Google has made its management processes and documents available for free. For many years, Google has been at the forefront when it comes to providing free tools. Carrying on with the tradition, Google is now offering to share its management processes and documents for free. Company CEOs and managers alike can use Google’s instructive documents to improve their businesses. But what is Google’s reason behind doing this? Here are some plausible reasons.
Google Has Nothing to Lose
Apart from Google’s practice of free sharing, other companies are likely to have a hard time adopting even the simplest management practices Google has made public. A study done on 12,000 firms across 34 countries found three prominent reasons for weak adoption of basic management practices.
The first reason is not being aware that the company may require better processes. The second is a lack of skills needed to adopt said processes. The third and final reason is organizational politics and lack of trust that creates avoidable roadblocks in implementing the necessary processes across the organization. One example could be the standardization of interviews. Unfortunately, employees might perceive this as excessive bureaucracy rather than how it would benefit the entire company.
It is not enough for a company to simply copy what they find online. They need to study the resources available and test which ones would work within their setup. The experience is similar to researchers who replicate lab experiments. Failure to replicate results stems from small method differences. Companies require an entire set of practices and standards set for said practices to make a significant impact. Therefore even by promulgating these general management practices, Google has nothing to lose in terms of competition.
The Value of Teamwork
According to Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, he highly values teamwork. He stresses on building organizations where people really want to work together. He mentions that he constantly keeps working on setting up collaborative cultures in the organization. For building such a culture that encourages everyone to work cohesively, it’s absolutely essential to have in place shared management practices.
Companies can benefit greatly from successfully implementing even the simplest Google management processes. Basic management practices are a challenge to adopt into a specific company culture and unique problems. Therefore, companies that are able to apply Google’s management practices would likely experience a huge impact on their organizational performance. In the study done on 12,000 firms, companies that managed to pull off the feat of moving from the bottom 10% to the top 10% when it comes to improving their core management practices experienced a $15 million increase in profits and 75% increase in productivity.
Establishing a common set of processes and ensuring adherence to these processes is vital for companies. This is because adherence removes biases, removes subjectivity and individual interpretation, and ensures employees focus on objective results. This is especially important for teams comprised of skilled individuals possessing complementary specialties working together to achieve a common end result.
Ensuring Economic Growth
Google could also be contributing to macroeconomic growth through its shared management tools. Research shows that firms that are better managed invest 10 times more on research and development (R&D) as compared to other firms. Interestingly, this ten-fold increase in R&D spend also results in increased patenting by a factor of 10. This innovation will benefit the broader economy. Thus, growing firms mean bigger gains for the economy.
In order for businesses to grow, they require strong and sound managerial practices. Therefore, it is important for both small and big businesses to analyze how they can improve. However difficult the endeavor may be, Google’s shared information will definitely help companies progress.
