The first Google Leadership Lesson is:
Give more than you receive
This lesson is simple yet so powerful. Have you ever helped anyone and all the while really expected something in return? The answer to this is most likely a yes – I think we all have been in a position to expect something in return for a favor. But if you ever helped anyone and did not expect a thing in return, you know that it brings an inner joy.
This lesson can be seen when Google allows a person to perform a search. The Google engine provides the results to a search query, and then a person can leave Google, having become better informed. For this model to be successful, Google had to create first a high value interaction whereby people would return and tell others about the value.
Of course Google knows that the real value comes from people coming back over and over to perform new search queries and getting a lot of information about them. But in the first place Google has provided an incredible interaction to these users.
Summing-up: We can learn much from this powerful principle: Give more than you receive. So don’t hold onto your business stakeholders so tightly that they feel like you are squeezing them to death. Give them the opportunity to see the value and make the decision to come back again and again.