>>presenter: I have the honor of introducing
Julie Clow; author of the Work Revolution:
Freedom and Excellence for All.
I know many people in the audience have the
opportunity to know Julie and we all think
very highly of her but I’d like to share
my personal experiences with Julie in working
with NGDU.
It wasn’t that long that we had the opportunity
to work together but I took every opportunity
to take advantage of her brilliance in leading
teams and managing and developing people and
in developing high impact strategy.
I also had the opportunity to gain her as
my biking buddy for one glorious summer where
we would scale the mountains up Old La Honda
and Page Mill in preparation for a century
ride.
And it was during those six hour rides that
Julie first mentioned her ideas of writing
a book.
And periodically she would share things with
me about thoughts she had and wanted to get
some feedback on how do we focus on what’s
right, what’s most high impact, not everything.
She shared her ideas around the challenges
and opportunities that come with technology.
And never being off but having the opportunity
to be on whenever it’s convenient.
So I feel like I got a little bit of an insider
view and an opportunity to see her ideas as
they were developing.
Now, we all know Julie in her wonderness and
it was no surprise to me and others that she
was able to get a book deal just about eight
months after first sharing her ideas and then
had a full manuscript about six months after
that.
Meanwhile moving to New York, starting a new
job and training for an Olympic triathlon.
So she is multi talented in a variety of ways.
For those of you that don’t know Julie’s
background at Google she joined sales EDU
for a period of time, transitioned to people
ops where she developed the foundations and
leadership in teamwork program also known
as Flight which is still thriving and great
reviews.
People continue to talk about it.
But we were fortunate enough to steal her
away and have her join us in NGE where we
had her for a period of time.
She’s now VP of learning and development
of a small investment management company in
New York.
She is a proud Auburn fan where she got her
PhD in organizational behavior in psychology.
And she’s here to talk a bit more about
her work so please join me in welcoming Julie.
[applause]
>>Julie Clow: So it was a little bit of a
challenge to think about what I might do for
an Authors at Google talk when my book is
basically about my experience at Google.
So usually I get to go and talk to people
and wow of them with stories of how life at
Google was great and free and autonomous but
coming here and telling you guys this is a
little bit flat.
So I had to stretch myself a little bit in
thinking about what I could share with you
around the work revolution.
So I thought I could do two things.
One is recount to you the lessons I feel that
I learned having spent five years at Google
and then two some of the surprising things
that I learned along the way doing the book
research.
So what kind of things pushed my imagination
even further in terms of what we can do in
our organizations?
So the question I want to pose is, “What
if?”
So I’m gonna share with you some of those
what if questions and talk through some really
interesting examples of what I’ve come across
in the course of writing the book.
So the book is The Work Revolution: Freedom
and Excellence for All and the question is
why a work revolution?
So, as anybody who’s worked in the corporate
environment knows, this is more the norm than
what we have experienced in Google.
And, in fact, I worked at several organizations
before joining Google in which this was the
case.
It was a nine to five sort of work life and
you had to be there on time and if I was late
because of traffic I was stressing, why?
I don’t know, to get there for no apparent
reason.
But this is really the reality of the majority
of people out there and I just felt compelled
to write a book to articulate why this is
kind of dumb and why we should be looking
at this in a brand new way and questioning
the assumptions behind it.
And as I was writing the book, what I realized
was that our management practices, in fact,
once had a function.
There was a reason behind the things that
we were doing.
And that was because the assembly lines back
in the early 1900’s was the way of organizing
people to make sure that everybody showed
up on time so that everybody was there to
actually do repeatable work on an assembly
line.
So it was all about repeatability, it was
about precision, about defining roles so that
people could do them over and over and over
again.
So all of those things we indicative management
practices and that’s where this came from.
This was a world of manual labor.
It was a world of manual work.
It was a world in which people were far less
educated than they are today.
So back in the early 1900’s only six percent
of the general population had a high school
diploma.
Six percent.
Now we’re up to around 70 percent that have
high school diplomas.
And we actually have 30 percent of our population
has college degrees and ten percent has post
graduate degrees.
So we now have more people with masters and
PhD’s and other post graduate degrees than
we did people with high school diplomas in
the early 1900’s.
That’s a huge difference yet we’re still
treating people like they need to show up
and be babysat, more or less.
But where we are now is also vastly different
with respect to the work we’re doing.
So rather than thinking about work as repeatable
tasks that we need to learn and do at high
precision, the opposite is, in fact, true.
We’re in a space where we actually need
to be creative in the way that we think about
our work.
Where the solution should never be the same
solution twice, we’re problem solvers now.
We have to think innovatively about how we
do our work.
So that’s the vast difference between it.
And when I thought about those differences
and then factored in our new reality which
is basically that work happens 24 hours a
day.
The information, as we know, does not stop.
We have e-mails, I mean; I remember my life
at Google with teams literally sprinkled across
the planet where emails would pour in every
hour of every day.
And that was great.
In some ways that was really cool to see that
sort of work environment but at the same time
it posed a conundrum because you’re basically
never off.
You’re always on.
So it’s hard for us to really manage that
especially if we’re trying to shove ourselves
into a nine to five work day.
This is essentially what people’s lives
tend to look like in your typical corporations.
So of course there never seem to be enough
hours in the day.
But if we look at this in a different way,
if we question the assumption behind this,
there are 24 different hours across which
we can sleep, work, play and recover but the
vast majority of the companies and families
adhere to the 9 to 5 work day, 11 to 6 sleep
cycle, two- day weekend and how we fit in
any kind of play and recovery is anyone’s
guess.
So I saw this as an opportunity to say, “Why
don’t we rethink this?”
What if we came up with new rules?
What if we embraced our reality instead of
fighting that reality to figure out how to
be in box zero all the time and come up with
all kinds of productivity fixes?
What if we just rethought the whole thing?
What would that look like?
Well, during my time at Google I really felt
like I got a glimpse of what that was.
When I started here, all the sudden I was
free to be the night person that I naturally
am.
All the sudden I was free to do work in the
way that suited me the best.
And what mattered was the impact.
What mattered was what I could bring to the
organization and the results that I could
produce.
That’s it.
It didn’t matter when I showed up in the
morning.
It didn’t matter what clothes that I wore.
And that kind of freedom was absolutely and
profoundly life changing for me as I’m sure
it was for many of you guys, especially if
you’d had jobs prior to Google.
So what I’d like to do is share the lessons
that I distilled out of this that essentially
are part of the book.
And I came up with five guiding principles.
I realized that trying to put new rules to
replace old rules was kind of, you know, not
the point at all.
We don’t need more rules we need fewer rules.
And so instead, what I came up with were guiding
principles.
And the guiding principles suggest ways of
thinking about the work environment that embrace
the always on sort of reality but then really
frees us up to do things in a way that both
benefits us personally, but also the organizations
that we work for.
It’s not a zero sum game.
So, what are those five lessons?
First of all, impact not activities.
This is kind of an overarching one that I
think I wove into every single one of the
chapters.
But the basic notion is that we have to think
about what impact we’re bringing rather
than fixate on the activities that people
are spending their time doing.
So if you free people to focus on the impact
then the activities don’t matter.
And one of the things I learned to ask, a
lot, was, “What problems are we trying to
solve?”
So one of the things that I love about Google
and I still it’s one of the most brilliant
mission statements on the planet is the mission
of organizing the world’s information and
making it universally accessible and useful.
Every single Google employee can sight that
on demand and that means it’s a powerful
and sticking mission statement.
But furthermore, it’s a problem based mission
statement.
It’s a problem that we’re trying to solve
for.
So this actually translates, not only to the
organization, but also to individuals.
So I got an email from somebody that read
my book and she wrote kind of a book back
to me which was cute and really nice, but
in it she talked about reading this book and
thinking completely differently about her
role in the organization that she’s at.
So she was hired to start a library.
She had a librarian’s degree and that was
her job.
But starting a library is an activity.
And when she read the book she realized she
had a huge opportunity to rethink her job
in more problem based terms.
So instead, she now thinks about her job as
information flow, information creation, dissemination,
consumption and now she sees all kinds of
opportunities to completely expand beyond
what she hired to do but to solve the problem
in really unique ways.
So that was a huge lesson for me and it’s
something that I continue to apply to everything
that I do.
What problems are we trying to solve.
The second lesson is, “Energy not schedules.”
When I started at Google, what I’ve always
known about myself is that I’m not a morning
person, at all.
And when I was actually able to set my own
schedule, what I realized is that I gravitated
towards coming in around ten o’clock a.m.
And, in fact, in my current job, that’s
what I do.
I don’t show up before ten.
I know myself.
It’ll be junk hours, I’ll get nothing
done but by paying attention to my own personal
energy and instead of fixating on schedules
which are most of the time based on, kind
of, arbitrary sorts of deadlines, I could
follow my personal energy.
I could follow the energy of projects in terms
of how they might naturally play within the
organization rather than trying to force those
things.
So paying attention to energy was a huge thing
for me and it freed me up to be more productive
during the hours I was here and to feel like
I could live a sane life, in terms of my schedule.
I recently stumbled across a new book which
I haven’t read yet but I got the concept
out of it.
It’s called Social Jet Lag.
And I never even knew there was a term for
this.
But social jet lag is this notion that we
all have our own, sort of, chronotype.
And a chronotype defines when you naturally
gravitate toward going to bed and how long
you sleep.
No surprise, everyone’s different in this
regard.
So, for example, with my particular chronotype
I am, let’s see, the average hours that
I sleep is about 8, divide that by 2, that’s
4, my free form bed time is about 1 o’clock
which means my midsleep is 1 o’clock plus
4, that’s 5.
Alright, so my chronotype is 5.
Well, what does that mean?
This is the distribution of chronotypes throughout
the population which I thought was quite interesting.
I’m kind of normal.
I’m right in the middle.
So four and a half seems to be where most
people fall, well the top of the curve, so
to speak, and 5, not far off of that.
So I thought, wow, I’m really not as different
as I thought that I was.
But what is interesting is if we look at the
typical 9 to 5 schedule, if the top of that
bell curve is 4.5, I kind of backwards calculated
this, and the median work time is 9 a.m.
And that’s being generous, a lot of companies
say 8, ya know?
Let’s assume you have to get up at 7:30
to get ready and commute in by that time,
then basically the 9 to 5 work schedule is
suited best for people that need 6 hours of
sleep on average and like to go to bed at
1:30 in the morning.
Do any of you fit that profile?
Anyone?
Anyone?
No one, zero, for the record.
So this seems kind of silly.
If we think about the ideal reality for someone
whose median is 4.5 needing 8 hours of sleep,
then in fact, the best time for people to
show up for work is around 10.
But I think the point here is we all have
our own unique chronotype.
We have the numbers of hours that are required
for us are vastly different.
So why can’t we just show up when we need
to?
What a realization.
So that, to me, was a pretty profound vocabulary
to put around this in a way that freed me
up to think about my needs and my energy and
regulating that is best for me.
So the third is “strengths not job slots.”
>>Julie Clow: So one of the things that I
loved about being at Google is that we focused
so much on hiring people that we feel belong
in the Google culture.
And that’s huge.
And, in fact, the organization that I’m
at now is the same way.
We hire people because we feel like they belong
in the community.
And when you do that, then you can bring people
into the organization, you can embrace them
and set them free to do work in the best way
to solve problems for the company.
Because if people buy into the mission, if
they’re excited by the work you’re doing,
there’s no need to babysit them.
So this is a profound difference between the
way that typical companies do that which is
to think about job slots and experience and
the right resume and if they have the right
things, check, check, check, bring them into
the organization.
But who cares if they’re a culture fit.
And then that breeds all kinds of problems.
And that’s why many companies don’t trust
their people from the start.
The right thing’s not everything.
So this speaks directly of that fact that
we are in a state of overwhelm.
That there is too much information, too many
ideas, too much to do, so we have to get better
at figuring out what the right things are
and not everything.
And one of the things that I loved about Google
was in almost every conversation around goals
and priorities, somebody would ask the question,
“What project should we stop doing?”
And I thought that was a really profound question
that surfaced quite often, that was a really
important question to ask.
And then finally, “grassroots not top down.”
This is where I really saw, first hand, the
power of collective intelligence.
When you set people free to make decisions,
especially as a group, then you get some pretty
amazing stuff.
And I loved the fact that, you know, our TGIF’s
were built around the Google moderator tool
where people could ask any question but then
we’d vote up the ones that were most important
to us.
And I loved bureaucracy busters every year
where people would find opportunities to flush
out bad processes.
All of that was about collective intelligence.
And it was about leveraging that within the
organization.
And when I saw the power of that, it made
me thing that it made me think that how underutilized
that tool is in many other organizations because
they don’t understand the mechanics of collective
intelligence.
So these were the lessons that I suggested
in my book for individuals, managers or organizations
to implement.
And I suggest various ways of doing that.
But in thinking about this presentation, then
I pushed myself a little bit further to think
what if we questioned all of our management
institutions?
So, even at Google, there are things that
we still hold on to.
I say we.
[laughs]
>>Julie Clow: That you all hold onto that
the organization still holds onto and I thought
what if we question some of these assumptions?
And tried to figure out what was behind these
institutions and how we might think differently
about other approaches.
So, what if?
What if we ditched job descriptions, job requirements
and job roles?
What would that look like?
The reason that I bring this up is because
the point of job descriptions and requirements
or roles is to make the hiring process more
efficient.
Because if you can make good guesses about
what skills somebody needs to do a particular
job, that makes the whole resume sifting process
a lot easier.
You know what you’re looking for in an interview.
Of course there’s still the cultural component
but when you bring someone in, what’s the
point of keeping them in one strict bubble
around the work that you’d like them to
do?
So what inspired me was a story I read a couple
of weeks ago.
I was in Seattle and I picked up the local
paper and they had this profile on this man,
Eric Wahl was his name, who went to work for
the University of Washington.
He’s a creative writer.
He has a Masters degree in creative writing.
And he went to work for the surplus store.
How does that work?
I mean, what could he possibly bring to that
job?
But what was interesting is he’s completely
transformed the organization, or the little
department.
They sell extra chairs, desks, lamps, whatever,
whatever happens to be in the university that
they don’t need any more they sell through
the surplus store.
So what did this guy do?
He applied his creative writing skills; he
took the initiative to apply his creative
writing skills, because he thought that the
website that advertised their products was
utterly boring.
So here’s a sample of one of his write ups.
[pause]
>>Julie Clow: It’s brilliant, a timestamp
machine.
Who needs a timestamp machine?
And yet the guy makes up these funky, hilarious
descriptions that makes people want to browse
the website.
And, in fact, this department at the University
of Washington, logged $900,000 dollars worth
of sales.
Practically tripled their twitter following
and people line up out the door to get into
the surplus store to buy their stuff.
Absolutely amazing, now again, if you thought
about a traditional sort of person to take
on that role, you would look for somebody
with sales experience, with marketing experience
and all these other things, but a creative
writer?
Not so much, and yet a creative writer applied
to a surplus store equals something pretty
phenomenal.
So it just inspired me to think outside the
box.
So what lessons could we take from that?
One, I think it’s important, I’m constantly
learning this.
I started learning this at Google but I think
it’s a lifelong journey, its being true
to our authentic selves.
Who are we?
What are our skills?
What strengths and talents can we bring to
the organization and how can we think about
using them in really creative ways?
That was something that I learned at Google
but it’s something that I continually push
myself in.
If I’m not happy in the role I’m in, it’s
my own fault for not figuring out a way to
make it better.
It’s my own fault for not figuring out how
I can better apply my talents to the work
that I’m doing.
But the second lesson here is to build diverse
and unexpected teams.
So take a chance on people who have quirky
degrees or a different point of view.
I think that the more diverse that we have
the better the opportunity to innovate and
to think differently about the problems that
we’re trying to solve.
So two, what if we ditched working hours,
milestones, meetings and vacation time?
Some of these things are still true at Google
but I think there’s a huge difference, some
organizations have taken this much further,
let’s just put it that way.
So, for example, vacation time, saying take
vacation when you need vacation we’re not
gonna track it.
Many companies have done this.
Best Buy is one in particular who instituted
what they ended up calling the “results
only work environment” And the results only
work environment is simple.
Each person is free to do whatever they want
whenever they want as long as the work gets
done.
So what does this force?
It forces people to be super crystal clear
about problems they’re trying to solve and
then holding people accountable for actually
doing those things and the rest doesn’t
matter.
So this is really impact, not activities taken
to an extreme when you literally do not care
if people show up to work, it’s just that
they get the job done.
So the results only work environment is actually
been spread to many other organizations.
There’s a pair of women that used to work
at Best Buy who are now consulting on this
with a group called Culture RX and they’re
a pretty phenomenal group and they’re coaching
these companies to move toward activity based
work environment to results only work environments
with pretty phenomenal success.
So lessons here that we can all learn and
take away is to be clear about the difference
between true urgency and false urgency.
And this is a hard lesson because we all think
that the things we’re working on are true
urgency.
But true urgency really is about the needs
of our customers and important deadlines that
drive the business itself.
True urgency isn’t about fake deadlines
we set to motivate ourselves.
I think that’s well and good and, in fact,
setting those goals is important but at the
end of every quarter when everybody’s scrambling
around to meet their own deadlines, those
are really false urgency deadlines.
And when we impose those false urgency deadlines
on each other, then what we’re doing is
creating a lot of confusion about what really
matters.
The second piece to this is to learn to be
a quitter.
And this is a hard lesson because, especially
with over achievers.
We’re programmed to work hard and achieve
and if we quit something that’s a sign of
failure.
But, in fact, if we really are focused on
impact and results then we have to get a lot
better at quitting things that aren’t working
that don’t have as much impact, that aren’t
working for the organization in general and
that, in fact, is a skill that everybody can
hone and get a lot better at.
But it also requires learning to say no which
is kind of the corollary to that and is very
difficult to do.
So what if we ditched managers?
What would that look like?
So if you think about it, managers, the role
of managers is to hold people accountable,
to evaluate people’s performance, to give
people feedback on how they’re doing and
to figure out how they should be compensated,
more or less right?
So if we step back and say, “Okay, what
if we did this a different way?”
What if we got rid of the manager layer of
things to do this and instituted different
ways of accomplishing the very same thing.
Again, what problem are we trying to solve?
Well, what problem we’re trying to solve
is the accountability piece, the feedback
piece and getting things done in the organization.
There have been a couple of organizations
that have done this.
The most famous, though, is Morning Star.
So this is essentially a company that processes
tomatoes in various ways.
So we’re kind of back to the whole manual
labor thing.
And yet, these guys decided very early on
that they did not want management layers in
the organization.
So what they did instead is establish something
called CLOUs; Colleague Letters of Understanding.
And these colleague letters of understanding
start with this is my personal mission statement.
So every individual has to define who they
are, what value they bring to the organization
and what their role is, roughly speaking.
And then they commit to being accountable
for a whole series of things within the organization.
But they do this by determining who they need
to work with the most.
And so every year, everybody sits down and
does this and negotiates with their teammates
to say this is what I wanna be accountable
for, how about you?
And so it’s a whole negotiation process
to figure out who has the right strengths,
who has the energy, who has the interest in
these kinds of things, what you are excited
to be accountable for and those clues are
how people are evaluated.
Not by managers, but by each other.
So, again, it’s all peer based.
So the peer feedback is a very critical component
to this.
In fact, I was looking at one of their sample
CLOUs and safety is a really great example.
So who holds people accountable for safety?
Well, if you think about it, the best people
to hold people accountable for safety are
your peers because your peers are the ones
that are seeing you in the process of either
wearing your safety helmet or not.
So by peers being held accountable to hold
each other accountable then the feedback becomes
much more frequent and open and honest with
each other.
So if somebody’s not doing well it is the
responsibility of the peers to give them feedback
and say, “You’re not holding up your end
of the bargain.”
And really being honest and forthright about
those things.
So when you have the management layer it kind
of divorces us from the whole process of giving
each other feedback in real time in ways that
people kind of need it.
So the lessons here are that one we can do
a much better job of articulating our value
through the lens of other people.
So if you think about what is my role in the
organization, how can I contribute to my teammates?
What will be of value to them and the organization?
That’s one it’s kind of a way of saying
what’s your personal brand but I think in
a much more functional definition.
It sits a lot better with me.
And then the second thing is giving each other
honest and timely feedback.
Not leaving it to the managers to necessarily
to this but doing it yourself because you’re
the one working with your colleagues.
So it’s a really cool way of thinking about
it and challenging your assumptions behind
what managers are all about and what role
they play.
What if we ditched teams and headcount allocation?
Chaos right?
You kind of need teams to form and get things
done and focus on priorities and those kinds
of things, but there is an organization that
decided to try it a different way.
It’s a game company called Valve.
And in their employee handbook, which was
very recently leaked, I think it was intentionally
put out there, but it’s a really interesting
organization and I highly recommend that people
read the handbook.
How do they decide on work?
Could they bring somebody into the organization,
again, based on cultural fit and belonging
and they say to them, “Go find a project
that you can add the most value to now.”
And somebody might come in and say, “Well
I have a really strong background in x, I
think I should contribute by x.”
And I told the story of one employee who did
that and they said, “Well we already have
people working on x for this team so you’re
not gonna add value there.
It’s already happening.
Go find someplace else that you can add value
who doesn’t already have people that are
contributing that.
“And so they actually encourage people to
go around and talk to people as much as possible.
What projects are going on?
What might I be a part of?
Where can I add value?
What’s important to the company?
Not just short term but long term as well.
And then they make the decisions.
So they literally put all of the desks on
wheels so that teams can self organize and
move their desks around and move closer to
one another or group people in a different
way.
And so there are teams.
And, in fact, there are actually team leads
but they’re very informal kinds of definitions
and they change often.
So the whole point is that people can self
organize and reorganize in ways so that people
can work on projects that they’re excited
about that add value to the company.
The founder, Gabe, said, “Are there things
that I wish people would be working on that
aren’t?
Yes.”
Period, yes but he’s okay with that.
He still believes that this model in which
you’re embracing a little bit of the chaos
is much better than him telling people what
they should be working on.
So this is collective intelligence and grass
roots to the extreme.
It’s pretty fun to think about actually.
So what are the lessons that we can take away
from this?
One, focus on the value you can uniquely bring
right now.
And that can change over time.
So you might add value in one way now but
then in six months it might be in a very different
way that you can add value but constantly
asking that question and reevaluating that.
And then two, trust in the chaos.
Know that when we set people free to do the
work, to find the value, there’s gonna be
a little bit of chaos.
There’s gonna be a little bit of disorganization.
Because Valve has all their desks on wheels
it’s kind of tough to know where anyone
is gonna be at any given time.
So they actually have a system set up so they
can tell, virtually, where everybody is located
so that they have real time information about
where to find people.
So you have to mitigate some of craziness
and chaos that goes around that but, in general,
embracing and trusting in that chaos that
ultimately the value will rise to the top.
Finally, what if we ditched Power Point and
pitches?
So what is this all about?
This is the difference between companies that
are idea judging companies versus companies
that are idea testing companies.
And I didn’t really grasp the distinction
between the two until I met the co-founder
of a company called Noom.
It’s actually a former Googler who started
this company to build these Android apps.
This one’s called Noom, there’s another
one called cardio trainer that I absolutely
love.
And I actually went to have lunch with them.
So they’re this great little start up.
They have about 20 people, they have their
own private chef, I mean, it was just truly
a fun little experience.
But what struck me, in the way that they run
their company, is they spend zero time debating
ideas.
They have invested in an infrastructure that
makes it possible to test virtually everything.
And they use Prudhoe typing type of methods,
which we’re familiar with here at Google.
But they use really creative ways of testing
everything.
And this goes down even to their management
practices.
So they’re playing around with how often
they switch people around in projects, they’re
testing that.
So 90 days they’ll try this and they’ll
see how did that work?
And then they change it up a bit and they
test something else.
So their whole culture is if you have an idea,
great, go test it.
And when everyone is free to test their ideas
then it doesn’t become political.
It’s not about power point and pitches and
how you state the numbers in a way that sounds
convincing that your idea might, in fact,
be the best one.
And, again, it’s challenging I think, you
know, Google is a testing culture but to the
nth degree is this company and even thinking
about what I do.
I’m in organizational development.
I don’t write applications.
So when you think about testing ideas for
applications versus testing ideas for organizations,
it’s slightly different and yet, there all
ways of testing these things.
And to force myself to think in that way has
been a really interesting revelation.
So what are the lessons here?
Test everything first and then use something
else like Google Docs of Prezi to actually
present your data.
I’m kind of partial to Prezi right now.
But test everything.
Test everything in creative ways.
And rather than trying to judge each other’s
ideas just use the data to tell you the answers.
So I heard Jim Collins speak about a week
ago and he talked about a personal hedgehog.
So in his book Good to Great he talks about
the hedgehog concept for companies in terms
of where they can be world class at, that
drives the economic engine that everybody’s
passionate about.
And he translated this to a person hedgehog
which I thought was a really phenomenal way
of summing up everything that I’ve talked
about today.
But what is at the intersection of, one, what
you’re passionate about.
And that’s not enough because I’m passionate
about surfing but I will never become a professional
surfer, to my chagrin.
Two, what you are genetically coded to do.
I thought I was good at math until I took
math classes in college and saw the people
who were really good at math.
I am not genetically coded to do math.
There are people who are.
I know that that’s not my strength.
But there are things that I am genetically
coded to do that I’m also passionate about.
And if you put those two things together with
the third which is what can you create that
is of value to society and to other people?
That is your personal hedgehog.
That’s the sweet spot of things that you
can do that’s gonna give you joy, bring
value to the organization and essentially,
hopefully, lead to your professional success.
But one more thing; don’t forget to have
fun.
And I think that is truly the most important
lesson that I took away from working at Google
and that I will always be passionate about
in life is; how do you make work feel like
play?
One of my favorite authors is Martha Beck
and I love this quote from her.
“I’ve mentioned the idea of using the
word play to replace the word work.
If you have no way of feeling playful doing
your work, get different work.”
I have this quote in the book and I didn’t
know if it would resonate with other people
but I got a LinkedIn invitation the other
day from somebody, you know, your standard
LinkedIn invitation and I would like to connect
with you, I read my book and I quit my job.
[laughter]
>>Julie Clow: So her message was basically
that she couldn’t find a way to be playful
at work.
And she couldn’t buy into the mission of
the organization and realized that it wasn’t
a good, you know, she didn’t belong in that
organization.
And so, ultimately, she made the decision
to quit to find work that is more meaningful
to her.
And thankfully, Google provides an amazing
place that where people can feel playful doing
their work and my hope and my vision for the
world is that everybody can eventually get
to that place.
Where organizations are not set up to be dreary
and bland and built to essentially create
conformity.
But rather, to pull out of people their deepest
levels of talent and enthusiasm and joy toward
the things that we’re doing.
So thank you guys, very much.
[applause]
>>Julie Clow: Here’s my information.
Follow me on Twitter.
I know most of you any way but thank you guys
for coming.
It means a lot and it has been wonderful to
be back at Google.
Thank you.
Questions?
>>male #1: So you mentioned the importance
of pure feedback and evaluating work and,
as you know, that’s something we do here.
But the challenge is always the negative feedback.
It’s very hard to give negative feedback
to your peers.
Does the fact that we also have managers do
evaluations here sort of force us to pass
off the dirty work on them?
Or did you find like in a place like Morning
Star, people are willing to give the negative
feedback because there isn’t that safety
valve?
>>Julie Clow: Well, I think you hit on it
exactly which is it is tough to give negative
feedback.
So one, if we’re not in the habit of doing
it then we tend to feel compelled to give
negative feedback versus positive feedback.
And so, if all we’re doing is giving each
other negative feedback, that’s not a good
scenario.
But if we get in the habit of giving frequent
feedback I think it becomes a lot easier to
be authentic and flowing in terms of the kind
of feedback that we give.
But I think, definitely, having managers in
place does provide a bit of a crutch where
we aren’t flexing that muscle.
And we feel like we can give feedback in other
round about ways and leave it to the managers
to give the hard feedback to people.
But if you think about it when you have somebody
who’s a poor performer on your team, it
makes everybody’s lives miserable, including
that person that isn’t doing well.
And when you set up a peer feedback sort of
system then it makes it so much easier for
people to flush that out and keep each other
accountable and give that real time feedback.
So where I haven’t experienced it first
hand, only through what I’ve read, I can
only imagine that it just creates an environment
where that feedback is expected and welcomed
and, you know, a healthy sort of thing rather
than being toxic or tough to do.
>>male #2: So I really liked your foundational
principles.
They, we see all of them here I think.
When I think of a person of traditional companies
some person in a leadership position, some
total of them are probably terrified of them
all together to keep them from running in
the other direction.
You have one or two that you think are most
impactful to them potentially that you usually
start with?
>>Julie Clow: Yeah, that’s a really excellent
point and, in fact, I most often bring this
up when I’m talking to audiences that these
concepts feel foreign, is that fear is a really
huge driver and I completely understand it.
Because if you’re in an organization where
things are working, you’re making money
and for the most part the organization is
working well but there might be indicators,
maybe retention isn’t as good as you’d
like it to be or whatever, why go through
the process of changing all this?
You know, why fix what isn’t broken?
At least that people think.
But the point is that those organizations
may be good and good is the enemy of great,
as Jim Collins says.
I’m a big fan of his.
So if organizations wanna be great then they
have to address the fear behind doing it.
And I think that, that advice that I give
people is, go back to the grass roots idea
of testing everything.
So don’t think that you have to change an
entire organization in one fell swoop.
But rather, think about little things that
you could do to test things out.
If we did this differently what would happen?
You know, let’s try no dress codes for a
week, for a month or whatever and see what
happens.
You know, testing little things and being
okay with the fact that there might be failure
along the way but that you’ll learn as you
move on.
And I think that, think really small and test
everything gives people the comfort of knowing
that you don’t have to try to flip everything
all at one time.
And can kind of follow with the success of
it.
So that’s really the number one piece of
advice I give.
[pause]
>>Julie Clow: Okay, thank you guys very much.
[applause]
