Managing Without Power
Creating high performance teams and organizations in your own human way
Google used to be notoriously anti-managerial. They stripped managers of their power wherever they could. Recruitment, performance evaluation and promotions are decided by groups, and compensation is largely determined by fixed rules. Joris Merks-Benjaminsen worked at Google for twelve years, and embraced this principle of Managing Without Power. He became one of Google’s best-scoring managers, and trained many of his fellow colleagues.
When humaneness prevails at the expense of accountability, or if prestige or a focus on performance overtakes humaneness and culture, a new balance is called for. This book will help you to build teams and organizations that combine performance with human leadership. It will help you to create principles, processes and systems to find this balance, with diversity and inclusion as the “default setting”.
A team or organization can only perform at its highest level if all people are at their best selves and are working well as a team. If you are starting out as a manager, the practical models and exercises in this book will help you to get focused.
About the author
Joris Merks-Benjaminsen played a critical role in Google’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives. As an independent entrepreneur he now organizes trainings and courses to coach managers in finding the right balance between humaneness and performance.
Recommendation
"If you’re a manager, or are looking to upskill managers in your organization, if you want to establish an inclusive culture with start-up spirit in a large organization, or you’re a fast growing scale-up eager to maintain the culture you’ve built, then look no further than Joris’s Managing Without Power." – Kim Wylie: Senior Director People Development at Farfetch
Foreword
Introduction
Part I Great managers, Brilliant Basics
Google’s ten behaviors of great managers
Improving yourself with manager-feedback from your team
Five Brilliant Basics for great managers
Basic 1 Genuine conversations about career and personal growth
Basic 2 Collaborative OKR-writing, setting direction and expectations
Basic 3 Meaningful meetings and team norms
Basic 4 Tracking progress on OKRs and milestones
Basic 5 Fair and predictable performance evaluations
Part II Great team leaders, high-performing teams
Psychological safety
Combining psychological safety with high performance standards
DEI: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
Triple-A: Activism, Allyship, Action
Part III Great leaders, high-performing organizations
Universal limitations of data: a game of prison break
Five enablers of organizational transformation
Epilogue
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Literature
