Showing posts with label Business Insider. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business Insider. Show all posts

Monday, April 01, 2013

Business Insider Is Doing Something Right

English: Arianna Huffington attending the prem...
English: Arianna Huffington attending the premiere of The Union at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The online publication Business Insider is doing something right and it reminds me of The Huffington Post. The Post did commenting really, really well, and it was and is very good at linking to others, but a paragraph of quote first. Business Insider does that too. It often links to others. But what it does really good is taking you to read other related stories. You read one, and the next thing you know you are reading five others. And it is also smart about getting page hits from pictures and infographics. It sure "gets" digital. It feels lightweight but deals with plenty of heavy topics.

Timothy Thomas: Why China Is Reading Your Email
Henry Blodget Is Quietly Planning a Stunning Return to Wall Street
Exclusive: Snapdeal raises $50 million from eBay and existing investors
YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley announces MixBit video collaboration site
E-Commerce Companies Bypass the Middlemen

NYC Subways Deploy A Touch-Screen Network, Complete With Apps
Washington Post seeks blogger for Style section
Why did Apple hire Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch?
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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Running Meetings: Charging Hard

SAN JOSE, CA - FEBRUARY 24:  Google co-founder...Image by Getty Images via @daylifeBusiness Insider: How Larry Page Changed Meetings At Google After Taking Over Last Spring
  1. Every meeting must have one clear decision maker. If there's no decision maker -- or no decision to be made -- the meeting shouldn't happen.
  2. No more than 10 people should attend.
  3. Every person should give input, otherwise they shouldn't be there.
  4. No decision should ever wait for a meeting. If a meeting absolutely has to happen before a decision should be made, then the meeting should be scheduled immediately.
To that I would add another observation. A team should be three people, maximum five people. And then you are moving.

Think Quarterly: Start-Up Speed
.... we needed to grow and speed up at the same time ..... that holy grail of business speed: The start-up ..... For starters, we noted that every decision-oriented meeting should have a clear decision-maker, and if it didn’t, the meeting shouldn’t happen. Those meetings should ideally consist of no more than 10 people, and everyone who attends should provide input. If someone has no input to give, then perhaps they shouldn’t be there. That’s okay – attending meetings isn’t a badge of honor – but the people who are attending need to get there on time. Most importantly, decisions should never wait for a meeting. If it’s critical that a meeting take place before a decision is made, then that meeting needs to happen right away. ...... “Google+ shipped over 100 new features in the 90 days after launch, while accelerating to over 40 million users. That’s a velocity we’re proud of.” ..... Besides fast decisions, another key hallmark of start-ups is their fast-paced, densely populated offices. We’ve always promoted this approach at Google, organizing around small teams and working in close proximity to one another. Even Eric Schmidt shared his office with an engineer when he first joined the company. ...... we created a ‘bullpen’ in one of the buildings on our main campus, which was specially designed as a place for members of our executive team to work and talk in an informal setting. These execs now set aside a number of hours per week to be there. It’s amazing how fast things can get done – even in a large company – when you put so many key people together and don’t give them an agenda. ....... Creating quarterly OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) has been part of Google’s culture since board member John Doerr introduced the concept in 1999. ...... Team by team, the leaders lay out their objectives and how they’ll measure success. Afterwards, they’re posted for anyone within the company to see. ..... a recent OKR objective for our search team was to improve the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, which restates and reiterates the company’s mission statement ....... Having these shared goals also has the benefit of helping prevent the formation of silos – always a concern as companies grow. ...... in a permanently accelerating environment, we’re all seeking the best ways to move faster and be smarter. ... Larry’s closing speech at Zeitgeist: “There are no companies that make good slow decisions.”

Larry Page's Challenge

English: Left to right, Eric E. Schmidt, Serge...Image via WikipediaLarry Page's challenge is to turn Google first into a company more valuable than Apple, and then perhaps into the most valuable company in the world. And he does not have 10 years. He could not have done it without some hardware muscle, so I have been positive he bought Motorola.

But so far I have been disappointed in Google's fight back on the Android front. Android is Google's number one most promising product right now. But it has been let to pasture. Google has not fought back hard enough to the onslaught on Android from the likes of Microsoft. You don't do that and still end up the most valuable company in the world. The price of Google not fighting back is in the tens of billions of dollars.

Google is king of search. Finally it has found its mojo on the next big thing after search: social. And it is well positioned for the next big thing after social: Big Data. But the biggest trend of all is mobile. And there Google has given ground for no reason despite having a winning product. It's a shame.

Business Insider: How Larry Page Plans To Change Google Forever In 2012
Larry Page Outlines His Plan And Vision For Google