Work Rules!

From the visionary head of Google’s innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work — and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed.

“We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It’s not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing.” So says Laszlo Bock, former head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge.

This insight is the heart of Work Rules!, a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto that offers lessons including:

• Take away managers’ power over employees
• Learn from your best employees-and your worst
• Hire only people who are smarter than you are, no matter how long it takes to find them
• Pay unfairly (it’s more fair!)
• Don’t trust your gut: Use data to predict and shape the future
• Default to open-be transparent and welcome feedback
• If you’re comfortable with the amount of freedom you’ve given your employees, you haven’t gone far enough.

Drawing on the latest research in behavioral economics and a profound grasp of human psychology, Work Rules! also provides teaching examples from a range of industries-including lauded companies that happen to be hideous places to work and little-known companies that achieve spectacular results by valuing and listening to their employees. Bock takes us inside one of history’s most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world, distilling 15 years of intensive worker R&D into principles that are easy to put into action, whether you’re a team of one or a team of thousands.

Work Rules! shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do.

Table of Contents

1. Becoming a Founder: Just as Larry and Sergey laid the foundation for how Google treats its people, you can lay the foundation for how your team works and lives

2. “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”: If you give people freedom, they will amaze you

3. Lake Wobegon, Where All the New Hires Are Above Average: Why hiring is the single most important people activity in any organization

4. Searching for the Best: The evolution of Google’s “self-replicating talent machine”

5. Don’t Trust Your Gut: Why our instincts keep us from being good interviewers, and what you can do to hire better

6. Let the Inmates Run the Asylum: Take power from your managers and trust your people to run things

7. Why Everyone Hates Performance Management, and What We Decided to Do About It: Improve performance by focusing on personal growth instead of ratings and rewards

8. The Two Tails: The biggest opportunities lie in your absolute worst and best employees

9. Building a Learning Institution: Your best teachers already work for you…. Let them teach!

10. Pay Unfairly: Why it’s okay to pay two people in the same job completely different amounts

11. The Best Things in Life Are Free (or Almost Free): Most of Google’s people programs can be duplicated by anyone

12. Nudge… a Lot: Small signals can cause large changes in behavior. How one email can improve productivity by 25 percent

13. It’s Not All Rainbows and Unicorns: Google’s biggest people mistakes and what you can do to avoid them

14. What You Can Do Starting Tomorrow: Ten steps to transform your team and your workplace

Review

“The book is a true masterpiece.”―Forbes.com

“An intriguing profile of an innovative company that continues to shake up the world.”―Kirkus Reviews

“Good guidance from the head of Google’s innovative People Operations, who wants to show companies how to attract and keep the best managers…Love the read-it-two-ways title.”―Library Journal

“Anecdotes about Google’s founding and history mingle with discussions of management theory, psychology, and behavioral economics to create a fascinating and accessible read.”―Publishers Weekly

“WORK RULES! delivers on its promise. Befitting a volume written deep within the algorithm factory, WORK RULES! is dense with data and counterintuitive conclusions for anyone looking to make the workplace a better place.”―Forbes

About the Author

Laszlo Bock led Google’s people function, responsible for attracting, developing, retaining, and delighting “Googlers.” Bock’s earlier experience spans executive roles at the General Electric Company, management consulting at McKinsey & Company, start-ups, non-profits, and acting.

During Bock’s tenure, Google was named the Best Company to Work For more than thirty times around the world and received more than 100 awards as an employer of choice. In 2010, he was named Human Resources Executive of the Year by Human Resources Executive magazine.