Google CEO 4-Word Advice On Leadership

Sundar Pichai shared some leadership advice with MBA students at Stanford University. 4 words from his address caught most attention of the students--"reward effort, not outcomes”.

Pichai was speaking of Google's performance as it scaled when he mentioned that scaling a company is a complex thing.

"You have a lot more cash. You have a lot more resources. But companies tend to become more conservative in their decision-making. And so encouraging the company to take risks and innovate and be okay with failure and reward effort, not outcomes."

The Google CEO Sundar Pichai was quick to add that following the same advice is very difficult to do in an organization.

"People tend to reward outcomes that means over time, the company becomes more conservative. They take safer bets and so on. So a lot of scaling is about making sure you preserve the good things you had in the early days. And that gets harder as the company becomes bigger," Pichai said.

"You have to work harder at it. But I think a big part of what we try hard to do is to keep that culture of innovating with technology, building products, and shipping things. And so that’s one of the many things.”