- Google wanted to understand how to "build better bosses"
- Over the course of 2009 Google's people analytics team ran a project they called "Project Oxygen" - they analyzed performance review, feedback surveys and other data 
- 10,000 observations about Google managers
- 400 pages of interview notes from interviews conducted with managers after the first pass of data analysis

What was result of Project Oxygen?
Eight top behaviors of bosses in order of importance:

1. Be a good coach
2. Empower your team and don’t micromanage
3. Express interest in team members’ success and personal well-being
4. Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented
5. Be a good communicator and listen to your team
6. Help your employees with career development
7. Have a clear vision and strategy for the team
8. Have key technical skills so you can help advise the team

Three boss pitfalls:

1. Have trouble making a transition to the team
2. Lack a consistent approach to performance management and career development
3. Spend too little time managing and communicating

Key leanings from doing this research and creating these findings?

I. Google is not unique
- “We want[ed] to understand what works at Google rather than what worked in any other organization,” says Prasad Setty, Google’s vice president for people analytics and compensation.
- Result of this massive undertaking: Google is like everyone else
- D. Scott DeRue, a management professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan emphasized this
- “Although people are always looking for the next new thing in leadership,” he  said, “Google’s data suggest that not much has changed in terms of what makes for an effective leader.”

II. Technical expertise was the *least* important behavior of a good manager
- “In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you,” Mr. Bock says.
- “It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.”

III. How managers manage is most important variable in employee performance
- Managers also had a much greater impact on employees’ performance and how they felt about their job than any other factor, Google found. 
- “So the biggest controllable factor that we could see was the quality of the manager, and how they sort of made things happen. The question we then asked was: What if every manager was that good? And then you start saying: Well, what makes them that good? And how do you do it?” 

Phil's take: The most important elements of a good business - creating and retaining customers, motivating and supporting employees is true whether the business is Google or GM. It's good to see Google's Project Oxygen confirm that.

Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
The New York Times
March 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html