Jason Calcanis:rethink & and Google redux
Many great companies have perished, or suffered horribly, from a type of corporate indigestion.
@jason wrote an excellent post capturing the Google comprehensive strategy to sustain itself profitably and humanely into the foreseeable future.
his post here: http://blog.launch.co/blog/googlewinseverything-part-1.html
What struck me most was not just the ‘wow, they do all that’ but: ‘Wow, how do they manage to do all that?’
This is not ‘lean startup’ nor is it six sigma, methodolgies that strive for learning to reduce inefficiency, Google is not trying to extricate every value withn its processes. They are tolerating, even encouraging a deliberate and liberally measured amount of waste, without allowing it to interfere with the ‘secret sauce’ of its profitable businesses.
What type of management discipline is required to synthesize so many disparate and divergent businesses operating under one tent, allocate and prioritize finite resources, contend with the character of a workforce that is always challenged to think outside of the box – while within the box of Google.
An abudance of cash is not always good thing. In itself it does not secure, or even assure, that a market leadership position will be sutained. Having the immense wealth to distribute into ‘hobby’ research and devleopment may turn out to be a distraction and I expect this cycle of growth will be temerpered by a broad and hasty retreat leading to succesuve spinouts of business that should, and would, be better managed as autonomous entities.
I have been a shareholder of Google for many years. It is my mutual fund. I am certain that they can deploy capital better than I can. Likewise, at one time my mutual of a sort was Microsoft. Until they weren’t. It’s a cycle.
“Not being tense but ready. Not thinking but not dreaming. Not being set but flexible. Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.” ―Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do