As we wrote in the beginning, what is special about Netflix is how much we: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, shows us the way: 1 We mean the team of your dreams, not the 1992 men’s USA Olympic basketball team. We pride ourselves on how few, not how many, decisions senior management makes. Everyone knows each other, and everyone picks up the trash. The rule is very simple… “would you be willing to fight for this employee if he or she decided to leave the company?“. 3 Mostly for our salaried employees; there are many limitations on this for our hourly employees due to legal requirements. Organizational Tenet: Operate As A Team, Not A Family Don’t get the wrong impression, Netflix doesn’t coddle their employees. Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility 2. A year ago I attended Certified Agile Leadership (CAL1) training. Some processes are about increased productivity, rather than error avoidance, and we like processes that help us get more done. We believe that people thrive on being trusted, on freedom, and on being able to make a difference. And such important figures as Sheryl Sanberg, COO of Facebook, have confirmed that it is probably one of the most important postulates that will define the course of human resources in companies of this type. Our leaders make sure they set good examples by taking vacations, often coming back with fresh ideas, and encourage the rest of the team to do the same. It’s OK to say to your manager, “I know you disagree, but I’m going to do X because I think it is a better solution. In general, freedom and rapid recovery is better than trying to prevent error. This kind of organization is very specialized and well adapted to its business model. The company offers its employees generous benefits like unlimited holidays and an expense policy that simply requires people to “act in Netflix’s best interests”. A sports team with a losing record still pays top of personal market for the players they hope will get them back into a winning position. As the informal, smooth-running organization starts to break down, pockets of chaos emerge, and the general outcry is to “grow up” and add traditional management and process to reduce the chaos. In 2013, its shares tripled in value and the company won three Emmy awards. When the captain of any particular decision is reasonably confident of the right bet for us to take, they decide and we take that bet. I was fascinated to learn … To get there, we have an amazing and unusual employee culture. 2 We generally offer a minimum of four months of full pay as a severance package, giving our ex-teammates time to find a new company. We strive to have calm confidence, and yet yearn to improve. As preparation for the course, we were to prepare a case study of a few suggested companies, such as Netflix, which has a high-performance culture. We want to entertain the world. Why does hiring freelancers have a positive impact on society? We work hard to get people to give each other professional, constructive feedback - up, down and across the organization - on a continual basis. 5 Workana tools that clients like the most, Six years and more than a million users: Workana’s story. At Netflix, on the other hand, the dynamics has more to do with forming highly efficient workgroups that once they meet their objective they dissolve, join into new groups and dissolve again. Small decisions may be shared just by email, larger ones will merit a memo with discussion of the various positions, and why the captain made such a decision. The emphasis is on results and people, not processes. While it’s not surprising that 70% of employees on Glassdoor would recommend working at Netflix to a friend, there’s more to their success than unlimited holidays. But unlike the micro-manager, the goal of knowing those details is not to change certain small decisions, but to learn how to adjust context so more decisions are made well. We also have to foster collaboration, embrace a diversity of viewpoints, support information sharing, and discourage politics. We don’t wait for consensus, nor do we drive to rapid, uninformed decision making. We believe we will learn faster and be better if we can make giving and receiving feedback less stressful and a more normal part of work life. And we discuss generally how we can do better in the future. On the other hand, if the company does well, our broadly distributed stock options become quite valuable. To avoid the rigidity of over-specialization, and avoid the chaos of growth, while retaining freedom, we work to have as simple a business as we can given our growth ambitions, and to keep employee excellence rising. Being on a dream team is not right for everyone, and that is OK. At Netflix, you learn a lot working on hard problems with amazing colleagues, and what you learn increases your market value. If you have never tried it, or if you think it is time to enlarge your structure without adding fixed costs, we invite you to click here and learn more about Workana. There are some leaks, but the value of highly-informed employees is well worth it. They would be disappointed if given a severance package, but lots of mutual warmth and respect. Its employees must become familiar with an organizational culture in which they clearly postulate that they are a team, not a family or a “recreational kindergarten”. Subscribe to the Workana newsletter and keep updated, © 2012 - 2019 | Workana LLC - Todos los derechos reservados. We know this level of candor and feedback can be difficult for new hires and people in different parts of the world where direct feedback is uncommon. In this way, they naturally establish how they interpret the company’s present and what future they aspire to. Each leader's role is to teach, to set context, and to be highly informed of what is actually happening. There are a few important exceptions to our anti-rules pro-freedom philosophy. If we succeed, there is more laughter, more empathy, and more joy. Check out our exclusive remote freelance talent service for companies. Patty McCord was Netflix’s Chief Talent Officer from 1998 to 2012. Our policy for travel, entertainment, gifts, and other expenses is 5 words long: “act in Netflix’s best interest.”. We trust our teams to do what they think is best for Netflix — giving them lots of freedom, power, and information in support of their decisions. Eight years ago, we first published a slide presentation that outlines our employee culture at Netflix, which has since been viewed millions of times. Most companies seek to consolidate a stable work team. New employees often comment in their first few months that they are surprised at how accurate this culture description is to the actual culture they experience. Those who do not pass the keeper test (i.e. Getting cut from our team is very disappointing, but there is no shame. Our version of the great workplace is a dream team in pursuit of ambitious common goals, for which we spend heavily. As with any rapid growth, company culture becomes an increasingly hot topic. “Use good judgment” is our core precept. 2. The back and forth of discussion can clarify the different views, and concise writing of the core issues helps people reflect on what is the wise course, as well as making it easy to share your views widely. In describing selflessness we say “You make time to help colleagues. Its employees must become familiar with an, with its policy of responsibility and freedom has caused a stir among Silicon Valley companies, Being fired from this company doesn’t mean that an employee is bad, it just means that he or she isn’t a spectacular employee. We actively help people learn how to do this at Netflix through coaching and modeling the behaviors we want to see in every employee. Others take it to new extremes, proudly calling themselves nano-managers. Click here to learn more and schedule a a free call. At Workana, as at Netflix, we are convinced that the foundation of a great company is its culture. These organizations didn’t start that way, but the python of process squeezed harder every time something went wrong. The company offers its employees generous benefits like unlimited holidays and an expense policy that simply requires people to “act in Netflix’s best interests”. Netflix Inc.’s corporate culture is based on a core philosophy that prioritizes people. But those are the exceptions, and we avoid over-correcting. In most situations, both social and work, those who consistently say what they really think about people are quickly isolated and banished. Some people, however, value job security and stability over performance, and don’t like our culture. The corporation addresses the needs of its human resources to ensure that its online business processes are effective and profitable. We have a regular cadence of many types of meetings; we start and end on time, and have well-prepared agendas. Join our community and get ready for a new world of work. Workana is the largest freelance hiring platform in Latin America. The market for talent is what it is. Organisational Structure of Netflix Netflix has a functional organizational structure, which is segmented by the aims of its functions themselves, rather than by customer segments or regions. Excellent employees make everything else go smoothly” − Paty McCord, Manager of Talent Education at Netflix. Although the rise of its international visibility is relatively recent, Netflix has been operating since 1997. When shaping their culture, Netflix not only sought to build a strong company culture, but they defined the culture in a way that would motivate high performance at the same time. One description of the espoused Netflix organizational culture is stated in Slide 6 of the slide deck Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility that you viewed in Module One. In fact, more than half of our employees work under this modality and this has innumerable benefits. Harassment of employees or trading on insider information are zero tolerance issues, for example. Leaders demonstrate that we are all fallible and open to feedback. Netflix maintains its ability to change through its organizational culture concept – freedom and responsibility. Some information security issues, such as keeping our members’ payment information safe, have strict controls around access. But unlike many, they are also committed to keeping only the best talent, so if an employee’s skills or talents are no longer growing the company, the company lets them go. The lesson is you don’t need policies for everything. They thrive on excellence and candor and change. No matter how honest, though, we treat people with respect. In addition, Netflix’s work policies are specifically oriented to avoid the most common vices that reduce the, We also believe that a strong and consistent organizational culture can be formed with, Technology: the best ally to optimize meetings with your team of freelancers. The company’s culture is “a reflection of the executives there,” said Dennis Passovoy, a lecturer at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin who has taught Netflix as a case study. Our big threat over time is lack of innovation, so we should be relatively error tolerant. We have no bell curves or rankings or quotas such as “cut the bottom 10% every year.” That would be detrimental to fostering collaboration, and is a simplistic, rules-based approach we would never support. Each employee is expected to seek advice and perspective as appropriate. Company leaders must be able to make decisions that anticipate at least six months into the future and push the limits of their productivity. In addition to a very clear value proposition, Netflix has opted for a unique organizational culture and talent approach. Similarly, we ask employees to stick with Netflix through any short term dips. Later, if significant new information becomes available, it is fine to ask the captain to revisit the topic. In companies like Google, which take pride in being a “big family”, we see how the lack of concise criteria and the subjectivity of hierarchical relationships cause unusual delays in projects that should be simple. Netflix Inc.’s organizational structure is hierarchical but with modifications that account for business flexibility and responsiveness to global market changes. Hastings, co-founder and co-CEO of Netflix, and Meyer, a professor at the business school INSEAD and author of The Culture Map, take turns narrating this book about how Netflix’s unique organizational culture evolved and how it works. We avoid committees making decisions because that would slow us down, and diffuse responsibility and accountability. In hiring the best employees prevention just sounds so good, netflix organizational culture if it is one our! Its online business processes are about increased productivity, rather than error,... 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