The Google Workout.

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Author: Schmidt, Eric1Varian, Hal2,3

How tech's hottest name keeps its talent pumped.

At Google, we think the late Peter Drucker well understood how to manage "knowledge workers." After all, Drucker invented that term. He said these brainy types believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that the most competitive businesses of the future will "strip away everything that gets in their way." Here are some ways we do that at Google.

• Hire by committee. Virtually every candidate talks to at least half-a-dozen people, including management and potential colleagues. Every opinion counts, making the process more fair and pushing standards higher.
• Cater to their every need. As Drucker says, "Strip away everything that gets in their way." So we provide first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses. Programmers don't want to do laundry.
• Pack them in. The best way to make communication easy is to put team members within a few feet of each other. This way, there is no phone tag, no e-mail delay.
• Make coordination easy. Each Googler e-mails his work group once a week, describing his latest progress, so everyone can track what everyone else is up to.
• Encourage creativity. Google engineers can spend up to 20 percent of their time on a project of their choice.
• Strive for consensus. Modern corporate mythology casts the decision maker as hero. We believe that the "many are smarter than the few." At Google, the manager is an aggregator of viewpoints, not the dictator of decisions.
• Don't be evil. Much has been written about our slogan, but we really try to live by it. Nobody throws chairs at Google, unlike at some other well-known technology companies.
• Communicate effectively. Every Friday we have an all-hands assembly, with questions and answers, where management and workers stay in touch. Google has unusually wide internal dissemination of information, and remarkably few serious leaks.

Of course, these practices are not unique to Google, and will have to evolve as our company grows. For we believe, again with Drucker, that the ability to attract and keep the best knowledge workers will be "the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years."

PHOTO (COLOR): NO EVIL! Training at Google headquarters

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By Eric Schmidt and Hal Varian

Schmidt is CEO of Google.

Varian is a Berkeley professor and consultant with Google. For more on "The Google Way," go to Newsweek.com.