Google Tells us How to Manage Each Other

Folks, I know my relationship with Google has concerned some of you. I admit, we’ve had our ups and downs, I’ve called Google a know it all and far too prying. Google says it just wants to help and even if it won’t smell the flowers with me, it’ll tell me everything I want to know about flora - including where I can buy it. I appreciate your worries, but will not be ending my relationship any time soon. We’re too close, and I know it sounds silly, but I don’t think I can live without Google.

 I’ve been typing to Google about this a little bit, and we’ve decided that the best way to make this work is if we keep things transparent. Google wants to know my worries so it can take care of them. I want to be able to discuss my uncertainties so you can help me cope. I know some of you are also close to Google, I think we can all be friends, but maybe just on facebook for now. .. we’ll see.

First item to Google today: “How To Be a Boss” the algorithms whirring along have be working on a lot of our problems. One of them, the NYT explains, is called project Oxygen. Oxygen spent the last two years figuring out the top eight traits of a good manager Adam Bryant’s only got as far as number three before drawing attention the absurdly of the study. Some highlights from the article:

“Have a clear vision and strategy for the team.”
“Help your employees with career development.”
“Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented.”
The list goes on, reading like a whiteboard gag from an episode of “The Office.”
“My first reaction was, that’s it?” says Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president for “people operations,” which is Googlespeak for human resources.

It’s comparable to Douglass Adams trying to answer the meaning of life with a computer answer=42 time to figure out= millions of years meaning= ? Bryant- probably a google user- tries to find an upside to Oxygen he writes:

  “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.”
Project Oxygen doesn’t fit neatly into the usual Google story line of hits (like its search engine) and misses (like the start last year of Buzz, its stab at social networking). Management is much squishier to analyze, after all, and the topic often feels a bit like golf. You can find thousands of tips and rules for how to become a better golfer, and just as many for how to become a better manager. Most of them seem to make perfect sense.
Problems start when you try to keep all those rules in your head at the same time — thus the golf cliché, “paralysis by analysis.” In management, as in golf, the greats make it all look effortless, which only adds to the sense of mystery and frustration for those who struggle to get better.
That caveat aside, Project Oxygen is noteworthy for a few reasons, according to academics and experts in this field.
H.R. has long run on gut instincts more than hard data. But a growing number of companies are trying to apply a data-driven approach to the unpredictable world of human interactions.

Data-driven approach to human interaction= disconcerting.