The document summarizes Google's Project Oxygen which aimed to identify the characteristics of effective managers. It discusses Google's culture and flat management structure prior to the project. It also evaluates the 8 attributes of effective managers identified by Project Oxygen, including being a coach, empowering teams without micromanaging, and showing interest in employees' lives. The document concludes that Google successfully implemented organizational changes informed by Project Oxygen's findings, improving manager behaviors and employee morale.

1. i
Sri Lanka Institute of Information
Technology
MSc/PGD in Information Systems & Information Management
January 2019
IE 5031 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Group Assignment
Group Assignment
Names of Group Members with Student ID Numbers:
1. W.M.J.H. Fernando – MS18901290
2. C. D. N. Fernando - MS18911572
3. K.D.R.S. Perera- MS18907926
4. T.Bandara - MS18908084
5. K.M.S.H. Karunaratne- MS18908152
Report Title: Google's Project Oxygen: Do Managers Matter?
Module Code: IE 5031 Module Name: Organizational Behavior
Describe any non-paper attachments:
Submission Date: 21st April 2019 Time: 3.00 PM

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Acknowledgement
First, we would like to pay our sincere gratitude to our lecturer Mr. Sanjeewa Perera who gave us
assistance in each stage of this assignment and also, we would like to thank to our MSc
coordinator (IM) and all other lectures of Faculty of graduate studies to giving their support in
some stages to make this report a success.
Finally, we would like to thank SLIIT and all friends of the IM batch to giving their ideas and
suggestion to write this report.
Thank You.
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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Contents
Executive Summary........................................................................................................................ 1
Google’s Overview......................................................................................................................... 2
1. Evaluation of Google’s culture and managers viewed before Project Oxygen....................... 3
1.1. Culture.............................................................................................................................. 3
1.2. Managers view before Project Oxygen............................................................................ 3
2. Type of people who work at Google ....................................................................................... 5
3. The role of human resource as a setting .................................................................................. 6
4. The role of managers ............................................................................................................... 7
5. Evaluate the characteristics of effective managers at Google................................................. 8
6. Assessment of the Oxygen 8 attributes.................................................................................. 10
6.1. What values do they provide? How generalizable are they? ......................................... 10
7. Setty’s priority when the company going forward................................................................ 12
7.1. The challenge of creating truly amazing managers........................................................ 13
8. Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 14
9. References ............................................................................................................................. 15
Appendices.................................................................................................................................... 16

5. 1
Executive Summary
This case study was commissioned to observe tech company Google’s Project Oxygen and the
company’s modification in management. Specifically, the analysis shows whether Google’s
process of change management and organizational modification was effective based on ideas
covered in organizational behavior as well as references from peer- reviewed articles.
Furthermore, the case analysis further estimates Google’s management and type of culture to
determine if the organization is successful based on its environment. References are also on
condition that to the Project Oxygen team for how to expand on the project to ensure its future
sustainability.
The analysis determined that management behaviors implemented by Google’s Project Oxygen
were in fact consistent if not matching to behaviors guided by the organizational behavior
textbook and authors of scholarly journals. Additionally, it was found that Google’s consensus
culture helps contribute to an effective company and well-known a leadership model that several
articles stressed as a model case for how leadership should be in organizations.
Regarding modification management, several organizational behavior concepts were used by the
Project Oxygen team to implement a revolutionary change at the company. Even with such
success achieved by Google and the team, there were still references exposed to help the
company expand on Project Oxygen. Case study clearly mention behaviors to the list of eight
attributes compiled from Project Oxygen. Finally, it was suggested that managers should come
up with their own strategic model of management as an alternative of strictly basing actual
management on the eight Oxygen attributes.

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Google’s Overview
Google was founded in 1998 by two Ph.D. students from Stanford: Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
The company organized the world’s information and made it universally accessible and useful.
To date they have raised over $26 million dollars in investments. In 2000, Google started
offering AdWords, a keyword-targeted advertising program. Former Novell CEO, Eric Schmidt
hired as CEO of Google in 2001. By 2012, Google’s market capitalization was $250 billion, and
it employed 35,000 people. Google provides the leading search engine. The company’s mission
is to make the world more accessible amongst everyone in all aspects of life. Google has
multiple programs, promotions, and campaigns to make human life easier. (“re,” n.d.)
Managers needed to provide direction without micromanaging and be approachable. Initially,
before the topic of management was of concern, Brin and Page wanted to improve human
resources functions for the dynamic company. The two founders started a group called “People
Operations” and hired Laszlo Bock to head the group.

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1. Evaluation of Google’s culture and managers viewed before Project
Oxygen
1.1. Culture
Google was created as a flat-structured organization meaning it was not hierarchical in structure
where managers had a wide span of control. The number of engineers importantly outnumbered
the number of managers. Google structures its organization exactly to prevent micromanaging.
The average number of direct reports per manager is about 30. As well, Google gives most of its
power to employees and stresses them to make ideas and to question decisions that are not data-
based.
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. People in a connection-type culture empathize with each other creating a more
positive environment. For an organization to change to a connection culture, they must possess
three cores elements are value, vision, and a voice (Stallard, 2011).
One common inference from this evaluation is that the tech organization values culture and
management as well as takes it seriously. 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 (Satell, 2014). Google attacks
problems not by criticizing its employees but rather working together to come up with a solution.
1.2. Managers view before Project Oxygen
Before Project Oxygen, management at Google was undervalued. New engineers appointed on to
the company had no sign about management nor were they inspired of the idea. Furthermore,
existing managers had a difficult time trying to encourage their direct reports and convincing
them of tasks needing to be accomplished. In addition, motivating managers were not
appropriate in communicating not 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. Authors Jay Conger and Beth Benjamin saw change as a demanding assignment.

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“Change had to be more fundamental and more systematic. Moreover, it had to produce results
that satisfied not only top management but also the expectations of increasingly sophisticated
and demanding shareholders”. (Conger, 1999)
People Relations and the Pi Lab team came up with a solution to the organization’s management
problems. It is important to note, however, that the Project Oxygen team had to implement the
solution they found. To effectively implement their findings, the team used organization
development (OD). Specifically, within OD, People Relations utilized survey-feedback activities
to measure the eight Oxygen attributes and group interventions to spread the word (Daft, 2016).
Because of the Daft’s Management OD concepts and Jaques’ stratums applied by the Project
Oxygen team, Google manager’s behaviors improved drastically, raising employee morale and
contributing to the rise in success of the tech organization. Applying such an immense
organizational change is something unique to Google’s way of solution of solving problems.

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2. Type of people who work at Google
Google is a company full of engineers. According to the case study, software engineer Eric Flatt
stated that, Google is a company built by engineers for engineers.
The company also conducts operations to ensure that they hire top-level talent. Google reviews
resumes looking for key factors for doing well at the company, including high levels of cognitive
ability. Google is looking for employees that contribute to the company’s human capital. Human
capital includes the knowledge, skills, health and values of an employee. In addition, Google
looks for four things from candidates during an interview. Which are leadership, role-related
knowledge, how you think, and googleyness. Google has many young, high achievers who crave
autonomy. Google has hardworking, ambitious people that are perfectionists.
In 2002 they experimented with a completely flat organization, eliminating engineering
managers in an effort to break down barriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the
collegial environment they have enjoyed in graduate school.
According to the case study, Google has some layers but not as many as you might expect in an
organization with more than 37,000 employees: just 5,000 managers, 1,000 directors, and 100
vice presidents. It’s not uncommon to find engineering managers with 30 direct reports. Flatt
says that’s by design, to prevent micromanaging. “There is only so much you can meddle when
you have 30 people on your team, so you have to focus on creating the best environment for
engineers to make things happen,” he notes. Google gives its rank and file room to make
decisions and innovate. Along with that freedom comes a greater respect for technical expertise,
skillful problem solving, and good ideas than for titles and formal authority. Given the overall
indifference to pecking order, anyone making a case for change at the company needs to provide
compelling logic and rich supporting data. Seldom do employees accept top-down directives
without question.
Google downplays hierarchy and emphasizes the power of the individual in its recruitment
efforts, as well, to achieve the right cultural fit. Using a rigorous, data-driven hiring process, the
company goes to great lengths to attract young, 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, and other factors that make a candidate “Googley.”

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3. The role of human resource as a setting
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. HR
should emphasize to recruit most suitable candidates among others. 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.
At the center of it is a sophisticated employee-data tracking program. The people analytics team
reports directly to the Vice President. People Analytics tried to find the correlations and
recommend necessary actions for improvement. 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. In 2007, Laszlo Bock, head of People Operations hired
Prasad Setty as the leader of the group “People Analytics” inside People Operations.
Keep high performance employees with Google is beneficial because it is less costly to retain
employees than to hire new ones. One way that Google HR does this is by offering their
employees one day a week to work on whatever they choose to. Benefits such as this boost
employee’s view of the company and inspires them to stay with Google. Google HR always
searching and developing new practices, new benefit schemes, to provide self-satisfaction to
retain their valuable employees with them.
Google’s leadership tried to make all people decisions by using data, but later it was changed so
that all people decisions should be informed by data and analytics. The purpose of this was to
remove bias in decision-making, but at the same time data had not to completely erase the role of
personal judgment. Three PhD members of People Analytics formed People & Innovation Lab
(PiLab). It consisted out of Jennifer Kurkoski (leader), Brian Welle, Neal Patel. In 2009, the
PiLab started working on the question: “Do managers matter? What would be the results if
everyone had an amazing manager?”

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4. 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.
There are some important and common obstacles in the path of being successful in leading a
team at Google. Managers had trouble making a transition to the team and some manager fail to
make a connection with people or fall in synch with the established team environment. This can
occur with either young or experienced managers. For example, even with a seasoned manager,
they may fail to transition after being relocated to a brand-new assignment. Second, managers
lacked a consistent approach to performance management and career development.
Another problem with the managers is they lacked a consistent approach to performance
management and career development. Each manager throughout the company could have his or
her own performance matrix for judging the performance of workers. Such kinds of inconstancy
can confuse and discourage people. Managers cannot understand what exactly is expected of
them and they can feel like they are being treated unjustly and unfair. For example, when people
working at one team or one particular location of a company got promoted more often than
others it can seriously discourage the rest of company’s employees and make them feel
underappreciated. Employees think that their personal performance has very little with their
chances for promotion inside the company. It can lead to the loss of some top talents.
Managers do not do enough time management and communicating. Some managers spend
almost all their time inside their offices, barely talking with their subordinates. They do not
explain the big picture and do not tell team members why they have to do something. If people
are not told why they must do their job, they are often not very enthusiastic about it and their
performance tends to suffer. Managers must ask their subordinates questions about their feelings
and ideas. Sometimes people have some good ideas that can benefit the company, and also by
talking with people managers make people feel like their boss is caring about them. This acts to
improve the worker’s morale and therefore it improves their performance.

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5. Evaluate the characteristics of effective managers at Google
A decade ago, Google began Project Oxygen, an attempt to identify the characteristics of great
managers. The tech giant used its findings to train employees, and then shared the information
with the outside world. That included listing the behaviors of Google’s best managers (“10
Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.):
01. Be a coach - Find out what matters to each of the team member. Agree on development
priorities. Check in with them regularly. Employees need and appreciate a manager who
takes time to coach and challenge them, and not just when they’re behind (“10 Behaviors
That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).
02. Empower the team. Do not micromanage - Break obstacles down to help team work more
Effectively. Micromanaging is a common mistake managers make without even realizing
it, one that discourages and frustrates employees. But Google’s research found that its
best managers don’t, instead offering the right balance of freedom and advice (“10
Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).
.
03. Show interest in team member life - Show the team that you care (“10 Behaviors That
Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).
04. Productive and goal oriented - Keep the eye on the prize and focus on priority results and
deliverables. Employees don’t want to work for a lazy boss. They'd rather be part of a
team that’s productive and successful, and that’s hard to do if the leader doesn’t set the
tone (“10 Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).
05. Very good communicator and listener - Set the stage for open dialogue. Communicating
effectively is one of the basics of being a good manager (or a good employee for that
matter). But it’s also important to remember that great managers prioritize listening (“10
Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).

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06. Helping team members in career development - Talk about career development. Help
team grow skills they want to develop. Google recently added the “discusses
performance” component to this behavior. The company pointed to research from Gallup
that found only half of employees know what expectations they should be fulfilling at
work (“10 Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).
07. Have a clear vision and strategy - Develop and share the vision for the team (“10
Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).
08. Technical skills in order to advice people - Roll up own sleeves to help the team get
things done (“10 Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).
09. Collaborates across google - Google recently extended its list by two when its employee
survey found that effective cross-organization collaboration and stronger decision-
making were important to Googlers. Whether you’re at a large corporation, an early-stage
startup, or a nonprofit, managing your team and leading it to success can depend at least
in part on how well you can work with other teams (“10 Behaviors That Make a Great
Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).
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 (“10 Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse,” n.d.).
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 (“10 Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The
Muse,” n.d.).
.

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6. Assessment of the Oxygen 8 attributes
The Oxygen 8 attributes are very good standards to build a company on. All of the attributes are
ethical and promote a good environment that employees want to be a part of. (See Exhibit 1 for
a full list of the eight behaviors and a quotation illustrating each behavior.) Additionally, these
attributes allow Google to accomplish their positioning statement: Google’s mission is to
organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful (Google). This
positioning statement gives Google international opportunities and does not limit them to one
geographical region.
6.1. What values do they provide? How generalizable are they?
The Oxygen 8 attributes are certainly a source of sustainable competitive advantage for Google.
A competitive advantage exists when a particular company consistently outperforms other
companies in the same industry (Davis). So a sustainable competitive advantage is just when a
company is able to maintain a competitive advantage for many years. One aspect of a sustainable
competitive advantage is that the product must be rare. The Oxygen 8 attributes are absolutely
rare because of the success that Google has had. Other companies in Google’s industry have not
been able to manufacture the same amount of success. Google’s Oxygen 8 is hard to imitate
because attributes are about Google, by Google, and for Google (Garvin 6). Therefore, other
companies cannot try to replicate these attributes. If they do, there is a good chance that it will be
unsuccessful because these attributes apply soley to Google. When a company has managers that
follow attributes such as the Oxygen 8, it can only lead to success. For example, the number one
attribute of the Oxygen 8 is being a good coach.
This 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 (Garvin 16). This attribute 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.
The second attribute says that a good manager empowers the team and does not micromanage.
This 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

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micromanaging as mandatory because if employees are not monitored every step of the way, the
work will not be done right. Another attribute that is not generalizable to other organizations is
the concept that a good manager helps with career development. 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.
A weakness of Google’s management is that there is not consistency across the board. Some
managers are worse than others. But to minimize this weakness, Google implemented Project
Oxygen to improve its manager’s skill from top to bottom. Due to Google’s prosperous
management, they have had great success in regards to revenue. This allows them to pursue
opportunities that many other companies don’t have. Google has been able to manufacture other
products such as Google Maps, Google Books, and many more. By reason of Google’s giant
market share, they do not experience many threats from other companies because they are
leading the industry. But to continue being on top, Google has persisted on innovating to stay
ahead of the competition.

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7. Setty’s priority when the company going forward
Setty built out the people analytics team with PhDs who brought rigorous research
methodologies to the company. Three members of the people analytics group ─ Kurkoski, Brian
Welle, and Neal Patel—formed a small team called the People & Innovation Lab (PiLab). Led
by Kurkoski, their goal was to tackle questions related to the well-being and productivity of
Google employees. ‘‘How can we encourage employees’ savings behavior?’’ and ‘‘How can we
improve the onboarding process for new hires?’’ He introduced scoring system.
The Project Oxygen team started by reviewing the data that had already been collected when
employees left Google to see whether management issues were cited as one of the reasons for
leaving. ‘‘High scoring’’ managers were those in the top quartile (top 25%) on both measures,
and ‘‘low-scoring’’ managers were in the bottom quartile of both. Finally, the research team
found that Google employees with higher-scoring managers had consistently higher scores on all
Googlegeist dimensions, including innovation, work-life balance, and career development.
Google has created a feeling like “They are family” According to Setty ” Treating people like
family means nurturing them, developing them, and making sure they reach their full potential”.
Setty was considering a number of possible new projects for the people analytics team.
One was to expand Project Oxygen to develop a deeper understanding of the specialized
attributes of the most senior managers of the company such as directors and vice presidents. In
the Google the management attributes are the same as other management jobs, but the delivery
process is different. He also thing it would be helpful to learn more about the complete lifecycle
of managers at Google, including hiring, lateral job transitions, promotions, and departures.
There was plan to analyze the job transitions for weak managers, while also reviewing the
company’s ability to reward and retain its top managers when they searched for candidates. The
goal was to create a virtuous, reinforcing cycle. How it worked, first thing that asking potential
managers about the Oxygen behaviors, then once they become a manager, assigned to onboard
them by training. After they had managed for a few months, company raised their self-awareness
by giving them a UFS (Upward Feedback Survey) or TMS (Tech Managers Survey) report so
they could see their team’s assessment. Finally, they were giving facility to attend manager
courses targeted at their lower-scoring areas.

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Google should be ‘‘growing the leaders that the world needs.’’ Said by Page. He should thing
that Project Oxygen is constraining employees. And with that rules and follow up will boxing
people’s thoughts. First they think to change the improvement on the management front. They
have moved the average up quite significantly, particularly for the bottom quartile. In addition,
they are continuing to work on reducing the variance across the population and trying to raise a
very high mean. They have a plan to start thinking about what else there is that drives people to
go from good to great. They are starting to do some work looking at managers by personality
traits to see which ones had the greatest improvements in their scores. Above variables are out of
their data set. So again, they have to consider to teasing them out, using more of an ethnographic
approach
7.1. The challenge of creating truly amazing managers
Yes, he and his team should take on the challenge of trying to create “truly amazing managers.
When we considering Upward Feedback Survey 95% selected as favorable. That means most of
the people are agreed and happy with this change of the company. Further we discussed there are
many more specific comments which we can consider most of the people are working here with
their pleasure. When we considering we can think that 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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8. 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.
Project Oxygen was a conglomerate of surveys, feedbacks, observations and analysis. The main
goal of the project was to find out the most important traits that employees perceived to be
critical in making an excellent manager. Even a small increase in management quality had a
powerful effect. Better managers had higher performance teams. Google employees with higher-
scoring managers had steadily higher scores on all Googlegeist dimensions. Based on this data
the PiLab team was able to conclude that managers do matter.

19. 15
9. References
Daft, R. L. (2016). Management (Twelfth edition). Boston, MA, USA: Cengage Learning.
Stallard. (2011). Google’s Project Oxygen: A Case-Study in Connection Culture | HR Exchange
Network. Retrieved April 11, 2019, from https://www.hrexchangenetwork.com/hr-talent-
management/articles/google-a-case-study-in-connection-culture
re:Work - Great managers still matter: the evolution of Google’s Project Oxygen. (n.d.).
Retrieved April 10, 2019, from https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/the-evolution-of-project-
oxygen/
10 Behaviors That Make a Great Google Manager - The Muse. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2019,
from https://www.themuse.com/advice/10-behaviors-make-great-google-manager?fbclid=
IwAR3B4k8XcoAO1jW4AwV1klUDODDDHzdJ-GBfNwW5tMBjLYtIx1Y-hAduybg
Google's Project Oxygen: Do Managers Matter? - Case Solution. (2019, March 03). Retrieved
from https://www.casehero.com/googles-project-oxygen-do-managers-matter/

20. 16
Appendices
Exhibit 1 The ‘‘Oxygen 8’’ Behaviors for Great Managers