Google’s operational philosophy has seen a significant shift recently. It’s a wake-up call, transforming the company from a place where “nothing happens in two weeks, but anything can happen in a year” to one where “everything must happen in two weeks.” This trend often feels like oversteering—turning the wheel a bit more than necessary.
Focusing on “Impact” has always been a Google motto, but this principle is now being tested by these tighter timelines. So, what has really changed?
The Good and Bad of a Tighter Timeline
The upside is clear: Google moves faster. Problems are addressed more quickly, and iteration cycles are shorter. However, this comes with a classic trade-off: more iterations can often mean a lower percentage of successful ones—a classic quantity-over-quality dilemma.
Effort vs. Impact
The downside reminds me of a warning I received early in my Google career: “That’s a lot of effort for very little impact.” In this new environment, vast amounts of effort can be planned simply to justify that time is being well-spent. This creates a culture of “doing” over “thinking.” If you spend all your time executing, you have no time for reflection and strategy.
This reminds me of my former CEO’s advice: “Don’t do the convenient thing; do the right thing.” Often, the “convenient” path is chosen because its metrics are easier to quantify, even if it’s not the most impactful.
Pragmatic vs. Strategic
Tighter time budgets naturally push people to be more pragmatic than strategic. Team members are forced to de-prioritize decision quality, whose true value only becomes apparent over a time horizon that no one feels they have anymore.
Reclaiming the Focus on Impact
So, how do we reclaim a focus on genuine impact? I believe it boils down to the following framework.
The Formula:
- Solve the right problem.
- Find an efficient, scalable solution that builds a flywheel, drives down marginal costs, and solves problems faster and more automatically over time.
- Convince others that your approach is the right one.
Solving the Right Problem
I’m a strong advocate for first-principles thinking: are we solving the right problem? Many of the issues we tackle are merely symptoms, not the root cause.
Finding the Efficient Solution
We should be cautious about calling something a “solution” when it’s merely a mitigation. To me, a mitigation solves one problem by creating more problems to solve later. An efficient solution, by contrast, should scale on its own. It clarifies the path to the final goal and can be adapted to solve a wider class of similar problems.
Convincing Others
Justifying why your approach will have the highest impact is difficult, whether you’re forecasting or looking back. This is because a true A/B test is rarely possible for major strategic decisions. The solution is to create a mental A/B test.
- First, lay out the comparison. A decision is almost always a choice between Option A and Option B—a pairwise comparison. Laying out this comparison transparently is the crucial first step. It’s the due diligence that proves you have thought through alternatives and their potential impact. This is also known as analyzing the opportunity cost.
- Second, understand your audience. Recognize that not every decision-maker’s primary value is “impact.” This is a hard truth. A political leader, for instance, might value job creation more than raw productivity. If you believe your path is correct, you need to find the right way to frame it for your audience and navigate the decision-making process accordingly.
- Third, validate the long-term with short-term wins. “Long-term” is not synonymous with “correct.” As John Maynard Keynes famously said, “In the long run, we are all dead.” A longer time horizon introduces more uncertainty and increases potential opportunity costs. Therefore, short-term milestones are essential to justify and de-risk a long-term investment.