Article Supporting Less Structure
I came across this article today about the company Netflix, which is the online DVD by mail company, about their organizational and leadership structure. I post this because of the way they have a “less structure is better" method.
Here is an exerpt from the article
Hire stars, scrap vacation policies
The overall Netflix approach is to hire stars, pay them at the top of the scale and give them the freedom to do their jobs. Simply adequate talent gets weeded out quickly.
Beyond that, get rid of the extraneous red tape that slows your stars down. For example, there is no vacation policy at Netflix. People take what they need while getting their jobs done. The travel and expense policy is five words long, “act in Netflix’s best interests.”
Freedom underpins how Hastings looks to grow his company and his team. Whereas most companies tend to curtail freedom and add process when they grow, Netflix tries to do the opposite. Hastings is of the opinion that a process driven culture drives the talent you want to keep out of your company.
In the near-term, you can have a highly successful process-driven company with a leading share in its market, but at the expense of the “innovators and mavericks” you want to keep.
When the market shifts, Hastings warns, “due to new technology or new competitors or new business models the company is unable to adapt quickly, because the employees are extremely good at following the existing processes, and process adherence is the value system.
"The company generally grinds painfully into irrelevance, due to inability to respond to the market shift.”
It seems that Netflix believes the best in they choose to employ and releases them to make the choices that are built into their character and if they don’t, they let them go.
At NeighborLink, volunteering your time and money has to be a choice. There is no forcing anyone to do it and the last thing I want is for volunteers who don’t really want to be on some homeowner’s property because they aren’t going to do a good job or be respectful to the process.
The big difference at NeighborLink is that I don’t need “stars," I just need people committed to giving it their best, because at the end of the day, it’s the volunteers who gain from their service not NeighborLink.
As a non-profit executive, I gain tremendous value by learning from top level execs from the for-profit sector on how to lead and mobilize people.
