What Google Can Teach Us About Self-Image
- Posted by glen on June 5th, 2007
Self-perspective is one of the hardest things to understand. I mean, it seems simple enough on the surface; it’s merely what you think of yourself. But many times we don’t see that how we view ourselves can affect our successes as a professional/parent/circus clown/etc. Maxwell Maltz put it best when he said
Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.
There’s nothing more dangerous or helpful to your individual success than high self-image. Many have failed miserably at fostering high self-image, while others have risen like fresh cream straight ‘outta the udder.
Companies are the same way. A company with positive self-image is going to be around for a while, and one such company has shown what it truly means to be confident in their product. Love or hate them, Google is an excellent example of masterful self-image.
1. You don’t have to change to fit in. Google knew what they were: a great search engine. Yet instead of tinkering with the latest thing, the continued to improve their bread-winning product, Google Search (I know, I know… do I really need to link to Google?!). Sure, they could have kept fiddling with new technologies early on, trying to stay relevant and trendy like the other search engines. But as Bush Sr. put it so eloquently, they “stayed the course“.
2. Become insanely successful at one thing, and use your confidence to branch out. This is almost straight from number one. Larry, Sergey and the gang kept at refining their central product until it was the best. Only then did they say a collective “booyah!” and branch into many other arenas like contextual advertising, feed readers, as well as every other aspect of our digital lives.
3. Not too fast, now (aka the “whoa nelly”). You can’t rush perfection, people. It took Google quite a long time before they started looking at other projects. If they had run around chickens with their heads cut off trying to create the “next best thing”, they would have squashed any possibility of creating one truly amazing thing.
Positive self-image is a lot like that: You don’t have to rush things. Make the world wait on you for once. You have to believe what you’re doing is worth waiting for.
(Note: Interestingly, Google is taking the headless chicken approach these days with all of their acquisitions and new products, but they appear to have simmered down and focused more on features.)
4. Always act like you know what you’re doing. I just had to throw this one in for fun. Google will lead you to believe that they’ve known what they were doing from day one. Ok, come on… this is impossible. Believe it or not, they have screwed up before. They have had growing pains. But so does everybody.
It can be a great strategy to cover your insecurity with a fig leaf of bravado. It’s OK to occasionally act like you know what you’re doing, even if you really don’t. Come on, just stick out your chest, throw up your head and make a fool of yourself proclaim to the world that you might definitely know what you’re doing.
Really, we can form our self-image (kudos to Google) in one word: Confidence. Be confident enough not to rush, or sell out, and you can even act like you know what you’re doing (when you really don’t) from time to time. Walk like you know you’re the best thing to hit the block since Google, and you’ll be fine…
June 5th, 2007 at 7:34 am
Always act like you know what you are doing.
It is my understanding that they teach doctors this in med school. The idea is that it is going to be much more difficult to help patients get better, if they don’t think their doctor knows everything.
June 5th, 2007 at 10:27 am
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June 5th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Very interesting Mark. It doesn’t surprise me… I’ve never met an indecisive doctor.
June 6th, 2007 at 7:48 am
They teach airline mechanics 1) Act like you know what you’re doing, and 2) Don’t etch your name on your tools. That way if the plane goes down, they don’t know which moron left his wrench in the engine. (Surgeons probably learn the same thing).
Glen: Thanks for a good post and list. To add to it, I also think the playful daily “GOOGLE” letters communicate that they don’t take themselves too seriously and are willing to have some fun with their users. A little creativity goes a long way…
June 6th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Excellent points Sean! Yeah, they do kind of have a playful feel, don’t they? I mean, the Google campus has all sorts of fun things: sand volleyball, etc.
June 8th, 2007 at 11:16 am
[...] What Google Can Teach Us About Self-Image [...]
June 25th, 2007 at 6:19 am
[...] What Google Can Teach Us About Self-Image - LiveDev Self-perspective is one of the hardest things to understand. I mean, it seems simple enough on the surface; it’s merely what you think of yourself. But many times we don’t see that how we view ourselves can affect our successes as a professional/parent/circus clown/etc. Maxwell Maltz put it best when he said Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. [...]
July 31st, 2007 at 1:39 am
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August 6th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
I agree with what this article says, it is hard to take seriously with all the typos. Proofreading!
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