Knowledge Workers

Google: Ten Golden Rules lists ten ways companies can "get the most out of knowledge workers." Now, I'm not up on the technical definition of a "knowledge worker," but taken at face-value, it sure sounds like a description of teachers. So how do school systems measure up?

Here are some highlights:

Hire by committee. Virtually every person who interviews at Google talks to at least half-a-dozen interviewers, drawn from both management and potential colleagues. Everyone's opinion counts, making the hiring process more fair and pushing standards higher. Yes, it takes longer, but we think it's worth it.

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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.

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Encourage creativity. Google engineers can spend up to 20 percent of their time on a project of their choice. There is, of course, an approval process and some oversight, but basically we want to allow creative people to be creative. One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures to the next killer app.

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Strive to reach consensus. ... We adhere to the view that the "many are smarter than the few," and solicit a broad base of views before reaching any decision. At Google, the role of the manager is that of an aggregator of viewpoints, not the dictator of decisions. Building a consensus sometimes takes longer, but always produces a more committed team and better decisions.

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Communicate effectively. Every Friday we have an all-hands assembly with announcements, introductions and questions and answers. (Oh, yes, and some food and drink.) This allows management to stay in touch with what our knowledge workers are thinking and vice versa. Google has remarkably broad dissemination of information within the organization and remarkably few serious leaks. Contrary to what some might think, we believe it is the first fact that causes the second: a trusted work force is a loyal work force.

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Massage rooms? First-class dining facilities? Geez, maybe this is why there's a shortage of science and math teachers...

No, seriously, if you value your employees and their ideas, show them! I like the idea of increased transparency, trust, and the encouragement of creativity. In my school, we strive for consensus, and over and over again, we find that many minds are better than one (but a good leader still has to know when to just make a decision). The last few months have made abundantly clear that no consensus exists among the teachers of NYC, let alone among everyone in the city involved in education. What are we doing to move towards consensus so that we can do better by our students?