Leadership at Google and Beyond

Leadership is about finding a new direction, not simply putting oneself at the front of the herd that’s heading toward the cliff. In the past two years, through its hosts, mentors, speakers and participants, the BOLD Program has taught me how to live by the preceding definition of leadership. I am the product of a mélange of experiences, learnings and serendipitous events at Google.

My return to the BOLD program this summer gave me considerable advantage over my previous summer, as I walked in knowing the company, the culture, and was ready to work, filled with energies that had been inspired by a year of the Ambassador program. The inspiration from individuals at every level- Rosenberg to Roe to Dinsmore, product to sales to hr, gave me the thirst to seek ownership of my projects, and represent Google’s core values as the face of all my exertion by going far and beyond.

Working with the dynamic DSO Consumer Packaged Goods vertical, under Catherine Roe gave me the ability to pitch to clients and be creative in the work I do. I have had the opportunity to do amazing work, be creative, pitch ideas and work hand in hand with the team. For example, an opportunity surged to help the Kraft management team design a full day of learnings and activities for their newly established innovation team, and I raised my hand, spoke-out my interest and jumped straight to the task. This was my opportunity to pitch Google products to Kraft management, while helping them fulfill their adventurous request. This was something that was out of the marketing scope of my internship, but it was new and exciting.

I helped put together a full day event, whereby the participants would visit different small to medium size companies and learn from their case studies to inspire ideas internally. I designed and created an interactive, digital Google map to provide guidance for the Kraft Pub Crawl organized by Google. The map is an interactive interface. The user is able to rate the locales, take notes on the icon's description box about his/her experience, draw lines connecting places and even set routes and directions. I went even farther. I held a tutorial for a VP at Kraft about Cloud Computing, and how we could implement Google Docs, Forms and even Sites for the Crawl, to not only inspire collaboration and communication, but also augment tech-savyness amongst what they hoped to be an innovative team. The list is long- I created iGoogle Marketing Dashboards to help them understand search and prepared a Walmart / Kraft strategy report.

The results were incredible. “Cloud Computing” was the new buzz-word inside of Kraft, they felt at the top of the tech-world knowing that they were implementing this new fashion. Collaboration and communication were unique, and idea sharing was exponential. The Senior VP of Marketing at Kraft emailed Dennis Woodside to thank him for my leadership in the project, and my team applauded my accomplishment as I ameliorated their relationship with Kraft and opened doors that had been locked for some time. Just this past week, I was approached by Hunter PR and Kraft to organize a similar event in New York.

Taking complete ownership of this project showed my ability as a leader and a doer. I was able to help an external team grow stronger, while simultaneously having them adopt Google products and act Googley, by collaborating, thinking of the bigger picture and being open and accessible to the world. This year I return to the University of Chicago as a Google Ambassador for the second time. This summer has taught me many things. Just like I was able to navigate effectively and make things happen at Kraft, I look forward to planting the seeds of Google products in similar ways- from the student who wants to keep his documents online to the school administration that aims to cut costs and integrate email, calendar and other online applications by Going Google. As a leader, I am always in search of a new direction. BOLD has given me mine.

How do you create as many options as you can? A conversation with Lazlo Bock, VP at Google

The following is an excerpt or agglomeration of ideas from a conversation with Lazlo Bock, VP of People Operations at Google, Inc.

The most important thing in your career is to pick your industry carefully. The industry you choose determines how many opportunities you can create for yourself. Following Jonathan Rosenberg’s ideas (another blog post pending on his talk), we all want to catch waves, find industries where there are tons of waves, and find a big one to ride. Technology is ours.

A lot of people say they want to work for nonprofits, since they have passions for things of charitable value. Do it, I’m not saying not to, but chose your priorities in life. You can have a very big scope of impact without staying always in solely nonprofit. As Vice President of People Operations, Lazlo Bock has the power to give millions of dollars in scholarships to touch people.

Pick your company right. “When I was in consulting at McKinsey, I would flip through thick resume books and take out the ones that had impressive companies on their resumes like Google, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and focus mainly on those candidates.” When you’re getting started in your career a big company is better. It doesn’t matter what job you have, but the fact that you’re there. Once in, you can find more opportunities for yourself that are better fits given the huge waves of opportunities flowing through everyday.

It doesn’t matter so much what you do, but whom you’re with and what opportunities you create for yourself.

The next important thing is about how you manage yourself. I see careers as managed in ten-year pockets. The first 10 are very experimental, jump from pond to pond, and try companies out, roles, and grad schools. Now, once you hit the 10-year mark you better settle, and excel! It’s like declaring a major. You don’t want to say “I could have gotten there” one day. Become known for that major you choose, the best at it, the expert in the field- have the potential to have real impact and establish yourself.

The other notion about how to manage yourself and your career goes back to an interview Lazlo had at Pepsi. “What are your three core values?” was the question that he got asked. Lazlo fumbled it, but was interested enough to ask Rusty (cool name for a Pepsi exec, ha?) what where his. There’s one that stuck with Lazlo over the years: always go above and beyond, because then they have no choice but to reward you.

One of the things I have been frustrated about is the quality of leaders around me. At McKinsey, they had this thing called obligation of descent. If you disagree, you are obliged to disagree, to stand up and fight back. Leaders should be inspirational, well-versed and truthful. “As a leader I put my money where my mouth is, and strive to build leaders like I envisioned,” he concluded.

Don’t be disappointed in your career at managers, don’t judge too harshly. Leaders are human. You will go from one manager to the next, but focus on the work you do because that is what matters.