Role Of Susan Wojcicki Leadership Style In The Growth Of Google Company
Question
Task: Provide a detailed account of Susan Wojcicki leadership style.
Answer
Susan Wojcicki, one of the most successful business people in Silicon Valley, is still considered to be one of the greatest leaders in the corporate world, and her style is known as Susan Wojcicki leadership style. Taking into account her official career, she was employed as a company head in reputed companies like Google and YouTube in the years 1999 and 2014, respectively. Initially, she had started her career as an employee in the marketing department at Intel. It was in the later stage that she joined Google Inc as an employee. The new aspects of various services by Google like Google Images and Google books were strengthened during the working period of Susan Wojcicki. Within a short time, she was appointed as the vice president of the marketing and advertisement department, where she displayed her higher capability of analytic initiative and leadership attributes. Her exceptional hard work and contribution to the company had later aided her in securing the post of a first-ever marketing manager of Google. It was the initiatives made by Susan Wojcicki that made possible the introduction of services like AdWords and Google Analytics. She had always kept her focus on providing customer-based services throughout her career, of which AdSense was one of the major initiatives (Trapp, 2017). Susan Wojcicki has played one of the major roles in developing Google company as the most dominant company in the world. It is estimated that around 90% of the present income made by google is because of the major decisions and initiatives made by the Susan Wojcicki leadership style. It was the decision of Susan Wojcicki which made possible the acquisition of YouTube by the company in 2014. It is by following the new and exceptional approach that brought her the reputation of best corporate leader all around the world. We have drafted this report on Susan Wojcicki leadership style to provide the readers with a better insight over the major initiatives made by her in making Google one of the most successful companies in the world.
Analysis
Susan Wojcicki had joined the company at the initial stage of inception and could be counted as the sixteenth employee of Google. It was in her garage that the company initially continued its operation. It was by her decision that the operation of the company was moved from her garage to an office in Mountain View. Most of the innovative decisions made by Google should be credited to Susan Wojcicki. The Susan Wojcicki leadership style would often resemble the ideology laid down under the innovative leadership style. She had created the Susan Wojcicki leadership style by referring to various ideologies mentioned under different leadership styles so that the subordinates should be coordinated towards delivering a very creative output. The primary goal and objective of a particular organization are strongly advocated by the innovative leadership style so that a substantial growth could be marked in the operational marker and in this instance, the Susan Wojcicki leadership style was crucial for Google is turning out to be the indivisible part of every person’s life (Klenke, 2017). To secure the path of success, it is very crucial for a company like Google to imply an innovative leadership style. It was renowned scholar David Gliddon who first developed the concept of innovative leadership via his competency model of innovation.
Most of the schemes and proposals were initiated by Susan Wojcicki during her official career in Google enterprise. She was one of the crucial units who worked as a driving force for commencing new projects for the company like AdSense, which helped in allotting commercials on various websites and blogs. The doodles presented on the home page of google are quite famous among its users which was proposed by Susan Wojcicki. It is by the three distinguished stages of finding ideas, assessment, and application that the innovative leadership style is implemented in an organization. The approaches towards the innovative leadership style could be further classified into exploratory innovation and value-added innovation. Whereas value-added innovation signifies the improvement and alteration in the already existing principles, exploratory innovation signifies the derivation of totally new and fresh principles for the enterprise. It is by implementing the approaches of open behaviour and new strategies that the exploratory principles are implied by transformational leaders in the organization (Basow & Crawford, 2019). It is by the activities like conducting various new experiments, novel ideas, and picking appropriate risks that the approach of innovation is implemented by the leaders. It is majorly the exploitative innovation that is majorly implied by the inventive leaders since it would help them in deriving very inspiring ideas. It was the introduction of AdSense in the Google services that are still considered to be one of the major contributions of Susan Wojcicki leadership style. It is by this initiative that various blogs and websites were permitted to make extra money by displaying various advertisements. If considering the current scenario, AdSense contributes to the second-largest source of revenue for Google. Other services introduced under Susan Wojcicki leadership style like Google Analytics, DoubleClick, etc. have also played a very crucial role in the financial growth of Google. The organization was always able to maintain an amicable working environment under the Susan Wojcicki leadership style. Higher coordination between the performance of employees and organizational innovation could be attained by the implementation of an innovative leadership style. The innovative thinking and creativity of the workers will only be enhanced if they are working in a very friendly and stress-free environment. The management should be ready to take the calculated risks and should implement the innovative ideas put forward by the employees (Small, 2020). The Susan Wojcicki leadership style has always tried to ascertain that the employees of the organization are providing value to the business processes by delivering innovative ideas and suggestions. In other words, Susan Wojcicki encouraged the subordinates to follow blue sky thinking which proposed to cogitate beyond the limits. Though every official was allotted with a particular time shift, the engineers were provided with very large elasticity in their shifts that helped them in sustaining a high level of creativity. It is by following this approach that the company has been able to generate a lot of groundbreaking strategies for itself.
If conducted a very detailed analysis of Susan Wojcicki leadership style, it could be observed that she referred to the recommendations provided by the subordinates in all designations which also included the major stakeholders like advertisers and shareholders of the company. Susan Wojcicki has always tried to be that she would be an active participant in every small meeting of the company and simultaneously avoided any autocratic decisions to be implemented within the organization. It was by implementing the innovative recommendations of the subordinates that further attributes in Google services like automated features of AdWords and publishment of museum arts via Google Art Project were made possible. She also ensured that every employee in the company had the provision to get enough recreational opportunities so that a particular level of creativity would sustain in the official environment. It is only by maintaining a creative environment that innovative ideas could be derived out from the workers. As part of implementing Susan Wojcicki leadership style in the organization, various principles of democratic leadership style were implemented in the decision-making processes. Though by implying the democratic leadership style, the company would have to face various challenges. The decision-making process of the organization would get affected by the attitude and biasedness of the employees (Craig, 2015). Though the control seems to be in the hand of the employees, the democratic leadership style would require a high level of interference from the leader, and the same was justified by the Susan Wojcicki leadership style. By her initiatives, a new working culture has been developed in Google, which promotes a higher level of innovation and the required mentality to take the calculated risks.
It is expected that the leaders should possess all the characteristics retained by Susan Wojcicki while implementing the democratic style of leadership. The leaders should possess the characteristics like broad mind, honesty, a higher level of imagination, inspiration, competency, etc. while implementing the democratic leadership style in the organization so that the most relevant decision should be implied. The Susan Wojcicki leadership style permeates the ideology that though the overall target of the company should be vast, the initiative towards it should be taken at a very small level. In many of the instances, it has been observed that very advanced and efficient plans have failed because of poor implications (Harrietha, 2017). Susan Wojcicki made it clear to the subordinates, every plan and strategy should be implemented at a very simple platform, no matter how complex it is. A similar instance could be observed in the introduction of services like Google books which initially seemed to be an impractical idea though later turned out to be a huge success. It was the founder of Google, Larry Page, who worked behind Google Books to make it a reality. Through this project, millions of books were made online for users. It is in the same that the AdSense service was started by Susan Wojcicki where only one engineer was appointed to post advertisements on Gmail messages. It was her attitude towards the project, which has converted this simple activity into one of the highest revenue-generating department of Google. It has been made clear by many business scholars that the employees would display a higher level of efficiency under an organized leadership style. Susan Wojcicki leadership style ensured that there is a sustainable level of innovation in the working environment, and the effort to arrive at immediate perfection is not made. Similar is the case with the introduction of AdWords services in Google. AdWords didn’t get any substantial reaction when it was introduced in the year 1999. Though the innovative outlook of Susan Wojcicki towards it had helped in developing it into one of the most revenue-generating divisions of Google company. If considering the present scenario, the company is still conducting researches to arrive at new heights of brilliance in technology. A new transformational style of leadership has been developed in the official environment of the company by the implementation of Susan Wojcicki leadership style.
The principles of transformational leadership implement that the opinion of the employees does not restrict the thought process of the leader since the whole focus would be on creating a transformation in the business process. The approach demands the workers to shift their attitude towards a new form of thinking which would benefit the progress of the organization. The employees are being motivated to accept more challenges and progress towards a common goal under the transformational leadership style. It has been observed that the mentors who imply the transformational leadership style develop the skill to originate fresh ideas that should be collectively implemented within the organization (Bozesan, 2011). Susan Wojcicki had sustained a higher level of transparency in the decision made by her during her career in Google with appropriate justification. The practice developed an office culture within Google to distribute the whole information in the Board letter to every staff member. The mutual sharing of innovative ideas and some crucial information would prepare the platform for revitalizing and reinterpreting the existing principles and processes. It would help in sustaining creative discussions between leaders and the employees. The employees were divided into smaller teams as per the Susan Wojcicki leadership style, to derive a higher level of efficiency from them. It is very easy to manage and communicate ideas in a small team. It is through this approach that the function of language translation was added in the service of Google Talk. The initiative was the product of communication between the teams of Google Talk and Google translation. Appropriate motivation should be provided to the employees while implementing the transformational leadership style so that they could convey fresh and groundbreaking ideas to the management (Weese, 2018). She had always focused on sustaining the innovative mindset of employees in the company. The employees have been performing with a higher level of perfection under Susan Wojcicki leadership style since they have always been provided with various challenges and opportunities.
Conclusion
The Susan Wojcicki leadership style has shattered all the stereotypes regarding the women employees in the global corporate platform. The particular leadership style was characterized by substantial humility and trust towards the employees. She had displayed rapid growth in both her personal and professional life which displays the effectiveness of the Susan Wojcicki leadership style. It was by the implication of this particular leadership style that Google has transformed into one of the most successful companies in the world. Susan Wojcicki is still considered to be the 30th most powerful lady in the world in which her leadership style has played a very crucial role. Google has learned a lot from the Susan Wojcicki leadership style, and they still give importance to its major principles, like referring to the feedback of the customers.
References
Trapp, M. (2017). Women Of The Valley: Culture, Leadership, Gender, And Emotional Intelligence In Silicon Valley’S Prominent Female Leaders.
Klenke, K. (Ed.). (2017). Women in leadership: Contextual dynamics and boundaries. Emerald Group Publishing.
Basow, S., & Crawford, E. (2019). College women’s self-leadership stereotypes as a function of prime similarity and motherhood information. Chang, E. (2019). Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley. Portfolio.
Small, E. J. (2020). Who Are You, YouTube?. MacEwan University Student eJournal, 4(1). Koper, H. Head Chefs Versus CEOs: An Analysis of the Women in Charge.
Craig, J. T. (2015). Antecedents of individual innovative behavior: Examining transformational leadership, creative climate, role ambiguity, risk propensity, and psychological empowerment. Alliant International University.
Harrietha, P. (2017). Introducing the" Caps" Theoretical Framework: An Assessment of Leadership through the Lens of Female Executives in Canada Using Grounded Theory Methods. Niagara University.
Bozesan, M. (2011). The future of investing in business: An integral view from an investors' perspective. In 14th International Business Research Conference, Dubai, UAE, April (pp. 28-304).
Weese, W. J. (2018). The 5C leader: Exceptional leadership practices for extraordinary times. Archway Publishing.
