Paths To Success: Five Career Lessons To Learn From Larry Page

When you want to find information on the Internet, chances are that you head to Google, the world’s most popular search engine. Google is the brainchild of Larry Page, who first conceived of the idea when he was a student at Stanford. Here are five career lessons that you can learn from Page’s staggering success.

Think outside of the box.

Page credits much of his success to his creative philosophy towards work. Page’s creativity stems from his childhood attending a Montessori school, an alternative education program that focuses on self-directed study. He is not afraid to think outside of the box, which is the first step towards innovation.

Learn from the mistakes of others.

Learning from another person’s mistakes will prevent you from making missteps in your own career. When Page was 12, he read a Nikola Tesla biography and cried when the inventor died in debt and obscurity. Tesla’s story taught Page that it is not enough to create innovative technology; you must also have the business sense to spread your ideas.

Network with your college classmates.

While Page was at Stanford for his Ph.D, he met and bonded with Google co-founder Sergey Brin over their shared love of computer science. They then began collaborating on an early predecessor to Google called BackRub, demonstrating the benefits of networking with your college classmates.

Write down your guiding work principles.

Page considers management to be one of his weaknesses because he dislikes dealing with people. Therefore, to be an effective CEO, he wrote down a list of management rules to guide himself. Take a cue from him and write down your own work principles for easy reference.

Be willing to listen to everyone.

One of Page’s management rules is to listen to everyone’s ideas, including those that come from junior employees. He avoids shutting down a person’s ideas, but instead recognizes that good ideas can come from anyone.

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