Diana Woolis, one of GSCC’s co-PIs, shared this article from The New York Times: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss. The article outlines Google’s Project Oxygen, a data-driven study to determine the practices of the most effective managers in the company…and to figure out how to help under-performing managers perform better.
Diana excitedly notes some of the similarities between Google’s Project Oxygen and GSCC. For example, GSCC began with 25 “deeply experienced” teachers who have proven their “exceptional impact with students.” Similarly, Google studied their best managers: “The starting point was that our best managers have teams that perform better, are retained better, are happier — they do everything better,” Mr. Bock says. “So the biggest controllable factor that we could see was the quality of the manager, and how they sort of made things happen. The question we then asked was: What if every manager was that good? And then you start saying: Well, what makes them that good?”
Our processes are similar, too. For GSCC, we comb through faculty ePortfolios and videos, and speak to students via student Jams. At Google “…statisticians gathered more than 10,000 observations about managers — across more than 100 variables, from various performance reviews, feedback surveys and other reports.” As with GSCC, at Google the key was ultimately in the patterns.
And as we have found, “The process of reading and coding all the information was time-consuming. This was one area where computers couldn’t help, says Michelle Donovan, a manager of people analytics who was involved in the study….’People say there’s software that can help you do that,’ she says. ‘It’s been our experience that you just have to get in there and read it.’”
Congratulations to Google on their ground-breaking project. We at GSCC continue our deep reading of the patterns.
Patrick Henry Community College, Martinsville, VAThe work of GSCC validates the huge role that affective issues play in the success of developmental students. As a result, I pay as much attention in my pedagogy to the non-academic life of my students as I do to the academic life.
GSCC Library
What do Google and GSCC have in common?
Diana Woolis, one of GSCC’s co-PIs, shared this article from The New York Times: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss. The article outlines Google’s Project Oxygen, a data-driven study to determine the practices of the most effective managers in the company…and to figure out how to help under-performing managers perform better.
Diana excitedly notes some of the similarities between Google’s Project Oxygen and GSCC. For example, GSCC began with 25 “deeply experienced” teachers who have proven their “exceptional impact with students.” Similarly, Google studied their best managers: “The starting point was that our best managers have teams that perform better, are retained better, are happier — they do everything better,” Mr. Bock says. “So the biggest controllable factor that we could see was the quality of the manager, and how they sort of made things happen. The question we then asked was: What if every manager was that good? And then you start saying: Well, what makes them that good?”
Our processes are similar, too. For GSCC, we comb through faculty ePortfolios and videos, and speak to students via student Jams. At Google “…statisticians gathered more than 10,000 observations about managers — across more than 100 variables, from various performance reviews, feedback surveys and other reports.” As with GSCC, at Google the key was ultimately in the patterns.
And as we have found, “The process of reading and coding all the information was time-consuming. This was one area where computers couldn’t help, says Michelle Donovan, a manager of people analytics who was involved in the study….’People say there’s software that can help you do that,’ she says. ‘It’s been our experience that you just have to get in there and read it.’”
Congratulations to Google on their ground-breaking project. We at GSCC continue our deep reading of the patterns.