Data-driven Google

I came across a great anecdote reading a Harvard Business Review article about culture and cultural change (Cultural Change That Sticks by Jon R Katzenbach, llona Steffen and Caroline Kronley). I’ve always known Google as an organisation that relies on data, not preconceptions, to guide its product development. I would never have imagined that it would extend all the way to campus design, at least not quite to this extent:

Google is a good example of a company that makes the most of its informal organization. A senior leader we interviewed there compared the company to universities that plan out paved walkways when they expand their campuses. At Google, he said, “we would wait to do the walkways until the employees had worn informal pathways through the grass—and then pave over only those getting the most use.”

Now that is culture.