Posts Tagged ‘management’

A Director is…

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

A director is someone who makes blockbuster hits, true, but the kind of director we’re talking about is someone who helps run a company. A company or organization normally has a board of directors, which is a group of men and women who are elected by shareholders or other members of the organization to oversee its activities and make major decisions about how it operates. A director is one of those board members.

The word is used in a lot of different ways, though, and it can also refer to someone at the management level in charge of… directing things!

Out With The Old, In With The… Wait, Is Anything At Google Old?

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

schmidt-and-page.jpg
credit: loiclemeur

Businesses need experienced leaders to succeed. Businesses need young talent to succeed. So what happens when there’s only room for one CEO?

  • Internet companies like Google have traditionally been small, nimble, and young. But Google has grown up. A lot. So much so that the size of its bureaucracy (read: paper-pushers) has started to limit how fresh and creative it can be.
  • So Eric Schmidt, the guy who has been CEO and providing “adult supervision” is being replaced by Larry Page, a Google co-founder.
  • Many Google employees, frustrated by business issues getting in the way of innovation, are hoping the executive switcharoo will be just what the company needs to ramp up its new product development. But can the founder run a company with more than 20,000 employees?

Facts & Figures

  • Larry Page is responsible for the algorithm that made Google the most powerful search engine on the net
  • He also oversaw the development of Gmail and Google’s Chrome browser
  • He was CEO for the 5 years after Google was founded in 1998

Best Quote

“Larry’s style is going to be different [than Mr. Schmidt's], but he has amazing instincts around developing products and is a tireless champion for improving users’ experience.” – David Scacco, Chief Revenue Officer, MyLikes, former Google employee

What do you think?

Do you think you could do a better job than your boss or parents? Is a new CEO enough to make an established company compete with new successes like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr?