Friday, February 1, 2013

Netflix's freedom & responsibility culture

I stumbled upon Reed Hastings' guide on Netflix's culture guideline.  128 slides of PowerPoint presentation outlines how Hastings has been running Netflix and kind of culture that he has been promoting internally.

It's an interesting look at how Netflix hires, measures and promotes their employees.






One thing that caught me particularly was how freedom and responsibility are stressed.  Hastings points out that hiring and maintaining the best talents who can act as owners can help him run Netflix as small company with as small number of rules as possible.  While keeping the complexities caused by bureaucracy and many product lines in check, he's attracting and retaining highly motivated owner employees who can make autonomous decisions to get their jobs done.

Hastings is not the first one to emphasize the importance of hiring employees who can act as business owners.  Many startup founders and investors have put their exclamation marks next to hiring's critical role in building a successful startup.

But what was refreshing to see was that Hastings' belief that he could stay ahead of complexity curve by hiring and promoting the right people to stay small and nimble organizationally.

Is your organization built to promote freedom and responsibility?  Is your team made of "stunning" people?  How many co-workers do you see acting as the owners?

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