Reed Hastings

WHEN ONE OF YOUR PEOPLE DOES SOMETHING DUMB DON’T BLAME THEM. INSTEAD ASK YOURSELF WHAT CONTEXT YOU FAILED TO SET. ARE YOU ARTICULATE AND INSPIRING ENOUGH IN EXPRESSING YOUR GOALS AND STRATEGY? HAVE YOU CLEARLY EXPLAINED ALL THE ASSUMPTIONS AND RISKS THAT WILL HELP YOUR TEAM TO MAKE GOOD DECISIONS? ARE YOU AND YOUR EMPLOYEES HIGHLY ALIGNED ON VISION AND OBJECTIVES?

For top performers, a great workplace isn’t about a lavish office, a beautiful gym, or a free sushi lunch. It’s about the joy of being surrounded by people who are both talented and collaborative. People who can help you be better. When every member is excellent, performance spirals upward as employees learn from and motivate one another.

The brain is a survival machine, and one of our most successful survival techniques is the desire to find safety in numbers. O

Today, in the information age, what matters is what you achieve, not how many hours you clock, especially for the employees of creative companies like Netflix.

One study showed people spend twice as much time thinking about their secrets as they do actively concealing them.

+ Build up talent density

teaching your managers principles like, “Lead with context, not control,” and coaching your employees using such guidelines as, “Don’t seek to please your boss.”

In hindsight, I understood that a team with one or two merely adequate performers brings down the performance of everyone on the team

The day of the layoffs arrived, and it was awful, as expected. Those who we laid off cried, slammed doors, and shouted in frustration. By noon it was finished, and I waited for the second half of the storm: the backlash from the remaining employees. . . . But, despite some tears and visible sorrow, all was calm. Then, within a few weeks, for a reason I couldn’t initially understand, the atmosphere improved dramatically. We were in cost-cutting mode, and we’d just let go of a third of the workforce, yet the office was suddenly buzzing with passion, energy, and ideas

If there is one thing we hate more than receiving criticism one-on-one, it is to receive that negative feedback in front of others. The woman who gave me feedback in the middle of my keynote address (and in front of her colleagues) helped me a lot. She had input that could benefit me and it couldn’t wait. But receiving feedback in front of the group sends off danger alarms in the human brain. The brain is a survival machine, and one of our most successful survival techniques is the desire to find safety in numbers. Our brain is constantly on the watch for signals of group rejection, which back in more primitive times would have led to isolation and potentially death. If someone calls out a mistake you are making in front of your tribe, the amygdala, the most primitive part of the brain, which is on constant watch for danger, sets off a warning: “This group is about to reject you.”