Sundar Pichai’s Counter-Intuitive Advice

Reward Outputs and Efforts, not just Outcomes

Sundar Pichai has added $1.11T to Google’s market cap.

His counter-intuitive advice? “You have to reward effort, not outcomes”

It’s basically heresy. “Outcomes, not output” is THE mantra amongst product leaders and books like Inspired. Why is Sundar, a former PM himself, praising efforts over outcomes?

1. Google’s Increased Conservatism

2. What You Can Control

3. The Pendulum Swung Too Far

1. Google’s Increased Conservatism

When Sundar joined Google in 2004, it was very different from when he became CEO in 2015. In 2004, people believed any problem could be solved. And the reward structures were built such that they felt they should try to.

By 2015, Google was not a young unprofitable startup pursuing aspirational bets. It was a conservative profit machine focused on growing its great businesses. This meant folks were not taking the same big, low probability bets Google needed.

The company needed to reward the effort involved with these low probability outcomes. This made rewarding effort, not output, the solution. The Google advice need not apply in situations where people are risk-taking. But it does in conservative environments.

2. What You Can Control

You can’t control outcomes. You can control outputs. You can control your effort and attitude, learning and quality of features. Outcome focus rewards the lucky and punishes the unlucky.

3. The Pendulum Swung Too Far

Google is famous for its use of OKRs to set goals & evaluate product teams. This approach completely ruled out outputs to focus on outcomes. But it had the result of penalizing good product teams in bad markets. It needed to come to the middle.

In summary, Google is zigging where others are zagging. It’s focusing on outputs and effort, not just outcomes. Consider if you should too.

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The Eisenhower Matrix for Productivity

All you need is ONE simple system to be more productive than 90% of PMs.

The Eisenhower Matrix is one single system that can radically improve your task completion, overflowing inbox, and feeling of being overwhelmed.

Let’s get into it.

The solution to the productivity problem as a PM isn’t do more. It’s do the right things. The Eisenhower Matrix is how you sort out what are the right things to do. Take any item on your list and map according to IMPORTANCE and URGENCY.

URGENT and IMPORTANT

—> Do it now

In PM land, this might be:

• Push forward a feature being worked’s progress

• Prepare for a cross-functional sync later today

• Things that are going to drive impact & must be done now

Use first principles to put few things into this bucket.

URGENT and UNIMPORTANT

—> Delegate

In PM land, this might be:

• Writing a status update that doesn’t drive a decision

• Checking in on engineering on a daily basis

• User testing the latest designs for usability

Find & empower team members to do this work or eliminate it.

NOT URGENT and IMPORTANT

—> Schedule time to do it

In PM land, this might be:

• Creating the strategy doc for next half planning

• 1:1s with key team members and stakeholders

• Diving into the analytics

Make sure you don’t only run on the treadmill of urgent work.

NOT URGENT and UNIMPORTANT

—> Eliminate it

In PM land, this might be:

• A large weekly status meeting

• Updating documentation for the late-breaking changes to a feature

• Work for the ERG you care least about

Be ruthless about eliminating, and add back if needed.

Every PM job is different. Some places, status meetings and documentation really matter. Others, it’s all about impact. Keep testing your categorization to customize to your job. And realize it will change a lot as your tenure does.

But keep up the practice. The practice of categorizing your to do list itself is going to make you a much more productive version of yourself.