Elizabeth Stone: evaluation

Transcript context

…So, everyone listening to this will want excellence as an operating system. Who would not want this? It'd be helpful for people to hear what are the ingredients to make this happen. One is obviously high talent density, just hiring only the best. Two is accountability. There's the input and the output, essentially. Input, amazing people, the top people, make them accountable, give them autonomy. What would you say are the pillars of creating this excellence as an operating system, if founders are listening to this and like, I want them to do that? Well, the talent density is the non-negotiable. You have to start with that. If you don't have that, you can't get to a place where you have confidence in decision-making at all levels of the organization, allowing people to take risks and innovate quickly. That's a big part of excellence in the Netflix culture, which is being very comfortable with risk taking. We don't try to avoid failures. We try to recover quickly when we have them. I think there's been great examples of that. Our foray into live was a wonderful example of being comfortable taking a ton of risk, knowing it would be imperfect, knowing we would learn fast and we would be better for it. I've never been prouder of the team, seeing how we worked through that. So, you have to be talent density, comfortable that people are going to take the context that you give them, strong judgment, and risk-taking, and fight for the things that are the best outcomes for the business. You have to be very clear that what you're doing is driving outcomes for consumers and Netflix. So, Netflix matters, Netflix members' matter. It's not about my own personal success or what I prefer. So, there's a selflessness that is part of this excellence operating system. And then the other thing I would say is some of the things that are... they're really unnatural for humans to do. So, I could give a couple examples of things to get comfortable with, which is there are certainly days where I see decisions happening and I think I would make a different decision. Is that really going to be the best thing? But my job, especially in the Netflix culture, is not to step in, in every one of those cases and overrule or veto or question someone. Especially if it's not material, it's not going to burn the place down, let people make that decision and learn from it and ask for those reflections afterwards of how did it go. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the decision was a great one. But that it's related to the risk taking. And help people learn how to feel comfortable making their own decisions, especially when they're not all going to be the right decisions and they're going to learn something tough from it. I felt that myself from my boss and my peers, saying, "This is your decision. I can provide input. I can help you brainstorm. It's yours in the end." And it just doesn't come naturally. When the stakes are high, when I feel responsible for what the org's doing to let people lean into risk, can be uncomfortable. And I think that also means in cases where things are not going well, as another example, to not assume that process is going to fix it. Something I've learned over the past few years, that when planning is difficult, I've never heard someone say like, "Oh, we figured out the perfect way to plan or the perfect way to go through feedback and leveling and compensation." But every time we saw that and we added more process, we spent more time without getting better outcomes. perfect way to plan or the perfect way to go through feedback and leveling and compensation." But every time we saw that and we added more process, we spent more time without getting better outcomes. And so, it's another unnatural thing that I think everyone's inclination when things are hard and complicated, is you think you're simplifying the problem by putting a lot of constraints around it. But it actually goes against the, is there a more creative way to plan or to make people decisions or to make prioritization decisions that actually get us to better outcomes? And so, it's a resistance to do the thing that a lot of bigger companies would do and to feel comfortable in that discomfort very often. So, that's something I feel in my role and I would believe a lot of people at Netflix feel it, because you try not to do the thing that is standard.…

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