Great work by our young Drupal apprenticeships
For the last twelve months Happy Computers has been running a Drupal apprenticeship programme, in partnership with the Drupal community, to enable young people (fresh out of school) to get an exciting start in the world of programming. (Drupal is an open source web development framework.)
Think Big – Like Google
Yvonne Agyei Yvonne explained how 4 years ago she went to the Board, as the newly appointed Head of Benefits, to ask for an 8% increase in budget to cover increasing health care costs in the US. Google CEO: “Why can’t you just fix the US health care system?” Yvonne felt it wasn’t going well, with the board not really engaging. Eventually Eric Schmidt (then Google CEO), after talking with Larry Page (current CEO), explained: “the problem we have is every year you guys come in and ask for incremental increases and every year we approve it. What I don’t see is any type of solution about how you will fix health care.” “You mean fix health care for Googlers?” asked Yvonne. “No you need to fix the health care system not just for googlers but for the world” replied Eric Now this was in Barack Obama’s first term and he was having one or two challenges, as President of the USA, in fixing the US health care system. The point wasn’t to take it literally, explained Yvonne, but to raise our ambition. It changed the way they were thinking. Instead of coming in again with an inflationary increase they took a year, did the analysis and came back and asked for a completely different approach. “We actually came in and asked for $100 million to make Googlers healthier and adapt healthier behaviour, looking at everything to the food we serve in the cafes, our gym, everything. It was the beginning of our “optimize your life” programme.” “That they were excited about. This is an example of how we were encouraged to think bigger and it shifted the way we thought.” Build Think Big into your company DNA Working with a variety of Googlers in organising two happy workplace conferences, I have been struck by how big vision is a basic expectation. After the success of the first happy workplace conference, at the post event review, I excitedly explained my plans to have happy workplace conferences at several venues across the UK. His response “why are you restricting your ambition?” Why not spread globally? Now I have to admit we haven’t got there yet but the challenge changed my way of looking at the possibilities and we are now in discussion with various overseas partners. Maybe even one day we will hold a happy workplace conference at Mountain View (Google’s global HQ). What would you do differently if you really thought big, and believed anything was possible?
Google: Hire Great People and Give Them Lots of Autonomy
On the one hand its about fun, creative workplaces with lots of colour and feature elements like slides. But its also crucially about trust and autonomy, and hiring the right people. Look for “Googliness” “We look for a cultural fit with the company”, explained Yvonne. This includes a passion for what you do, interests beyond work. “We like people who travel, we like people who speak more than one language and engage with their community.” “Now we don’t hire people if we don’t think they are “googly”. If they mis-treated the receptionist or came across as arrogant, we would not hire them whatever their skills.” When Google got it wrong In a period of extreme growth, 2005-2008, there was a focus on hiring the right skills. In 2007 they realised they were having challenges in some of the people they’d recruited, picked up especially in the regular Googlegeist, the employee satisfaction survey. Google realised they had veered off in their hiring practice and had brought in senior people with a more command-and-control approach, “which doesn’t work at Google at all.” The response was to dramatically improve the induction process, to help people understand culture and weed out people who have a “tell” approach. Autonomy is key I often ask people, at our events, who should set targets – the manager or the member of staff. Most respond that they should do it together. My view has always been that if you can get individuals to set their own targets they will be likely to both set tougher goals and to be more likely to achieve them. Yvonne makes clear this is also the Google approach. Every quarter the corporate strategy is revealed for the next three months. “As a manager it is not your role to tell your people what they should be doing, rather its a bottom up process. Each Googler is expected to understand what the corporate objectives are and figure out how they contribute.” Within three weeks of the whole company objectives being set, every one of the 38,000 members of staff will set their own OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Which means they each determine what they will be doing for the quarter. Be transparent, share as much as possible In their IPO letter Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page made clear “We are not a conventional company”. For Yvonne a key element is that “I have never worked in a company that shares as much information as Google does.” Every week Sergey and Larry hold TGIF (Thank God its Friday), where they personally talk with hundreds of Googlers at the Mountain View HQ and thousands worldwide. They explain upcoming product launches, and share information on what the company is doing. Plus they take questions and “pretty much nothing is off limits”. Googlers use simple online technology to vote questions up and down and decide what gets asked. (Though it took 15 years for somebody to figure out it would work better on Thursday, so more international Googlers can participate in real-time.) Imagine that in your organisation: How could it improve communication if the top bosses held a regular inter-action on what’s happening – involving all staff? Related Blogs
1 Million Pounds to Spend and Nobody is Interested
Happy is moving. A month ago, just before the deadline for the landlord’s break clause approached, a law clerk arrived at our office and served a notice to quit. The landlord plans to redevelop the building and we have to be out of our office by 30th October.
Reduce Expense Claims: Let Your People Decide What to Spend
In his excellent book
Listen to it here
, Julian Birkinshaw describes a very interesting experiment at the pharma multi-national Roche. Two groups of staff, in Germany and Switzerland, were told that their travel claims were to become self-authorised.
Is This a Government Committed to Small Business?
Today David Cameron will claim his government has delivered on supporting small businesses. I’m sorry, Prime Minister, but I don’t see it. Your government’s direct attacks on small business has cost my company in excess of £200,000 a year.
The Key Business Question: Will it Make Life Better?
“Seven years ago we were a tiny unremarkable company. Last year Propellernet were voted the best search agency in Europe and best small company to work for in UK,” says Jack Hubbard, founder and CEO of Propellernet.
8 Companies That Don’t Have Managers
At Happy we let people choose their managers, an idea which has been seen as very radical when I’ve spoken about it. However there are companies that have gone a step further and got rid of managers altogether. Some are small but some are billion-dollar companies:
