Elizabeth Stone: evaluation

Transcript context

…Which is a key to building a team with high talent density. There's two sides of this that I want to chat about briefly. One is the hiring and the other is keeping the people. So, you're famous for the keeper's test. We talked about this last time. Another unnatural thing for people. People that want to understand what this is, they can listen to the first conversation, but how has that evolved over the last couple of years? That still a core part of the culture, this idea of the keeper's test? It's often cited in a way where you think of keeper's test as that moment where you decide to let someone go, that they're not the right fit for the role and the conversation about that. But it's equally commonly used to have a conversation about how extraordinary someone is, how well they're doing in a role. Because the entry point is for me to say to one of my direct reports or for them to say to me, "How am I doing on your keeper test?" And the lion's share of the time, my response is, "I would fight so hard to keep you. Let me go through a set of things that I think you're doing such a great job at, what your strengths are, where you're having a lot of impact. Here's how you could be even better." So, it's an entry into a conversation that is very positive and uplifting for people, but the framing is, do I pass the keeper test? And then, of course, there's the harder situations where I'm evaluating, does someone pass the keeper test or they're asking me? And this is the toughest thing to say, "To be honest, you're not passing that right now. I think you could get there in some cases." And that comes with feedback and what are those milestones. Or in some cases you're saying, "We've really tried and I don't see the path to success. " So, it's an anchor and an entry point for a conversation that can go lots of different directions. And the thing I like about it is it's good hygiene on feedback and checking in on how things are going and forcing a tough conversation sometimes, instead of shying away from it. Or to keep great talent, you do need to say you're doing great. That's an important part of making people feel recognized and valued. So, I don't want it to come across that we just have this very negative view of it. I think there's this positive side of the coin as well. Awesome. I guess just to explain to people what this is so they don't have to go listen to a whole other podcast, I'll try to briefly explain it. The idea here, a part of the Netflix culture is that when you have people reporting to you, you should always be thinking, would I hire this person today knowing what I know about them? And if not, then I should probably let them go. And the idea there is to keep the high bar, to not ever just settle. Okay, this person, they're here, I guess we'll keep them around. Is that roughly the way to understand it?…

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