I’ve
been a little MIA lately – apologies for that.
I’ll throw out the old “I’ve been busy” excuse, partially because it’s
true, but the real reason I’ve been MIA is that I’m lacking inspiration lately,
and have been avoiding writing just for the sake of writing a post. However, this week the inspiration bug bit me again - I hope you learn a little and enjoy!
During last year’s appraisal process at my organization, we
rolled out some revisions to our manager training curriculum. One of the small changes we made was a
reference to Google’s Project Oxygen. If
you read about leadership or HR, there’s a decent chance you already know about
this project. Here at my company, we
recently received and analyzed the results of our annual employee satisfaction
survey. We use a company called
Workplace Dynamics to help us conduct our annual survey for full-time
staff. Overall we had a great year, and
I’m proud of the work our managers did and continue to do to improve our
workplace and their staff’s job satisfaction.
However, as in most organizations, some managers were more successful in
this area than others. Google’s Project
Oxygen is significant because it helps explain some of this differentiation in
managers and thus, employee satisfaction.
 |
| Google's "people analytics" team lead the efforts on Project Oxygen. |
Background on Project Oxygen:
Statisticians inside Google embarked on a cross-functional
project to build better bosses. People typically leave a company for one of
three reasons, or a combination of them. The first is that they don’t feel a
connection to the mission of the company, or sense that their work matters. The
second is that they don’t really like or respect their co-workers. The third is
they have a terrible boss — and this was the biggest variable. Managers
also had a much greater impact on employees’ performance and how they felt
about their job than any other factor, Google found. So, as only a data-mining
giant like Google can do, it began analyzing performance reviews, feedback
surveys and nominations for top-manager awards. They correlated phrases, words,
praise and complaints.
Later that year, this “people analytics” team at the company
produced what might be called the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Managers.
These eight habits are:
- Be a good coach.
- Empower your team and don’t micromanage.
- Express interest in team members’ personal success & well being.
- Be productive & results oriented.
- Communicate and listen to your team.
- Help your employees with career development.
- Express a clear vision and strategy for the team.
- Demonstrate technical skills so you can help advise your team.
Google also identified three pitfalls of managers:
- Have trouble transitioning to the team.
- Lack a consistent approach to performance management & career development.
- Spend too little time managing and communicating.
It’s funny because the first time I read about Project
Oxygen, I essentially laughed out loud because what they found is not rocket
science. I’d be shocked if this post was
the first time you’ve heard any of these ideas about being a great leader or manager. The ideas that coaching, empowerment, being
results oriented, developing a vision, communicating, etc are recipes for being
a great leader have been written about for decades. Google’s project is only unique and
noteworthy in the fact that they were able to validate these ideas with data
and numbers.
How this applies to you:
If you are an HR practitioner, or an organizational leader
of some kind, I want you to think about your organization’s leaders. Think about the ones that everybody
loves. Do they embody some or all of the
eight characteristics that Google defined?
My guess is yes. When I think
about our organization leaders that people truly love working for – they’re brilliant
at the basics, which is essentially what Google has defined for us.
Now, think about the managers whose teams are less engaged
or the leaders that people complain about.
If you do a true evaluation of their leadership style, I think you can
find the root cause of their poor leadership embedded somewhere in one of the
three buckets of pitfalls that Google also outlined, which is why I find those
3 pitfalls almost more helpful than the eight effective habits. As HR, our job is to help diagnose
organizational or leadership issues, and create and execute plans for
improvement. Many managers may have
additional issues or circumstances they are dealing with, but if you’re stuck
diagnosing an organizational or leadership problem, I encourage you to start
here. The other common pitfall I find
for leaders is not having the right people in the right jobs, which can be a
tough call to make as the HR person, but it’s important for your organization’s
health to call it out. The other lesson
we can learn from Google in this area is the importance of getting information;
performance information, engagement information, satisfaction information,
etc. You can’t properly diagnose
problems, and subsequently develop effective plans or programs without it.
Additional information on Google’s Project Oxygen:
