Google Extends to Charitable Giving

Questions

1. Are Google co-founders Brin and Page servant leaders? How about Larry Brilliant?

Servant leadership is a practice of leadership that promotes the idea of ‘A leader’s success is defined by other’s successes’, which includes employees’ and customers’. This simply means that leaders work for the benefit of others rather than one self.

Similarly, Brin and Page created a search engine that provided what people wanted to find; located in one place, in which during that period of time search engines only focus on revenue rather than actually being supportive. It is clearly seen that the definition of a servant leadership fits in their environment. Furthermore, Brin and Page did not stop there but continued to provide aid and tackle problems for people who suffering from around the world; thus, google.org was created.

In addition, Larry Brilliant is also a servant leader, as the head of google.org, he had continued his line of work in expanding awareness on economic and environmental issue. Brilliant is an expert in medicine and leading non-profit global health organization. Brilliant could have chosen another job where he could lead with a different personal style; however, he did not, thus, showing his qualities of a servant leader.

2. What would you say is the biggest source of Larry Brilliant’s power as a leader?

Larry Brilliant is a physician, epidemiologist, technologist, and author. His biggest source of power as a leader came from his diversified background and experiences of the years that shaped his career. He is known to be one of the leaders of the successful World Health Organization smallpox eradication program. His expertise in leadership and decision making is remarkable. His authority as the head of google.org and many other non-profit organization is prominent.

3. How does google.org illustrate empowerment at Google?

Google.org illustrates empowerment at Google because the owners of Google, Brian and Page, empowered Brilliant to develop the complete strategy and to run the organization. The strategy here was taking many ideas initiative from employees and people from around the world and chose the best one to research and pursue. Out of 1000 possible ideas google.org chose 11 to focus on. Google.org also empower organizations outside of its circle by giving grants to them to improve people’s live, which is the sole purpose of the organization. The investment here can be described as trust to these companies, a kind of support while google.org is also pursuing their goals.