Humane Leadership

Remembering Susan Wojcicki

Some time around new year of 2014, at Seascape Beach Resort in Santa Cruz, I was attending Google Ads Leadership Summit. This was organized by Susan Wojcicki, then SVP of Google Ads org. After the dinner, we had a bonfire on the beach, and Susan joined us.

At that time, my team was working on a project called Action Ads (which was later reported publicly by Search Engine Land and many other media). The idea was straightforward. For a movie, we’d offer streaming service providers a chance to bid to show themselves on movie Knowledge Panels, and this would be a brand new ad format.

We built all the technology needed to launch this, but it hit a wall.

Back then Google was organized into different Product Areas (PAs), each led by one SVP, and this project stirred up conflict among multiple PAs. Search (which owned Knowledge Panels), Ads (which Susan led, and my team was part of), YouTube (which offered these movies to be streamed), Android (which offered Google Play where these movies could be bought), all had opinions on what this Action Ads product should be.

My team was caught in between. We worked heads-down for 3 months to get the product ready, and then were put in a holding pen to wait for leadership decisions. I was full of uncertainty on that summit day.

Susan noticed, and grabbed me for a walk. We had a long walk on the beach. I unloaded my frustration on the situation. Susan mostly listened, occasionally asked for clarification questions or my opinions on tradeoffs, but didn’t offer much of her own opinions. At the end, she told me “I’ll talk to Larry [Page] tomorrow”.

Susan then worked her magic to align with the entire L-team (Larry Page’s leadership team was called L-team). Lots of negotiations later, we got a launch approval, signed off by the entire L-team. It was a compromise product decision, best illustrated by the Search Engine Land’s article:

Google Play is featured first with a sort of enhanced listing that includes the brand icon and “Watch” call-to-action. An “Also available from” ad listing appears below the featured ad spot on several results. Amazon is the only streaming services included in the “Also available from” that we’ve spotted at this point. … Update: Hulu Plus is showing on some results.

This product decision wasn’t the ideal our team was hoping for, but it allowed us to launch to the public, and that put us through the moon.

This was Susan’s super power. In an environment where leadership is often defined as aggressively dictating the outcome, Susan demonstrated a different type of effective leadership. She brought humanity, she understood where people came from, and she communicated effectively to bring people into a common understanding and agreement, thus move forward. I learned from Susan what Humane Leadership is.

According to Google GenAI search result,

Humane leadership is a style of leadership that focuses on people, ethics, and culture. It's about putting people first, recognizing their value, and treating them with respect and dignity. Humane leaders are empathetic, compassionate, and authentic, and they listen to their team members' concerns and ideas. They create a culture of trust, transparency, and accountability, where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities and success is celebrated as a collective achievement.

RIP, Susan. We will remember your humane leadership.