Eric Schmidt from Google - Essay Example

ERIC SCHMIDT Location: Eric Schmidt Eric Schmidt is a businessman, software engineer in America and the executive chairman of Google. He was born in April 21, 1955. He is ranked amongst the richest people in the world in 2013. He owns an estimated wealth of $8.3 billion. Schmidt was recruited from Novell by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google founders. At the time of this recruitment, Schmidt was the chairman and CEO of Novel. He had also led the company through its management, technology development and strategic planning. Before being appointed by Novell, he was the corporate executive officer and the chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems. At Sun Microsystems, he Schmidt contributed to the creation of java. He had also led in the launch of the company’s programming technology and given a definition to its Internet software strategy. In 1983, before joining Sun, Schmidt worked as a researcher at a computer science lab at PARC. Schmidt has been determined to build the infrastructure of Google and maintain its rapid growth since joining the company. He has worked hard to ensure that the cycle times remain minimal while the quality level is increased. Along with Sergey and Larry, he shares the daily responsibilities for Google operations. Before being recruited by Google, Schmidt had a total of a 20 year experience in entrepreneur, Internet strategies and developing of new and great technologies that he had obtained from Novell (Schmidt, E., 2012, 92). Schmidt’s perspective that was well-seasoned clearly complemented the needs of Google, which was a young search engine with a corporate culture that was growing at a faster rate. Schmidt graduated from Princeton University with a degree in electrical engineering. He also obtained a Ph.D. and a master’s in computer science in 2006 from the University of California. The National Engineering Academy acknowledged Schmidt’s effort on strategy development for the most successful search engine in the world. In 2007, he joined the American Arts and Sciences Academy as a Hellman Fellow. In the New American Foundation, Schmidt chaired the directors’ board. Google is a political regime under the domination of three powerful individuals; Larry, Schmidt and Brin. Schmidt’s background that was technical and business-oriented gave him unique qualities of leading Google. Currently, he is a member of Obama’s adviser on Science and Technology. He is also the head of the New American foundation. Again, he is a former member of the Apple Board of Directors. Schmidt is also a member of the board of trustees for Princeton University and Carnegie Mellon University. The theories of leadership that are evident in Schmidt’s leadership skills include the great man theory, trait theory, behavioral theories and participative leadership. According to the leadership theory of the great man, Schmidt, as a leader, is different from other average people in terms of personality traits such as perseverance, intelligence and ambition. According to the theory, it is assumed that Schmidt inherited these traits that are particularly suited to leadership. He has the correct combination of leadership traits. According to the trait theory, Schmidt’s leadership is based on his psychological focus. Discovering psychological traits requires a lot of attention, mostly by studying the behavior of successful leaders. According to this theory, it is assumed that other people possessing these traits have the capability of becoming great leaders. According to the behavioral theories, leaders are made and not naturally born. Basing on this theory, Schmidt obtained his leadership skills by schooling. The theory further states that successful leadership is based in learnable and definable behavior. Behavioral theories do not seek leadership skills from inborn traits; instead, they base on the actions of the leader. The theories define success of a leader in terms of actions that can be described. The theory, therefore, implies that the capability of being a leader can be learned. Behavioral theories further suggest that a true leader is the one who shows concern for people and production. However, according to previous studies, a leader can exhibit both traits. According to participative leadership theory, individuals involved in decision making gain a good understanding of the issues under discussion. After getting involved in decision making, people get committed to actions that are relevant to the made decision. While working on joint goals, individuals become more collaborative and less competitive. As people come together to make a decision, their social commitment becomes stronger, thus increasing their commitment to the decisions that are agreed upon. This implies that several people make better decisions than a single individual. Therefore, a participative leader, rather than taking autocratic decisions, involves other people like the peers, subordinates stakeholders and other superiors in decision-making. One of the behaviors identified in Schmidt is that he is responsible of all his actions. This, in turn, makes him a little bit of perfectionism. This explains the reason why he replaced Larry Page and became the new CEO of Google. His nice-guy reputation is revealed when he posted in a blog post saying that he was proud of his past decade CEO. Schmidt’s trait of being responsible is not just realized by body-language analysts. It is his general picture among the gossips of the tech-industry. This implies that he is an intelligent manager who highly contributed in developing Google to become the world’s most revolutionary company. Another behavior observed in Schmidt is that he has the drive that keeps him going. He also possesses understanding and compassion. Schmidt possesses adaptability and compatibility that help him to get along with other people. As the CEO of Google, he led the company to compete with Apple in the cell phone market. Unlike Bill Gates who managed to beat Apple by being ruthless, Schmidt does not seem to have the same kind of ruthlessness in him. Schmidt is also honest, despite what the consequences are. He has the courage of getting up to do what is right in tough situations. Furthermore, he is loyal to his friends and workmates. As the Google CEO, Schmidt is considered as being nice. No one criticizes him. He is tough enough to enable Google to remain on top of the tech. It took the smart mind of Schmidt for Google to reach where it is today. Google’s search engine is as a result of brainpower and not mercilessness. However, current competitors of Google are different. According to Schmidt, the computing future includes mobile phones and other small devices. This is because these devices will become the main Internet access tools and, therefore, the main access points to Google. In the leadership style of Google, Schmidt rules democratically. Democratic rule is where the employees are given an opportunity of choosing their representatives on their own. The representative is then accountable for their policies and conduct in office. The employers do this by choosing between competing individuals in free, regular and fair elections. Schmidt motivates the workforce using democratic approach because he aims at attaining maximum input and the best possible solution to each problem. He listens and puts into consideration the opinions of his followers. Through direct democracy, Schmidt allows employers to make their own important decisions on all policies. Alternatively, Schmidt’s followers have a choice of practicing representative democracy whereby the decisions are made by few representatives who are chosen by the followers. In both direct and representative democracy, the majority rule applies. The winning vote is that of the majority. The democratic approach provides motivation to the employees due to the fact that it allows an individual to speak out their opinions without being ignored. This, in turn, allows increased discussion of the matters concerning the welfare of the employees thus leading to the development of innovations. Schmidt motivates his employees in many different ways. He aims at making sure that the voice of each individual is heard. He also ensures that all opinions that are expressed by the employees are taken care of. To motivate the employees, Schmidt calls out on individuals who do not add input to a meeting and gives them the opportunity to speak first. He ensures that they promote the discussion by sharing dissenting opinions. Ruling using democracy is important because it gives employees the right to elect a representative of their own choice. Through democracy, employers are able to carry out frequent elections after a specified period of time. This ensures that unpopular and bad representatives are voted out and replaced by new ones. The new representative is faced by the responsibility of implementing policies that are favorable to the majority of the employees in order to stay in power. Through democracy, the most popular candidates stand the opportunity of being elected as representatives. It also ensures that wealth is evenly distributed because the elected representative ensures fair distribution of the incentive funds. Through democracy, the employees have the opportunity of their voices being heard by their employers. This results to fulfillment of their wishes. Through democracy, many aspiring representatives are allowed to compete for the position. This gives the other employers a wide range of choices to choose from for their votes. References Schmidt, E., 2012. 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