THE DREAM IN ACTION

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the best way to start a company. As my co-founder, who’s the technical half of our venture works his ass of on the code, I have been working on the design.

When I say design, I mean the design of many different aspects of our company. Yes, I have begun to dive into the CSS, the styling, the logo, and other aspects of the visual design, but probably more important is the time thinking about the design of our company and how we will do business. At my day job process is highly important and I think that mentality will benefit me a ton in my startup.

As I work to design our company I have to consider many factors. Our meetings, our development methodologies, how we report and track tasks, and how we keep one another accountable to those tasks, are just a few. These are all part of an intricate design that will eventually make up the culture of our company. I believe that this is important to design the right culture early so that the mood is set early. The design of how we go about our daily meetings (and by daily I mean nightly) determines a lot about how we work together and accomplish tasks in the most efficient manor. We’ve adopted an agile development methodology and this works well as we are both part time on the project. We meet at least 3 times a week with numerous Basecamp task updates and emails in between. These communications help to define our culture too.

One thing I truly believe is that culture starts with the founders. It’s not something that can be put in place after you have 10 or 100 employees, it starts day one. I also believe that it needs to start in the right direction otherwise it may never find the right course.

Recently, Reed Hastings Netflix‘s CEO, was made famous when his lengthy Culture ppt spread through the interwebs. His companies culture might be second to none and it’s heavily due to great leadership from the beginning. As we work to built our own great culture, we will surely learn a ton from Reed as a founder, and Netflix as a company. Here are 9 of the behaviors that are expected from Netflix employees, that in aggregate set the culture of this great internet company. Truly impressive.

#1 Judgement

• You make wise decisions (people, technical business and creative) despite ambiguity
• You identify root causes, and get beyond treating symptoms
• You think strategically, and can articulate what you are, and are not, trying to do.
• You smartly separate what must be done well no, and what can be improved later.

#2 Communication

• You listen well, instead of reacting fast, so you can better understand
• You are concise and articulate in speech and writing.
• You treat people with respect independent of their status or disagreement with you
• You maintain calm poise in stressful situations

#3 Impact

• You accomplish amazing amounts of important work.
• You demonstrate consistently strong performance so colleagues can rely upon you.
• You focus on great results rather than on process.
• You exhibit bias-t0-action, and avoid analysis paralysis.

#4 Curiosity

• You learn rapidly and eagerly
• You seek to understand our strategy, market, subscribers, and suppliers (factors that impact the business and customer experience)
• You are broadly knowledgeable about business, technology and entertainment (you understand the various contexts the business operates under and the interplay between them)
• You contribute effectively outside of your specialty

#5 Innovation

• You re-conceptualize issues to discover practical solutions to hard problems
• You challenge prevailing assumptions when warranted, and suggest better approaches
• You create new ideas that prove useful
• You keep us nimble by minimizing complexity and finding time to simplify

#6 Courage

• You say what you think even if it is controversial
• You make tough decisions without excessive agonizing
• You take smart risks
• You question actions inconsistent with our values

#7 Passion

• You inspire others with you thirst for excellence
• You care intensely about Netflix’s success
• You celebrate wins
• You are tenacious

#8 Honesty

• You are known for candor and directness
• You are non-political when you disagree with others
• You only say things about fellow employees you will say to their face
• You are quick to admit mistakes

#9 Selflessness

• You seek what is best for Netflix, rather than best for yourself or your group
• You are ego-less when searching for the best ideas
• You make time to help colleagues.
• You share information openly and proactively.

If you have the time, go through the deck below and get the details of what makes Netflix such a successful company. It’s all about the people.