January book: Powerful — building a culture of freedom and responsibility
by Patty McCord, former chief talent officer at Netflix for 14 years advocates radical honesty and transparency in the workplace, open feedback, and setting a clear vision shared by everyone in the company. “Powerful” is a story of why and how Netflix was building its, now famous, culture of freedom and responsibility. To understand what is this culture, in the words of Netflix team, just read this document. It describes what Patty and her team have built during a lot of years at Netflix. The book tells why and how. And it’s just impossible to write a short afterword. I will talk mostly about the feedback art as I think it is the best example of this radical honesty Patty talks about.
Shared vision
To achieve what business want, the vision of the product/company/service has to be shared by everyone in the team, top-down and backward. As Patty says, she should be able to stop anyone in the corridors of the office and ask “What is the vision of this company?” and she should hear almost word by word what top management would say in answer to the same question. This is the job of managers to clearly communicate the vision to their teams, so everyone understands it and can contribute to it fully.
The power of honesty
One of the most important insights to take from the business world is that it’s not cruel to tell people the truth respectfully and honestly. Part of being an adult is being able to hear the truth. As Patty says, the business owns this to their employees the moment they hired them.
Of course, it’s not easy to start practicing radical honestly in the company or team just because it’s the right thing to do. Netflix had to model honesty and only then it was picked up by the rest of the team. Patty emphasizes that if you want to start practicing radical honesty in your company, it should go top-down, starting at the business executive level, with no exceptions. Everyone should be able to give feedback to anyone in the company. Netflix leadership team started with the exercise “Stop — Continue—Start” during their meetings. Everyone could provide feedback to anyone in the room shaped in a “Stop doing — Continue doing — Start doing” message. This worked out. So that a system was created to send “Stop — Continue — Start” feedback to anyone in the company once a year, on annual feedback day.
It was an anonymous form until engineers started to sign it using a text message at the end of the form. This was a crucial moment. Engineers, who used to the idea that their code can be reviewed by everyone, and traced back to the author, rebelled against the system which lacked transparency. The Netflix management team was asking for openness and honesty and yet the tool was anonymous. Not knowing from whom feedback comes, you can’t put it into the context of the work they are doing, who their manager is, what kind of employee they are. Anonymous feedback lacks a lot of information crucial for a leadership team to make changes. A culture of freedom and responsibility can not be anonymous. Taking that into the account, Netflix management team has adapted the system and made it fully transparent to everyone in the team. “You only say things about fellow employees you say to their face.” — Netflix team.
Not to get it wrong, the annual feedback form was just one of the tools. Patty says that practicing feedback at the moment is the best business leader can do. As then it is within the context. And the most effective feedback is positive, catching people doing things right and encouraging them.
Another powerful and bold honest question from a book is the question business leaders must ask once in a while — “Are we limited by the team we have not being the team we should have?” Patty is saying that one of the biggest mistakes in building teams is assuming that the current team will be able to grow into responsibilities of the future. She gives the method of how to address this challenge. Business leaders should picture the most amazing team they could have brought together in 6 months from this day. Then they should think about what makes this team so amazing and capable of achieving great success. What strengths this team have, what culture is there, and does it make a difference? How people behave in the team? How do they work together? How do they solve problems? Is collaboration crucial or they work independently? Are there good leaders to help guide the team? When a business has answers to these questions, then they can look at their current team. Are there any differences? What has to be done to have that dream team in 6 months? Whom to bring in? Whom to let go? You are building a team, not raising a family.
Patty closes the book by talking about business being honest with employees — paying people what they worth to the business, supporting and engaging but not nursing, the art of saying goodbye. As mentioned before, Patty says that people should hear frequently how they are performing. Next to this, they should see if there is a place for their talent in the future. It’s not only about business picturing a dream team and checking in if there is a match with the current team. It’s also employees being able to see if they are a match or maybe they can become a better fit somewhere elsewhere. That’s why the vision of the business should be so bold clear for everyone. Once again, it’s about honesty at the core. Honesty that can be a foundation to a successful culture change.
I will leave you with this. Just please add this book to your reading list, it does worth it. It has so much more than I mentioned here. The next book for me is “No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention”, to complete the Netflix saga ;)
Do you have any interesting books in mind to add to my list? Thank you for staying with me until these words 🌸 Do good, be kind, think open-minded 🌸
