Facebook’s No. 2 top dog, COO Sheryl Sandberg, recently said that Netflix’s company culture document “may well be the most important document ever to come out of the Valley.” The document, a bullet-point-happy PowerPoint, has become a cultural manifesto for the Internet’s economic epicenter, amassing over 3.2 million views on Slideshare.net. More than simply a management guide, it’s a window into a philosophy that thrives on uncertainty, creativity, and trust — a blinding contrast to the hierarchical culture that dominated much of the 20th century workplace. To the extent that innovation and the Internet play a role in the modern workplace, it is a crystal ball into the future of daily life. We’ve summarized the most telling principals below: Creativity is Most Important In procedural work, the best are 2x better than the average. In creative/inventive work, the best are 10x. The technology industry, especially, is haunted by the ever-present fear of obsolescence. As Internet bandwidth speeds rapidly increased, Netflix had to figure out how to retrofit its entire DVD delivery service into a video streaming service that satisfies demand for instantaneous video. The next big transformation in video and Internet capability is an unknown, and creative solutions to up-and-coming problems are nearly priceless. The consequences for stunted innovation could not be greater: One of Microsoft’s flagship products, Office, got eaten alive by Google’s free office suite, Google Docs, after the company failed to follow users where they are now spending their time (the Internet). Prioritize Discovery Over Job Security Many people love our culture, and stay a long time. They thrive on excellence and candor and change….Some people, however, value job security over performance, and don’t like our culture. Politically, this principal is the most fascinating: no major Internet company has a union, despite consistently ranking as some of the best places to work. Creative enterprises have been able to replace the long-cherished values of worker compensation and stability with a challenging, enjoyable environment. “Risk” is an often-praised characteristic of tech founders, who are now asking their employees to jump down that same rabbit hole. The future of work is likely to be as insecure as it is unforgivable. For some, this is utopia…for others, not so much. Poor Employee Behavior Is Caused By Misunderstanding Managers: When one of your talented people does something dumb, don’t blame them. Instead, ask yourself what context you failed to set. High performance
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