Google’s Project Oxygen – How Google identifies potential leaders

 

Google is one of the most successful companies today. It is also one of the most analytical and data-driven organizations. They rely on hard data rather than opinions. As leadership development is both science and art, how does Google handle leadership assessment and development?  How does Google identify if someone has the potential to be a great manager or leader?  Read further about Google’s Project Oxygen. Get the pdf file of Google’s Project Oxygen.  Google also updated the Project Oxygen questions to reflect the growth and complexity of the company and change in how work gets done.  The new list of Project Oxygen questions is at the end of the article.

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Google’s Project Oxygen initiative to identify good leaders at Google

 

In 2008, an internal team of researchers started ”Project Oxygen” to determine what makes a great Google manager. They called this project “oxygen” as managers are the lifeblood of any organization.

Google’s employees are mostly engineers and do highly technical work.  Their tendency was to focus on core technical things – programming, coding, debugging, etc.  Their perception was that management was a distraction that took them away from “real” work!  When the company was small, the founders, Sergei and Larry, had a flat structure with no managers!  Everybody reported directly to them. 

Then Google grew and there was a need for managers and management. How do you convince the technically brilliant employees who make decisions based on data and information, and work in a company that believes in a flat organization – that managers and management are important and add value?  

The answer was to provide them enough data through research that clearly shows teh importance of managers and management! Through manager feedback surveys over an extended period of time, Project Oxygen identified eight behaviors that predicted managerial success. The success was measured through many factors and included employee turnover, employee satisfaction, and team performance. Later they added two more behaviors to the list for a total of 10 “Oxygen” behaviors and aligned their leadership and management development training programs to develop these behaviors. 

Although these 10 behaviors were correlated with managerial success, in statistics, correlation doesn’t prove causation! Google confirmed that these 10 behaviors were indeed the cause for better managerial outcomes in two ways –

1. They confirmed that these 10 managerial behaviors preceded employee outcomes and not vice versa. 
2. They confirmed by switching employees and managers that when an employee is working under a manager exhibiting these behaviors, her performance improves. 

 

What are these 10 behaviors, and how do we know if a leader has these qualities? As it turns out, asking just the 13 questions to the manager’s direct reports does the trick!  Twice a year, employees rate their managers on a Likert scale in an anonymous survey. The leaders who rate high on these 13 questions have a statistically significant correlation to future performance measured by turnover, satisfaction, and performance. 

Just 5 minutes to identify a good leader?

 

The feedback takes about five minutes for each employee’s time!   Jeff Haden, the contributing editor at Inc.com, wrote an article titled – Here is how Google knows in less than 5 minutes if someone is a great leader.  You may read the article here https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/heres-how-google-knows-in-less-than-5-minutes-if-someone-is-a-great-leader.html   This simple leadership assessment is very effective in determining the quality of one’s leadership.

 

Read – The single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success.

 

Here are leadership evaluation questions as part of Google’s Project Oxygen.

 

1. My manager gives me actionable feedback that helps me improve my performance. 
2. My manager does not “micromanage” (get involved in details that should be handled at other levels). 
3. My manager shows consideration for me as a person. 
4. My manager’s actions show that he/she values the perspective I bring to the team, even if it is different from his/her own. 
5. My manager keeps the team focused on our priority results/deliverables. 
6. My manager regularly shares relevant information derived from his/her manager and senior leaders. 
7. My manager has had a meaningful discussion with me about career development in the past six months. 
8. My manager communicates clear goals for our team. 
9. My manager has the technical expertise (e.g., coding in Tech, selling in Global Business, accounting in Finance) required to manage me effectively. 
10. I would recommend my manager to other Googlers. 

Then Google asks employees to complete two other questions.

1. What would you recommend your manager keep doing? 
2. What would you have your manager change?

 

Click the link to download these question Google Project Oxygen pdf  –

Google’s Project Oxygen Pdf

 

Leadership is mostly about people, not only about technical skills – even at Google!

 

Although Google hires only the most technically sound employees, note that only one question (question number 9) is about the manager’s technical skills. All other questions are about the soft skills or the behavior of the manager or leader! Even for a company like Google, hiring only the most technically sound Engineers and programmers, what matters in their managerial and leadership effectiveness is behavioral skills or emotional intelligence. 

 

Daniel Goleman’s research has proven that emotional intelligence quotient or EQ is much more accurate in predicting future success than intelligence quotient or IQ.  IQ and technical skills are like the entry ticket to a career – technical skills are needed to get in the job. However, how far a person will progress in his/her job will depend on the behavioral skills and emotional intelligence exhibited.

The equation is simple: 

 

Leadership behaviors create culture, which in turn affects employee engagement, which in turn drives business results.  Leadership behavior (which creates organizational culture) is the single biggest factor impacting organizational performance. Jack Welch (former CEO of GE) labeled organizational culture as a lasting sustainable competitive advantage. 

Leadership development is critical for an organization to survive and thrive in today world’s ever-changing business environment. Would you like to assess and develop your leaders?   

• Identify and develop your high potentials?   
• Develop bench strength for succession planning?   
• Help leaders transition up or across through leadership development?   
• Deal with “derailers” (unproductive behaviors of otherwise successful leaders that cause team conflicts and holds them back from further success)? 

 

Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360) for your leadership team

 

The GLA360 is rooted in groundbreaking research conducted by Marshall Goldsmith (#1 Leadership Thinker and Executive Coach), involving CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, global thought leaders, and international business executives of organizations on 6 continents. The GLA360 articulates and measures the top 15 most pressing competencies for today’s global leader. It shows leaders the areas they need to develop to succeed in a competitive business environment.

 

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