CULTURE – DISTINCTIVENESS

Last month I introduced the topic of business culture and core values. This month I will discuss a couple of examples to highlight the difference a bit of effort and passion can make in building an organisation that differentiates your business and attracts top talent.
 
You can search for Netflix Culture and get a lot of information on how they built a very effective culture. I ended up with a 125-slide deck and have no hope of jamming it all into this article. Here are the highlights for me:

• “The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.” If the people who exemplify your “core values” aren’t getting ahead in your business, those aren’t your core values.
• “Great workplace is stunning colleagues. Great workplace is not espresso, lush benefits, sushi lunches, grand parties or nice offices. We do some of those things, but only if they are efficient at attracting and retaining stunning colleagues.”
• “Brilliant jerks – some companies tolerate them. For us, the cost to effective teamwork is too high.”
• “Responsible people thrive on freedom and are worthy of freedom.”
• “The best managers figure out how to get great outcomes by setting the appropriate context, rather than by trying to control their people.”

 
An important point here for me is this didn’t take five minutes. It took many years of building up, learning and refining, getting clearer and more confident, taking pains to document the outcomes carefully. And not being afraid to be different – for example eschewing brilliant jerks and management control. With the company values at the centre, they built six other aspects of their culture around helping them to achieve excellence.  The key is to build a cohesive culture based on authenticity.

Another example, infamous, is the large multinational that had these “Core Values” on a plaque on the wall:

• Integrity
• Communication
• Respect
• Excellence

The key is to build a cohesive culture based on authenticity.

Great job guys. That must have taken five minutes in between admiring the balance sheet and the share price. Bland. Boring. It’s not like you were going to pick “Lack of integrity, disrespect and mediocrity.” Although perhaps it would have been the honest thing to do. The company was Enron, the business at the centre of the biggest corporate fraud in history. Its senior executives walked past those values every day, and barefaced it out – until they ended up in prison. Who wants to work for that?
​
Don’t be like Enron. Be like Netflix.

---