Google's Favorite Psychologist Explains How The Company Retains Top Talent

How does Google attract and cultivate the best talent in the world?

Adam Grant, Wharton management professor and Google's favorite psychologist, says one of its keys to keeping employees happy is encouraging them to pursue peripheral opportunities within the company and "customize" their jobs.

Grant has worked with its People Analytics Team to help Googlers take a sharper look at their jobs, figure out where they want to be, and how to get there.

"Oftentimes that produces some frustration when they realize they're not exactly working on everything they want to," Grant tells us. "Then they realize, what are their skills and what are their values, and design a more ideal but also realistic version of their job."

The other side of that equation is making sure you have rockstar managers. Grant says Google takes a data-driven approach to evaluating which managers are most effective, and says he'd "love to see every organization using that kind of data."

Watch our conversation below:

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