Questions:
As a strategy consultant to Google’s triumvirate, advise them on the relevance of its current mission and its effectiveness in achieving a “sense of mission”
Case study 2
Evaluate Google’s strategic-decision making process and its significance for developing innovation capabilities, taking into accounts the choices and key actions of its strategic leadership which support the capability development process.
Structure of answer
The answer will contain detailed information about the
A strategic leader has the responsibility of the overall mission, vision or strategies that could motivate others. They also create certain beliefs by which people works together and helps to develop detailed strategies in the organization (Papanastassiou & Pearce, 2009). A strategy leader may also influence the organization’s strategy that is to be taken.
The mission of Google is to sort and order the world’s information and to make it accessibly throughout the world. Google by its own has in a few years time achieved a growth at a lightning pace in the area of internet search. It has attracted attention of many people like analyst, researcher etc. many organizations are trying to unfold their success formula. Google started as a small search engine in 1998 (Vise & Malseed, 2008). Within years it gained momentum and attracted more users and followers. From the very beginning the company has a hanger in its belly and for which by 2004 they have been able to launch IPO in the stock market of USA.
The mission of Google has always been to do something out of the track; something innovative which others will not think of doing. Like for example, they launched an open IPO instead of allowing investment banks to dictate on the IPOs; which other companies might not have thought of.
Once again Google made a difference when they introduced a two-tier system of board of directors which was very rare in the USA at that time but very common in some European countries.
The two founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin took alternate roles while Larry concentrated on the social structure while Brin looked on the ethical part. After its inception only Google has a strong market share which now has increased to 67.5% whereas its next competitor Yahoo is at 8.4% which is way behind Google’s market share. Google is a widely diversified company. Apart from a search engine it has other fields of operation like online payment services, mobile phone operating systems blogging social networks and radio and TV advertising (grant, 2015).
Another important aspect of Google’s operation is that if they cannot innovate anything new in the organization; they buy those products. A famous example of it was the buying of YouTube in the year 2001.
In Google it is said that the organization is run by its culture and not necessarily by the board of directors. The people do what they want to do every day which is much easier since the employees never face any problems. This form of work culture is very different from the traditional one where there is always a CEO statement telling what to do and what not to. The people in the organization are provided with 20% free time during their work hours within which time they are allowed to exercise, swim have free meals etc. this shows that the company values their employees and always try to allow them to think freely and come up innovating ideas. Though Google has always tried to do something very innovative each time, but their main motto was always to organize the information of the world.
Larry Page always believes that they should try to build something which does not exist. They do not pay much attention to the competitors who are working on similar products since they are sure that they will be always be one step ahead of them. It is in the leadership style of Larry Page that makes the company innovative and ahead of its competitors. He is a true transformational leader who can lead his team to new heights. It is really the people that make the company what it is. The company hires people who are smart and dynamic and determined towards their work. For the success of the organization it is very essential that the vision of the CEO is in line with the company’s vision and mission. The leadership style is reflected in the openness of his ideas and his curiosity to innovate greater ideas to put and develop the organization.
The Ashridge mission model is based on the four pillars that is purpose, strategy, behavior standards and values. The model can be applied to achieve organizational benefits. It is a useful tool used for analytical purpose which helps organization to set their missions clearly. It can also be applied to create new missions for the organization and also to examine the organizations current mission. The organization seeks to align their organizational goals with that of the employee values, by doing so they try to reach their organization’s goals (The Economist, 25 March 2006). Google has always tried to keep their employees benefits at the front. They provide all the benefits necessary for the employees to prosper. Allowing freedom in the work helps motivate the employees which make them come up with new ideas. In doing so they take ahead their mission of presenting the world with updated information. The statement is an expression of the mission of the company. Google follows this model in their work culture. The model combines the cultural and the strategic motivators so as to guide the organization. The mission statement of the company is to sort and order the world’s information and to make it accessibly throughout the world. For doing so the company from its inception have tried to achieve the mission and has now become a house hold name. People often say to ‘google’ a word if the meaning is nit found. The ‘purpose’ is mainly to ensure why the company exists. It is clearly defined that why the company exists. It is to ensure that it can lead the market in terms of information search. The strategy of Google is to achieve a competitive stance in the market. It has achieved such a competitive position that now it has increased to 67.5% whereas its next competitor Yahoo is at 8.4% which is way behind Google’s market share (B.V., 2015). The value of Google is in its ability to make its employees feel committed to the work. The assessment of the company is done on the values it maintains such as to deliver good information and data.
Though Google has always tried to maintain its position in the market, it has many a faults inside the organization. It is mainly a disorganized organization where it becomes very difficult to guess who is responsible for which job. As it happened that no represent of Google was present at the court room in Belgium when a case was filed.
Another problem that Google face is that their employee manager ratio is not maintained properly. Whereas in other US organizations the ratio of employees to managers is only 1:10; in Google it is 1:20, which is double that of other organizations.
Google has introduced a system whereby the employees are allowed to have 20% work time for personal projects, which may even extend to 30% of the work time in the organization which they believe which will give rise to new opportunities and new ideas. The company has a large work force but the way of recruiting and the critical method they follow make the job seekers feel depressed at some point of time.
Irrespective of the image that Google has as a organization that gives its employees benefits to free themselves from managerial control, it has a strong recruitment process. Thus no wonder it is so lenient with its employees. The pay is also competitive but not much ahead of its competitors. However the perks like messages, free meals and swimming pool helps to attract employees to a great extent (Keen, 2011). Moreover the employees mainly engineers must possess a masters degree or doctorate from leading universities. Each and every candidate has to pass through the psychometric tests before joining Google so that a good number of the population can be retained. The company follows a laissez-faire attitude which gives the management to control the employees as well as freedom to the employees (Sandberg & Rollins, n.d.). Peer review is extensively followed in Google where by employees are constantly being reviewed by their peers which improve their work quality. Moreover other constraints are also effective in the organization. The team of workers on a certain project is limited to not more than six; even deadlines for submitting the projects are also maintained at not more than six weeks. The company is boastful that they are analytical and everything in the company is measured and systematic (Vise & Malseed, 2008). The hourly updates are taken on spreadsheets and monitored. The technical platform internal to the company is one of the major sources of its success. The organization has its own intranet called ‘Moma’ which can track a very large amount of data within real time. Google is to capture and track information and present it in a proper and organized manner.
Structure of answer
The answer will contain detailed information about the –
From its very inception Google has been always trying to do out of the track innovations and developments. In 2004 a series of new products were launched by Google. Google acquired 99 companies between 2004 august and end of 2011 (Wired,2012). There was a series of introduction of new products by Google which started with goggle acquiring YouTube in 2006 followed by the introduction of the android operating system used in mobiles in the year 2007. In September 2008 the web browser called Chrome was introduced. Soon after, the announcement of making Chrome an open-source operating system was made (Scott, 2008). This has only added to Google’s image of continuously updating strategy. Google’s mission is to continuously collect and analyze data and present it to the world at large for referencing. The acquisition of YouTube has rightly followed its mission by collecting all the audio and video and presenting it under a same roof (Vise & Malseed, 2008).
Decisions in the company are taken within the company as no one is certain about who is taking which decision. There arose certain situations when law suits remained unattended due to identity crisis as each and every employer perform all the jobs. But most importantly Google has not always remained loyal to its mission and vision. While venturing into the web browser it has not collected all the data and made it accessible to the users!!
Apart from that it must be noted that due to diversifying nature its revenue has an upward trend. Their revenue in the year 2006 was $10,604.9 million to $ 37,905.0 million in the year 2011. From the above figures it can be seen that Google has always been in the want for more achievements. Achievements which many other companies may not think of; and for this reason their revenue has risen more than three times within five years. Google has recklessly expanding in the recent years. The most talked about acquisition was that of the Motorola Mobility the maker of the wireless handset. The acquisition was made for a $12.5 billion. It is considered as the first billion dollar venture of Google. Prior to the acquisition of the Motorola, Google was in the software business companies, but after the acquisition of motorala, Google has stepped into the hardware business as well.
Conclusion
To conclude it can be said that that Google has always given priority to its mission. The mission of Google is to collect the information of the world and then present it in a systematic way for the world to view and access. For that reason Google has always delved into business which could keep its mission alive. But for doing so it has sometimes fallen into controversies as to whether Google is a web based company or it is a software producing company or a hardware company is a much talked about question. But the Ashridge model in which the organization seeks to align their organizational goals with that of the employee values. Google also tries to do the same, so that they try to reach their organization’s goals. Google on one hand strictly follows the time limit for the work; the team of engineers handling a project is restricted so as to ensure quality work. On the other hand the employees are allowed 20 percent of their working time free in which they could do recreational activities. They are sometimes given freedom in their work so that creativity comes in their works.
References
Google. (2014). ECOS. doi:10.1071/ec14171
grant, r. (2015). corporate strategy.
Keen, A. (2011). Google’s inner workings. New Scientist, 210(2809), 50. doi:10.1016/s0262-4079(11)60935-4
Media, B. (2010). CTH Introduction to Business Operations. London: BPP Learning Media.
Papanastassiou, M., & Pearce, R. (2009). The strategic development of multinationals. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sandberg, R., & Rollins, M. The business of Android Apps development.
Scott, V. (2008). Google. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Vise, D., & Malseed, M. (2008). The Google story. New York, N.Y.: Delta Trade Paperbacks.
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