Wednesday, December 4
When Google’s co-founders resigned from the top of Alphabet yesterday, public reaction was muted. Larry who? Sergey what? “It’s very hard to say that this will be meaningful for Google employees or anyone in the world who uses Google products,” Peter Kafka noted in Recode.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded the company in 1998, have not played an active role in Google’s core business for some time — hence the ho hum response. Working on “Other Bets” inside Alphabet, they had all but disappeared, hidden from their employees, and ghosts to the public. “Where in the World Is Larry Page?” asked a Bloomberg Businessweek cover story in September 2018.
It would be wrong, however, to think the founders’ stepping back — even if they will keep a majority of the company’s voting shares — won’t make a difference for Google. The presence of founders, even disengaged ones, typically keeps the workplace culture they built intact. It’s easy to change a product. It’s much harder to change the norms, expectations, and processes established by people who built a successful company — at least while they’re still around.
Google’s culture is unique, more like the university from which it was born than the corporation it became. Page and Brin developed it to be transparent and contemplative. The culture minimizes secrets and maximizes debate. Everything inside Google, and outside Google, has been fair game to discuss in its many internal social networks. And almost all the company’s files and calendars have been discoverable, ensuring a healthy culture of internal dissent.
Google’s culture has kept it from making the type of mistakes that trip up its rival in Menlo Park. While Facebook moves fast and breaks things, Google moves slowly and debates things. However painful that’s been for Google’s leadership, it’s made it a more responsible corporate actor. (Though it’s still far from perfect, as its harassment scandals and fines for anti-competitive behavior attest.)
As Page and Brin step back, their successor, Sundar Pichai, will have free rein to reshape the culture to his liking. Pichai has embodied the open culture the Google founders developed. But he’s recently toyed with rolling back elements of it. He’s minimized TGIF, Google’s open question and answer session with leadership. “It’s not working in its current form,” Pichai told employees in an email announcing the change. And his executives discouraged employees from talking politics at work.
Pichai could quash Google’s openness if he’d like. But he should resist the urge. An introspective Google is a better Google. And though it takes a special type of executive to welcome that type of culture — one with thick skin and a willingness to listen — if it prevents boneheaded decisions made due to a lack of self-awareness, then it’ll be worth it. It’s Pichai’s culture to shape, but he should be very careful before applying any further restraints.
