Reference no: EM133338377

Questions:

1. What are ways Google and other large organizations reduce conflict, misinformation, rumors, debate, divisiveness?

2. What agenda items should Google include and cover in the TGIF Meetings?

3. Identify the positives of the Google guidelines on Internal communications. What are they missing?

Case Study: Alphabet (Google) Headquarters, Mountain View, California, USA. Google, the world's dominant search, ad- vertising, and video (YouTube) technology company, was founded in 1998 by two Stanford University computer science PhD candidates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google became part of Alphabet, a holding company created in 2015 to oversee a number of budding tech businesses that Page and Brin wanted to develop. But today Google still accounts for 99 percent of Alphabet's $162 billion in sales. Google's CEO since 2015, Sundar Pichai, was promoted to be CEO of Alphabet in December 2019 as Page and Brin officially stepped back from leading the company. In shaping Google's culture, Page and Brin were strongly influenced by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, the legendary founders of Hewlett-packard, and Jimmy Treybig, founder of Tandem Computers. Those three founders emphasized transparent communication by making top leadership accessible to their workforces via all-hands meet- ings and direct communication via companywide emails, to which all were encouraged to respond. Similarly at Google, communication transparency was achieved via weekly Thank God It's Friday (TGIF) townhall meetings, open access to all internal documents, and free, open, candid internal discussions via email discussion groups and discussion forums (which later became Google Chat). Page and Brin agreed, "We are a different sort of company, we want to be super open and transparent." The last sentence in Google's Code of Conduct is, "And remember... don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right - speak up!" At Google's TGIF meetings, upper management communicates detailed private information that is typically not shared at most companies, trusting that employees, who it encourages to "act like owners," won't share confidential information with outsiders. Page and Brin regularly led TGIFs, including the regular question-and-answer sessions on all topics from any employee. Regarding open access to all internal documents, a Google employee said, "As a company we've prided ourselves on transparency and information sharing...I was told as a Noogler [new Google employee], one of the big benefits of Google is that you can see what everyone else is working on, and how it all fits together." Internal documents for any Google project or customer have always been accessible to everyone in the company. Google employees create, access, and run a huge number of internal mailing lists and online Google-only Chat/ discussion forums (more than the number of employees!), all without approval or input from Google management. A former Google employee said, "These lists were in large part a free-for-all," covering technical challenges, hobbies, or travel, but sometimes political issues. Today, Google is a global company with 120,000 employees, with 20,000 new employees added in 2019 and another 20,000 new employees to be hired in 2020. Google's once-successful approaches to companywide communication, which worked when it was smaller, began breaking with its rapid growth. Issues that might have once been worked out in internal problem-solving discussions with Google's leadership became increasingly confrontational. Thousands of employees, who described themselves as activists, pushed back on Google's work with the US military (using artificial intelligence to identify and track drones), the development of cloud service and data storage for the US Customs and Border Protection agency (whose functions protesting employees deemed a human rights abuse), the development of a censored search platform for China (which Google had publicly left years earlier because of the Chinese government's requirement that Google restrict search results), and better treatment of Google contractors (contract workers, some- times called a shadow workforce, who lacked the full benefits, pay and status of regular Google employees). Employees, acting as internal activists, encouraged by one of Google's most important values, "Don't be evil," used Google's internal search tools and open access policy to discover documents on each issue, including subscribing to top leaders' open calendars to see who they were meeting with. The details were summarized and shared in internal Google docs, including protest letters and signed petitions. Fiery debates took place via discussion forum and mail lists, which also guided the development of questions that were workshopped and then submitted to top management for discus- sion at weekly TGIF meetings. This approach often worked. For example, when these steps were used to protest the US military drone project, they flew the employee leading the internal protest to Google headquarters for three back- to-back townhalls, after which Google chose not to renew the contract. Things continued to heat up during and after the 2016 election as internal employee discussions became increas ingly divisive and political. For instance, open, raging disagreements became so intense that Google had to discipline and fire employees. Subsequent news coverage, made possible by widespread leaks to reporters, showed the public how contentious things had become within the company. _ch15_WWYD_ptg01.indd 1 04/11 Growing distrust of Google's leadership wasn't helped when a New York Times article revealed widespread issues regarding sexual harassment, and that a top executive accused of sexual harassment four years earlier had been given a $90 million exit package. . Thousands of employees around the world walked out in protest. Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized in a companywide email, which also described the removal of an arbitration clause from employee contracts preventing them from suing Google for sexual harassment, a new policy stopping exit packages for executives accused of sexual harassment (none had been awarded the last two years), and a number of other steps to create and maintain a fair, protected work environment for Google's female employees. Tensions became so great that co-founders Brin and Page stopped attending weekly TGIF meetings, stopped send-