Eric Schmidt’s description of the
Google hiring process and culture does make sense for their type of
organization and the innovation that they try to inspire. However not all of it
can be applied to my organization. For example Eric says, “One of the things
that I learned—and I learned a lot from Larry and Sergey—is that it makes an
enormous difference who you hire at every level. And people don’t really sort
of manage that. So we worked very, very hard on who’s going to be in our
company.” (McKinsey Quarterly, 2011) While I agree
that it does make an enormous difference on whom you hire, the military
unfortunately doesn’t get the luxury of choosing the best people for the right
job. Ultimately, were constantly shifting personnel and in the end were stuck
with what we got. This means we have to put a lot of trust in the system to
make sure it works.
Eric also brings up the idea of the
20 percent rule; an idea that 80 percent of an employee’s time is dedicated
towards main organizational objectives while the other 20 percent is dedicated
towards innovation of new products. This is something else that doesn’t get
taken advantage of at my organization because it’s almost not required. Jets
brake from war and training and they come to my organization to fix them. While
I won’t say there’s no innovation to be had in the maintenance field, as there
certainly is, what I will say is that it’s nothing compared to that of the
service/software industry.
The idea of self-managing, self-directing
work teams can be used in my organization though (and to some extent it already
is). One of the greatest aspects of my job is the troubleshooting aspect,
finding a solution to a problem. Many members of my organization view
troubleshooting the same way and so should I ever becoming an expediter, I plan
to take this idea and allow people to solve problems their own way. Rather than
manage and tell people what to do and force work/tools onto them, instead I’ll
ask them what they need and help them get it. In a way I’ll work for my people
as opposed to having my people work for me.
References
McKinsey
Quarterly. (2011). Eric Schmidt on business culture, technology, and
social issues. Retrieved 2014, from
http://whispersandshouts.typepad.com/files/eric-schmidt.pdf
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