Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

by Patty McCord

The good news is that we found that inculcating a core set of behaviors in people, then giving them the latitude to practice those behaviors—well, actually, demanding that they practice them—makes teams astonishingly energized and proactive. Such teams are the best drivers to get you where you need to go.

One of the pillars of the Netflix culture is radical honesty,

the quickening pace of disruption demanded the development of agile, lean, and customer-centric methods.

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.

be disciplined about a fundamental set of behaviors.

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 people to have strong, fact-based opinions and to debate them avidly and test them rigorously.

We wanted people to base their actions on what was best for the customer and the company, not on attempts to prove themselves right. • We wanted hiring managers to take the lead in preparing their teams for the future by making sure they had high performers with the right skills in every position.

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.

When I consult to start-ups, I’m most excited about working with those who’ve found that their venture money is starting to dry up and they’re facing really tough challenges; it’s tackling those that makes truly great teams. Great teams are made when things are hard. Great teams are made when you have to dig deep.

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“I feel sometimes like I’m going to lose a limb doing this, but it will be worth it because I’m doing something important and adding something to the world, and that is what drives people.”

“If we did that,” I asked him, “how would you know it was great?” He said, “Oh, I’d want to come to work every day and solve these problems with these people.”

leanest processes possible and a strong culture of discipline

Our first big realization was that the remaining people were the highest performers, and it taught us that the best thing you can do for employees is hire only high performers to work alongside them.

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

We began to systematically explore how we could free people up to do their best work while also providing the right amount of guidance and feedback to keep teams on track yet able to dramatically change course if necessary.

We were huge fans of A/B testing, rigorous experimentation, and open debate about what was right for the product.

People need to see the view from the C suite in order to feel truly connected to the problem solving that must be done at all levels and on all teams,

but they’ve failed to actually explain to all of their employees how their business runs.

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

Part of being an adult is being able hear the truth. And the corollary is that you owe the adults you hire the truth. That is actually what they want most from you.

the satisfaction of being right can be very dangerous. I was a huge fan of that satisfaction. I used to love being right.

I found myself wondering how I could have made a better argument.

ten-year period that was an astonishing 270 percent higher than that of companies that didn’t. When People

My point was that if you rely on anonymous surveys and prescribed questions, you will not get quality information.

If you want to know what people are thinking, there is no good replacement for simply asking them, best of all face to face. That company consisted of seventy employees. They should have simply broken people into seven groups of ten and asked people to share their thoughts.

Model openly admitting when you are wrong. In addition, talk about what went into your decisions and where you went wrong. That encourages employees to share ideas and opposing views with you, even if they directly contradict your position.

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. Insisting that decision making be fact driven doesn’t detract from the importance of opinions.

data informed rather than data driven.

One of the biggest mistakes is fixating on metrics that don’t matter.

And the really brilliant twist was that each one argued the other’s side. To prep for that, they really had to get into the other person’s skin.

“The downside of experts is that they are all too aware of the current constraints. Someone with fresh eyes can sometimes find their way around constraints, almost out of ignorance.”

One of best ways of ensuring that debates adhere to these standards, and stay civil, is to stage them in front of a group.

This is a way to show people what excellence is, what a good argument looks like, and what presenting a strong case requires.

In the Culture Deck we wrote that one of the core qualities we looked for in those we hired and promoted was good judgment, defined, in essence, as the ability to make good decisions in ambiguous conditions, to dig deeply into the causes of problems, and to think strategically and articulate that thinking.

“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?”

would go back to people’s projections and find that they had requested the budget for 10 or 15 percent more hires than they ended up making.

Building the muscle to hire great people is a huge competitive advantage.

When I’m consulting to start-up founders, I often have to tell them that many of their people aren’t going to be competent in the new world order they’re heading into as they scale. Usually they respond, “But I like them and they work hard and they’re really great!” But the questions are: Can they do the job at scale? Are you going to need them to do tomorrow the same job they’re doing now? What’s your plan for them?

more important, think about how things are being done differently from the way they are currently done.

“Okay, in order for those different things to be happening, what would people need to know how to do?”

An essential question is, do you have enough capacity builders? By which I mean people who know how to build a great team.

The basic problem is that most people start with the team they have, thinking, We’ll do more, and we’ll be amazing. The thing is, if you start with the team you have, sure you can do more, but it won’t necessarily be amazing.

In discussing this, we decided to use the metaphor that the company was like a sports team, not a family.

We had a rule of thumb for whether to promote from within or bring in a top performer from outside: did the job to be done require expertise that no one inside had, or was the work in an area that we were ourselves at the forefront of innovating?

When I consult to company leaders and their team managers, probably the most difficult advice for them to accept is that they don’t owe their people anything more than ensuring that the company is making a great product that serves the customer well and on time.

But I’ve come to believe such thinking is outmoded and isn’t even the best approach for employees.

So often companies give people half of a job they need done, because the person can’t do the whole job. I realized that we just couldn’t afford to do that.

I believe the best advice for all working people today is to stay limber, to keep learning new skills and considering new opportunities, regularly taking on new challenges so that work stays fresh and stretches them.

The belief part is crucial, because all start-ups are crazy ideas. If they were logical, somebody else would be doing them.