Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

by Patty McCord

A company’s job isn’t to empower people; it’s to remind people that they walk in the door with power and to create the conditions for them to exercise it. Do that, and you will be astonished by the great work they will do for you.

Here is my radical proposition: a business leader’s job is to create great teams that do amazing work on time. That’s it. That’s the job of management.

I’ve often said that while I’ve removed the words “policy” and “procedure” from my vocabulary, I love discipline. My whole career I have gotten along well with engineers, because engineers are very, very disciplined.

It’s a matter of identifying the behaviors that you would like to see become consistent practices and then instilling the discipline of actually doing them.

We wanted open, clear, and constant communication about the work to be done and the challenges being faced, not only for a manager’s own team but for the company as a whole.

We wanted people to base their actions on what was best for the customer and the company, not on attempts to prove themselves right.

Creating a culture is an evolutionary process. Think of it as an experimental journey of discovery.

Great teams are made when every single member knows where they’re going and will do anything to get there. Great teams are not created with incentives, procedures, and perks. They are created by hiring talented people who are adults and want nothing more than to tackle a challenge, and then communicating to them, clearly and continuously, about what the challenge is.

Great teams are made when things are hard.

When I’m hiring, I look for someone who gets really excited about the problems we have to solve.

what people most want from work: to be able to come in and work with the right team of people— colleagues they trust and admire—and to focus like crazy on doing a great job together.

my experiences at fast-growth companies that successfully scaled showed me that the leanest processes possible and a strong culture of discipline were far superior, if for no other reason than their speed.

Excellent colleagues, a clear purpose, and well-understood deliverables: that’s the powerful combination.

Wouldn’t you want to be able to rely on their being proactive and staying ahead of the curve, because they know that they’ve got to help you steer the way?

The greatest team achievements are driven by all team members understanding the ultimate goal and being free to creatively problem-solve in order to get there. ▶ The strongest motivator is having great team members to work with, people who trust one another to do great work and to challenge one another. ▶ The most important job of managers is to ensure that all team members are such high performers who do great work and challenge one another. ▶ You should operate with the leanest possible set of policies, procedures, rules, and approvals, because most of these top-down mandates hamper speed and agility.

Constantly seek to refine your culture just as you constantly work to improve your products and services.

As you survey your company-wide policies and procedures, ask: What is the purpose of this policy or procedure? Does it achieve that result?

What percentage of its time does management spend on problem solving and team building?

Clear, continuous communication about the context of the work to be done.

The irony is that companies have invested so much in training programs of all sorts and spent so much time and effort to incentivize and measure performance, but they’ve failed to actually explain to all of their employees how their business runs.

“You will take out of this day what you put into it. If you don’t ask questions, you won’t get answers.”

Never underestimate the value of the ideas, and the questions, that employees at all levels may surprise you with.

It’s ironic how little information about strategy, operations, and results is generally shared with employees throughout companies.

If your people aren’t informed by you, there’s a good chance they’ll be misinformed by others.

I’ve found that the best perks and special time away from the grind are opportunities to understand the business and customers better.

Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier just to tell that person, “It makes me crazy when you do that, so please stop!” More important, though, is that honesty helps people to grow, and it flushes out the differences of opinion and alternative ideas that people so often keep to themselves.

We’d also discuss the importance of giving specific examples of the problematic behavior and proposing solutions.

The most important thing about giving feedback is that it must be about behavior, rather than some essentializing characterization of a person, like “You’re unfocused.”

Once the sources of comments were identified, feedback became more thoughtful and productive.

There is no problem with people having strong opinions. On the contrary, it’s important that they do and that they argue for them vigorously. However, people’s opinions should always be fact based.

We set a standard at Netflix that people should develop their opinions by probing into facts and by listening with an open mind to fact-based arguments they didn’t agree with.

Nothing could hone those skills better than this kind of open, vigorous debate. It also develops another of the core competencies we looked for: courage. People are emboldened to speak up when they see that their views will be heard and they can really make a difference.

Can you establish a regular forum for the presentation of arguments about key decisions and the best ways to solve problems your team is working on?

“You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

He had said he needed 150 new people, so I asked, “Are you sure you don’t want seventy-five people who you pay twice as much because they have twice as much experience and can be higher performers?”

In discussing this, we decided to use the metaphor that the company was like a sports team, not a family. Just as great sports teams are constantly scouting for new players and culling others from their lineups, our team leaders would need to continually look for talent and reconfigure team makeup.

At Netflix we encouraged people to take charge of their own growth, availing themselves of the rich opportunities we afforded them to learn from stellar colleagues and managers and making their own way, whether that meant rising within the company or seizing a great opportunity elsewhere.

To stay agile and move at the speed of change, hire the people you need for the future now.

On a regular basis, take the time to envision what your business must look like six months from now in order to be high-performing. Make a movie of it in your head, imagining how people are working and the tools and skills they have. Then start immediately making the changes necessary to create that future.

You’re building a team, not raising a family.

Some members of your team may simply not be able to grow into high performers for the future you’re heading to.

Have you systematically assessed the skills of all members of your team against the capabilities you will need in six months to a year?

Second, for every job, we tried to hire a person who would be a great fit, not just adequate.

He wrote a great piece for First Round Review about his specific tactics for hiring great people, “This Is How Coursera Competes Against Google and Facebook for the Best Talent,” which I highly recommend.

to stay limber, always innovating and growing, largely because they are always proactively bringing in the new talent they need. The best employees are always looking for challenging new opportunities, and though they are usually intensely loyal, many of them will eventually seek those opportunities elsewhere.

Our goal was for every single person who came in for an interview to walk away wanting the job, even if we hated them. We wanted them to think, Wow, that was an incredible experience. It was efficient, it was effective, it was on time, the questions were relevant, people were smart, and I was treated with dignity.

The interview and hiring process gives a powerful first impression about how your company operates, for good and for bad.

Retention is not a good measure of team-building success; having a great person in every single position on the team is the best measure.

Bonuses, stock options, high salaries, and even a clear path to promotion are not the strongest draw for high performers. The opportunity to work with teams of other high performers whom they’ll learn from and find it exhilarating to work with is by far the most powerful lure.

We decided that we didn’t want to use a system where people had to leave to get paid what they were worth.