A bad case study from Larry Page

I read a story from Quora about Larry Page’s early management in Google(link). Below is the copied content. The author is Doug Edwards.

I remember Sundar’s first project at Google, because I had been working on it for weeks before he started at the company. Larry had asked me to coordinate with the sales, legal, and engineering groups to develop some guidelines around what we would allow partner companies to bundle with Google’s toolbar as downloadable apps. At the time, toolbars that included search capability were all the rage and every company was trying to get users to download their flavor.

We wanted our toolbars downloaded because we feared Microsoft would embed their own search window into the Microsoft Explorer browser, making it easier to search from there than to go to Google, and partnerships were a good way to add distribution quickly.

After hours of negotiating the competing priorities of each Google team, I came to a meeting with Larry and Sergey to present the draft proposal. Also in attendance were Sergey, Larry’s admin, Salar Kamangar (I think) and Sundar, who may have started that week.

As I started to go through the language, which walked a tightrope between protecting us legally if a partner downloaded malware with our toolbar and still enabled the sales team to actively seek partnerships without being overly restrictive, Larry grew restless.

“This is too complicated,” he complained. “It should be simpler! It should be as plain as ‘Don’t be evil.’” He turned to his administrative assistant and she agreed.

I tried to explain that the guidelines struck exactly the right balance and had been approved by all the stakeholders after many hours of discussion, but Larry just looked annoyed.

“Sundar, why don’t you give this a try?” he said.

I had no idea who Sundar was or why Larry thought he would do a better job than I had, but clearly Larry had a lot of confidence in him. Sure enough, a week later, Sundar had simplified everything and Larry signed off on the new wording.

I never felt any animosity toward Sundar, who seemed (and later interactions verified) to be a very nice guy. It wasn’t the first time someone else had been given responsibility for something I thought was in my realm (I talk about this phenomenon in my book, “I’m Feeling Lucky.”), and it actually was a relief not to have to deal with it anymore.

So, sure, I’m happy to state that Sundar’s rise to CEO started with my own inability to do the task assigned to me, giving him the opportunity to prove his worth to Larry and Sergey. I haven’t spoken with him in years, but maybe I should remind him of that in case his biographer asks him how it all began.

Some perspective notes about the history: Sundar joined Google in April 2004 and Google went IPO that year. I find both Doug and Larry made mistakes in the meeting which implied flaws in their leadership style.

What Doug did wrong

Since Larry is clearly the decision maker, Doug should have involved him before the review meeting. Larry’s decision should not be a surprise.

Ideally, Larry should be informed during the whole decision making process. Instead, Doug reached consensus with other stakeholders and authorities w/o involving Larry closely. He assumed their endorsements would be enough to influence Larry Page.

Clearly Larry didn’t make the decision that way and chose to dictate the details. Hence the failure of Doug’s effort.

What Larry did wrong

Larry made big mistakes by discouraging subordinates. In the long run, seasoned successful employees are the cornerstone of a strong business. I would rather have failed projects than failed employees.

Veto in public

Larry vetoed the proposed draft in public and looked annoyed(In Doug’s eyes). There’s no better way to discourage Doug. Leaders with authority should never criticize in public.

Even public praise should be careful because those who didn’t get praised will feel the authority doesn’t like them or their works are not appreciated.

Transfer ownership after negative feedback

As if the public overrule is not enough, Larry transferred the project ownership on the spot. Were he determined that Doug is the wrong person for this project, he should have the transfer happen offline. It’s true that senior leadership like Doug should have a big heart, but it’s also wrong for Larry to depend on that.

Veto in late process

Doug already put hours of work negotiating it with multiple teams. That means this draft already cost the company significant resources. If Larry was aware of his possibility to veto, he should have proactively checked the status and veto as early as possible. Failing to do that implied some flaws in the project management process.

Micro managing

Google was about to IPO at that time. I think Larry should not be contributing in the detail level as the story implied. He should have delegated the decision to one of the senior managers.

Conclusion

All people in the story are very successful in their careers. Though Doug did leave Google in 2005(next year after the story), which can be just a coincidence. Larry Page has my ultimate respect for funding Google and making the world a much better place. Still we can all learn from his ‘smaller’ mishandlings.