“You can take it. We trust you. We give people the opportunity to make the right call for themselves and the company, and they do”
“We don’t force people to use anything at Google, but we measure what they do use”, Fried said. Once a month, employees receive a ‘bill’ for the technology and services they have consumed—from phones and data plans to conference rooms that they have booked for meetings. The knowledge of how people use resources—and how that usage compares to those of their peers—tends to make people more efficient, not less.
“They can choose Mac, Windows, Chrome or PC computers. If they want to use Office or iWork, they get Office or iWork”.
— Ben Fried, Google CIO (2012) Google CIO Runs IT on Trust and Transparency
Three are the big factors in play here:
- Trust, because this is the foundation of every kind of collaboration. This must be exist deeply in the company and must be in everything the company does.
- Transparency, to see clearly what’s happening, at every level and to compare with other decisions.
- Feedback loop: this allows people to see the objective data and take decision.
Notice that the combination of trust and transparency implies that there’s no control nor judgement: the system self organizes.