How to retain talent, have less processes and policies, and be a highly creative company

This SlideShare presentation of Netflix’s organizational culture is worth watching. Some excerpts:

Processes…

Most companies curtail freedom as they get bigger. (…) Desire for bigger positive impact creates growth, growth increases complexity. Growth also often shrinks talent density. Chaos emerges. Business has become too complex to run informally with this [low] talent level. Process emerges to stop the chaos. No one loves process, but feels good compared to the pain of caos. Process-focus drives more talen out. Avoid chaos as you grow with ever more high performance people, not with rules.

Netflix vacation policy and tracking

Until 2004 we had the standard model of N days per year. Meanwhile, we are all working online some nights and weekends, responding to emails at odd hours, spending some afternoons on personal time, and taking good vacations. An employee pointed out… we don’t track hours worked per day or per week. So, why are we tracking days of vacation per year? We realized (…) [that] just as we don’t have an 9am to 5pm workday policy, we don’t need a vacation policy. Netflix vacation policy and tracking: “there is no policy or tracking”. Lesson: you don’t need policies for everything.

[slideshare id=1798664&doc=culture9-090801103430-phpapp02]