Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

by Patty McCord

For a time, Reed and I would meet with every ten new hires in a room and go through a PowerPoint, which was our starting point in creating the Culture Deck. We’d say, “This is your cheat sheet. This is what you should expect from one another and absolutely expect from your management.” Over time, we developed “new employee college.” For one whole day each quarter, every head of every department would make an hourlong presentation on the important issues and developments in their part of the business. The idea for the college actually came from Cindy Holland, who is now VP of content acquisition/original series. She and I were backstage watching a set of management presentations the executive team was giving to a group of investors. She realized that she was learning a great deal, and she turned to me and asked, “Why do we do all of this hard work for a bunch of strangers but don’t do it for ourselves?” So we rolled it out for everybody. Netflixers will recall with a kind of awe that taking in all the information at new employee college was like drinking from a fire hose. They heard detailed presentations that included the metrics and the deliverables of each department. This not only gave employees a deep understanding of our business but also introduced them to the heads of the different parts of the business. Better still, they could ask those people questions.