Culture deck, a company manifesto, from Netflix is sometimes regarded as the most important document ever to come out of the Silicon Valley. There is a new version on their website, but I like the former power point slide version better. You can take a look at the slides here.
Nothing so special, but probably not fulfilled in most jobs.
Main Messages are:
- Behaviours and skills of employees should be valued based on:
- Judgment; Communication; Impact; Curiosity; Innovation; Courage; Passion; Honesty; Selflessness
- High Performance
- Keeper Test: which people would you keep in your team if they told you they were leaving for a similar job
- Team work is central: be honest; be loyal; but hardwork is not relevent (we care more about the accomplishment rather than the effort); briliant jerks may not be acceptable if the cannot hold the values and work as a team
- Freedom & Responsibility
- Don't rely on rules to manage chaos due to growing company size.
- Increase talent density and minimize complexity growth so that you do not have to face the chaos. To do this, creativity and self-discipline, freedom and responsibility is central.
- Not all rules are bad. Those to prevent irrevocable disaster and moral, ethical, legal issues are necessary.
- Focus on rapid recovery when an error occurs.
- Do not Control. Provide Context
- When you are tempted to "control" your people, ask yourself what context you could set instead.
- Control can only be acceptable in emergency, learning period and when the wrong person is sitting at the role.
- Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled
- Pay Top of Market
- No centrally administered raise pool each year. Top of market comensation is re-established each year
- At annual compensation review, the manager has to answer: what could the person get elsewhere?; what would we pay for replacement?; what would we pay to keep that person?
- Promotions & Development
- To get promoted: the job has to be big enough; and the person has to be a superstar in current role
- If a manager would promote to prevent an employee from leaving, the manager should promote now instead of waiting
