gDiapers: the early years...

Challenge = Opportunity

Providing onsite day care for the kids of our employees is something Kim and I are passionate about. As a society, we humans need to be close to our babies. Everybody wins. But it is a challenge to make it all work. In fact it is probably the most challenging thing to make work. But as they say, if it was easy, everyone would do it. 

We have had a tough week this week on this front. The issues are complex and solutions are not easy to come by. I am happy to report however that our gTeam has come together in style to face the issues and put together elegant solutions. As a result we are stronger for it. 

Put simply, this team rocks and I salute each and everyone of them.

Interestingly, we are not alone. It seems a company as resource rich as Google is facing challenges with their onsite day care facility. Read on.

On day care, Google makes a rare fumble

By Joe Nocera

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Two months ago, Google held a series of secret focus groups with employees who have children in Google's day care facilities. The purpose was to gauge their reaction to the company's plan to raise the amount it charged for in-house day care by 75 percent.

Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500 — well above the market rate. For parents with toddlers and preschoolers, who were charged less, the price increases were equally eye-popping. Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000.

At the first of the three focus groups, parents wept openly. As word leaked out about the company's plan, the Google parents began to fight back. They came up with ideas to save money, used the company's TGIF sessions — a weekly meeting for anyone who wanted to ask questions of Google's top executives — to plead their case, and conducted surveys showing that most parents with children in Google day care would have to leave Google's facilities and find less expensive child care.

Do you think you know how this story ends? You're probably guessing that because it involves "do no evil" Google, Fortune magazine's "Best Company to Work For" the past two years, this is a heart-warming tale of a good company reversing a dumb decision.

If only. Although Google is rolling back its price increase slightly and is phasing in the higher price over five quarters, the outline of the original decision remains largely unchanged. At a TGIF in June, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he had no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of "Googlers" who felt entitled to perks like "bottled water and M&Ms," according to several people in the meeting. (A Google spokesman denies that Brin made that comment.) Last Monday, Google began the first phase of its new day care plan, letting go of the outside day care firm it had been using.

In recent months, Google has hit the first rough patch in its short, magical life as a public company. From November to April, Google's once high-flying stock dropped 44 percent, to $412 from $744. (It has since gained some of that back, closing on Thursday at $537.) It may be a stretch to equate the day care fiasco with the fall in Google's stock. But maybe not.

When a stock was rising as fast as Google's once was, it was easy to buy the view that there was something truly special about Google. But when the stock is falling, overlooked problems start to loom large. Having discovered that Google is not, in fact, the promised land, a number of Googlers have left recently to join start-ups, hotter companies like Facebook — and even Microsoft.

"There are many things about Google that are not great, and merit improvement," blogged Sergey Solyanik, who recently returned to Microsoft after a stint at Google. "There are plenty of silly politics, underperformance, inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, and things that are plain stupid." Starting, it would appear, with day care.

Google first began offering day care three and a half years ago, and perhaps it is only coincidence that this occurred not long after a woman named Susan Wojcicki returned to the company from maternity leave. Wojcicki is a figure of significant stature at Google; hers was the garage that Brin and Google's other founder, Larry Page, rented while starting up Google. Today she is the company's vice president for product measurement, though as I discovered in talking to unhappy Google parents this week, not many Googlers seem to know what her exact duties entail. Everybody, however, knows that she's Brin's sister-in-law.

From the start, Wojcicki has been a passionate advocate for Google's day care efforts, though there is some dispute about how much decision-making authority she has. Parents who know her point out that the company's day care approach is very much aligned with her views; for its part, a Google spokesman insists that "these decisions were not made by her; they were made by the executive management team."

Google's first facility, called the Kinderplex, was run by the Childrens' Creative Learning Centers, or CCLC, which, according to its Web site, offers "learning in a play-based, developmentally appropriate environment that incorporates a variety of activities and multicultural aspects in a thematic style." That sounds perfect for Silicon Valley, doesn't it? One of CCLC's longtime Silicon Valley clients, Electronic Arts, sent me an e-mail statement telling me how happy it has been with CCLC's services.

According to Google, there were numerous complains about CCLC, but the Google parents I spoke to disagree. They say that at the Kinderplex, teacher-child ratios were low, teachers were first-rate, the facility was clean and upbeat, and the food — organic, naturally — was terrific.

But at least one parent wasn't happy: Wojcicki. She is a proponent of a preschool philosophy called Reggio Emilia, the hot kiddie philosophy of the moment, which stresses even small children's ability to chart their own learning paths.

A year after the Kinderplex opened, Google opened its second day care center, called the Woods, which Google ran itself. The Woods was an expensive undertaking; in terms of the square footage per child, the aesthetics of its toys, and the college degrees of its teachers, it put the Kinderplex to shame. It also used the Reggio Emilia philosophy.

With the Woods open, Google decided to upgrade the Kinderplex to match the salaries and the teacher-student ratios of the Woods. Google now had 200 day care spots — and such wonderful day care at that! — and was promoting this new perk as a recruiting tool. The company was growing like crazy — its work force now numbers 19,000 — its young employees were starting to have babies, and well, you can just picture what happened next. The wait list ballooned insanely, finally reaching over 700 people. New employees who arrived at Google thinking they were getting in-house day care were stunned to discover that it could take up to two years to land a coveted spot.

Meanwhile, someone at Google woke up one day and realized that the company was subsidizing each child to the tune of $37,000 a year — which nobody had noticed up until then — compared with the $12,000-a-year average subsidy of other big Silicon Valley companies like Cisco Systems and Oracle. Faced with this dilemma, Google decided that the way to solve the dual problems of a too-long wait list and a too-large subsidy was — are you sitting down for this? — to get rid of CCLC and make the Kinderplex more like the Woods! (Google says it was always planning to replace CCLC) Given that decision, the only possible way to reduce the subsidy was to raise prices through the roof.

If you are shaking your head at this point, that's because you lack the proper understanding of Google's culture. Having conquered the Internet, Google's executives tend to believe that they can do pretty much everything better than everybody else — even day care. When I spoke to Laszlo Bock, the company's vice president for "people operations" (a k a human relations), he told me that "what is really driving the cost is eliminating the two-year wait list while focusing on providing really high quality."

Google can't just have low teacher-child ratios — it has to have the lowest of anybody. Its teachers have to be the best. Its toys have to be the most advanced. If it costs a lot of money to provide the Greatest Day Care on Earth, well, that's life.

Plus, the high price of Google day care solves the waiting list problem. Indeed, getting the waiting list down was a huge priority for Google; the spokesman told me that forcing people to wait two years for day care was "inequitable." And maybe it is.

But parents who talked to me said that several times during the six-week-long day care brouhaha, Brin made comments indicating that he viewed the whole thing as a giant economics experiment. "This is a supply-and-demand issue," he told one group of parents — adding that Google needed to charge what the market would bear. (Through a Google spokesman, Brin denies making such a statement.) Given that Google has lots of pre-IPO millionaires, it can clearly charge a lot.

Indeed, at one meeting, Wojcicki, a multimillionaire herself, told the parents that she planned to keep her own children in Google day care, despite the higher cost. "I've had firsthand experience with the great care provided by these centers and I want as many other parents as possible to have access to it," Wojcicki noted in an e-mail message.

Google has also started charging people several hundred dollars to stay on the waiting list; as a result the list has dropped to around 300 parents. By next fall, Google plans to open new facilities with another 300 places. See? No more waiting list.

Google, I should note, believes that it has handled the day care issue in a "Googly" way and object strongly to the criticism by the parents. The company points out that the prices are somewhat lower than originally planned, that it is expanding its day care operation, that its facilities will be state of the art and that it will be giving scholarships to parents who can't afford to keep their children in Google day care. (Although yet to release the details of the scholarship plan, the company says that employees will have to show proof of household income to qualify.)

But here's the real problem: providing day care isn't an economics experiment, nor should it be just another Google perk, alongside organic food and free M& Day care matters to people's lives in a way that few other perks do. There are many people in this country — including, I'll bet, many Googlers — who believe that employer-provided day care, at affordable prices, ought to be like health insurance, a benefit that every company provides as a matter of course. Yet as the technology blog Valleywag noted recently, Google doesn't even advertise day care as a benefit for its employees anymore. That's the real shame.

Google may be providing the greatest day care ever, but so what? It doesn't matter how good the day care is if only its wealthiest employees can afford to use it. If Google had really wanted to do something path-breaking about its day care crisis, it would have spent less time creating elitist day care centers and more time figuring out how to "scale" day care for everybody no matter what their salaries.

Instead, Google has shown that it thinks about day care the same way every other company does — as a luxury, not a benefit. Judging by what's transpired, that's what Google is fast becoming: just another company.

 

Me want me one of them cars...

Car of the Week in downtown Messyac... The Citroën 2CV (French: deux chevaux vapeur, literally "two steam horses", from the tax horsepower rating) was an economy car produced by the French automaker Citroën from 1949 to 1990. [3] It is considered one of their most iconic cars. It was described in the book Drive On!: A Social History of the Motor Car by longtime CAR magazine columnist the late LJK Setright as 'The most intelligent application of minimalism ever to succeed as a car.' It was designed for low cost, simplicity, versatility, reliability, and off-road driving. For this it had a light, easily serviceable engine, extremely soft suspension, high clearance, and for oversized loads a car-wide canvas sunroof. Between 1948 and 1990 3,872,583 2CVs were produced, plus 1,246,306 camionettes (small 2CV trucks), as well as spawning mechanically identical vehicles like the Ami, Dyane, Acadiane, and Mehari. From 1988 onwards production took place in Portugal rather than in France. This arrangement lasted for two years until 2CV production halted.

En Vacance

We have been offline for 10 days now enjoying the best of the south of France at a family reunion.

My high school French has been sorely tested but the staples are covered - cheese, wine, beer, coffee...what more does one need?

Fascinating observing how the locals live sustainably in this tiny village of Meyssac in the Midi-Pyrenees. In the local supermarket car park there was not one car bigger than a mini. With gas at $12 per gallon, (yes, you read that right)  SUV's are hardly an option.To a man, they would leave their car, grab their reusable bags from the trunk and go shopping. None of this paper vs plastic debate we see in the UK, the US and Australia.

 

 

A chuckle for this Friday from the kids...

Thanks to my good mate Lesley in Sydney for this...

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY? (written by kids) 

You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports,
she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and
dip coming. 
-- Alan, age 10

No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God
decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck
with.
-- Kristen, age 10 

WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?

Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then. 
-- Camille, age 10 

HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?

You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the
same kids. 
-- Derrick, age 8 

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?

Both don't want any more kids.
-- Lori, age 8 

WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?

Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each
other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough. 
-- Lynnette, age 8 

On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them
interested enough to go for a second date. 
-- Martin, age 10 

WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON A FIRST DATE THAT WAS TURNING SOUR? 

I'd run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and
make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns. 
-- Craig, age 9 

WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?

When they're rich. 
-- Pam, age 7 

The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with that. 
-- Curt, age 7 

The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and
have kids with them. It's the right thing to do. 
-- Howard, age 8 

IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED ? 

It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to
clean up after them.
-- Anita, age 9 

HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN'T GET MARRIED?

There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there? 
-- Kelvin, age 8 

HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK? 

Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck. 
-- Ricky, age 10

I hope he rubs off on me...

Some photos of myself with David Bach, - author of the Finish Rich series, at Green Fest in Chicago. He gave gDiapers a mention in his latest book.

Mirror Neurons

I read the piece below by Daniel Goleman ( Author of EQ) to my team today. Most thought provoking...

Mirror Neurons

There’s a class of brain cells called “mirror neurons”, which act as a neural Wi-Fi, attuning to the other person’s internal state moment to moment and recreating that state in our own brain—their emotions, their movements, their intentions.

Mirror neurons offer a neural mechanism that explains emotional contagion, the tendency of one person to catch the feelings of another, particularly if strongly expressed. This brain-to-brain link may also account for feelings of rapport, which research finds depend in part on extremely rapid synchronization of people’s posture, vocal pacing and movements as they interact. In short, these brain cells seem to allow the interpersonal orchestration of shifts in physiology.

In the last few years researchers have discovered the social brain, the circuitry that connects us intimately in every human encounter we have. This can be for better or for worse, of course. For instance, we can pick up toxic emotions by witnessing violence, something like the emotional equivalent of secondhand smoke. Or we can radiate peacefulness to the people we meet. We’re all part of an invisible emotional economy, a give-and-take of feelings that transpires no matter what else we do in an encounter.

Because of mirror neurons, tuning into our internal feelings gives us a mix of our own responses and what we pick up from the other. So the challenge is to distinguish between what comes from the other person. The dilemma is that the social brain continually makes emotions contagious, which means our empathy also makes us vulnerable to catching distress.

Before we realized that brains interconnect so much, it seemed that how someone does at work has little or nothing to do with how that person’s boss treats them—that it’s entirely up to the person alone. But the social brain’s interconnectivity means that to some degree the boss’s brain is looped into that person’s brain. And so a leader’s responsibility includes helping that person get into and stay in an internal state where he can do his best work. It’s also a teacher’s responsibility with a student, because there is a strong relationship between maximal cognitive efficiency and a person’s emotional state. When people are in an alert, motivated, and engaged state, the brain operates at peak efficiency. In fact when they’re joyous, they’re even more efficient.

If a teacher just angrily scolds a student and expects that student to learn better, he’s basically undermining his own efforts as a teacher. Or if a boss puts someone down or humiliates them, that threatens and undermines the person’s ability to be at their best. So the boss or teacher has to understand that they’re partly responsible for the other person’s very brain state and subsequent inability to do better.

The emotional status of our main relationships also has a significant impact on our overall pattern of cardiovascular and neuron-endocrine activity. This radically expands the scope of biology and neuroscience from focusing on a single body or brain to looking at the interplay between two at a time. In short, my hostility bumps up your blood pressure, your nurturing love lowers mine. Potentially, we are each other’s biological enemies or allies.

There is also a power factor: emotions are most contagious from the most powerful person in a group outward. One study shows that people ruminate about negative statements from their boss far more than they remember positive ones. Which means that a small dose of negative feedback gets magnified in your own mind, and can have great power because something coming from this powerful person in your life is amplified emotionally.

People need to be very skillful when giving performance feedback and not be overly harsh. Otherwise all you’re doing is arousing the brain’s centers for anxiety, undermining the very ability to perform well.

Compiled from an article in the New York Times (Oct. 10, 2006) and an interview in Tricycle, Winter 2006

Key Performance Indicators

I have been taken away from blogging of late but I am back.

Today. I am talking about KPI's. Sure revenue and EBITDA are important but gDiapers has just exceeded plan on a few different fronts. Celebrating employee anniversaries now takes a whole case of beer and two packs of Tim Tams. I can hear the Board cheering now! 

gDiapers baked?

At last gDiapers Diaper Cakes! The innards are filled with Burt's Bee's or J&J products. More details here. Thanks to Darcy!

The facts and nothing but the facts...

This is why we moved 10,000 miles to start gDiapers

This morning on Good Morning America, they laid out the case why gDiapers is the only choice (without actually mentioning us but that's OK). Given they have done such a good job, I guess we'll need to take our Ad budget and put it toward our Xmas party now...

Check it out here . And here are some still pictures from the piece.