Google Google!

We googled Google and gained some interesting insights. Here they are in 2 parts:

Part 1: The Name

How Google was named is an interesting story and reflects how a “vision to become” became a “mission to achieve.”

In 1997 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google Co-founders) met to rename Backrub (the search engine predecessor to Google) they were joined by fellow Stanford schoolmate Sean Anderson.

As the story goes, Sean suggested naming the search engine “googolplex” (a huge number) and Page shortened it to googol.

Both thought naming the search engine after something really big was the way to go as it was consistent with their vision of creating something that would be really big!

Googol obviously fit the bill but their friend Sean misspelled Googol during registration and entered Google by mistake.

Google (the company) was formed in 1998 and by 2018 had annual revenue of $136 Billion.

In a short 20 years Google had become legendary and so when we learned that Google had updated its study (Project Oxygen) on what makes a manager great (see Part 2 below), we were of course eager to see what they had found.

Part 2: What Makes a Manager Great

Here goes – the first five in ascending rank order:

Surprised?

Likely not as these five are often sighted as key abilities every manager needs.

Here are the next four – also in ascending rank order:

Makes sense?

We think so and is certainly consistent with robust competency models found in many successful companies.

So — what’s Number One?

It may surprise you, but it didn’t surprise us. Not one bit.

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View the video below to find out.

Helpful Resources:

• QwikCoach – to help you coach yourself and others.
• COPE – Coaching Others for Performance Excellence