The Culture of Google, the Advantages of Teams, Best Boss - Assignment Example

Describe the culture of an organization with which you are familiar using concepts in chapter 13. You may interview someone if you have limited experience.  If there is a company whose corporate culture is as diverse like its products and services, it would be Google. Google is a company that started as an internet search engine in 1996 under its previous moniker “BackRub”. Two years later in 1998, it evolved into Google as we know it today and grew by leaps and bounds. It launched dozens of innovative products and services, including online advertising services applications, such as Gmail, Google Map to Google Plus as among of its few of its innovative products. From its few employees, Google has now leapt to a gargantuan organization of 20,000 plus employees. Google as a company always strove to be diverse and innovative warding off any tendency to mature knowing all too well that its strength lies in its young and innovative workforce. It always strive for the “small feel company” where teams and the organization as a whole can work closely. This is related in the chapter 13 concept of striving to have an organizational culture and climate that supports the organizational objective. In this case, the organizational objective was innovation, to create new products and services that were either new or revolutionary. To reinforce this culture and climate, Google adopted some unorthodox ways to promote an environment and climate that breeds innovation. Google’s distinct, perhaps unorthodox culture can be readily observed in its headquarters in Mountain View, California which Google calls its campus as Googleplex- a combination of the words “Google” and “complex”. It actively creates an environment of interaction among its employees where it offers its employees to eat free in its coffee stations to have conversations. It also creates diversity just like its products and services with its game rooms that has pool tables, video games and ping-pong, and yes, it even has a baby piano. It also promotes a culture of openness with very few solo offices where Googlers share cubes, yurts and huddle rooms. Dogs, massage chairs and large inflatable balls are also okay. The list on how distinct its offices maintain an innovative and diverse ambience can go on and on. Google’s youthfulness and innovative culture is not only limited on how its offices are set up. What appears to be play is in fact a continuous search for perfection beginning in its hiring process where it favors ability more than experience. Moreso when hired, because Googlers, a Google employee is often called, is not strapped with a single repetitive function but wears several hats. This actually shows with how things are set up with Google offices and those free cafes have their purpose. It provides an avenue for cultivating ideas that may become the next big innovative product. This is further reinforced with the openness of its leadership which it also actively promotes a cultivating environment. In a Google environment, “no one, no one hesitates to pose questions directly to Larry or Sergey in our weekly all-hands (“TGIF”) meetings – or spike a volleyball across the net at a corporate officer “ (Google). 2. What are the advantages of teams in general? Are there particular benefits and/or challenges within health care organizations? What kinds of things can managers do to increase the probability of positive outcomes? You may draw on your own experience with teams as well as chapter 13 in the text to explore what makes a team successful.  There are several advantages of having a functional team. Having a team enables an organization or a group of people achieve their objectives easier, faster and more efficient. A team collects diverse skills, background and perspective from its members and hones it into one collective force either to solve an issue, complete a project or surpass an objective. Having to work with individuals with different backgrounds, trainings and skill sets, each team member also grows when they are exposed to each when working together. Unlike other resources in an organization where it diminishes with constant use, teams flourishes when they continue to work together because they get to know the job better and learn more from each other. In effect, talent in successful team multiplies their capabilities as they continue to work together. Chapter 13 suggested a perspective on how to optimize a positive outcome in a health care organization setting by addressing one of its most pressing issue – lack of diversity. Health care organizations is one of the least diverse industry and the author raise the caution that such situation may deprive an organization of an inclusive environment that makes the most of people of varying background. What managers can do to increase the probability of positive outcome is to extend themselves to the minorities in their organization instead of waiting a minority to be promoted and let the person do the job. It may be difficult and there may be differences that need to be overcome but if the manager is patient, it can be done. The result would make the organization more inclusive and cohesive where the minorities do not feel alienated or inferior and are motivated to perform which is beneficial for the organization as a whole. 3. Describe a situation, either from your own experience or the media, in which an individual was powerful. Use concepts from the reading to analyze why the person was able to be influential.  In this question, I would like to cite my high school principal as an example. I could say that he had a huge influence in my life that it influenced how I coursed my life after high school. As a school principal, he was powerful but it was not the power that comes from his office that influenced me but rather his deportment and leadership as a principal and a teacher. As a teacher, he was a mentor in the real sense of the word because he was really patient with us and motivated us to do better and believed in us that we can achieve anything we set our mind at. He never coerced us into doing something but rather inspired us to be better. In fact, it was him who encouraged me to pursue college when I did not feel like going to school anymore. Among the concepts from our reading materials, I believe that it is the social responsibility and ethic aspect that he best exemplified that made him respected and influential among his peers and students. He really took teaching by heart and made it a responsibility that we learn to prepare us for life and not just to get good grades. His personal ethic was also exemplary because he is able to balance well his family, teaching, social involvement, personal hobby (he likes to paint) without any news of misdeed. All we can hear is praises which is why when he dispenses his advice, I really listen because I know he is a credible person. 4. Describe the best boss you have ever had. (if necessary, interview someone to find a description of a very good boss). Identify whether the characteristics are managerial or leadership characteristics. Why do you think these qualities are so important? In what way do they affect your motivation and performance?  The best boss is one that leads and inspires people and not just manages people. Managers can achieve short lived objective but leaders inspires its people to perform better. This kind of leader is called transformational leader. They bring the best of everyone without the carrot and yardstick nor the threatening punitive measures to make a subordinate oblige. Transformational leader is a kind of leader that inspires and develops others to become a leader as well. This is the type of leadership that goes beyond the short term and focuses on the higher needs of its follower. It does coerce to solicit following but rather induce its peers and subordinates to identify and relate with the leader for being a good role model that they would like to emulate. It is a leadership that appeals to the subordinate’s sense of higher purpose to inspire a following. It does not coerce people but rather encourages them to be better and also become a leader. In this aspect, I would like to cite again my high school principal to be the best exemplar of transformational leadership evident with how his students become. I think he would be that influential to those had he not managed issues that we bring to him. It is a given that as young teenagers, we sometimes get into trouble but he never pass judgment to us. He inquires first and talks to the person why certain things was done or happened and understands them. This explains why we are not guarded to relate to him. Many of my classmates are now fairly successful in their professional life that includes me. His view on his personal and family life to put equal importance to it rubbed on us because most of us who have families are taking our responsibility seriously and I can say that we are happy with our personal lives. Without his example and leadership that we would like to emulate, I am not sure if I will have the kind of career and family life that I have now. 5. Describe a situation in which you were a minority on an important demographic dimension. What did it feel like? How is it different than being part of the majority? The closest situation of which I experienced that I was really a minority was when I first took my first job. I was relatively young then and my co-workers were many years my senior that I felt intimidated by them. The demographic dimension that I became I minority then was my age thrusted into a team composing of people that were generation ahead of me that has been together for decades. My predicament was even confounded by the fact that it was the only time they hired a new employee in their team for a very long time that having a new face in their group is a very alien idea to them. For me, it was a very alienating experience because I do not have anybody to ask what to do or even for just a simple conversation. The manager was what we will consider as an old school manager who expects that since HR put me in their department, that I would already know what to do. There was no effort even to formally welcome me and introduce to everybody. During my first day, I literally looked like an idiot because I was just standing there without anybody to guide me what to do. Worst, my manager was in a meeting and I have to wait for him for an hour before I got my instructions. As a result, I felt demotivated that I have to drag myself going to work. My job became a drudgery because there was no one whom I can relate with. It literally became a job, something that I have to do because I get paid to do it. As a result, I did not stay long because I was not happy with my environment. The feeling is very much different when I feel that I am in the majority. I feel empowered and do not have any anxiety about my environment. Unlike before where my environment made me paranoid because I kept on thinking whether I did my job right. I was also always on the lookout that I will not be reprimanded which is really a very stressful feeling. Being in the majority and empowered, my performance is way better because I feel good doing my job and kept on pushing myself to be better at my work not just to please my boss but also for my own satisfaction that I did a terrific job. My experience as a new hire however had taught me a valuable lesson about teamwork. Knowing how alienating it would feel to be new in a team, I always exert effort whenever there is a new hire coming into our group. It makes a huge difference in performance when an employee feels good about his or her environment than an employee who felt alienated by his or her environment. Work Cited Google. Life at Google. Online. 2011. 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