Managing Without Power

In its heyday Google was notoriously anti-management. They stripped managers of their power where they could. Recruitment, performance evaluation and promotions are decided in groups, and compensation is largely determined by fixed rules. Joris Merks-Benjaminsen worked at Google for twelve years, and embraced this principle of Managing Without Power: he became one of Google's highest scoring managers and trained many fellow managers.

When humaneness prevails at the expense of accountability, or if prestige or a focus on performance wins over humaneness and culture, a new balance is needed. Managing Without Power helps you build teams and organizations that combine a high bar for performance with human leadership. If you are a manager starting out, the practical models and exercises will quickly help you get started. If you work in HR, or in a senior leadership position, the book helps create principles, processes and systems that balance performance and humanity. Diversity and inclusion is always the 'default setting'. A team or organization can only perform at its highest level if all people are their best selves and work well as a team.

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen played a critical role in Google's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives. As an independent entrepreneur he now organizes trainings and courses to coach managers in finding the right balance between humaneness and performance.

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen is an award winning author, and organization transformation expert specializing in cultivating inclusive high performance teams and cultures. Over the last 12 years he supported hundreds of global brands navigate and conquer their transformation challenges. Drawing on his exemplary track record of developing leadership skills at all levels while Head of Google Academy and having been one of Google's highest scoring managers of all time, Joris developed a toolkit to help build new human leadership capabilities in any business: the Managing Without Power program. It offers a truly holistic approach combining data, action based learning, analytics and strategy with human insight, empathy and personal consciousness to create practical solutions that can create positive change in any organization. Managing Without Power is Joris's sixth book. The book helps managers and companies embed a more human leadership practice within their business and drive their teams performance to the next level.

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen worked with Google, Just Eat, Unilever, L'Oreal, Heineken, ING, and many other companies.