The Power of Quick Decisions

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Google adopted a model of staffing on Monday, business meeting on Wednesday and product meeting on Friday. Google famously instituted a rule that any employee could devote 20% of their work week to any project they'd like. This combination of inventive bottom-up ideas and focused top-down decision-making has guided Google's growth over the past 16 years.

Google doesn’t tell its employees how to innovate; it manages their inventive chaos. Their secret? Mix free-flowing ideas with disciplined decision-making.

In this week's All-Star Episode, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt shares his strategies to manage chaos. CEO of Google from 2001-2015, and now the co-founder of Schmidt Futures, Schmidt reveals the hidden secret in Google’s famous “20% time” policy, their approach to hiring smart creatives, and the parallels between leading Google and piloting small airplanes. Plus, the decision he made to support a crazy idea that he was certain would bankrupt the company.

"All-Star Episodes" are part of a special series designed to center some of the most timely — and timeless — business wisdom in the Masters of Scale feed. These episodes best encapsulate the kind of transformative, unconventional insights you hear in the series. Have an idea for an All-Star Episode from our library? Let us know at hello@mastersofscale.com.

Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com/

Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.