Building a better Boss

Google Inc. is such a huge international company that founded in 1998. Prior to Project Oxygen was created and has pumps fresh air by introduce new implementation of management and from my point of view, it is quite interesting to know how a very big company like Google chooses to manage its organisation by examined and identified of eight characteristics of Google’s most effective managers.

The 21st century has brought with it a new workplace, one in which everyone must adapt to a rapidly hanging society with constantly shifting demands and opportunities. This essay is to identify the practices of Google’s best technical managers.

From developing field of Management, there have been several theories and experimentations conducted by business pioneers in order to enhance the understanding that could lead to improved and elevated productivity that involving the work activity to be completed efficiently and effectively. They can be classified by management functions, management roles and management skills.

At Google, research shows that employees feel valued if they connect with their manager. Google’s Project Oxygen research picked up on some leadership behaviours that reflect value and the culture is designed to break down the barriers amongst the engineers and managers. Introducing on the basic management concepts and tools for applying into the changing business environment. It will cover fundamental theories in learning and motivation, decision making, career management, leadership, and communication.

An organisations are changing because the world around them has changed and is continuing to change. Overall the article given was well written, clear and relevant.

This assignment essay will first describe the recent changes in building a better boss but also explain on how other companies can learn from Google’s experience.

QUESTION 1: Describe the findings of Project Oxygen using the functions approach, Mintzberg’s roles approach, and the skills approach.

Question begins with a section dedicated to three (3) main approach that impact organisation and they are are Functional approach, Management roles approach and Skill approach that essential to understand the context that requires managers to adopt a strategic approach. The eight characteristics of a great manager which are must have a clear vision and strategy, help their employees with career development, express interest in your team members’ success and well-being, be a good communicator and listen to your team, be a good coach to lead, be productive and results-oriented and empower your team and don’t micromanage.

The first component of managing is planning function. A manager must determine what the organizations goals are and how to achieve those goals. Much of this information will come directly from the vision and mission statement for the company. Google first characteristic of “big eight” is Have a clear vision and strategy for the team because their mission was to devise something far more important to the future of Google to build better bosses.

Managing and leading are not the same activity. Leading is a manager manages employees; this person makes sure that tasks are completed on time and policies are followed. Employees typically follow managers because he or she is the supervisor and in-charge of employees. Help your employees with career development and employees see a leader as someone that motivates them and guides them to help meet the goals.

Being a manager involves many different tasks. Controlling function involves monitoring the organization’s performance to make sure goals are being met. It also provides the required information to the worker and lower level managers. To improve their job performance, an experience manager must have specific knowledge to guide them. This is also elaborate with technical skills and interpersonal role.

In the model proposed by Robert L.Katz, he recognizes three different abilities that a leader should have. These are: technical, human, and conceptual.

Human skill is proficiency in working with people and team. Their skills required to effectively influence superiors and subordinates in the achievement of objectives or goals. Express interest in your team members’ success and well-being consists of leading function and human skills. They are related and can help to improve the relationship and ability between to managers and others.

To be a great manager, they must have the technical skills so that manager can advice with the team by monitoring, controlling and correcting to each other. Technical skill is proficiency in a particular area of work. Without technical skill, managers unable to provide useful information for by those who are excellent in specific skills.

In an ideal situation, the manager as the leader and a person who want to lead effectively need to discover what motivates their employees and inspire them to reach the company objectives or goals. Human skills can help managers to be a good communicator as they have good relation with them and listen to the others and team.

Be a good coach is the reason why every organisation must provide leadership in the team or perhaps in the entire organization; and it’s where Google manager managed the performance and responsibilities of everyone in the group. Leading is involve because a good coach has to lead their employee to do well in organisation. Without a leading, employees will see a manager as unprepared and may lose respect for that particular manager’s supervisory techniques. Technical skills, human skills and leading are consisting in this characteristic because to have their knowledge and technique, managers have to build up a good relationship with the employees so that they can work well together to reach the target.

Each component is important and one cannot function well without the others. Be productive and results-oriented is complied with organising and controlling function. Managers are responsible on the organization of the company and this is include organising people by conceptual skills which allows manager to think through and work with ideas. It is a skill that can be learned and encourage manager to take advantage of every opportunity complied with decisional roles by develop, solving problems, generating new ideas and the ability to learn conceptually.

Last but not least, empowering the team and don’t micromanage is the last characteristic of eight. Communication and strong relationships is the human skills that are most needed by all managers, because they need to share information and ideas up and down. They must know how to communicate, motive and lead because the good relationship between managers and employees can help to empower their team and do not micromanage to the lower job performance employee.

All those Eight Attributes, it was quite interesting to see them all pulled together and articulated the way they are and actually allow you to focus on them as well as classes on team management, team building, situational leadership and career developing.

QUESTION 2: Are you surprised at what Google found out about “building a better boss?”. Explain your answer.
I am not surprised because now a days employees are totally understood about the important of a manager in the organization. Google research found that not only are managers a critical component to corporate structure—but that good managers increased job satisfaction, retention and employment within their groups and the organisation as a whole.

To build a better boss, Google had done by interview people who are leaving a company. The results that they had are one of three reasons. They have terrible bosses, and this was the reason why employees leaving the company. Google’s vice president for people operations, Mr Laszlo Bock spent some time and effort to uncover this and its study found that a boss’s technical expertise was less important than “being accessible.” (Peter DeSilva, New York Times). Examined from some 100 variable and ultimately the Project Oxygen identify eight simplistic characteristic to understand and approach to management.

When Mr Bock and his team began looking closer and rank ordering the eight items by importance. I am totally understand on what Mr Bock concern about the important of a manager. A great boss can really change our life and inspire us. Basically they got to learn a lot more about the people that work for manager. Google would lose a team and a good manager if the company did not help the manager in how he can do it or improve themselves. Allow me, to share an example of experience from my current job. I am a junior executive who directly report to my middle manager. She is the person who only thought about herself and too micromanage to the other colleagues.

Many of us did not like her and despises her. They wanted to give up and hope to change to other team. An annual engagement survey introduce to the company and to obtain comprehensive feedback from employees and company gave one-on-one leadership coaching to all managers exactly what Google done. Surprisingly, she is actually improving more than expected. She became really focused on our career development, coaching us, and helping everybody in my team.

The moral of the story is not simply that people managers do matter and make a positive impact. It’s also that they have to utilize and act on data in order to make it worthwhile. Google’s Project Oxygen is a great example of how proactively using data really can change the way your company hires and maintains its people. QUESTION 3: What’s the difference between encouraging managers to be great managers and knowing what being a great manager involves?

Being a good manager does not just happen. To become one, we will need to have an effective mix of management and leadership skills. In this regard, experience is an invaluable ally and it involves a completely different set of skills. Being great managers is a person who should give some suggestion, supporting to employees and should perform well in their works.

Realising the fact that the manger do not always know all the answers but the other factors of being a good manager is involve by providing the training necessary to do their jobs. They can motive by attending a lot of classes, as well as classes on team management, team building and situational leadership. Furthermore, managers are encourage to take coaching class and to learn how to be a better coach and also learn how to really get to know the people that work with them a lot better. Without the proper training and guidelines many employees will not excel in their work.

Being a great manager is not just about barking out orders. Sometimes, the worth of a manager can be found in his or her ability to listen and empathise. It allows them to identify what is going on in the company. Keeping an open ear to complaints will also help managers to identify mistakes that may be making but by correcting them.

Functional approach, Roles approach and Skill approach are the main functions that must be considered in how to be a great managers. A great manager must perform well in four functional approach such as planning, organizing, leading and controlling. A great managers also can be described by looking at the roles which are interpersonal roles, informational roles and decisional roles. A great manager also must have the three essential skills such as technical skills, human skills and conceptual skills. Those behaviors are the centerpiece of Project Oxygen, a research initiative that’s bloomed into a comprehensive feedback in training program for Google’s managers.

The qualities and characteristics discussed in this article are only a sample of what good managers can accomplish. Good managers can make or break an organization. Managers at all levels in an organization must utilize the elements presented to enhance and increase the effectiveness and success of their organization. QUESTION 4: What could other companies learn from Google’s experiences?

“Google is at the leading edge” of companies attempting to apply a data-driven approach to the unpredictable world of human interactions (Will Marré, 2012). I believe most of the companies can learn from Google’s experiences. This is also a benefit to other companies to learn on how to build a great company culture is by build a great leader. A great leader is to lead and has the ability of the ethical person to shine through to leadership.

Before Google implemented Project Oxygen, they were reported as having trouble holding onto talent, losing people to other startups. The project was set out to analyse and the results were prioritised by importance. Therefore, through Google’s experience, if the companies want to keep employees motivated, a good manager must be able to maintain the balancing act of many different components. Hence, the managers should make it known that they appreciate employees, want to help them, and that the work employees do for them will pay off. Employees want to feel like their efforts will be noticed and that their hard work is furthering their careers development.

Beside that, the other companies can learn from Google’s experience is on how to become a good coach and understand how to work better with others. It’s an effective method for showing that how to reduce conflict and improve working relationships. A good coach is to provide guidance, build a great teamwork and supportive. Being supportive means a lot more than providing an encouraging word but also help to figure out the way of creating the business.

Next, the key to get employees working more efficiently and effectively is encouraging their productive work and balancing appropriate levels of results-orientation with understanding of employee needs. Through Google’s experience, companies also can learn and improve employees by develop and maintain a consistent management approach that engenders esprit de corps is a key link in the productivity process.

The findings of Project Oxygen appear to bear out the conclusions. Above all else, other companies and employees want managers who give them face-to-face time, and who connect with them in ways that help them learn and grow.

QUESTION 5: Would you want to work for a company like Google? Why or why not?

My answer would be yes. Google is a well-known as Internet Giant. True mission at Google is not to help employees find things, or even to make money, but to create a master-race of employees. I have always wanted to work at this company. A place where my background and skills can be utilized and developed.

Google has a very high hiring bar due to the strength of the brand name, the pay & perks, and the very positive work culture. Therefore, I consider myself an innovator and I would love to work for an organization that’s leading the future of the industry. Google also provides amazing opportunities for working in small, focused teams and outstanding technical mangers who were encouraged to leave people do their on task.

Google are spots to wins when it comes to treating its employees right! Although Google may be a huge company, it still attempts to operate more like a small business. I will choose Google because they’ve created an environment that masterfully fosters and encourages intellectually flexible people that share like-minded passions and commitments. Basically I can experience to learn a lot more about the people and spend a lot more time learning about them individually and finding out what their personal goals were. Google have a lots of opportunities to help grow in lots of ways that I couldn’t before.

Besides that, Google has made a name for itself as an innovative organization. Google’s powerful advantage is just simple search engine. They could become a world’s most innovative companies because of their engine and strategies. They are also investing in the youth of tomorrow with a selection of education programs.

To discover the advantages of what Google Education offering, first one is Computing and Programming Experience (CAPE) program started in America and next is in Malaysia. CAPE program such as Google Chrome program consists of middle and high school students especially in rural place to learn about how computers work in the real world. Secondly, Programs in computer science was not only leading in America universities but it is now expanding to all students all over the world, including Malaysia. Thirdly is App Inventor. They can make employees make a lot of innovative ideas. Lastly, online resources such as Google+ can be use for communications between group project members via Circles. The app can also keep in touch with former boss or parents by creating Circles for each.

Allegedly, in conclusion, I really agree that Google is the most innovative company all over the world. And if we work in Google, we can develop our thinking and expect that what will be the future. And Google is changing with world.

REFERENCE:-

Adam Bryant (2011) Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss. Viewed on 08/2014, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html?pagewanted=all

Emily Lucas (2013) Top 10 Google Education Advantages and Disadvantages. Viewed on 09/2014, Retrieved from http://www.onextrapixel.com/2013/05/31/top-10-google-education-advantages-and-disadvantages/

Gryffin Consulting (2013) Build A Better Boss. Viewed on 08/2014, Retrieved from !build-a-better-boss/cp0e

Heather Rothbauer-Wanish (2009) Four Functions of Management. Viewed on 07/2014, Retrieved from

Jennifer Wiley-Cordone (2014) Informational Roles of a Manager. Viewed on