GPhone Frenzy and Google’s New Risk: Corporate Communication Snafus
The latest GPhone frenzy is an amalgam of divergent internal Google facts and fiction. What gives?
Google is in fact worried about the integrity of its Googley corporate culture.
Googler in chief Eric Schmidt acknowledged in his Q2 report to Wall Street that the Googelplex has gotten a little carried away with its rapid fire hiring of rocket scientists.
In his SEC mandated 10Q report for same period, Schmidt doubles down on the Google-centric risks Mountain View faces due to its “unconventional” corporate culture:
Our corporate culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot maintain this culture as we grow, we copuld lose the innovation, creativity and teamwork fostered by our culture, and our business may be harmed.
As our organization grows, as we are required to implement more complex organizational management structures, we may findf it increasingly difficult to maintain the beneficial aspects of our corporate culture. This could negatively impact our future sucess.
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer is not surpirsed. He warned earlier in the year about Google’s “insane” pace of staffing acqusitions:
Trying to double in a year…we’ve been digesting a certain percent growth over many years, what has allowed us to do is to build up a base of capable people who can take on more capable people…
So many peole, so little time…to organize, manage AND communicate?
Professor Gary Hamel, London Business School on “management a la Google,” a self-described flat, transparent, and non-hierarchical organization:
Goolge is organized like the Internet itself: tightly connected, flat and meritocratic. Half of its employees–all those involved in product developemt–work in pint-sized teams, with an average of three or four engineers per team. Product managers typically have 50+ direct reports, making it hard for suipervisors to micro-manage. Control is more peer-to-peer than manager-to-minion.
SO, who is watching who, exactly, at the Googleplex? Are there sufficient macro level management controls within Google to make sure the worldwide roster of rocket scientists are not setting out on conflicting missions?
Google’s recent inclusion of Sun’s StarOffice in Google pack, BIG not so Googley case in point, as I underscore in: Google Office Ignores Sun StarOffice: Microsoft Killer Still MIA
Why DID Google put a direct competitor of its own Google Apps in its own Google Pack product, at the future expense of Google Apps. I asked another Google Apps competitor–Zoho–the very question yesterday.
Rahu Vegesna, Zoho evangelist, concurred with me that Google Pack + StarOffice is a perplexing Google move. Vegnesa indicated to me that it is highly likely that the Google Apps and Google Pack teams are actually unaware of the work and objectives of each other.
IS a lack of sufficient internal communications amongst the many, many Google teams of rocket scientists working on their own, specific projects the explanation for the head scratching apparently anti-Google Apps, Google Pack embrace of Sun Microsystems?
Direct Google Apps competitor Zoho’s own offline implementation of Google Gears, at the future expense of Google’s own online Office product, also spurs head scratching, as I discussed with Vegesna yesterday:
READ my exclusive interview – Why Google Apps Competitor Zoho is Powered by Google Gears Offline
ALSO: Google Apps Packs It Up: StarOffice On Microsoft Desktop Rules and Google Helps Zoho AND StarOffice Fight Microsoft Office