Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building

“Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.”

existential risks > core product (including which countries to invest in further) > new products.

Then-CEO Eric Schmidt shared a simple but extremely effective framework to resolve these tensions: 70-20-10. Google would devote 70 percent of its resources to the core business, 20 percent to emerging products, and 10 percent to research and development for future products.

“I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do, and thus we focus on nothing in particular.”

“Every day, you all choose where to put your time. My goal is to give you the information to make the best decision.”

“To succeed, you actually want people thinking inside the box. The box you constructed!”

Leadership is ultimately about driving change, while management is about creating stability.

Leadership is disappointing people at a rate they can absorb.

“Leadership is strategic, and management is more [about] implementation. Leadership is about setting direction, knowing where you want to go, convincing others to go with you, and explaining why you’re going there: setting standards, setting expectations, setting tone. Management is about implementing that: getting the processes right, getting the