The Importance of Managing Chaos

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If you want an innovative company, your job is to manage the chaos. Ideas emerge organically through conversations like one Eric Schmidt and a meet had in their cramped executive suite. Reid Hoffman: A dash of insubordination is the secret ingredient to Google's success. If you want to invent something new or reinvent something at a spectacular order of magnitude, don't suppress management.

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.

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