Zusammenfassung der Ressource
A Story from Google
Shows You Don’t Need
Power to Drive Strategy
- The case is of Brian Fitzpatrick joined Google
as a senior software engineer in 2005
- Brian specialized in open-source software
development and he quickly
- Their crowning achievement was a service launched in 2011
called Google Takeout, a unified site for exporting user data
from multiple services like Gmail and Google Photos.
- He is a key component of corporate strategy, with
then-CEO Eric Schmidt highlighting Takeout to
government regulators as evidence that Google wasn’t
pursuing monopolistic practices such as customer lock-in.
- He developed unique insight to solve an
emerging need and then he drove
transformational change to realize that vision.
- Also, all of his work was done outside the boundaries of strategic
management practices within the organization.
- Companies like Google and 3M have benefited from embracing
innovation that comes from all parts of the organization.
- We started with focus groups drawn from both our
graduate class at Northwestern University and a
global high-potential program we run at Aon.
- conducted in-depth interviews with a dozen of
the leaders they cited, including Brian at Google.
- Estrategies
- 1. They develop a broad and varied
network of relationships
- Brian’s network at Google went well beyond the engineering unit he was a part
of. He built this network proactively
- These relationships also gave Brian influential advocates
he could call on when needed
- 2. They identify “strategy gaps,”
- Brian knew that providing users better control of personal
data was critical to Google’s success
- What Brian also noticed was that while this was technically true, it was rather difficult to do in practice:
users who wanted to take their photos to a different service
- 3. They link their work to
existing priorities
- While Brian could explain his goals using statements made by Eric
Schmidt, this didn’t give him automatic legitimacy or the ability to
compel others to adopt his recommendations
- A big break came later when Brian had the chance to
partner with a major initiative — the launch of Google+,
the company’s competitive response to Facebook
- 4. They work with an eye toward scale.
- Brian’s work to build several working examples and a coalition
of supporters before he found the right time to pursue his
broader ambitions.
- Brian also took steps to make that future decision
easier, using common coding methods across those
initial projects that made each subsequent project
easier.
- Strategic leaders without formal backing still
operate with the long term in mind,
- 5. They orchestrate milestones to
build their credibility
- using a combination of success stories and
communication from supporters to legitimize their work.
- Eventually, these leaders develop a track record that
then allows them to exert influence in their own right.
- Brian started with let them
experiment and prove their concept
- Brian became more strategic in his project selection as
time passed, targeting products that were more
technically challenging and of greater impact.