Leadership Style, Larry Page
Google Inc. is a multinational organization based in the United States, the organization concentrates on internet related products and services including: cloud computing, search engine, online advertising technologies and software. Most of the returns and profits are realized through Adwords. Google Inc. was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Lawrence ‘Larry’ Page was born in 26th March 1973; he is a computer scientist by profession and an internet entrepreneur (Girard, 2009). The personal wealth of Page is estimated to stand at more than twenty billion dollars ranking him in position thirteen among the richest Americans. Page also the cofounder of Brin and PageRank. Carl page the father to Larry Page is a computer scientist and has pioneered in artificial intelligence related to computer science. Both the mother and the father of Larry Page are computer science professors, the mother to Page is known as Gloria.
Larry Page took over the leadership of Google Inc. in 2011 as the Chief Executive Officer, he went ahead in reorganizing the firm, spearheading some of the drastic changes since it was formed (Thomas, 2013). Larry Page’s leadership focused at reigniting the firm and working in a more cohesive and unified approach in order to facilitate the product development. Page believes that the management teams should collaborate as a team in building the brand (Levy, 2011). Page focus at goals that seems impossible, commonly referred to as ‘moonshots’, Page replaced the members of the operating committee that was powerful, the committee incorporated top executives commonly referred to as the L-Team. The replacement ensured that the new top executives reported to Page.
The leadership of Page focused at breaking up Google Inc. into small groups which worked as a startup for the organization. A good example is the Android operating system that was founded by Rubin and later sold to Google Inc. in 2005. Another successful startup was YouTube that was purchased by Google Inc. in 2006. Page accorded the leaders within Google Inc. autonomy with an emphasis on integration, collaboration and unity among all the products offered by the Google Inc. It can be argued that Page offers distributed leadership in the organization (Thomas, 2013).
Page engage Participative/Democratic leadership style, Page include team members in the processes of decision making, where he encourage team members to be creative at the same time work together in cohesiveness. Surveys indicated that as a result of his leadership style, employees of Google Inc. are more productive and satisfied since they are actively involved in the decision making processes. Page has been credited with facilitating the people’s skills, where the team members feel in control of the situations of the organization, quality has been emphasized in building the brand, as part of Page’s philosophy (Vaidhyanathan, 2011). Leadership of Page emphasizes the importance of the organizational culture in serving the target market.
Personal values in Page shape the way he work and live; Page has been influential in setting his priorities right. As the cofounder of Google Inc., Page feels happy when the performance of Google Inc. is exemplary and at the same time influential in changing lives of people in the world for the better. Google Inc. has changed the way the world work and interact (Vaidhyanathan, 2011). Some of the Page’s strongest personal and organizational values identify with; accountability, achievement, adventurousness, clear-mindedness, commitment, competitiveness, continuous improvement, creativity, discipline, growth, independence, originality, professionalism, quality orientation, reliability, teamwork and uniqueness among others (Elmer, 2011).
The values of a CEO influence the ethical practices within an organization. It has been noted that in most cases, leaders act as the role model, if the CEO has character traits worth emulating, then the employees tend to have sound ethical practices. If the values of the CEO are corrupted, the same unethical practices in the organization are passed down to the employees. In this case, Larry Page acts as the role model of Google Inc. employees, a model that foster ethical practice among the human capital (Vaidhyanathan, 2011).
Page greatest strengths identify with being creative and adventurous, committed to quality orientation and embracing the uniqueness of teams within the organization. Page is a visionary leader. Page is the cofounder of Google Inc., an indication that he values creativity and originality (Levy, 2011). Google brand is one of the strongest in the world, an indication that Google Inc. foster on quality. Employees within Google Inc. are happy and satisfied, an indication that teamwork is encouraged. Weakness of Page identify with setting unrealistic goals like the ‘moonshots’ goals, it is also argued that Page is rude, a jerk and egomaniacal. As a result Page’s interaction with other people is compromised.
The success of Page is pegged on his visionary leadership, it has been noted that Page inspire employees, he is optimistic, Page has a sense of purpose and meaning in his personal live and in his workplace, Page accept personal responsibility, Page consider himself as a victor of the circumstances and not as a victim, Page portray integrity and he is action oriented (Levy, 2011).
Google Inc. over the decades of operations has faced a number of organizational dynamics that has shaped the brand; there has been both positive and negative influence to the Google Inc. considering collaboration, communication, power and politics. Under the leadership of Page, it has been noted that the organizational culture has shaped diverse ways of dealing with the internal environment and the external environment. The organizational culture at Google Inc. has been influential in improving productivity, increasing marketability of the company and in increasing unity among the employees that shape the way the organization respond to the external environment (Elmer, 2011).
References
Elmer, V. (2011, April 18). What would Larry Page do? Leadership lessons from Google’s doyen. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from Management.fortune.cnn.com: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/18/what-would-larry-page-do-leadership-lessons-from-googles-doyen/
Girard, B. (2009). The Google Way: How One Company Is Revolutionizing Management as We Know It. San Francisco, California: No Starch Press.
Levy, S. (2011). In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Thomas, O. (2013, March 14). There’s A Pretty Big Tension In How Larry Page Is Running Google. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from Businessinsider.com: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-larry-page-is-running-google-2013-3
Vaidhyanathan, S. (2011). The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry). Berkeley, California: University of California Press.
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