NetflixCulture
Freedom and responsibility.
98% Match2009F&R125 slides, now 11
The culture deck that rewired Silicon Valley, cut to its best eleven.
01 / Values are what we value
Values are who you hire, promote, and let go.
Not the words carved in the lobby.
Carved in a lobby, circa 2001
- Integrity
- Communication
- Respect
- Excellence
Enron's values.
02 / What we value
We hire, pay, promote, and let go on nine behaviors.
Top 9 in Culture Today
- 1 JudgmentWise calls in ambiguity
- 2 CommunicationConcise, and listens
- 3 ImpactGreat work, a lot of it
- 4 CuriosityLearns fast, eagerly
- 5 InnovationNew ideas that prove useful
- 6 CourageSays what they think
- 7 PassionInspires with excellence
- 8 HonestyKnown for candor
- 9 SelflessnessBest for Netflix first
03 / High performance
Would you fight to keep them?
If they said they were leaving for a peer company, would you fight hard to keep them? That is the Keeper Test.
Who's on your team?
98% Keeper match
Keep
Fight hard to keep them, and pay them top of market.
04 / A team, not a family
Adequate performance gets a generous severance.
Like a pro sports team, not a kids' league: hire, develop, and cut smartly, so there's a star in every position.
05 / Freedom and responsibility
Most companies grow rules. We grow talent.
Keep talent density ahead of complexity and you never need the process.
- Netflix talent density
- Business complexity
- Most companies: rules fill the gap
06 / No vacation policy
Our vacation policy? There isn't one.
Expenses, travel, and gifts got five words: act in Netflix's best interest.
Vacation_Policy_v4.docx
Vacation policy and tracking
There is no policy or tracking.
There's no clothing policy either. Nobody has come to work naked lately.
07 / How we lead
Lead with context, not control.
When someone makes a dumb call, don't blame them. Ask what context you failed to set.
Top-down calls, approvals, committees. Every decision waits in line.Everyone sees the strategy and the stakes, and decides for themselves.
08 / How teams work
Highly aligned, loosely coupled.
- Aligned on the what
- Goals and strategy are clear, specific, and shared.
- Loose on the how
- Few cross-team meetings. Trust on tactics, no approvals.
09 / Pay top of market
In creative work, the best are 10x the average.
So one outstanding person gets more done, and costs less, than two adequate ones.
Procedural work
Creative work
Freedom and responsibility
Hire stars. Then get out of the way.
"Maybe the most important document ever to come out of the Valley."Sheryl Sandberg, as widely quoted