I understand that one of the primary missions of Google is to organise world’s information. As a part of this dream it embarked on a project of scanning books and creating a digital library as early as 2001. It approached this dream in a systematic fashion. It worked on strengthening the technology for speedy and efficient scanning, it interfaced relentlessly with the libraries to give it access to their treasures and it established infrastructure to handle this volume. It also had to address legal issues relating to copy rights.
Although they had proceeded quite ahead, even by 2006, they were still far short of their ultimate dream of having a large number of books in their digital library. This was not yet sure place to hit upon the scanned images of many books we are looking for. So in 2007 it came up with an innovation. It added to its book search a means to link all publically available information about any books from various sources like online library catalogues, web references on books, book reviews and a host of such sources which had rich information about any books.
They really did not have to wait till 2007 to launch this innovation. They had most of this information available with them as early as 2004. It is just that the team of Google book search did not get the idea to look at the other division in their own company and make their project more meaningful. Once they linked all these silos the outcome is truly marvellous. {1}
Today, if you want to know about practically any book, the best place to search is Google Books. If it is not available in the list of scanned books, we still can get a lot of information about the book we are searching for. As they have huge cache of scanned books, we can even search from these scanned books, on the basis of key words. A truly brilliant functionality!
We learn some lessons from this little story.
Silos within: One of the core strengths of Google as a company is encouragement they give and the environment they create for people with diverse skills and from diverse teams to interact with each other. That is one reason though late, such a solution evolved. Even then the solution which in retrospect looks so obvious did not evolve overnight.
But in many organisations we see silos; the silos that don’t talk to each other, the silos created and protected by leaders who lack vision; the silos maintained by insecurity; the silos encouraged by Tuglaks who believe in ‘divide and rule’. These silos then become sinks for innovation where status quo becomes the norm.
Cross Pollination: If there are mechanisms in place to inter-connect silos, if not break them, the benefit that we can mange would be beyond imaginations. We will find learning from one group which solved a problem, giving ideas, and generating new solutions to the problems in another area.
In his book “Future of Management” Garry Hamel has discussed the key ingredients that are required for longevity of organisation and institutions. One of the five key factors he has discussed is the contribution of diversity of knowledge, culture, ideas, and expertise present in any group.
Passion and Commitment: In any team, company and organisations there are two kinds of people.
(i) Those who are there only for a salary. They come to office, do what is required of them to do, to the extent they can get away with, they react to emergencies and problems more in the nature of blaming somebody or to cover their derriere than to find a solution. Their priorities are driven by what makes then look good and what their bosses are excited about than what is important for the organisation. They keep looking at the clock for the closing time; their leaves are planned for their convenience with no regard for organisational challenges.
(ii) Those who share the dream, the vision and are passionately committed to and involved in what they are part of. They have in the back of their mind, processes running looking for new ideas and new solutions from everything they read, see or come across. They behave almost like young men/ girls who have been smitten and are constantly looking for ways to please their loved ones. Their priorities are driven by what can make a difference to the team/ project/ company / organisation they belong to and how they can make the life better for their clients. When they are so passionately involved they are able to crack insurmountable problems. It is this phenomenon that is expressed in the famous quote from Alchemist “If you believe in something the whole world will conspire to make it happen for you”.
These learning are relevant for any organisation whether private or public. Any organisation that attempts to break down silos, encourage cross pollination of ideas and instil commitment and passion will see emergence of unique solutions, killer applications and exciting products that elevates them to new heights. Those who fail in these are destined to have a place in the history a place they will share with dinosaurs.
There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish.- Mary Parker Follett
[1]Planet Google, Randall Stross
I think all the three ways of dealing with difference are suitable in different circumstances. Integration would be the ideal thing but not often possible because of egos and differences people do have against one another in any organization. In this case possible options available will be either domination which is again not always possible or compromise which is possible in any circumstances. In either case at least one side will get what it wants or both sides will end up getting something what it wants. We need to be a good negotiator to get maximum out of third option that is compromise.
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