Values and mojo: Netflix

 

 

One of the best case studies of using values to develop mojo that I’ve come across recently is from Netflix, which I’ve also just posted on at the Moon Shots community ning.

Netflix’s culture is clearly based around their values – and I like the way that these clearly do reflect their mojo and organisational capability (even if they’ve chosen to only articulate these through their values).

For me, the company’s mojo (the type of company they are) is about being:

• Manic about high performance
• A pro-team with stunning colleagues
• Creative-inventive.

 

And I’d suggest its organisational capabilities (the things they do really well, that help them compete) are:

• Providing employees with freedom
• Avoiding complexity.

 

 

Importantly, I think, the values are expressed as the behaviours that are particularly valued in fellow employees (“values are what we value”). And they’re not dressed up as things that everyone is supposed to internalise and make part of who they are.  I just think this makes it easier to talk about them and clarify the organisation’s expectations.

And the values aren’t just nice sounding statements - they’re also central to recruitment; performance management (“the keeper test”); reward (“adequate performance gets a generous severance package”); development (“we don’t try to do it”); promotion (“if manager would promote employee to keep them if employee were thinking of leaving, manage should promote now, and not wait”); exit (“Netflix doesn’t have to be for life”) and other HR processes.  I particularly like the fact that their values are central to their recruitment processes, to ensure they only take people on if they do live the company’s values (and they don’t therefore need to ask anyone to change these).

And in addition, the values are clearly seen as important – in that people will question others if they act inconsistently with the values.

But I still think the company’s mojo and capabilities provide a better description for understanding what the company is about, and providing a basis for aligning its HR processes in the way I’ve described above.

 

 

While I’m addressing the presentation, I should also mention that I do have some issues with the company’s approach.

For example, they suggest that having 10 people interview each candidate is a ‘bad’ process – something they want to avoid to minimise complexity.

Well, maybe.  I mean, while having even 2 or 3 people interview the same candidate can be a bad process if there’s no agreed job description, communication between interviewers etc, having 10 people interview can be a good process as well – Google is a prime example.  And given that recruiting high performers is such a critical aspect of Netflix’s strategy, I would suggest that they shouldn’t dismiss the approach as easily as they seem to have done.

(Perhaps it’s because they know they can fire the wrong employees easily enough – although this is going to be expensive, and isn’t going to help them form productive teams.)

 

In addition, I can see that the company might regret its decision not to use variable pay. Providing a base which reflects and outperforms the market makes sense, but what about the person who is significantly ‘overpaid’ – what incentive do they have to perform as well as they can?

 

 

But in the main, I think it’s a fantastic example of so many things I support – particularly a really clear mojo, and the development of best fit (vs simply best practice) HR processes that support this positioning.

 

 

For more information, go over to Moon Shots and take a look there too.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Values,mojo,organisational capability,organisational capabilities,Moon Shots for Management,Netflix

 

 

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Values and mojos

 

I wrote in my last but one post that I’d follow up on my review of Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s description of Procter & Gamble’s value-led strategy with some more notes on the role of values in supporting organisational mojo.

Firstly, I should explain that I’m not generally a fan of organisational values (see this post).

This may surprise you?

After all, I post fairly regularly on the need for organisations to be clear about how they’re going to operate (their mojo) and then to compete on the way that they’ve structured themselves around this (their organisational capabilities).

I just find it difficult to feel positively about the role of values in supporting mojo and organisational capability.

This is partly about my own experience.  None of the best change processes I’ve been involved in – as an employee, a line manager, an HR Director or a consultant – have involved them.  And some of the very superficial and ineffective change exercises that I’ve been involved in (not, I hasten to say, as a change leader) have placed a new set of values at the very centre of the change.

I also don’t like the idea that people should be asked to change their own values to fit with an organisations.  Again, this perspective comes largely from my own introspection and the fact that I’ve never really changed my own values to fit with an organisation’s – at least not as a result of any intentional strategy of, and deliberate actions taken by, an organisation.

However, I do recognise the benefit of values within recruitment – to ensure that people are only recruited when they have the values that the organisation wants them to exhibit.

In addition, I have changed my values when I’ve seen the benefits of, and been engaged by, an organisation’s values.  That is, they’ve not asked me to change my values – but I’ve been personally compelled to do so.

Of course, I’d argue that what really compelled me to change was the organisation’s mojo, its organisational capabilities and its culture – not it’s values.  But I suppose values can have a role in helping to articulate what the organisation’s mojo / capabilities / culture are about.  This is going to help organisational leaders, and employees, ensure that their actions are aligned with their mojo, and as long as this is the way that values are used, then doing this is only going to help.

In my next couple of posts, I’m going to look at some case studies that may shine some further light on this…

 

 

Image: Mojo in an episode of the X-Men animated series

Technorati Tags: Values,mojo

 

 

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Proctor & Gamble: competing on mojo

 

    Rosabeth Moss Kanter has some great posts on her Harvard Business School Change Master blog, supporting her new book ‘SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good‘.

Firstly, in 21st Century Workplaces, Moss Kanter writes about Super-corporations (like Procter & Gamble) which aim to become employers of choice by ensuring their people are happily employed, using their skills, with a sufficient feeling of security to plan the future, and a minimum of stressful overload:

“Hitting that sweet spot - keeping people employed in good jobs - is a goal of the vanguard companies I describe in my new book, SuperCorp. Companies such as Procter & Gamble, IBM, and others are trying to create innovation and profits through values and principles that enable them to have a positive social impact. They are thinking their way out of twentieth-century assumptions (e.g., that a job must be performed in a facility at specific times and assigned by a boss who observes performance) to create twenty-first century dynamic workplaces.”

 

Secondly, Moss Kanter writes more specifically about P&G's New Values-Based Strategy (in a post that looks like it was once called ‘Fall like a Lehman, Rise like a ???’).  She explains that P&G’s new CEO, Bob McDonald, is redoubling the company’s emphasis on its culture and values, linked to its 171 year-old purpose, in order to better execute a “stunning new business strategy to jump-start growth”:

“It begins in a startling, almost counterintuitive way — with company values and sense of purpose.  Invoke the heart and care about human needs, the strategy seems to say, and the money will follow.

 

This sounds a lot like my / Marshall Goldmsith’s concept of organisational mojo* that I discussed in my last post.  Assuming that I’m right to make this link, then the key in building mojo is that leaders understand the rising importance of values, which Moss Kanter explains is:

“For the new generation of employees, for finding innovations in underserved markets, and for getting respect from the public and favorable treatment from government.”

 

I’m going to review the role of values in supporting organisational mojo over the next couple of posts.

 

 

* = I recognise that Goldsmith is going to popularise this term, but I did start to write about it first!

See for example:

31 May 2008: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2008/05/need-for-internal-purpose.html

24 June 2008: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2008/06/power-of-mojo.html

8 July July 2008: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2008/07/search-for-greening.html

5 March 2009: http://blog.social-advantage.com/2009/03/social-advantage.html.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Rosabeth Moss Kanter,Change Master,SuperCorp,Vanguard Companies,Innovation,Profits,Growth,Social Good,Procter & Gamble,values

 

 

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