Question
Who should Google hire as its "Head of Social" and what would/should they do exactly?
Answer
I think the job description shows that Google has still not truly understood the "social" challenge.
Though I respect some of the candidate names that have been thrown up, this is actually a job for the Google CEO. The very idea of hiring a "head of social" is doomed to failure, because "social" is a disruptive force that threatens Google's core business model (social search/advertising). They are dimly recognizing this in the job description... "2) developing the capability and integrating social into Google’s existing portfolio."
Operationally, it would be very hard for what seems like a dotted-line staff exec to sufficiently influence healthy-cash-flow line operations the way they appear to think they can. Even with CEO air cover, I've only seen a very few people be effective from that kind of "diagonal influencer" position.
Making Google's existing portfolio organically social is only a small part of it though. The DNA needs to be injected into Google's work culture first, rather than the product porfolio. Google people need to become as good at "thinking social" as they are at "thinking algorithm." This is a people problem, not a technology problem.
I think the best available means here is to build on the one social success they've had (acquired, rather): YouTube. Possibly cannibalize the top YouTube talent and move them over to headquarters, filling a critical mass of C-level roles or just below. Possibly even Eric Schmidt needs to step back in favor of someone else if someone suitable can be found.
Then you cascade down a forceful change in hiring and retention policy. It'll take 2-3 years of HR churn to bring the aircraft carrier around. There's a lot of momentum to swing here.
What they are trying to do, create a "head of social" is create a box for the problem, put a label on it, and (in a well-intentioned way) set someone up for failure inside it. Even the finest talent put into that box will lack the leverage to achieve anything, because the job and role have been framed as though "social" were merely a defined, clean-edged computer science problem like "improve search ad targeting by 15%" rather than a true business model threat.
That said, I basically don't think Google can really pull it off. They are too successful, and their cash flows too robust, for there to be any true sense of urgency about this. In some ways non-social to social is a leap for Google that will likely cause as much trauma as IBM's leap from hardware to services. And as they are not on the brink of bankruptcy, perhaps they'd be better off ignoring social and just doubling down hard on their core competency in non-social computing infrastructure.
Though I respect some of the candidate names that have been thrown up, this is actually a job for the Google CEO. The very idea of hiring a "head of social" is doomed to failure, because "social" is a disruptive force that threatens Google's core business model (social search/advertising). They are dimly recognizing this in the job description... "2) developing the capability and integrating social into Google’s existing portfolio."
Operationally, it would be very hard for what seems like a dotted-line staff exec to sufficiently influence healthy-cash-flow line operations the way they appear to think they can. Even with CEO air cover, I've only seen a very few people be effective from that kind of "diagonal influencer" position.
Making Google's existing portfolio organically social is only a small part of it though. The DNA needs to be injected into Google's work culture first, rather than the product porfolio. Google people need to become as good at "thinking social" as they are at "thinking algorithm." This is a people problem, not a technology problem.
I think the best available means here is to build on the one social success they've had (acquired, rather): YouTube. Possibly cannibalize the top YouTube talent and move them over to headquarters, filling a critical mass of C-level roles or just below. Possibly even Eric Schmidt needs to step back in favor of someone else if someone suitable can be found.
Then you cascade down a forceful change in hiring and retention policy. It'll take 2-3 years of HR churn to bring the aircraft carrier around. There's a lot of momentum to swing here.
What they are trying to do, create a "head of social" is create a box for the problem, put a label on it, and (in a well-intentioned way) set someone up for failure inside it. Even the finest talent put into that box will lack the leverage to achieve anything, because the job and role have been framed as though "social" were merely a defined, clean-edged computer science problem like "improve search ad targeting by 15%" rather than a true business model threat.
That said, I basically don't think Google can really pull it off. They are too successful, and their cash flows too robust, for there to be any true sense of urgency about this. In some ways non-social to social is a leap for Google that will likely cause as much trauma as IBM's leap from hardware to services. And as they are not on the brink of bankruptcy, perhaps they'd be better off ignoring social and just doubling down hard on their core competency in non-social computing infrastructure.