Reed Hastings

Say What You Really Think. Feedback is essential for your team to become successful. You must not hold back on information when offering feedback due to fear of conflict.

Lesson 2: To have a successful company, have high talent density, a lot of candor, and get rid of dumb policies. When you have multiple high performers together, they hold themselves to a higher standard and have more fun.

Once you have high talent density in the workplace and have eliminated less-than-great performers, you’re ready to introduce a culture of candor.

If you have a team of five stunning employees and two adequate ones, the adequate ones will sap managers’ energy, so they have less time for the top performers, reduce the quality of group discussions, lowering the team’s overall IQ, force others to develop ways to work around them, reducing efficiency, drive staff who seek excellence to quit, and show the team you accept mediocrity, thus multiplying the problem.

The Best Way To Inspire New Ideas Is To Give Them ContextAs a leader, your role is to ensure the team has all the knowledge to make good decisions. Provide them with all the tools necessary to achieve their goals.Don’t blame your staff when one of them fails. Instead, ask yourself what context you have been unable to set? Are your objectives and strategy well-expressed and motivating to others? Have you adequately disclosed all assumptions and risks?

We learned that a company with really dense talent is a company everyone wants to work for. High performers especially thrive in environments where the overall talent density is high.

If you give employees more freedom instead of developing processes to prevent them from exercising their own judgment, they will make better decisions and it’s easier to hold them accountable.

At Netflix, it is tantamount to being disloyal to the company if you fail to speak up when you disagree with a colleague or have feedback that could be helpful. After all, you could help the business—but you are choosing not to.

DON’T SEEK TO PLEASE YOUR BOSS. SEEK TO DO WHAT IS BEST FOR THE COMPANY.

Many employees will respond to their new freedom by spending less than they would in a system with rules. When you tell people you trust them, they’ll show you how trustworthy they are.

Lesson 3: It can be time-consuming to keep a high density of talent, but it allows maximum efficiency. So instead of viewing employees as a family, Netflix views employees more like a sports team collectively trying to win a title.

Frequent candid feedback will help your team grow. The most effective approach is to instigate regular feedback sessions. In these sessions, all employees can offer honest feedback on the team’s performance. Coach your employees to give and receive feedback effectively.

If you build an organization made up of high performers, you can eliminate most controls. The denser the talent, the greater the freedom you can offer.