Former Google CEO Describes ‘Brutal’ Review Process For New Projects (Search Engine Journal)
Google’s 20% Project lead to several of the company’s top products we use today, though it was “brutal” for employees.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt shares details about the “brutal” review process employees had to go through when pitching ideas for new products.
During a Q&A session at the Collision conference in Toronto, Schmidt was asked about his approach to forecasting futures and whether he uses a bottom-up or top-down approach.
Collision is a conference geared toward startups and investors, so the questions asked were all within that realm.
One question prompted Schmidt to drop some interesting tidbits about Google and what it took for employees to get their ideas off the ground while he was CEO.
Google popularized offering time to work on side projects as an employee benefit — known as the 20% Project. Several of those projects became top products like Gmail, AdSense, and Google News.
Schmidt revealed his approach to managing the 20% Project and how it differed from how he explained it while working for Google.
Greg Tingle
I'd much rather hear about a "brutal" process than piss easy. You need to make sure the projects are geared for success and have the dedication of the team involved. You don't want every man and his dog thinking they can change the world at a Google just by putting down draft notes, getting a few yes's, and than going on to waste everyone's time.. When I got the PPV and Ethnical Channel Liaison project over the line at comms and subscriber television firm Optus we proved the concept the next day after I submitted the paper. The numbers went up and then I hand picked the expanding team to 5, personally training each of them the right way. You need a few key elements including vision, hard work, ability to learn and adapt quickly, and have the project make a worthwhile positive change to the company, and in our case, the customers and associates. Of course, sometimes in life and business, one has to be prepared to fail once or many more times before finding success. Thanks Google and SEJ for sharing this story of work inside Google, which gave me a flashback to one of my most successful projects at Optus.
