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welcome to the show I'm Kade Massey
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professor the practice here at the
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Wharton School and I'm joined by Laszlo
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Bock he's the head of people operations
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at Google and importantly he's the
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author of a brand new book a book called
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work rules we're here to talk with
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Laszlo about his new book welcome well
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okay it is fantastic to be here thank
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you it's fantastic to have you here I've
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chatted with you in various places
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around the u.s. anyway but I've never
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chatted with you here on camera and we
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want to hear about your thoughts on your
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new book so the first question in my
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mind is what does it say about Google
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they allowed you to write this book I
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mean most people I think would want to
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keep these secrets of how you guys
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operate to themselves and yet they
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allowed you to write this book what does
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it say about the firm
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yeah well it's it's funny we kind of had
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this epiphany and I was thinking about
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this and I realized work actually sucks
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for a lot of people a lot of the time
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and and at Google it's actually pretty
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good most days we still have bad days I
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have bad days but it's not miserable all
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the time before a lot of people work
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system means to an end and we spend more
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time working than we do anything else
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more time than we do sleeping more time
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than we do with our loved ones and it
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didn't feel right that that we would be
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having something and figuring out how to
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do things and kind of other firms
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wouldn't be able to learn from a benefit
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from what we do so we decided we're
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gonna open-source some of this stuff and
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share it with the world in the hopes
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that actually work gets better
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everywhere not just at Google why does
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Google care about that improving the
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state of the world in terms of work you
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guys are about organizing information
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why do you care about other people
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enjoying themselves at work well for two
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reasons and this is gonna sound a little
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trite because every company's got a
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mission statement but people at Google
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really attached to it they really feel
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it they they believe in this idea of
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making information free and sharing
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things and transparency and so reason
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one is we want to we want to do that we
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want to try that the second is because
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what we found is rightly or wrongly you
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know when Google makes news people pay
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attention and so even if we're saying
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things that aren't rocket science we did
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this thing called Project oxygen which
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actually had rocket science in it was
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fascinating about what makes managers
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work well but it it got a lot of
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coverage as soon as the New York Times
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picked it up and people paid attention
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and we got all these stories about
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people treating their employees better
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and we thought you know what yes we got
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organized world's information
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that's important but we should be doing
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the right thing and everything we do and
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this is a way to share some of that well
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can you tell us some of the main
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principles that you espouse in the book
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if you were to say what the message is
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of this book what would that be
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I think I think there's a few one is
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that it's important to have meaning in
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your work and there's fantastic work
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actually about one of your colleagues
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Adam grant around the importance of
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mission and connecting your work to
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something meaningful and what he's seen
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in his research you get a 30% to
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sometimes 400 percent improvement in
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productivity by just making work
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meaningful ami Rosinski professor at
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Yale University also a friend similar
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work she looked at people who were
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housekeepers who were janitors in a
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hospital and she found a third of folks
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even in that kind of job
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found meaning in their work and ways to
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make it matter so number one is that the
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second is taking power away from
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managers managers have all these
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incentives to control and manage but as
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employees we want to be free and when we
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feel free we do our best work so I write
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a lot about how to take power away from
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managers at Google for example managers
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can't hire they can't choose who to
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promote it's all done by committee the
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third big thing is actually applying
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some data some science to making sure
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that the decisions we make when it comes
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to people are right because our
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intuition is is wrong most of the time
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you actually can't trust your gut in our
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computer scientists tell us you've got
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11 million bits of information coming at
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you at any given time if you think about
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not just what you see what you hear you
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actually you feel that your clothing on
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you right you're tasting the inside of
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your mouth all your all the time your
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brain filters us out and can only
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process about 40 of those 11 million
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bits so we make bad decisions without
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realizing it so the rest of the book is
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about how do you apply science to
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actually make better decisions and it is
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we'll take what we learned and and the
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beautiful thing is it works for just
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about any company well this is one
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question a lot of people would would
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would say this is something that can
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happen in Silicon Valley or especially
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at Google they have all these resources
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is it really applicable to my company
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whether it's small guy or an industrial
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guy is it really applicable outside of
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your special setting yeah so so far it
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really seems to be and what's amazing is
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we at Google have applied a lot of
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intellectual horsepower and analytics to
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prove this stuff works but you know like
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a lot of good ideas a lot of companies
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develop this stuff independently and
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have just been doing it so in the
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Northeast you've got this grocery chain
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called Wegmans and they treat people
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well they open their books to people
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they give people incredible freedom
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there's this great story that jaktip
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eaters their CEO told me dad a baker who
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got a call and said you know I need a
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wedding cake this afternoon can you
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please help me
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so God bakes a cake and he he picks it
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up and goes to deliver it he shuts down
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the bakery for four or six hours to get
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this cake to a customer and when he
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comes back to the store he's not
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vilified for losing revenue they say
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he's a hero
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because he did the right thing and then
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outside the US there's this really cool
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company I stumbled across doing the
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research called Brand X retail our
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textile manufacturer they and you think
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about textile manufacturing in a
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developing country
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you don't think great working conditions
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but they have a largely female workforce
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they teach them entrepreneur
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entrepreneurship because they actually
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want them to actually go and do other
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things afterwards they give them money
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to buy wells and build wells and their
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home villages so people have clean water
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and so they're viewed as heroes and they
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do all these things and they're more
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profitable they're viewed as a great
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company they have higher employee
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retention and higher quality work
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product as a result so all these things
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around what you do for people lots of
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companies as different-sized I've done
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it and what they generally find is you
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actually end up with better economics
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rather than worse selasa
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if that's the case and it can it's more
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profitable and it works for grocers and
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Buffalo and textile manufacturers in
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India why don't more people do it why
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don't more organizations do it that's a
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great question I think I think the
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reason more organizations don't do this
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stuff is it's not always intuitive and
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it actually cuts against all your
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incentives as a manager as a leader the
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reason you get promoted is because
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you've done good work you've hit your
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goals you've made good decisions so
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you're in this job and of course you
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immediately want to make good decisions
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hit your goals move things forward and
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you forget that when you're an employee
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you want your manager helping and you
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know giving you advice and then kind of
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getting you up getting out of your way
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as a manager your whole mindset shifts
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so if your whole mindset shifts and once
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you start doing is saying like well I
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got to make sure everyone delivers I got
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a micromanage I got a watch thing so
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it's not intuitive as a manager to
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actually give people more freedom and
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back off and that's one of the things
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we've discovered that you have to limit
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the power of managers and then people
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actually perform way way better so
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institutionally you solve that as a
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organization by robbing your managers of
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power and this is I think one of the
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most interesting one of those surprising
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aspects of the book I mean we always
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need the story of transparency and
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illustrations of it we've heard about
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empowerment and we've seen some
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illustrations of it you guys seem to
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take the empowerment thing a step
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further by explicitly philosophically
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robbing managers of power
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you mentioned the term committee is that
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really an improvement on giving manager
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I mean some sense you're not empowering
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that manager yeah so we we actually make
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a lot of decisions by committee so
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hiring for example you interview at
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Google you'll meet your potential
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manager your potential peers potential
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subordinates everyone writes up feedback
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feedback goes to a hiring committee and
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none of the people you met will be on
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that committee and then that committee
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makes a recommendation which goes to a
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more senior one and eventually to Larry
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Page or CEO and these committees are
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really important because they've just
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got one job they their job is to keep
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the quality bar incredibly high and the
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reason you go to the separate group to
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review this stuff is because they don't
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have any other incentives other than
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keeping quality high if I'm a manager I
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want to fill my job and I want
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somebody's gonna do what what they're
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told and by the way if I've got a
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customer who's got a nephew and the
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nephew needs a job maybe I want to give
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that kid a job so that maybe I'll get a
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sale or some kind of deal later with
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this customer those are all bad
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incentives the committee is all about
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quality and that's our only incentive
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the other thing is once you remove sort
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of the individual you know oh I
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interviewed this person I like them you
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know I like to sale they like to sale or
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I went to the same school you know we
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must be similar
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once you remove all that you get less
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biased decisions and what we find is we
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actually do better in terms of hiring in
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diversity because you remove all this
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bias that is introduced in the interview
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process okay another another thing I
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hear that I've heard in other places but
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again you guys seem to take it further
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than most is transparency and this is a
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major theme in the book and I'm curious
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do you think there are necessary
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conditions before you can start being
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that transparent does transparency
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follow other conditions or does it lead
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that's an interesting question we so
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Google had we had an advantage our
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founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin
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believed from the beginning it was
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important to be transparent so it's in
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our DNA so they started having employee
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All Hands called TGIF's you know sort of
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once the coming out 50 people if you
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listen to surrogate
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and we've just always done it we've
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always shared information it's kind of
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part of who we are in what we do if you
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don't have that kind of culture I
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wouldn't start where we start right like
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what we do today is every quarter Eric
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Schmidt our chairman after the board
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meeting he comes two dozen he comes and
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doesn't all hands for all our employees
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and he tells you exactly what happened
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at the board meeting he shares all the
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materials that's a big step as a first
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step so what I would do instead is build
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trust and I'd start sharing things you
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would normally wouldn't share so for
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example it might be as simple as the
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minutes from the meeting of the
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management team might be as simple as
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having people come and be no takers who
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are junior people who can kind of soak
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up how decisions are made it might be a
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product roadmap you don't normally
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change share with folks or it could be
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you know some financials you don't
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normally share but give people a little
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and allow that trust to build and it'll
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feel less scary and you get to a point
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where people share a lot more and the
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benefit of that is not just that people
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feel trusted which is a positive because
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then they'll work harder for you the
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other benefit is they'll know what's
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going on and they'll make better
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decisions and they'll create better
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product um something I've seen with you
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guys over the years and you talk about
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some of the book is how much research
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you do internally and how do you how do
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you inculcate this sense of always
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improving and building on what you've
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done Minh you guys take now two three
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four generations of research to continue
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to improve it you don't treat these
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things as a one-off project you don't
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have an outside consultant come in and
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do the same one time you're it's almost
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academic in the way it builds on
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previous work how do you pull that off
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well actually part of it is you we lean
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on academics so Prasad Sethi who leads
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our analytics and compensation team he
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often says if you're a company if you're
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a non-profit if you're the government
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you should be spending more time with
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academics than you do with consultants
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because academics also have this
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long-term perspective you know they're
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they're trying to make tenure right and
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so they want to show results over a long
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time they're interested in topic area
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you can actually get some great results
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so they actually those kind of
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partnerships actually encourage you to
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have a longer term perspective but the
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other piece is I often talk with the
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team at Google about there's a
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difference between running a program and
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doing a stunt
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a stunt is we're just one time gonna try
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this and see how it goes and on to the
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next thing but you never actually know
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for sure what the benefit was of that
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program because there's always lots of
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other things so you need to repeat
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things you need to run experiments they
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need to watch how they unfold over time
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to make sure that what you did actually
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works mm-hmm great so we're about out of
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time
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I'm curious we've talked about some
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parts of your book the book is rich it's
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got tons of information tons of detail
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tons of interesting ideas is there
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anything in particular we've not talked
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about you want to make sure you share
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you know I think that that's part of the
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book that kind of I had the most fun
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writing was this chapter on nudges and
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it's called nudge a lot and nudges are
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these things to academics Fowler and
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Sunstein kind of came up with this idea
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and they talked about a nudge is is a
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it's a it's a nudge it's not a shove
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it's not a push it's not forcing someone
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the idea is what can you change in the
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environment around somebody to help them
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make a better decision without removing
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their options of making choices and it's
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a very cool area of research and I'm
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glad you're asking because we haven't
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talked about it a lot but the two of the
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coolest things in there one is about
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actually weight loss so we did this
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experiment where we we put all the candy
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in our New York office and opaque
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containers so we have micro kitchens
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everywhere free food healthy snacks
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unhealthy we put the candy and opaque
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containers and by making a little harder
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to see and a little harder to get to
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people shifted to healthier snacks and
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over a three-week period people consume
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7 million fewer calories almost a
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thousand pounds worth of calories fewer
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consumed and then you think about your
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home pantry and you open the pantry and
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what have you got right in front you've
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got like the sugary cereals and the
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snack food and the candy bars and all
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the healthy stuff is hard to get to like
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it's immediately applicable to home and
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you know you can actually make yourself
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healthier there's another piece about
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the importance of savings and in a way
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it's kind of the dullest but also the
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most important idea in the book another
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researcher looked at how much wealth
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people accumulate over a lifetime and he
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found that he looked at the lowest
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decile people who had $35,000 of social
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security reportable income over 25 year
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period which means all their other
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income or transfer payments right social
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security medicare medical food stamps
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things like that
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and within that cohort of people $35,000
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is all they earned some of them were
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able to save $150,000 over a 25 year
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period and the reason was if you set a
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baseline savings rate and just keep
00:13:33
saving that rate you accumulate a lot of
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money and most of us don't most of us
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live paycheck to paycheck or it's hard
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to save but because of the power of
00:13:40
compounding if you and your 20 save 100
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bucks a month you can retire with 50 or
00:13:45
100 150 thousand dollars more than if
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you didn't and it's super boring because
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it's like it's just talking about
00:13:51
retirement it's the future and there's
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this math and compounding but honestly
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it has the potential to have the biggest
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impact on somebody reading the book
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wonderful great we thank you for being
00:14:01
here good luck with the book it's great
00:14:03
work we've been with Laszlo Bock new
00:14:05
book work rules hope you pick it up
00:14:06
Thank You Leslie pleasure thank you so
00:14:08
much Kate
00:14:25
you
