1. Does Schmidt's description of the Google Culture make sense to you?
Yes it does. I love flat cultures and I like recruiting to fit an atmosphere rather than a job. Not having huge hierarchies allows people to feel very empowered. When they know they are free to pursue their own projects and are supported in this idea it goes even further towards creating an empowered and trusting employees. These types of cultures also fosters innovation. Centralized command stifles innovation and having worked for an organization where centralized command is the norm I can tell you that I feel very nervous floating new ideas. I often joke with a few trusted co-workers that I have angered the Collective and while most of them don't get the Start Trek reference they at least get the idea that I feel we are expected to be drones (if you click that link a guy shows up at your door and gives you back your virginity).
2. Is this a reasonable way to view the work that most people are doing in your workplace?
I wish. Working in a hospital means that I have to have somewhat stricter guidelines than programming. However, that being said, I think it would be nice if teams dedicated to program improvement were given more latitude to make decisions. Suffice it to say we are not particularly innovative and that bothers me a great deal. It seems we repeat the same things over and over and hope that somehow results will just magically appear. I have always enjoyed process improvement and I actually plan on loaning out this class's textbook to a few people to see if I can gain some small amount of traction.
3 As a leader, does it take courage to have and to implement this point of view? Could this backfire?
I think it just takes faith in your employees. It isn't comfortable relinquishing control. And I see how managers have been burned by placing trust in weak employees. I am a union supporter but they can make it difficult to remove obstinate employees or implement organizational change. So when a manager wants to empower an employee he or she needs to be careful to pick trusted employees. Trust is a two-way street but I do see how managers often have more to lose. It can take a great deal of courage to be willing to make mistakes to find those correct employees.
4. What can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in your career?
That I need to apply to Google, or a firm that specializes in helping create the type of culture that Google has established. I am not in a place where I am truly empowered to make decisions and that can be very frustrating. I also don't think any great changes will be coming around any time soon. I work for an organization that still thinks flash-drives will activate Skynet if plugged into the computer. Overall I think it takes external pressure to create new cultures in well-established organizations. When there is no incentive for change it becomes very hard for new ideas to take hold.
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