Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

by Patty McCord

People Don’t Want to Be Entertained at Work; They Want to Learn

Subscription is a numbers race, and revenue occurs only over time after an up-front investment. I appreciated what a very big bet it was. We’d have to spend considerable money to sign up a first group of subscribers, which was an investment in getting more customers, and those new customers would allow us to pay for the next expansion. This is the fundamental Netflix model; pay up front for benefits in future years.

I can’t stand the term “millennials,” and the ones I know hate the name tag too. We should simply think of them as people early in their careers. Yes, we should teach them more, but we should teach them more about how business works.

How could they not? They’re just out of school. They’re in that spongy, want-to-learn-everything phase of life. They’re going to eat up whatever you feed them. If it’s just snacks, that’s all they’re going to eat. But if you start feeding their brains the real meat of business, you’ll be amazed by how engaged they are

Because you are absolutely not always going to be right, and the satisfaction of being right can be very dangerous.

One of the best ways to get all the cards on the table is to help people see that those who speak up live to see another day.

about admiting being wrong

People can handle being told the truth, about both the business and their performance. The truth is not only what they need but also what they intensely want.

Telling the truth about perceived problems, in a timely fashion and face to face, is the single most effective way to solve problems.

Practicing radical honesty diffuses tensions and discourages backstabbing; it builds ...

There’s a dangerous fallacy that data constitutes the facts you need to know to run your business. Hard data is absolutely vital, of course, but you also need qualitative insight and well-formulated opinions,

Another big mistake made with metrics is thinking that they’re fixed. They must be fluid; they must be continuously revisited and questioned.

You’ve got to hire now the team you wish to have in the future.

Don’t Expect That Your Current Team Can Be Your Team for Tomorrow

This is an especially acute problem for start-ups, because founders often feel a strong sense of loyalty to their early team.

An essential question is, do you have enough capacity builders? By which I mean people who know how to build a great team. Bringing in great capacity builders was one of my main missions at Netflix.

Training well and spotting growth potential are vital skills for team leaders.

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

If you are not great at hiring high-talent people, then you cannot truly be comfortable letting good people go. You will never be good at one without the other and will never be good at building a high-performance team.”

True and abiding happiness in work comes from being deeply engaged in solving a problem with talented people you know are also deeply engaged in solving it, and from knowing that the customer loves the product or service you all have worked so hard to make.

But working with amazing people and the opportunity to grow were more important to me than having an explicit promise of a path for promotion.”

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. I would tell people, “Even if this person isn’t the right fit, we might love their next-door neighbor.”

“Well then start expecting—and demanding—that they do!” And hire people who are smart. If you hire smart people and you insist that they be businesspeople, and you include them in running the business, then they’ll act like businesspeople.

Making a great hire is not about bringing in an “A player”; it’s about finding a great match for your needs. Someone who is a high performer for one team may not be for another team.

One thing I absolutely advise is making sure your HR people are your partners; you must stress to them that you want them to be true business-building partners.