Put more wood on fewer arrows

This theme of keeping it simple sweetheart; simplicity is the new complex etc has been around for a while but no one, no one - took this as far as Steve Jobs did with his products. Sir Walter Issacson in his biography on Steve Jobs mentions that Steve wanted to give back and was mentoring both Mark & Larry Page. I'm yet to see Facebook implement any Simplistic designs, but I was pleased today to see this write up on Google streamlining and getting back to start up mode.

Here are some key steps that google took --

• Meaning full meetings - Every decision-oriented meeting should have a clear decision-maker, and if it didn't, the meeting shouldn’t happen
• Bullpens aren’t Just for Pitchers - 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.
• Use OKRs to Unify - Team by team, the leaders lay out their (Objectives and Key Results) and how they’ll measure success. Afterwards, they’re posted for anyone within the company to see.
• Buck stops here - streamline the decision-making process. To do this, they adopted a ‘buck stops here’ approach that has been very effective
• Make tough calls – closed more than half their products or Larry Page says, to “put more wood behind fewer arrows.” There are no companies that make good slow decisions.

With the takeaways above and its move to close a bunch of high profile products, im once again excited by this shop. 

Read the entire article -- 

http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/quarterly/speed/start-up-speed-kristen-gil.html