The most recent testament to the power of this approach is the speed with which Netflix has expanded its original programming while also achieving popular and critical success. Ted Sarandos, head of content since the earliest days, told me that freeing high performers from constraints has been vital to building up the original-content business so rapidly. The team has doubled their creation of new content every year, and when we talked, they were producing thirty scripted series and had twelve feature films, fifty-five documentary projects, fifty-one stand-up comedy shows, and forty-five children’s shows in production. On top of that, they had just gone global, expanding to thirteen countries at once. What’s so amazing is not only the speed with which the team has created so much content but also the diversity of types of content. Ted’s group has been able to cater to all sorts of tastes, with offerings ranging from highbrow series like The Crown to the wildly crowd-pleasing but hardly critically acclaimed Fuller House. The team has even entered the fray of unscripted series, such as with Ultimate Beastmaster, a competition show with contestants from six different countries, each speaking their own language.
Ted says that his core approach has been asking his team to focus on finding the best creative talent with the skills to execute, and then giving those creators the freedom to realize their vision. That has been the greatest differentiator between Netflix and the Hollywood studios, he says, allowing his team to compete so effectively for top creative talent and to launch such breakthrough shows. Creators love that his team doesn’t micromanage the production process, barraging them with notes. Ted’s group also doesn’t use the traditional pilot system, instead green-lighting creators to produce a full season of episodes. They put their confidence in people who’ve proven they can produce, and hand in hand with the freedom those people are given is the understanding that it’s they who are accountable for the quality of shows. They have risen to the occasion. By contrast, the traditional Hollywood way has been creation by committee, with accountability spread too thin.
Ted told me that being steeped in the Netflix culture also allowed him to feel comfortable freeing his team from constraints they might have imposed on themselves. For example, they broke their own model for bringing in new shows with only their third original series. Because they weren’t using pilot testing, they had decided to bring in only series that already had very well-developed scripts and the acting talent lined up. But then Jenji Kohan, the creator of the Showtime series Weeds, proposed Orange Is the New Black before any scripts were written. Ted and his team were so impressed by her vision for the show and had such confidence based on her track record with Weeds that they very shrewdly threw their rule out.
• • •
Ask yourself: If you were to treat managing people the way you treat managing product, wouldn’t you also want to approach the entire system differently? If you started not with best practices but with what it takes to deliver a fabulous end product to your customers, what system would you invent? Wouldn’t you want your people to be more agile? Wouldn’t you want to be able to rely on their being proactive and staying ahead of the curve, because they know that they’ve got to help you steer the way? Wouldn’t you rather be devoting the full measure of your time and attention to making sure they have the resources and information they need to do that for you and to discussing challenges with them, getting their best input and their pushback, rather than processing forms and approvals and policing them?
I’m not at all saying that teams don’t need direction setting and coaching. They do. But the ways in which they’re given direction and feedback are often far from optimal. At the same time we were experimenting at Netflix with eliminating processes, we were also experimenting with better ways of communicating where the company was heading, what goals to be driving toward, and how people were performing.
The Greatest Motivation Is Contributing to Success 13
IN BRIEF
▶ The greatest team achievements are driven by all team members understanding the ultimate goal and being free to creatively problem-solve in order to get there.
▶ The strongest motivator is having great team members to work with, people who trust one another to do great work and to challenge one another.
▶ The most important job of managers is to ensure that all team members are such high performers who do great work and challenge one another.
▶ You should operate with the leanest possible set of policies, procedures, rules, and approvals, because most of these top-down mandates hamper speed and agility.
▶ Discover how lean you can go by steadily experimenting. If it turns out a policy or procedure was needed, reinstate it. Constantly seek to refine your culture just as you constantly work to improve your products and services.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
• As you survey your company-wide policies and procedures, ask: What is the purpose of this policy or procedure? Does it achieve that result?
• Are there any approval mechanisms you can eliminate?
• What percentage of its time does management spend on problem solving and team building?
• Have you done a cost-benefit analysis of the incentives and perks you offer employees?
• Could you replace approvals and permissions with analysis of spending patterns and a focus on accuracy and predictability?
• Is your decision-making system clear and communicated widely?
CHAPTER TWO
Every Single Employee Should Understand the Business
| Communicate Constantly About the Challenge |
When I advise doing away with as many procedures and approvals as possible, I am inevitably asked, “But how? How can that be possible? What takes the place of rules, processes, approvals, bureaucracy, and permissions?” The answer: Clear, continuous communication about the context of the work to be done. Telling people, “Here’s exactly where we are, and here’s what we’re trying to accomplish.” The more time managers spend communicating and elaborating and being transparent about the job to be done, about the challenges the business is facing and the larger competitive context, the less important policies, approvals, and incentives are.
Even if you’re not at liberty to do away with policies, procedures, bonuses, and formal annual reviews, you can implement much clearer, more open, honest, and continuous communication about the business challenges and how employees are meeting them. This facilitates much more timely improvements in performance as well as more limber adjustments of goals. It also encourages people to ask questions and share ideas, which can lead to extremely valuable insights about how to improve your product, your service to your customers, and the business itself. I came to appreciate how important it is for every single employee to truly understand the business when I myself began to learn deeply about the business at Netflix.
People Don’t Want to Be Entertained at Work; They Want to Learn
When I was at Sun we had 370 people in HR. 370 people! And virtually all of them were divorced from the business; they couldn’t tell you what we made. We were doing initiatives and off-sites and celebrations. We were half entertainment and half happy-face HR. It was really fun but somehow empty. We always wanted more respect and recognition.
I became jazzed about my work
