Bulldozer00's Blog

If you don’t know that Google’s informal corporate motto is “Don’t Be Evil“, then either you were born yesterday or you shouldn’t be reading this ridiculously inane blog – or both.

While reading Stephen Levy‘s well written, informative, and entertaining book, “In The Plex“, Mr. Levy tells the story of how the controversial and tough-to-live-up-to Google war cry came into existence. Here, he describes the first triggering event:

Mr. Levy goes on to say:

Note that 15 employees were assembled from across a broad swath of the company. Do you notice something amiss? Uh, how about the fact that the two founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page weren’t involved?

As the group debated the motto, here’s what one group member said:

Note that everyone had a chance to weigh in, and thus, “Don’t Be Evil” was internalized by the whole org. It wasn’t handed down from on high by a politburo or junta or God-like individual that “obviously knows what’s best for all the children in the borg“.

Did, or do, you have the chance to provide feedback on your corpo values or philosophy? Are they authentic like Google’s and Zappos.com’s, or are they a copy-and-paste job from a 1970’s vintage management book? If they’re a copy-and-paste job, have you suggested revisiting them? If so, how was your suggestion received?