Lenny Rachitsky recently interviewed Elizabeth Stone – CTO of Netflix. It was a great discussion about how very high performing teams at Netflix work and an eye opening level of information about how Netflix’s unique culture is operationalized. It is also a great lesson about “How to succeed at work”. Here are some of the tidbits
- On Elizabeth’s background in economics and datascience and how it helped her professionally.
- Understanding incentives : How to clarify priorities or motivate company or define problems leadership wants to solve. Externally – understanding how consumers perceive about Netflix or what kind of competition is Netflix up against. Comparison between behaviors of rational intelligent people vs same people when provided certain incentives.
- Thinking about unintended consequences – cause and effect
- Secret behind Elizabeth’s meteoric rise in corporate ladder and advice to people on how to be successful.
- Dedication to work – not about long working hours. More about excellence and giving your best.
- Enjoy the work
- Do the best work – not about ambition but more so for betterment of team and company
- Build partnerships inside and across teams
- Set others up for success
- Communicate well – especially to both technical as well as non-technical audience and help bridge the gap of communication between both.
- Observe and learn from others.
- How can managers help people who report to them into leveling up to the high bar.
- Example setting
- Set expectations about high bar
- Provide specific feedback on the gap (in private)
- Help fill the gap
- How can people avoid long hours and burnout but still meet high bar
- Make sure the objective for a deliverable is clear. Manager should be able to help set clear expectations around the objective of deliverables.
- According to Lenny, 3 important elements of netflix culture
- Very high talent density with focus on high performers
- Radical candor – being very direct
- Giving people freedom and responsibility
- How is the mental model about the keeper’s test operationalized?
- Managers at Netflix regularly ask themselves about people on their team – “Am I willing to do everything in my power to keep my employees”
- Employees in team should be able to approach managers and ask – “Am I meeting your expectations or am I meeting your keepers test. What’s going well or what’s not going well”
- A formal keepers test helps create a lightness around a very heavy and loaded conversation regarding employee performance and expectations.
- How can companies hire best talent as Netflix does
- Pay top dollar
- However, do not bind employees in golden handcuffs.
- Figure out if the person is going to help company identify how to solve a problem or solve current problems more efficiently.
- Hire people with newer perspective
- Hire people who uplevel the current employees. Raise the bar for whole team.
- Things other companies should not do what Netflix is able to do because of unique culture and high talent density
- Freedom and responsibility aspect of netflix culture. Netflix has very high level of freedom for employees to figure out a way to solve a particular problem. Other companies may not have that luxury and may want to be more prescriptive about method and processes. “Lack of process and prescriptiveness at netflix hinges on great people at netflix who are smart but have even better judgement”