Below is a summary of the (desired) corporate culture of Netflix, a NASDAQ-listed company with close to 2’000 full-time employees. While some aspects of Netflix’s culture are relevant to many growing companies, others are probably specific to the Internet/IT sector (e.g. relative importance of creativity vs processes).
Overall, Netflix’s so-called “Freedom & Responsibility Culture” aims to support rapid innovation and excellent execution as well as effective team work of high-performance people by focusing on the following 7 aspects:
- Values
- Work with people who embody these nine values: Judgment. Communication. Impact. Curiosity. Innovation. Courage. Passion. Honesty. Selflessness. - High Performance
- The “Keeper Test” for Managers: “Which of my people would I fight hard to keep, if they told me they were leaving in two months for a similar job at a peer company?”
- Performance is more important than loyalty or hard work, but “brilliant jerks” are not tolerated if they threaten teamwork. - Freedom & Responsibility
- Responsible people thrive on freedom and are worthy of freedom.
- Employee freedom, instead of process focus, attracts and nourishes innovative people and allows the company to adapt to a changing environment.
- Good processes help talented people get more done. Therefore, increase talent density and minimize complexity/rules as the company grows.
- Example: Netflix policy for expensing, entertainment, gifts and travel = “Act in Netflix’s best interests” (5 words)
- However, as for “free speech”, there need to be exceptions to “freedom at work” (preventing irrevocable disaster, respecting moral and legal boundaries). - Context, not Control
- The best managers figure out how to get great outcomes by setting the appropriate context, rather than by trying to control their people.
- Exceptions: Emergencies, employees still learning in their roles or employees in wrong position. - Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled
- Strategies and goals are clear, specific, broadly understood.
- Team interactions are on strategies and goals rather than tactics. - Pay Top of Market
- “We endeavour to have only outstanding employees.”
- Three tests for “top of market” for a person: What could they get elsewhere? What would we pay for replacement? What would we pay to keep person?
- Bad Ideas: Linking pay to titles, caring too much about internal parity, giving everyone the same raise. - Promotions & Development
- Two necessary conditions for promotion: The job has to be big enough (to warrant a newly created position) and the person has to be a superstar in their current role.
- Develop people by giving them the opportunity to develop themselves, by surrounding them with stunning colleagues and giving them big challenges to work on.
Full presentation at: http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
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