Margo Georgiadis: Re-Imagining Everything | Odgis + Co

Have A Healthy Disregard For The Impossible

   
Ask someone to name Google’s main competitors, and they’ll probably list Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. Not so, Georgiadis said. Facebook is a social networking company, while Apple develops hardware and software; Amazon focuses on selling products. But from its beginning, Google has positioned itself as an information company, dedicated to using data to build accessible, easy-to-use tools and services.

Georgiadis suggested that anyone could take lessons from Google’s history and philosophy to evolve their own companies. Whenever she sits down with an entrepreneur to talk business, she always begins with the fundamentals. What does the entrepreneur want to accomplish, and why does he or she want to accomplish it? What’s the company’s overarching mission, and how can success be measured?

In order to complete that mission in a quantifiable way, companies must be transparent, with clear lines of communication between those in the executive suite and those carrying out the various aspects of the business. From top to bottom, every employee must possess a willingness to adapt to changing circumstances, and seize upon new opportunities with speed and agility.

Most of all, Georgiadis added, companies and entrepreneurs must keep learning. It’s only by acquiring new knowledge, in conjunction with the aforementioned agility and openness, that a company can re-imagine itself into a more perfect form, and ultimately make its customers’ lives better. While that might sound like an intimidating—even impossible—goal, it’s one well within reach. 

So if you want to re-imagine your company, remember these 6 key takeaways on how Google does it:

2. What’s the best way to accomplish your strategic goals?