Leveraging Logic as a Leader - Patty McCord - Netflix

It's not what you aspire to do - It's what you actually do

Fundamentals
    Company First (if you don't have a successful company you don't need a culture)
    Judgment trumps everything (intelligence, speed, intuition)
    You can just tell the truth

Teams: Visualizing Greatness
    Imagine in six months if everything was amazing and you had the perfect team. What would be occurring then?
    What would you measure (metrics, deliverables, reporting, cross functional alignment, timeline, deadlines, due dates)?
    What would it look like (winning debates, winning tests, customer feedback, data & analysis, influence)?
    What would people have to know how to do in order to pull it off?
    What kinds of skill and experiences would lead you hear?
    And only after that do you think about who is on the team.

To build the right team first you need to know what you are going to build.
If you start with who you have, you may be limited in what you can do.
You now can tell the truth.
Which means people can decide if they are motivated by the work.
They know what they can do.
They can own their careers.
They can opt in or opt out.

The steps above would allow for a world where there would be no need for performance improvement plans. In truth a PIP just exists to justify letting someone go. It is better to be honest about the work and needs of the employees from the start. Also the steps above would keep interviewing from being a sin. It allows people to be honest and for people to do their best work.

If an employee is unhappy you should tell them to go interview. It will make it easier for them sometimes to articulate to a complete stranger regarding what they want. Also it will let them know what market value is for their job. And they may realize that the grass isn't greener and they'll come back more motivated. The catch is that if someone comes back you need to say "what did they offer you" and you need to offer it because that's what "market comp" means.

Good interview question: tell me about the day you went home and said to yourself "damn I'm good"

Netflix didn't have performance reviews. They had gantt charts and knew who was performing and who was lagging behind.


Pattern recognition - how to lean people. Pay attention to patterns. Learn to observe. People are rewarded differently, wired differently, and need to be treated differently.

Learn to observe how people react to: change, challenge, the unknown, each other, unexpected interruption, learning

What Patty did to innovate within HR is to just stop doing things. No more PIP. No more vacation policy.

Humans are organized for efficiency. You cannot avoid organization, it will form.