The Googlization of Everything

Washington Post:

You've Gotta Think Like Google

By Douglas LaBier
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, November 11, 2008; HE01

What are the keys to success and well-being? Being able to manage the stresses of your work and personal life, right? And to cope with the emotional conflicts you brought with you into adulthood.

In the office, that has meant being clear about your goals and working your way up a fairly predictable set of steps to achieve power, recognition and financial success.

But, like the stock market, that dependable formula has taken a nose dive. It's still important to be able to manage conflicts that could derail your career or personal life, but it's not enough anymore. And it alone won't produce success, well-being or sanity in our globalized, turbulent and interdependent world.

The traits you most need today are to be transparent, flexible, focused and collaborative.

You need to adopt the psychology of Google.

I write as a business psychologist and psychotherapist with 35 years' experience who is being confronted more and more often by men and women who are discovering, often painfully, that the attitudes and behavior they thought would lead to fulfillment suddenly leave them at a loss. They don't know how to keep up -- let alone get ahead -- in a world where the only constant is change and where it seems as if everybody has to be skilled at competing and collaborating with everyone from everywhere about almost everything.

We've all become aware of how widespread turmoil can flow from unforeseen circumstances: entirely new global business paradigms that create upstart competitors or put you out of business; social networking technologies that can confront you with other people's pain just as easily as they can broadcast your own flaws worldwide; turbulent shifts in weather patterns, apparently brought on by global warming; the ill-defined threat of terrorism. It's as if we've all, unwittingly, been given roles in the Brad Pitt movie "Babel," in which the actions of two goat-herding boys have tragic consequences for lives on three continents.

I deal with the fallout almost daily: I see people who've functioned pretty well but now feel as if they're standing on tectonic plates that are shifting beneath them.

There's the Wall Street banker who told me he'd always defined himself by "making it through the next end zone" in his career. Now, with his company -- and career -- collapsing, he finds that in addition to sacrificing time with his family, he has sacrificed his health: He has diabetes and high blood pressure. "Kind of a reverse 'deal flow,' " he lamented to me.

And the management consultant, pressured to ratchet up her travel to keep her career on track. "I'd been coping with everything, I thought," she told me, "though I don't like needing Zoloft to do it." Instead of becoming more predictable as she gained seniority, her career was taking her on an even wilder ride. "Now I don't have enough time for my daughter or my husband," she said. "What kind of life is this? . . . My husband's checked out, emotionally. And what am I teaching my daughter?"

These people were on the kinds of career paths that brought their parents' generation rewards they could rely on. But that linear upward climb has become hazardous. That's because it focuses too much on self-interest, which is an ineffective strategy in today's interconnected world and leaves you vulnerable when forces outside your control create unanticipated upheaval.

Having observed changes in the business model -- as people look for value in their work in addition to profit from it -- I've come to believe that employees today need to subordinate self-interest. Qualities we long admired but never thought absolutely necessary, such as cooperation and altruism, have become both survival skills and keys to competitiveness. A psychologically healthy life involves building those qualities into your conduct -- in a sense, learning to forget yourself. ...