How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 142

2.

Cater to their every need. As Drucker says, the goal is to "strip
away everything that gets in their way." We provide a standard
package of fringe benefits, but on top of that are first-class dining
facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts,
carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses – just about anything
a hardworking engineer might want. Let's face it: programmers
want to program, they don't want to do their laundry. So we
make it easy for them to do both.

3.

Pack them in. Almost every project: at Google is a team project,
and teams have to communicate. The best way to make
communication easy is to put team members within a few feet of
each other. The result is that virtually everyone at Google shares
an office. This way, when a programmer needs to confer with a
colleague, there is immediate access: no telephone tag, no e-mail
delay, no waiting for a reply. Of course, there are many
conference rooms that people can use for detailed discussion so
that they don't disturb their office mates. Even the CEO shared an
office at Google for several months after he arrived. Sitting next
to a knowledgeable employee was an incredibly effective
educational experience.

4.

Make coordination easy. Because all members of a team are
within a few feet of one another, it is relatively easy to
coordinate projects. In addition to physical proximity, each
Googler e-mails a snippet once a week to his work group
describing what he has done in the last week. This gives
everyone an easy way to track what everyone else is up to,
making it much easier to monitor progress and synchronize
work flow.

5.

Eat your own dog food. Google workers use the company's tools
intensively. The most obvious tool is the Web, with an internal
Web page for virtually every project and every task. They are all
indexed and available to project participants on an as-needed
basis. We also make extensive use of other information-

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