Five leadership lessons from a former Google president

Here are five key lessons he shared: 

1. Get out of the way

Matt, who spent 18 years at Google, said he learnt early on in his role at the tech giant to “get out of the way”. 

“I was lucky enough to have a conversation with Larry Page, one of the two founders of Google,” said Matt. “He said to me, ‘Your job is to put the best people on the most important work and get out of the way.’ And actually, that’s what I learned to do.” 

Although this sounds easy, Matt said it is a multi-layered task, as you have to find out who the best people are, what the most important work is and then learn to give them space. 

Getting out of the way doesn’t mean saying “you’re hired, go figure it out”, he explained. It’s about finding ways to create space for teams and people to grow – and giving them the right level of accountability and challenge. 

“That was something I had to learn to do from the early days, when the instincts were to control.” 

2. Collaborate to innovate

“We’ve never seen a level of uncertainty like this in our adult lives,” Matt said. “And actually, probably longer.” 

He highlighted the importance of working together to tackle the uncertainty facing business – whether it’s tariffs, energy prices, climate change or AI. In this environment, leaders need to innovate and adapt quickly. For Matt, this is about working together more closely. While the old way was working in silos, the new way is to “cross-fertilise”, he said. 

“There are famous cases where people put difficult engineering problems out online and said, ‘Can anyone help us solve this?’ And they were often solved by people from totally different fields,” said Matt. “You need to have that environment where different disciplines are respected and can work together.” 

3. Create a safe environment to experiment

Matt’s involvement in sport taught him to value experimentation as a driver of progress. 

“In sport, I learned more from losing than from winning,” he said. “I believe in the saying, ‘You win or you learn’.” He said the focus should not be on failing fast, but on experimenting.