It’s only the most valuable brand in the world these days, so in one sense any kind of accolade, even one as prestigious as the GameChanger of the Month Award (”The Gamey”) with its winning prize of this blog post, is pretty obvious and lame.
What’s not so obvious or lame is how Google’s culture is built on fundamental concepts of improvisation.
Here are some of those concepts:
Performances begin with suggestions from the audience. From search queries, on through the many ways the brand listens to the world’s voices and and participates its cultures, Google’s performance as a brand begins with input from its audience. Search queries are, in effect, suggestions. Results to queries have themes, and those themes have the potential to turn objective (”what I want”) into action (”how I get it”). And that, ladies and gents, is the essence of improv.
Conversational language invites dialogue. By looking for opportunities — often as subtle as a single well-chosen, perfectly-placed word — to bring the brand’s language into a friendly, colloquial style, Google encourages conversation. In Googletalk, email threads are, exactly that — ‘conversations’ . Those conversations are varying degrees of ‘old’. Phrases like “Still working…” “I’m feeling lucky” “Search for stuff to buy…” and “You don’t pay a nickel” pop up casually throughout Google’s dialogues with searchers. That apparentl casualness is not casual at all. It is an alchemy of art and science. They don’t overdo it, and they don’t do it in an effort to be linguistically hip or unique. They do it to create little points of commonality, wispy hints of relevance, that make interactions more friendly, easygoing and natural. Those traits are, very much by design, part of the brand’s character.
Dialogue works on multiple levels. Google’s language algorithm folks delve deeply into the meaning of language on the cosmetic, emotional and meta levels. What does a user really mean? What are the associations created by queries? What emotions are in play? How does code divine meta meaning from language? Is a dialogue about an ailing dog about the location of a nearby vet or the best way to treat the dog? An improviser pays attention to subtext, so does Google, and it’s no coincidence.
The company’s culture includes a great big playful streak. They like having people on the team who once worked for the WNBA, who play volleyball, swim, bike, run, Segway. The Googleplex is a warren of physical activity, of music and yoga poses and people sitting on their office floors bolting new trucks to their long skateboards or playing with slot cars. Franz Weber, who once the held the world record for skiing down a mountain, escorts company managers on extreme skiing trips. Google knows that physical activity is a productive counterpoint to all the time its employees spend in the metaverse. The reason Google gets the Gamey, however, is that it’s impossible to improvise without playing. The brand’s spirit of of play morphs naturally into the spirit of improvisation, and vice versa.
Poaching is allowed. Thanks to ‘Chief of Confusion’ John Seely Brown for pointing this out to me. Just as JSB allowed poaching — i.e. recruiting players from other teams to join your own — at Xerox PARC when he was Chief Scientist there, Google also allows it. This is a very nuanced line in the business improvisation code, and it goes like this: Your scene is only as good as the game you are playing. If you’re playing a productive game, in which everyone is content with his or her role, and objectives are being achieved, all is cool. If your game is unproductive, players will sense it, coaches will see it, and the scene will get an adjustment in the form of an addition or edit, at the very instant of recognition. If you play a game that’s so productive and so engaging that other players want to join in, joining in should be an option. Good games attract good players. It’s true in improvisation, it’s true in pick-up basketball, it’s true in business. That attraction holds immense performance potential, but it’s potential that can only be realized if those good players are allowed to play along.
The environment is well-defined. Improvisers pay careful attention to everything about the environments in which their scenes transpire, and so does Google. Everyone is familiar with the stark Google home page design with its 30-something word count and the themed artwork that often adorns the logo. Other pages have a similar clean aesthetic. Nothing is wasted or extraneous to the scene. The Googleplex, likewise is a distinctive environment, with all sorts of romping around going on at all times of day, and a creatively cluttered quality to the office areas. Meals are served, massages given, games are played non-stop. A couple of years ago, after doing some business at the Googleplex, I asked my host if I could stop at the company store and pick up a t-shirt. “We don’t have a company store,” she said.
“Where do you sell Google t-shirts?” I asked.
“We don’t,” she said. “Sometimes people have them made for conferences and occasionally they have some left over.”
“Where are those?” I asked, getting enamored with the idea of having a rare, hard-to-acquire Google-T.
She led me past an office hall where several engineers were inspecting the gears on a very expensive looking mountain bike, to a large amoire sitting in an otherwise-empty corridor. “If there’s anything left over from a conference, people usually stick it in here, but the stuff always disappears pretty fast.” She pointed to an ‘eye on the amoire’ webcam mounted on the ceiling, no doubt connected to some internal Google schwaghund network. “Word gets around,” she said.
The amoire, as you’d expect, was bare, but my host had given me a bigger gift. Our t-shirt/company store/cycling engineers/amoire/webcam scene had conveyed to me the very essence of the Google spirit. Word gets around and energetic action follows.
Tags: April 2008, GameChanger of the Month, Games, Google, Googleplex, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, T-shirt
no doubt, people love to work there..specifically i like the, 20% free time for engineers..