that a lot of people at a lot of companies don't know what managers are supposed to do. In fact, I ask them routinely and they don't. And so they cover for that by saying managers aren't that valuable. And actually the way, you know, they don't, they don't think managers are that valuable is we still have managers at very large companies who can't be given $1000 budget or 1100 or whatever it is now to come to our effective manager conference because they will not give them money to learn how to be a manager. Now, some of that is because the person approving it has been to five or six other trainings and, and they were terrible. It was crap. Horrible, just absolutely horrible. And so that reinforces the idea, hey, the people training managers don't know what managers are supposed to do. So clearly it's a cipher we can't understand. Yeah. Now frankly, we've always thought of this lack of understanding of management as it derives from organizational theory, kind of with a dichotomy. We Think it's understandable. And we also think it's frustrating. You know, it's understandable because of the vast majority of managers being ineffective. Most folks don't love their manager. And when managers are good, they really love them because they stand out as being two or three standard deviations from the mean. And look, managers are always portrayed like idiots in comedic forms like the office Michael Scott or the pointy haired boss in Dilbert the comic strip. So yeah, we get it.
- [16:56]
Sarah
Yeah, it's perfectly understandable. Perfectly. And it's frustrating because the fundamental managerial responsibilities have been known for half a century. And not just that, the behaviors most likely to deliver upon those responsibilities that have been known for half a century have been known for 30 years. It's not like this is new burgeoning technology. This isn't bleeding edge stuff. And that may not seem like a terribly long time. You're right. 50 years isn't that long. But it's far longer than the history of many technology companies. And that's the thing. It was well established. It was already put into practice and well known. Pre technology companies.
- [17:45]
Mark
Yeah.
- [17:46]
Sarah
Removing their managers and at manage your tools at think we would be remiss at this point not to take responsibility for not having done a better job of spreading the word about what it means to be an effective manager. Because if we would have already solved the problem now and met the mission by now, it would, this wouldn't. This would be a non issue because.
- [18:08]
Mark
They would know and just as a little manageable's history here. But we thought a Wall Street Journal article would help. Didn't do a thing. We thought three books would help. Didn't do a thing. There's a pretty entrenched belief that management is broken and it cannot be fixed. We will continue to toil until that has changed.
- [18:27]
Sarah
Well, and the thing is Mark, this goes back to what you were saying about there is a lot of bad management out there. Like there's a lot of bad management advice. Sorry, there's a lot of bad training out there. I mean it just yeah. Feeds back into it. Ready for your next step? If you've been in management for 10 to 15 years, perhaps as a director or even a junior VP and are wondering how to reach that next level. Consider an executive coaching engagement with our co founder Mark Horstman. You'll get dedicated time and commitment from Mark to understand you, your role, where you want to go, how to get there and how you can deliver maximum value. And if Mark believes you don't need him or your goals fall outside our expertise. He will be the first to tell you. Contact Maggie by emailing her at customerserviceanager-tools.com for an outline of our program and to book a discovery call with Mark.
- [19:20]
Mark
Okay, so let's talk about Project Oxygen. During their manager less state, they did have managers, but they were uncertain about whether they wanted them. And there was lack of clarity, which is bad. Lack of clarity about important things is bad in organizations. Right. So they set up Project Oxygen. Its original intent was to prove with data that managers were not necessary. According to people I talked to at Google at the time, the idea was let's be sure of that and then let's start figuring out what the data might say about a new form that might be useful. And you know what one of the people there said, look, if we need a lot less managers, and that is an economically easier, better company to run, yeah, there's a bunch of salary, there's a bunch of compensation and real estate, all kinds of things. And let's be clear, if managers aren't making a difference, and I would argue in most cases they are not, you do what anything anybody else would do about any other system in any other company, you get rid of it and you find some other organizational technique or process or structure or whatever that does get you the results you want. Want. By the way, they also hope to get some proof that their previous approach of promoting the most technically qualified engineers to manage other engineers would be borne out as. As being effective.
- [20:50]
Sarah
Yeah, yeah. Now folks, Manager Tools was not involved in Project Oxygen, but.
- [20:57]
Mark
Right.
- [20:58]
Sarah
We were working with a group of managers at Google at the same time. Now, the managers themselves didn't know anything about Project Oxygen, but these managers, the ones that we were working with, had been listening to our podcasts and decided that even though Google didn't really believe in managers, they thought good managers were good for the organization and they wanted to learn how to use the manager tools trinity of one on ones, feedback, coaching and delegation. Now again, they're working at Google, so many of their peers thought they were insane because I mean, everyone else around here has already basically believed that management is insane.
- [21:42]
Mark
We're all super smart, we carry around extra brains, strapped to ourselves.
- [21:45]
Sarah
Exactly. And y' all are investing more time and that stuff, but whatever. And yet these people, they still believed and they started using the guidance separate completely from what Google was doing to try and figure things out in their Project Oxygen.
- [22:01]
Mark
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit more about Project Oxygen. Google interviewed hundreds of their managers. There are People who say thousands. That would surprise me based on what I've read and heard from Googlers about Project Oxygen. They captured more than 10,000 observations about managers spread across over a hundred variables. And I really have to say I like what I've seen. I really, really like the way they handle it. There were some things I would have done differently, but I really handed to them. They took a true research approach. They were going to have third party validation. Whatever came out of this, because of how careful they were, they did not skew it by trying to create something that would prove to them what they already wanted to know.
- [22:48]
Sarah
Exactly. Which is pretty solid, dude.
- [22:50]
Mark
I mean, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's scientific, right?
- [22:54]
Sarah
That's the thing.
- [22:55]
Mark
Yeah. They looked at performance reviews and by the way, one of my favorite parts about the performance reviews, they looked at manager performance reviews and then they made sure that they looked at the directs of that manager to see what he or she did and what the directs did and how well those people did in the company and so on. They looked at feedback from direct reports, which by the way, I was pretty impressed with. They had some really good scientific researchers. There's a tendency when you're looking at human commentary to quickly aggregate it. But what they did for almost all the comments is they put it in as many categories as they could rather than just collapsing to 1 or 2 or 3 or 4. They resisted their urge to know the solution in advance. Those 10,000 comments ended up being in hundreds, thousands of places, if you will, depending upon all the different categories because they didn't want to judge too soon what the motivation was for that particular comment. I was super impressed by that. They looked at a lot, a lot of data and they tried to make discern what made a difference and what didn't in terms of managers.
- [24:01]
Sarah
Yeah. And that's, that's a huge, huge investment for an organization to make about or, or for something that again, they don't even think is really valuable. They're pretty sure it isn't. But they did all of the, the rigor, the due diligence to make sure that they were right in that assumption. And therefore the work was broad, it was deep, it was statistically impressive based on a lot of data that we've seen and asked about. And as Mark said, we were impressed. That's impressive. It's impressive that they, without knowing what their analysis was showing and what their recommendations might be, that they sought to continue down this path and prove themselves wrong or right. And we thought, I mean, based upon our assessment of it that they were looking at the right things for the right reasons, with true seeking for more knowledge. Exactly. That's what we're doing. We just, we want knowledge about this thing.
- [25:03]
Mark
Which of course, as one person said to me, if you released a whole bunch of data to Googlers who have scientific research backgrounds and so on, and they sniffed that you tried to skew that, you would never ever have any credibility ever again. Anyway, to be clear though, I want to say something. As many of you know, I hope vast majority of you know, we have a big pile of data too. We actually have a bigger pile than Google does. But they didn't do the kind of research that we have done over the last 30 years. The manager tools data was not just interviewing people. Our data is based on studies we did of actual managers. We tested their actual workplace behaviors, we constructed workplace behaviors, and we compared a group of managers using these new constructed behaviors to a control group who were forbidden from using those behaviors. And then comparing the outcomes of the test group and the control group against the most important metrics for all managers everywhere in the world, results. Did you get the job done? And retention, did you do it in a sustainable way? So we just want to be clear, we're not comparing apples to apples here. And there are some things where Google's insights are a little bit different than ours. And we certainly wouldn't suggest that we had as many PhD level scientific researchers doing this. Although to be clear folks, as well, we many of you know, I'm a mechanical engineer by schooling, probably pretty smart, but I would never attempt to undertake this myself. I had statisticians and data analysts and all kinds of people doing all kinds of things to check to make sure. And I had to routinely agree. You can't just say that, Mark. This is what the data say. And I actually say no. I always joke with them. I'm like, the data don't say anything. We speak for the data. Right? Numbers don't lie. But we lie about numbers all the time. But in our case, obviously the mountain of data, 900 over 900,000 managers worldwide. Pretty good. And my point is, ours is different than theirs, but man, is theirs. Impressive. Totally valid. Totally reasonable.
- [27:12]
Sarah
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we covered the before and the during. Now we're at the after beat, after.
- [27:18]
Mark
This is my favorite part.
- [27:20]
Sarah
I know, right? Okay, so what did they find out? They found that good managers make an enormous difference and that good managers generally shared several common behavioral patterns.
- [27:34]
Mark
Does that sound familiar to you guys? In the manager tools community, there are certain behaviors that make a lot of difference and that if you do those behaviors, you are a much better manager than other people. Does that sound exactly like what we've been saying for 20 years? Yeah. Anyway, sorry sir.
- [27:50]
Sarah
It does. No, no, no, that's great. And folks, again we think that this is, it's particularly important, impressive in that the research was actually designed to prove the opposite result of what it resulted in. But they trusted their data enough to realize that they had actually been wrong all along about their managers and about the effectiveness of leadership at Google. They spent the time, they collected the data and they let it prove them wrong. Which is just amazing.
- [28:29]
Mark
Yeah. And to their credit, again. And they talk about this openly when they talked about it openly when they were training managers. And there were some based on this new, this new information they had. And there were some managers that were disappointed because they had been promoted for this reason. In keeping with that idea of the research, proving the opposite of what they expected. Project Oxygen also found that technical expertise like writing code or constructing databases or constructing an experiment was the least valuable of the behaviors that their highly effective managers had. Now it was valuable, but it was the least of the eight behaviors.
- [29:12]
Sarah
Yeah. And as summarized by a much read and discussed New York Times article about Project Oxygen, which you can find, you can read. It's out there.
- [29:21]
Mark
In fact, sir, I would say it sounds so weird to say this. If you Google Project Oxygen, the first link will be Google's Project Oxygen and it will take you to that New York Times article. Unfortunately, I think it's buying a paywall. But you can get a free subscription and read it. And it's a very well done article.
- [29:38]
Sarah
It absolutely is. Okay, so yes, based upon what was summarized in the article, what employees valued most were even keeled bosses who made time for one on one meetings, who helped puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees lives and careers. And again, this is where we come back to that. Does this sound at all familiar? Does anybody feel like someone else told this story? I don't know. It. It feels like I've heard this before.
- [30:09]
Mark
Yeah, exactly. So let's do this real quick because we're running long here. I've been meaning to write this cast for 15 years and in part I didn't because it wasn't an actionable management behavior. But I decided that we would write it. Not particularly now because I thought many managers could use it and say, hey boss, I know you think this is weird. I listened to this podcast I started Doing this stuff, I don't think you can argue with my results. But regardless, if you think that what I'm doing is a little unusual, you know, you might want to listen. If you're a licensee, please share them. Share with your boss the show notes, but tell them, tell your boss to Google Project Oxygen. Yeah, I mean, people trust Google.
- [30:53]
Sarah
People trust Google.
- [30:54]
Mark
Yeah. All right, so here are the eight behaviors ranked in order of effectiveness. I love this part too, in creating great results and retention. Those are the two things. Without really saying it, it's inherent, it's implicit in what Google did. And I like that that they knew that results and retention really, really mattered. Number one is a good coach. What Google found is managers who produce great results and retention took time with their directs to help them solve problems rather than telling them what to do. Great managers grew their people's skills. Rather than doing their jobs for them, whether through micromanagement or just always giving them the answer, they encourage them to try to keep working on things and do better, which is how people learn. It's the adult learning model. It's andragogy, which is learn by doing.
- [31:48]
Sarah
And then number two, which is a slight variation on number one. But again, Google was very specific about differentiating these things. Number two empowers the team and does not micromanage. Great managers let their workers work, which again is somehow or is, is somewhat in concert with the idea of leaving great engineers alone to get their work done. Hire smart people. Get out of their way.
- [32:12]
Mark
Yeah. Number three, I love this one. And this was a bit of a surprise for Google expresses interest in and concern for team members success and personal well being. Google doesn't come across that way, by the way, if you're there. But what they learned was great managers understood that trusting relationships and getting to know your people. The fundamental foundation of everything we at Manager Tools know about management is trust. That was super important in a human organization. And that's why virtually everyone at Google who's a manager now does one on ones. And in part, they do it because they got trained on how to do it. They were told why to do it. And they're measured on it too.
- [32:57]
Sarah
Yes, exactly.
- [32:58]
Mark
Yeah.
- [32:59]
Sarah
Things that get measured are the things that get done. All right, now that takes me to number four. Great managers are productive and results oriented. Great managers focus on results, talk about performance, and hold people accountable for their work.
- [33:13]
Mark
Help them shine. Me, I'm sorry. Yeah, come on. Yeah. Number five is a good communicator. By the way, they didn't say great they just said good is a good communicator, listens and shares information. Google learned that great managers not only know their people but also talk to them about their work and lives and makes time for the direct to talk to them. They learned that managers who always are talking, are not listening, are not learning about their people and are not perceived to be useful in terms of hey, I want to be as an individual contributor, I want to be connected to the company and they keep their people informed. Because managers, as we've said for years here, are not communicated to, they are always communicated through.
- [34:04]
Sarah
Takes us then to number six. Great managers help with career development. Great managers develop their people by giving them challenges that are going to lead to more opportunities which again delegation. Right?
- [34:18]
Mark
Come on. Yeah folks, it's literally delegation.
- [34:20]
Sarah
Yeah, it's literally delegation. Pass stuff down.
- [34:23]
Mark
Yeah. Number seven has a clear vision and strategy for the team. Great managers tell their people where they're going and why this is not hard. I don't know what to do in this situation because I don't know what the outcome is you want. I don't have a roadmap for what you expect me to do. I'm not Talking about a 10 year roadmap, I'm just talking about three months. What's the driving force going on now? And there's no way you're not going to get asked that question if you have no driving force, no driving, no. No direction, no vector, no, you know, no true north.
- [34:55]
Sarah
And then that, that takes us to number eight, the one that we knew would be on the list. Great managers have key technical skills and help to advise the team. And yes, great managers can help people solve technical problems and teach them new skills while also folks not doing work for the team members, rather advising and helping and, and teaching and, and showing them those skills. But having the skills was number eight on their list.
- [35:27]
Mark
Yeah. And I want to caution you folks here, Google is a obviously a very technical company. They have technical underpinnings. They, their products are all, I think all their products are digital. I think certainly phones have a physical form but the underlying principles are all digital. So there's a lot of software going on there. But this is true for non technical jobs as well. You're going to be much better off having someone manage people if the manager has done what those people have done or if you get promoted to run a group and you have two divisions of your group. Divisions being smaller than groups in my example that you know what they do and you've managed them before. But you have a third division that you don't. You're going to have to spend more time and it's going to be harder for you to be highly effective with somebody whom you don't understand their work and being able to have a direct come to you and say, hey, I'm kind of stuck. And you could say, okay, let's talk about it. What are you doing? And why are you stuck? And then you have some experience. You say, well, I've actually been there before. And we actually have a podcast about that called Feel, Felt, Found. I understand how you feel. I felt that way too when I was situation like this. And what I found is you might want to try one of these or two, two or three things. I'll tell you one more story. We're running a little bit longer, Sarah, but I used to work for Sony Pictures and then I started working for Sony Music. And there's a story, a guy told me this story about an A and R guy, an artist and recording guy. Who are the guys that used to manage bands or singers and songwriters and so on. And he went to Australia to embed himself for a week with a band. I think it was Australia. And in the first discussion, they're having this discussion about all this music they've made and they're getting ready to put together their first album. And they said, the song that really we think is going to be the gel for this album is this ballad. We did this kind of love song thing and so we want that to be the first single. And he says, guys, I'm sorry, no, you can't do that now in this moment, they think he's being the boss of the band. Right. And some people would do that. I'll just say, I won't do that. What he said is, no, guys, I'm sorry, check it out. No, the. It's kind of a rule, it's almost a law. It's certainly a principle that the first song on an album has to be a pop or a dance hit. If you're in that genre.
- [37:57]
Sarah
Yeah.
- [37:57]
Mark
And they're like, well, we don't like that one as much. He said, look, don't believe me? Go back at all the historical albums and ask yourself, what was the first single? You'll find that it was a pop or a dance hit. And that gets people interested and they like it and it makes them happy. And then they'll listen to your other stuff. That's the kind of thing that great managers do. They have skills. Maybe they're not technical in the sense of digital, but they do that. So in all of this project docs basically proved for Google and found in our opinion more generally, in part because it resonates and aligns completely with our stuff. They basically found that managers themselves through these kind of behaviors, but the manager's own behaviors had the greatest impact on employee performance and their likelihood of staying at Google. I mean, I'm sorry folks, we can't imagine any manager tools listener or anybody who knows anything about our work not seeing the parallels between our work and the recommendations. The top eight behaviors of managers coming out of project auction. Anyone who knows our recommendations, you can't fail to see the manager tools trinity in these results. One on ones feedback, coaching and delegation.
- [39:13]
Sarah
Yeah, and it's, it's not just that folks. Because Google discovered that it was behaviors that made all the difference. That meant management was teachable, trainable and transferable. You don't need to have a certain background or a certain personality or a certain experience.
- [39:35]
Mark
Yeah. And by the way, you don't have to be a man. You could be a woman too. You don't have to be white. You can be a person of color. You don't have to have necessarily great language skills in your using a second language. You don't have to be rich. You don't have to be from the right school. You don't have to have. In some cases, a degree will matter. You. You know, I couldn't survive in the software world. At Google, you don't have to have all those things. No, in fact, good management democratizes it. Makes it available to everyone because behaviors are available to everyone. Yeah, Soapbox.
- [40:09]
Sarah
I love it. And again, because these things are teachable and trainable and transferable, it means that Google can teach their managers who can learn these necessary behaviors and everyone benefits. And that's what Google did. Yeah, they taught their managers, they educated them all on the results and then measured the behaviors that they asked their managers to do. Because again, anybody can do it. I mean, it's not rocket science. We say that about our stuff all the time. This isn't rocket science. Just do this. That's the answer. Yeah, it'll get you there. It's not about personality or there's not some magical potion that's making great leaders great leaders just do this stuff.
- [40:55]
Mark
The whole leadership thing just drives me. Oh, some leaders are born, not made. I'm like, you're an idiot. Anyway, okay, let me, let me summarize all this, folks. We've said this a million times, but I love that Google and Project Oxygen reinforce it that managing others is not a state of being, it's a state of doing. It's a behavioral state. Managers are not born, they're taught, they're made. And they make themselves if they have to. These core behaviors are available to everybody. The only thing shocking about all this is that despite all of our data written about in the Wall Street Journal and later Google's data written about in the New York Times, the vast majority of companies and their managers are left to their own devices because they still hold on to the completely disproven, idiotic idea that management can be left to a person's own style or performance. And it's not true and it's not fair. It can't metastasize. If you tell people it's about who they are or what they think, it's about how you behave. Yep.
- [42:06]
Sarah
Awesome. It was a good one.
- [42:08]
Mark
Yeah, it's fun. Finally got to do it.
- [42:10]
Sarah
All righty. So that was the end of this one, folks, and thank you for joining us. I hope this helped you out. Now, please help others and tell them about manager tools. And of course, follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only, please.
- [42:30]
Mark
Google would not like that. Five star only, please. I know we're doing research here.
- [42:34]
Sarah
Whatever. It's. It's by research. We're doing this.
- [42:37]
Mark
Bye, folks.
- [42:37]
Sarah
Bye, everyone.