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Since the early days of Google, people throughout the companyhave ques- tioned the value of managers. That skepticism stems froma highly techno- cratic culture. As one software engineer, EricFlatt, puts it, “We are a company built by engi- neers forengineers.” And most engineers, not just those at Google, want tospend their time designing and debugging, not communicating withbosses or supervising other workers’ progress. In their heartsthey’ve long believed that management is more de- structive thanbeneficial, a distraction from “real work” and tangible,goal-directed tasks.

A few years into the company’s life, found- ers Larry Page andSergey Brin actually wondered whether Google needed any managers atall. In 2002 they experimented with a completely flat organiza-tion, eliminating engineering managers in an effort to break downbarriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the collegialenvironment they’d enjoyed in graduate school. That experimentlasted only a few months: They relented when too many people wentdirectly to Page with questions about

expense reports, interpersonal conflicts, and other nitty-grittyissues. And as the company grew, the founders soon realized thatmanagers contributed in many other, important ways—for instance, bycom- municating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects,facilitating collaboration, supporting career development, andensuring that processes and sys- tems aligned with companygoals.

Google now has some layers but not as many as you might expectin an organization with more than 37,000 employees: just 5,000managers, 1,000 direc- tors, and 100 vice presidents. It’s notuncommon to find engineering managers with 30 direct reports. Flattsays that’s by design, to prevent micromanag- ing. “There is onlyso much you can meddle when you have 30 people on your team, so youhave to fo- cus on creating the best environment for engineers tomake things happen,” he notes. Google gives its rank and file roomto make decisions and innovate. Along with that freedom comes agreater respect for techni- cal expertise, skillful problemsolving, and good ideas than for titles and formal authority. Giventhe overall indifference to pecking order, anyone making a case

for change at the company needs to provide compel- ling logicand rich supporting data. Seldom do em- ployees accept top-downdirectives without question.

Google downplays hierarchy and emphasizes the power of theindividual in its recruitment efforts, as well, to achieve theright cultural fit. Using a rigor- ous, data-driven hiring process,the company goes to great lengths to attract young, ambitious self-starters and original thinkers. It screens candidates’ re?sume?sfor markers that indicate potential to excel there—especiallygeneral cognitive ability. People who make that first cut are thencarefully assessed for initiative, flexibility, collaborativespirit, evi- dence of being well-rounded, and other factors thatmake a candidate “Googley.”

So here’s the challenge Google faced: If your highly skilled,handpicked hires don’t value manage- ment, how can you run theplace effectively? How do you turn doubters into believers,persuading them to spend time managing others? As it turns out, byapplying the same analytical rigor and tools that you used to hirethem in the first place—and that they set such store by in theirown work. You use data to test your assumptions about management’smerits and then make your case.

Analyzing the Soft Stuff

To understand how Google set out to prove man- agers’ worth,let’s go back to 2006, when Page and Brin brought in Laszlo Bock tohead up the human resources function—appropriately called peopleoperations, or people ops. From the start, people ops managedperformance reviews, which included annual 360-degree assessments.It also helped con- duct and interpret the Googlegeist employeesurvey on career development goals, perks, benefits, and companyculture. A year later, with that foundation in place, Bock hiredPrasad Setty from Capital One to lead a people analytics group. Hechallenged Setty to approach HR with the same empirical disciplineGoogle applied to its business operations.

Setty took him at his word, recruiting several PhDs with seriousresearch chops. This new team was committed to leadingorganizational change.

“I didn’t want our group to be simply a reporting house,” Settyrecalls. “Organizations can get bogged down in all that data.Instead, I wanted us to be hypothesis-driven and help solve companyprob- lems and questions with data.”

People analytics then pulled together a small team to tackleissues relating to employee well-being and productivity. In early2009 it presented its ini- tial set of research questions to Setty.One question stood out, because it had come up again and againsince the company’s founding: Do managers matter?

To find the answer, Google launched Project Oxygen, a multiyearresearch initiative. It has since grown into a comprehensiveprogram that measures key management behaviors and cultivates themthrough communication and training. By November 2012, employees hadwidely adopted the program— and the company had shown statisticallysignificant improvements in multiple areas of managerial effec-tiveness and performance.

Google is one of several companies that are ap- plying analyticsin new ways. Until recently, organi- zations used data-drivendecision making mainly in product development, marketing, andpricing. But these days, Google, Procter & Gamble, Harrah’s,and others take that same approach in addressing human resourcesneeds. (See “Competing on Talent Analyt- ics,” by Thomas H.Davenport, Jeanne Harris, and Jeremy Shapiro, HBR October2010.)

Unfortunately, scholars haven’t done enough to help theseorganizations understand and improve day-to-day managementpractice. Compared with leadership, managing remains understudiedand undertaught—largely because it’s so difficult to describe,precisely and concretely, what managers actually do. We often saythat they get things done through other people, yet we don’tusually spell out how in any detail. Project Oxygen, in contrast,was designed to offer granular, hands-on guidance. It didn’t justidentify desirable management traits in the abstract; it pinpointedspecific, measurable be- haviors that brought those traits tolife.

That’s why Google employees let go of their skep- ticism and gotwith the program. Project Oxygen mir- rored their decision-makingcriteria, respected their need for rigorous analysis, and made it apriority to measure impact. Data-driven cultures, Google dis-covered, respond well to data-driven change.