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1.

0 Introduction

It has been the norm for decades that organizational strategic plans have been created by
upper levels of management. Annually, the best and brightest division heads come together to
brainstorm the company's strategic challenges and solutions, articulate the vision for strategic
growth, and formulate the plan for optimizing organizational resources. Yet with all the time and
money spent on strategic planning, often there is a lag in putting the plans into action, or the
execution fails to achieve the desired results. All managers know that execution is critical to the
success of the strategic plan, but making the plan work is an even bigger challenge than creating
the plan, in large part because execution requires a disciplined process or a logical set of
connected activities that enables the organization to successfully integrate the strategies into the
operation. Many factors inhibit the successful execution of the strategic plan, and all of them are
tied to the people of the organization.
The Harvard Business Review (HBR) in 2010, showed that the obstacles to executing
strategy in the current economy included being too busy/lack of time and resource constraints,
while the obstacles to executing strategy in general were making it meaningful to front-line
employees, translating strategy to execution and aligning jobs to strategy. As for the most
important aspect of strategy execution, clear communication was rated highest by most
respondents (72 percent). One respondent said, "Failure to communicate strategy causes frontline workers to invent their own strategy." Other high priorities identified were effective
leadership and a commitment to putting the right people in the right jobs. One of the biggest

roadblocks to successful strategy execution, as stated by the respondents, was "encouraging


managers to make decisions in line with the strategy."

2.0 Background of Google

Google now provides free net-search services in more than 120 languages, with a large
number of web-based products in its portfolio and generates about 97 percent of its revenue
through online advertisements (Google Adwords and Adsense). The Google brand is valued at
USD 100 billion, making it the worlds first one-hundred billion brand. In 2009, Fortune
magazine ranked it as the best place to work in the U.S., which is indeed a tribute to the
companys leadership and people-management practices.
Like many other well-known companies, Google Inc. too had a garage startup. When
Larry Page and Sergey Brin met in the Stanford PhD program in computer science, they
developed the idea of a search engine company. They decided to drop out of the PhD program
and to launch the new company from a friends garage, which they did in 1998. Both Page and
Brin have academic ancestries: Pages father, Dr. Carl Victor Page, was a computer science
professor at Michigan State University; Brins father and paternal grandfather were both
mathematicians, and his mother was a research scientist with NASA. Brin was Russia-born and
emigrated to the U.S. when he was six years old.
Both Page and Brin were researchers at heart (though neither of them completed
their PhD). Their venture was a rather unanticipated outcome of their research project on The
Anatomy of a Large-scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine. The search engines available at
that time were not very efficient in quickly finding the most relevant results for the user. This

issue was becoming increasingly complex, with the explosive growth of the materials on the
web. Hence, the duo took up the challenge of designing an efficient system for crawling
information from the web, keeping the crawled information up to date, storing the indices
efficiently, and handling many queries quickly. In the process, they developed the PageRank
technology (now proprietary to Google), which ranks the quality of each web page using a
complex calculation of link structure based on the linkages among web pages. Their confidence
in their invention was so high that when selecting a name for their company they picked up a
modification of a mathematical term (GOOGOL, which is the name of the number represented
by 1 followed by 100 zeroes). In doing so, they indirectly conveyed the companys unique vision
to organize and procure infinitely large amounts of information for users, and possibly make as
much money.

3.0 Strategy Execution Google

Boiling Googles strategy down to just one thing is impossible, but Internet marketers
(and search marketers in particular) ought to be thinking about where Google wants to take the
industry, because even if Google ultimately cant go where it wants, the industry will be changed
regardless. Watching Google helps us understand not only where Google is going, but where
others might go also. So, what is behind all the actions weve seen Google take over the years?
Some of the motivations are simple. Googles revenue is based on advertising, so it needs
more and more places to show its ads to increase its revenue. So, expanding its reach through its
AdSense contextual ad network makes sense. So does its acquisition of DoubleClick. Both of
these moves allow Google to place ads on Web properties it does not own. Similarly, Google has

been consistently acquiring properties that serve as venues for its ads, such as Blogger and
YouTube. Google has also pioneered new offerings that attract audiences for its ads, such as
Gmail.
But Googles strategy is far richer than merely adding new venues for the same kind of
ads it shows on search results pages. Google knows that the reason that its ads have commanded
premium prices (versus banner ads) is because Google ads have the customers attention. When
someone is searching for something, they are interested in the ads, while Web surfers might not
be. Google understands that the attention paid to a message is a critical part of why it has high
value to an advertiser. So, attention is more than real estate. Showing a display ad does not
ensure true customer attention. True attention is a function of relevance.
Google already commands attention with its search ads, and seeks to create similar
relevance with other forms of advertising. The act of searching itself is based on relevance, but
Googles contribution to advertising relevance is the hybrid paid search ranking schemethey
were the first to rank search ads based on the combination of bid price and clickthrough rate. By
adding clickthrough rate to the previous high-bidder approach, Google not only maximized its
income, but also increased the relevance of those paid search ads. Its reasonable to think that the
gradual increase in clicks on paid search ads is partially caused by the fact that they are more
relevant than they once were, and searchers have learned trust them more.
But thats not Googles strategy, its Googles history. Google has a history of selling
advertising that is the most relevantits relevancy is driven by the attention people pay to it.
Googles strategy is to broaden this kind of relevancy beyond search. Google wants plain old
banner ads to command the same level of attention that paid search ads do. And the key to that

kind of relevance is personalization. Thats Googles strategy. If you look at what Google has
done over the years, it all ads up to finding out more about everyone.
The Google toolbar can report search terms and Web sites visited. Geotargeting identifies
where they are. Google Analytics reports all activity on a Web site. Google Checkout knows
what gets bought. Google Website Optimizer knows which variations of your marketing message
work best. Gmail knows what your customers say, even in private. Google might even bid on
mobile phone spectrum, which might allow it to know peoples whereabouts and even more of
their behavior. And its all tied together with your Google Account.
Some people see some sinister Big Brother aspect to this, but I think its just the natural
evolution of relevance. Search engineers have spent the last 40 years working on the content, but
now its time to focus on the searcher. Thats why youre seeing Google and the other search
engines beginning to personalize search results. And it will only escalatea few small changes
to results here and there will lead to more and more personalized results over time.
But thats not all. Behavioral targeting and retargeting brings personalization to banner
ads. (Even ISPs are looking at behavioral targeting.) And Google is well-positioned to mine
personal information, given how well it has executed its strategy. Its hard to remember how, just
a few years ago, Google seemed less capable than Yahoo! and Microsoft to bring about
personalization. Those companies had portals that promised to detect far more information than
Googles simple (and anonymous) search interface. Its remarkable how much ground Google
has covered since, so that today it appears to know more about searchers and surfers than
anyone.

The most likely problem Google will have to face down is a backlash based on privacy
concerns. As the public becomes savvier about privacy with each passing year, providing free
software might not be enough to persuade people to part with their privacy. Even the work
underway is slow because searchers dont understand the benefits of personalized search. Google
is well aware of this danger, so it remains to be seen if they can evade it.
Its always dangerous to attempt to summarize a companys whole strategy in a short blog
postGoogles strategy is far more diffuse and nuanced than this. But it helps us to try to
simplify things to their essence, even at the risk of oversimplifying, because it helps us
understand the forces at work in Internet marketing.Understand that what Google wants to do
might not happen, but it is certain to affect what others do and what eventually does happen in
Internet marketing. If you pay attention to these broad themes as you do think through your
marketing strategy, youll be more prepared for whatever does come along.

4.0 Leadership at Google

Leaderships policy of empowering and facilitating employees work has led to a large
number of innovations and, consequently, to the explosive growth of the company. As a startup,
Google had relied primarily on the personal funds of the founders. We had to use all of our
credit cards and our friends credit cards and our parents credit cards, recalls Larry Page.
Finally, Page and Brin decided to bring in venture capitalists. They also started to allow
unobtrusive text advertisements alongside search results. By 2000, the company had started
making a profit.

The founders managed the company until 2001, with Larry Page as the CEO. By the year
2001, Google had grown to more than 200 employees, and it had widened its board to include
representatives of the venture capitalists. They brought in a professional manager, Eric Schmidt,
as the CEO, with the responsibility for providing the organizational and operational expertise and
company leadership. Page and Brin continued to provide the engineering, technological, and
product development leadership Page as President of Products, acknowledged as the
companys thought leader, and Brin as President of Technology, with the responsibility for
advertisements, the major source of the companys revenues. Thus, the foundation of the
leadership triumvirate at Google was laid in the year 2001.
Between 2001 and 2004, the salaries of the top three executives were US$250,000 per
annum for Schmidt, and US$150,000 each for Page and Brin. However, just before the IPO in
2004, the trio asked the board to cut their salaries to US$1, with a view to boosting investor
confidence in the company. This was indeed a smart move whereby the leaders could convey to
potential investors the immense confidence they had in their companys performance and tell
them that they were willing to link their own remuneration to the market performance of their
company.
They also adopted an innovative method for fixing the price of the IPO; they used
a Dutch auction, in which the market determined the initial stock price, and that helped prevent
insiders and institutions from selling immediately for a quick profit. Their confidence in their
own company and the market was not misplaced. Schmidts 12.45 million shares of Google are
now worth about US$4.86 billion. Similarly, Brins 31.6 million shares and Pages 32 million
shares are each worth more than US$12 billion. Considering the strong performance of the

company following the IPO, the board in 2006 offered to raise the salaries of the top trio from
the nominal amount of US$1. All three declined.
As pointed out by Ken Auletta in his book, Googled, Eric Schmidt was primarily the
choice of venture capitalist and Google board member John Doerr, which was why others viewed
him apprehensively, at least initially. His past performances gave out mixed messages. He had
been a successful chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems in its glory days, but had
performed poorly in his one stint as CEO at Novell. Besides, there was worry that the Mercedes
he drove and the suit and tie he wore would not go down well with Googles informal culture. In
any case, nobody thought that he was an inspirational leader, a great speaker or salesman, a takecharge leader like Paul Otellini of Intel, Carol Bartz of Autodesk, or John Chambers of Cisco.
While the founders themselves shared some of the apprehension, Schmidts staunchest critic was
another venture capitalist member of the board, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital. He felt that
Schmidt lacked the toughness required for pushing ahead with the revenue plan based on the
advertising formula being experimented with during 2001-02.
But for a company like Google, which took pride in its distributed leadership culture, it
was perhaps possible that the patient, unobtrusive engineering management style of the mildmannered Eric Schmidt was better than the more aggressive, go-getter style of individualoriented leadership. However, it took some time and another intervention by John Doerr, who
brought in Silicon Valleys best-known management coach, Bill Campbell, to mentor and coach
the triumvirate and mediate between the new CEO and the founders as well as the two VCs,
Moritz and himself.

Campbell, then 61, was probably the right person to mediate between the founders, then
in their twenties, and the new CEO, who was 20 years older than they were. Campbells prior
work experience also added credibility to his new role. He had once been Columbia Universitys
head football coach, a senior executive at Apple, and the CEO of several Silicon Valley
companies, including Intuit. His major contribution was to take emotion out of the decisions and
help the principal decision-makers evaluate the options in an objective manner. It would not be
an exaggeration to say that the mentoring and mediation by Bill Campbell have made a major
contribution to the development of Eric Schmidt into a Superman CEO who could win over not
only the founders but also the ever-skeptical, venture-capitalist critic on the board, Michael
Moritz. Googles results speak for its performance. The company reached $1 billion in revenue
in six years, 10 years faster than Microsoft. In April 2007, Schmidt was elected chairman of the
board while simultaneously holding the position of CEO. In 2011, Schmidt became the
Executive Chairman, as Larry Page once again assumed the post of CEO.
Analysts are of the view that, though Eric Schmidt came from a corporate background,
his leadership style had many things in common with the culture already created and put in place
by the founders of Google. Schmidts leadership practices could be summarized in the following
five precepts:
1. Get to know your employees: Schmidt used to make a list of his best employees, as identified
by multiple levels of peer-references, and interact with them personally to encourage
them to implement their innovative ideas and to insulate them from unwanted
interferences by others.
2. Create new ways to reward and promote your high-performing employees: For rewarding
high performers, there were a few systems already in place, such as financial incentives,

stock option plans, dinner with the CEO, and so on. In addition, Schmidt created a fivehour long video called The Factory Tour, where the protagonists themselves would
explain the idea and its working.
3. Let your employees own the problems you want them to solve: In order to make the
employees the owners of their work, Schmidt used to provide a very broad definition of
the company goal and leave the implementation entirely to the employees. In defining the
goal, care was taken to highlight the benefits to the customers and society at large rather
than to the company. For example, Schmidt has defined Googles goal as: Organizing
the worlds information and making it universally accessible and useful. This is
something that every employee can easily relate to, compared to a statement of company
targets like increasing turnover by 200 percent.
4. Allow employees to function outside the company hierarchy: As corporate hierarchies can
often obstruct employees work, Schmidt reinforced the existing system of allowing
employees a certain degree of freedom to create their own projects and choose their own
teams.
5. Have your employees performance reviewed by someone they respect for their objectivity
and impartiality: In reviewing employees performance, Schmidt made it a point to
identify reviewers from among professionals whom the concerned employee respects for
their objectivity and impartiality.

5.0 Conclusion

As a conclusion, effective leadership and a commitment to putting the right people in the
right jobs play a major role in successful strategy execution.

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