Organizational Behavior

1. Google's Project Oxygen:
Do Managers Matter?

2. Group Members
 W.M.J.H. Fernando - MS18901290
 C. D. N. Fernando - MS18911572
 K.D.R.S. Perera - MS18907926
 T. Bandara - MS18908084
 K.M.S.H. Karunaratne - MS18908152
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3. Content
 Google’s Overview
 Question 1
 Question 2
 Question 3
 Question 4
 Question 5
 Conclusion
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4. 10/19/2020 W.M.J.H. Fernando 4
Google developed a successful
program using employee data and
feedback to help create better
managers.

5. Google’s Overview
 Google was founded in 1998 by two Ph.D. students from Stanford: Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
 AdWords invented in 2000.
 Former Novell CEO, Eric Schmidt hired as CEO of Google in 2001.
 Google’s market capitalization was $250 billion, and it employed 35,000 people.
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6. W.M.J.H. Fernando 10/19/2020 6

7. Evaluation of Google’s culture and
managers viewed before Project
Oxygen
Question 01 – W.M.J.H. Fernando
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8. Culture
 Google was created as a flat-structured organization
 Google structures its organization exactly to prevent micromanaging.
 Micheal Stallard from Human Resources IQ describes Google as having a connection culture. This interprets to a bond
between similar individuals who move more towards group-centered connection.
 Google knows the two together are vital to the success of the company and retention of skilled talent.
 Harvard Business Review contributor Greg Satell emphasizes how great leadership and culture go together
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9. Managers view before Project Oxygen
 Before Project Oxygen, management at Google was undervalued.
 Existing managers had a difficult time trying to encourage their direct reports and convincing them of tasks needing to be
accomplished.
 Motivating managers were not appropriate in communicating nor giving attention to their employees. It was obvious that
Google was going to have a hard time undergoing a company-wide change to expand their standing.
 People Relations and the Pi Lab team came up with a solution to the organization’s management problems.
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10. Type of People work at Google
The role of Human Resource
The role of Managers
Question 02 - C. D. N. Fernando
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11. Type of People work at Google
 Google is a company full of engineers.
 According to software engineer Eric Flatt, Google is a company built by engineers for engineers.
 Google conducts its operations to ensure that they hire top-level talents including high levels of cognitive
ability. Google looks for four things from candidates during an interview. Which are leadership, role-related
knowledge, creative thinkers, and googleyness. Google has many young, high achievers who crave
autonomy, hardworking, ambitious people that are perfectionists in their fields.
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12. The role of Human Resource
 Human Resources within Google is called People Operations.
 The role of Human Resources should be to recruit new employees, develop them, and keep them working for Google.
 The purpose of People Operations was to replace opinion-based employee management decision with data and analytics-based
decisions, and therefore dramatically increase the quality of the decisions being made.
 People Operations helped manage the performance review process, which included regular response to managers as well as an
annual 360-degree reviews.
 By using a rigorous, data-driven hiring process HR will find perfect candidates who have high levels of cognitive ability, leadership
skills, ambitious self-starters and original thinkers, people who make that first cut are then carefully assessed for initiative,
flexibility, collaborative spirit, evidence of being well-rounded.
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13. The role of Managers
 The role of Google’s managers should be to oversee operations and facilitate production.
 Google’s managers should make sure that everyone in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re
having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society.
 Managers should also continue to innovate their relationship with their employees and figure out the best things they can
do for Google.
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14. Evaluate the characteristics of
effective managers at Google
Question 03 - K.D.R.S. Perera
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15. 1. Be a coach - Find out what matters to each of the team member.
2. Empower the team. Do not micromanage - Break obstacles down to help team work more Effectively.
3. Show interest in team member life - Show the team that you care.
4. Productive and goal oriented - Keep the eye on the prize and focus on priority results and deliverables.
5. Very good communicator and listener - Set the stage for open dialogue. Communicating effectively is one of the basics of being a good manager.
6. Helping team members in career development - Talk about career development. Help team grow skills they want to develop.
7. Have a clear vision and strategy - Develop and share the vision for the team.
8. Technical skills in order to advice people - Roll up own sleeves to help the team get things done
9. Collaborates across google - Google recently extended its list by two when its employee survey found that effective cross-organization collaboration
and decision-making were important to Googlers.
10. Is a strong decision maker - Google’s last addition is a reminder that while it’s important for a manager to listen and share information, employees also
appreciate one who can make decisions.
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16. The role of Google’s managers should be to oversee operations and facilitate production. Google’s managers should make sure
that everyone in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are
contributing to the good of society. Managers should also continue to innovate their relationship with their employees and
figure out the best things they can do for them.
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17. Assessment of the Oxygen 8
attributes
Question 04 - T.Bandara
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18. The Oxygen 8 attributes
1. Be a good coach
2. Empowers the team and don’t micromanage
3. Express interest in team members’ success and personal well-being
4. Be productive and results-oriented
5. Be a good communicator and listen and share information to the team
6. Help employees with career development
7. Have a clear vision and strategy for the team
8. Have key technical skills that help advise the team
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19. What values do they provide? How
generalizable are they?
A good coach encloses that the manager caters to the employee’s skillset and personality with their guidance and feedback and pushes
the employee to grow while still making the employee feel strongly supported. It may not work in other organizations where managers
don’t fully understand their employee’s skillsets or know them on a personal level. Moreover, other organizations may not provide
feedback so this attribute may not be plausible.
Empowers the team and does not micromanage attribute will not be applicable to other organizations that don’t involve teamwork such
as competitive organizations where the employees work alone. Other organizations consider micromanaging as mandatory because if
employees are not monitored every step of the way, the work will not be done right.
A good manager helps with career development is not generalizable to other organizations. At Google, career development involves
developing an employee’s expertise. But at other organizations, managers may only be concerned with filling positions and having the
job done correctly.
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20. People & Innovation Lab (PiLab) in
Google
Question 05 - K.M.S.H. Karunaratne
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21. What is People & Innovation Lab (PiLab) in
Google?
First step taken by setty
Build a group
 Three members group
 All are PhD Holders
Goal of the team
 Challengerble questions related to the well-being and productivity of Google employees
 "How can we encourage employees’ savings behavior?’’
 ‘How can we improve the onboarding process for new hires?’’
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22. What is People & Innovation Lab (PiLab) in
Google? Cont.
To fulfill above things they initiative
 Scoring system
 "We are family" Concept
 Process when Hiring new Managers
 UFS(Upward Feedback Survey) or TMS(Tech Managers Survey)
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23. The Challenge of Creating Truly
Amazing Managers
Question 05 - K.M.S.H. Karunaratne
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24. The Challenge of Creating Truly amazing
managers
 The Challenge is accepted by the team
 Success result of Upward Feedback Survey
 Most of the people are agreed and happy with this change of the company
 Oxygen project has leads to achieve their goals.
 Yes it’s not 100% percent succeed. But when considering this survey result and other comment most of the Googlegeist
leads to their achievement with the support of their managers.
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25. Conclusion
The broad case study under code name Project Oxygen started in late 2009. The Project got it name, because “good managers
are the lifeblood of Google, helping it grow and innovate. Google had high standards of proof. Google’s People Operation
department used science based HR. Therefore, the team was using scientific methods. One of these methods was the Proof by
Contradiction. This is a form of indirect proof, that establishes, that the truth of the statement by disproving the opposite
statement. So, the team tried to prove the opposite case; that managers did not matter, but they ultimately failed to do so.
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26. Thank You
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