Code Brain | It's Year-End Review Season Again. What's the Key to Outstanding Performance?

If your team feels like it's "not working," check whether these behavioral patterns exist. The following points are also key to thinking about "work value."

Are you working while thinking about "work value"?

Have you communicated "work value" to your members?

Do your members understand "what this work is for"? Do you understand what your company's "values" are?

Do your members correctly understand what your company's "values" are?

Do you and your members show genuine interest in your company's products?

Are you investing in yourself for your own growth?

01

Work Value Depends on Changing Your Work Values

One rule for leading a team to success is fully understanding work value — that every member must find their own meaning or value in work.

Finding the right way to approach an assigned task and discovering its meaning and value can transform a person.

Peter Drucker often told a much-cited story about three stonecutters in a quarry. Someone asked the three men, who were doing the grueling work of cutting and stacking stones in the same place: "What are you doing?" The three gave three different answers. Let's look at each.

First answer: "This is backbreaking, exhausting work, but I have to do it to make a living."

Second answer: "I'm doing quarry work, which is what I'm best at."

Third answer: "These stones will help build a beautiful church. How wonderful."

Of the three, only the third stonecutter's eyes shone as he answered, gazing up at the sky as if entering a dream. Because he had found his own work value. How one understands work value is what distinguishes people from one another; different thinking leads to different results.

Moreover, work value depends not only on how each person perceives their own work, but also on how their boss and senior colleagues guide them.

02

Both Scientist and Artist

Companies Have Bad Patterns

Google and Microsoft have very different corporate styles, but Google and Apple share similarities — one being how they cultivate employee mindset. When developing the Macintosh computer, Steve Jobs gathered the R&D team for a signing ceremony, engraving their signatures inside the Macintosh case. Jobs believed that just as artists sign their works, engineers and programmers who create excellent products deserve to sign theirs too.

Jobs often told young engineers to "be artists," demanding they work with an artist's soul.

Google shares this value. According to Krishna Bharat, creator of Google News, we learn that Google's famous "20% rule" was designed in part to help employees recognize themselves as "both scientist and artist."

This "both scientist and artist" philosophy likely influenced Brin and Page during their time at Stanford University. So it was natural that when founding Google, they aimed for an "engineer's paradise" corporate culture.

Page described the phenomenon of "companies having bad patterns" this way: "In technology companies, the foot soldiers actually doing the work — engineers, programmers — often get their necks stepped on by management, and management is mostly not very strong technically. This is the worst possible org chart.

If programmers, engineers, and computer scientists have bosses who don't understand technology, their directives will miss the mark or go off-topic, resulting in products that miss the target and plans that fall apart from their original intent. What matters is building a corporate culture that amplifies the capabilities of scientists and engineers in that field, where people who truly understand their work become their bosses or managers. But most companies aren't like this."

Excellent Values Attract Excellent People

Changing a company's values truly changes the company. But compared to changes in products, shifts away from sales-and-profit-first thinking, or changes in hiring and promotion methods, changes driven by values make the biggest difference.

John Sculley, handpicked by Steve Jobs to jump from Pepsi to become Apple's CEO, was most surprised after joining Apple that while at Pepsi "winning the competition" and "how much money we make" were obvious common sense, at Apple no one cared about such things. Apple focused on gathering excellent people and developing outstanding products.

Precisely because of this, Apple deeply valued the "both scientist and artist" concept. If Apple's values had shifted to prioritize sales and profits, Jobs could never have spoken such "transcendent" words. In short, to elevate work value beyond the level of "for a living" or "for the company," the company itself must seriously ask whether it will follow such a philosophy, and why.

Under excellent values, excellent people gather. Google prepared an "engineer's paradise" of "both scientist and artist" for these talented people, where work was less "for money," "for advancement," or "for the company," and more "to better change the world."

03

Make Something You'd Love to Use

Do You Feel Attachment to Your Company's Products?

Thinking about "for whom" you work is crucial in your job. When "for whom" becomes "for yourself" or "for those around you," work gains meaning and value, and people find the drive to push harder.

For example, a certain Japanese electrical manufacturer continuously produced astonishing, world-changing products because its employees started from what they themselves wanted, using professional expertise to create high-value products. When consumers were asked about these products, they said: "We love them so much." And so a buying frenzy swept society.

Sony's Walkman was once wildly popular worldwide, yet it originated simply from co-founder Masaru Ibuka wanting to enjoy high-quality music during business trips, casually combining a Sony recorder with headphones. Then fellow co-founder Akio Morita said: "This is great! Why don't we make it?" And the Walkman took the world stage.

The best products don't emerge from marketing surveys — they come from striving to create something you truly love, something you genuinely wish existed, arising from people's efforts to figure out how to make it happen. So what matters is that we deeply love what we make, and want to make it even better.

However, as companies grow larger, this awareness gradually fades. If you create products not because you truly love them, but because "other companies are making them" or "they're selling well now," you'll only produce something "slightly better than competitors," never anything "excellent."

Cheer for "Your Own Creation"

Initially, Google's two founders didn't set out to start a company — they were simply dissatisfied with existing search engine technology and wanted to build something truly convenient and functional for themselves. They succeeded in making what they wanted and what they'd want to use.

For instance, when you enter keywords in Google's search bar, what appears isn't ads first, but accurate information about what you want to know. Showing people what they want to know within one second — that's what makes a fast, convenient search engine.

If someone had shown interest in the search engine they created, they probably wouldn't have needed to start a company. But no one showed such interest or attention, so "we'll just have to do it ourselves." For this, they worked desperately, almost recklessly — "12 hours a day, 6 days a week became the norm."

Similarly, Krishna Bharat, who created Google News, loved news since living in India, calling himself a "news junkie." The September 11 attacks, when multiple terrorist attacks occurred simultaneously in the United States, became his catalyst: "Could I access many different perspectives widely?" This was the starting point for Google News. Precisely because of his desire to show more of the news he loved to read, news from different perspectives, news he could read slowly and form "his own opinions" about, Bharat solved many problems and created an outstanding product.

So how do you achieve "for yourself" and "making something you'd love to use"? Steve Jobs expressed it this way: I think the older people get, the more they feel the importance of motivation. This was the starting point of Jobs's efforts — because he was deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, he strove to make what he "wanted" and what he "loved to use."

For example, his motivation for developing the iPhone was "wanting to make a phone I'd want to use." Many people still feel excited recalling this idea today, but now, "the drive isn't as strong, the purpose not as clear."

Work Value Generates Positive Energy

This posture of Google and Apple is precisely what leads teams to success. The work value of "for whom, for what" in work is extremely important, and if you add "making something amazing for yourself," it generates strange positive energy.

Work isn't just "for money," "for living," or "because the boss said so" — add "work value," make it "making something amazing for ourselves" or "making something amazing for customers," and you won't cut corners, and might even "push a little harder." What team leaders should do is ensure every employee properly recognizes work value. As long as most people are willing to work hard, even small difficulties can be overcome.

04

The 20% Rule Can Enable Self-Investment

Why the 20% Rule Exists

Google's work style is often exemplified by the "20% rule." This rule isn't about making money or creating hit products. The 20% rule first says "if you have an idea, make something and show us," then provides support and pushes it forward. Engineers are allowed to be passionate, allowed to experiment and shape their ideas, then reward themselves. From Brin and Page's perspective, to establish the right corporate culture, maintain and elevate it, and to let excellent engineers propose innovative ideas, such a rule is highly effective and indispensable.

The 20% rule can work slightly differently too. For example, why does improvement in Toyota's production system connect to employees' work value? Because "what was decided for you" becomes "what you decided yourself."

On the production floor, there are work methods called factory operation standards. Initially, operation standards are "decided for" employees, but eventually become "what you follow."

Though some oppose operation standards, they work according to them, and where they feel "this is hard to do," they propose suggestions like "it would be better to do it this way" to improve the method. Thus, "what was decided for you" becomes "what you decided yourself," turning into "since I decided it, I'll follow it properly."

In other words, though working according to work standards, transforming them into your own thinking requires effort and ingenuity in your work. When this happens, generating work value becomes natural.

People add their own wisdom and originality to "instructions" and "standards," then propose original insights and good ideas, and from this feel work value.

Even if Google operates to make profits, it must have its own daily work, and Google's daily work is that everyone has free time to change their own thinking and work value, with the purpose of continuously innovating.

Don't Neglect Investing in Yourself

In reality, hundreds of projects born from Google's 20% rule operate simultaneously, and employees participating in these projects are more engaged than those in their assigned departments. Financially, Google also backs excellent projects.

Many companies want employees to innovate, so why don't some companies produce innovation? On this point, one Googler said seriously: "Innovation fails because they don't adjust the process from generating innovation to completing it."

To turn ideas into tangible things, you first need to try practicing them — at this point, both people and money matter. Without a mechanism to deploy them, even good ideas will have to die.

At Google, the 20% rule is separate from regular work — they're allowed to turn creativity into tangible things, and generated ideas are registered in a database where anyone can freely access them, anyone can offer suggestions and criticism. Additionally, Google provides funding and personnel for highly supported ideas and concepts. Other companies aren't without ideas — the problem is simply not having such mechanisms and supporting organizational structures. Google includes such organizational structures, where everyone can find work value in what they're doing. With such structures, both regular teams and 20% beyond-the-norm teams can achieve solid results.

Beyond innovation, "spending some time on yourself" is also significant for your own growth. Warren Buffett, the "world's greatest investor," once said that first make yourself the client, then work well for the client, and you should schedule at least one hour of free time for yourself daily.

For example, using morning time for your own learning can gradually expand your capabilities, and such accumulation enables rapid growth. Spending time for "your own future" and applying theory to practice can produce unexpectedly fast growth.

Busy with work every day, you unconsciously lose sight of work value and drift with the current. At such times, if like Google you could allocate 20% of work time to your own ideas and passions, you could rethink work value, and "20% research projects" might help you discover other work values.

One rule for leading a team to success is that everyone in the team must fully understand where "work value" lies.

To this end, for every task, seriously think and ask: "What is this work for, and for whom?" Remember, this thought and question are indispensable in work.

On the other hand, and crucially, when you can't find the answer to "what is this work for, and for whom," then like Google's 20% rule, spend some time on what you're passionate about, and strive to find new work value.

Author: Kuwahara Teruya, economics and management journalist, consultant at Karmann GmbH Source: Google's Five Team Rules: Learning Google's Core Strategy for Talent and Team Operations, Zhejiang People's Publishing House. Abridged and published by ClecChina (ID: ClecChina)