Treat Employees like Allies
Following are some of the highlights from the book “Masters of Scale” by ‘Reid Hoffman’ on building company culture. Reid Hoffman quotes examples from Netflix CEO — Reed Hastings. Before Reed founded ‘Netflix’, he was a programmer and had a company called ‘Pure Software ‘.
Some learnings from Reed’s initial days
- Not trusting employee’s abilities to problem-solve on their own, but trying to solve problems for them
- Creating granular process for everything dumbs down the intellectual capacity of the team.
In my opinion, creating a team who are good at only following processes affects ‘think for themselves’ attitude. Culture is the essential thing that sets the context for the organization and ensures the mission is understood by everyone and built by everyone.
To avoid the pitfalls that Reed observed in his first company, he took a different approach for team formation for Netflix. His driving principle on hiring was hire first principle thinkers.
‘First-principle’ thinking is the idea that breaking down a problem to its most basic assumptions or question those assumptions and recreate them from ground up.
To hire the best minds, he created something called “Culture Deck”. It consisted of 100 slides describing what Netflix stands for, who it seeks to hire, and what to expect upon going to work there.
One stand-out factor for me from the deck is that “Managers should treat employees like allies trying to accomplish a mutually beneficial mission, rather than trying to pretend that their company is a family”.
And we cannot directly replicate what’s followed in Netflix. Every company & team is unique. Question is on leaders & managers — whether you want people who should be told what to do or need a first principle thinker in the team.
Such culture code is applicable for teams that are getting newly formed. It’s good to start thinking intentionally at the start itself. It becomes difficult to course correct at a later stage when there are ‘political retaliation or verbal abuse ‘culture gets formed.
Reid Hoffman quotes “If you have a C culture, you can revise it to B+. But a C culture will never become an A culture. The only way you get an A company culture is by creating it at the beginning and preserving it.
And getting the culture right will be dependant on who we hire. Different companies & teams have different ideals. We need to be clear on company’s culture and whom do we want to hire.
- Do we need a free thinker or a person who follows direction?
- Do we need ‘I’ people or a ‘We ‘people?
- Diplomatic vs People who are direct?
Former Google CEO Eric Schimdt says winning combination for him is persistence & curiosity. Another important aspect is the transformation thing. As our teams grow, we need to be wary of the transition that’s needed at every level. Moving from ‘Jack of all trades ‘majority to ‘Specialization ‘, managers (who make contributors productive) to experienced executives (who can lead massive teams ).
In my opinion, it’s not good to hire a bunch of think-alike or ignoring someone just because they are intellectually better than us. Reid quotes that “If your company is dominated by one type of person, your collective blind spots will add up to tunnel vision.”
“If you fool proof your culture, you will have a culture of fools “
