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Table of contents
Table of contentsThe pitfalls of superstars cultureEvaluation pitfallsAllocation pitfallsRethinking: SuperstarsHistory and contextSuperstars’ definition must closely tied with business outcomeHard to replace, easy to scaleThe two factorsUnique skillsMultiplierThe 4 quadrants of the superstars (or valuable people)Superstars must be put in the right context..Sometimes you just don’t need superstarsSum upFAQReference
I had a pleasure to work with and got to know some of the companies in my network that manifests that they follow the Netflix’s “superstar culture” (a.k.a Netflix Culture — Seeking Excellence), where “We’re not a professional sport team, not a family” stood as a daily mantra from high-level executives.
👉 The premise is “If a company prioritizes hiring exceptionally talented individuals, they can achieve extraordinary results and outperform their competitors.”
Although the culture is well known and serves as a great culture foundation for a company (especially for startups), but in practice it seems like it is not implemented correctly, that hurt employee’s morale and efficiency.
In this post, I will:
- Share my observation of pitfalls of understanding and executing of the “superstar culture” from some the company I knew
- Attempt to craft a much simpler and more general mental model for finding, evaluating, and thinking about hiring superstars.
Disclaimer: In this post, I’m not specifically criticize the Netflix culture (although I did see some down sides of the culture), what I want to clarify is the meaning and implication of the culture, and how we should execute that in a solid manner - if we really want to replicate such culture in our businesses or startups.
This post serves as my personal opinion towards the execution of netflix’s culture, logic loop hole might be possible and important information might be missed out, so it’s open to receive critics. Please feel free to give feedbacks if you have any!
The pitfalls of superstars culture
Working in the “superstar team” culture does bring a lot of benefits and enjoyment, we’ve got to produce incredible results with high productivity, and at the same time satisfy life fulfillment through meaningful work. But if a company was so talent-focused, which sounds pretty awesome, in what way could it be so wrong?
What really bothers me is that there are inconsistencies and unfairness in the way the company executes the Superstar Culture - specifically in finding and evaluating talents, which is mainly based on personal judgement of the executive (of what they think is true for the Netflix’s culture).
This is not to say gut-judgement is bad, it can be strengthen via exposure and experience (I do make gut-judgement from time to time) - However, I still insist that it could be much more systematically defined, in terms of superstars
Evaluation and Allocation .Evaluation pitfalls
Problems- Some managers struggle to define what a superstar should be specifically, resulting in low-confidence evaluation during performance review, and in hiring/firing decision
- The effort of thinking the definition of superstars are to painful that sometimes the managers would just rather evaluate on the gut feeling to avoid cognitive load, like if they like or not like a person is suffice for the evaluation.
- Employees feel that the evaluation of them not being a superstar inconsiderate and unfair, that they are expected to be “more superstar”, at the same time what definition of superstar is not clearly defined
- The effort of countering the the evaluation is so stressful and can be seen as unreceptive to feedbacks (which could potential lead to a verbal combat), so employees would choose to accept at face value, and then build up tension with the employers - This is particularly true for the asian culture
If you starts digging deeper into the The Nine Netflix Company Values, you will realize that there are 9 factors serving as a benchmark to evaluate what a superstar really looks like, the list of standards are:
- Judgement
- Communication
- Impact
- Curiosity
- Innovation
- Courage
- Passion
- Honesty
- Selflessness
It sounds like a correct depiction of what a superstar should look like. However you will start to see blurry aspects about it is when you start observing and question the evaluation result of a superstar:
- (i) Why some guys spend so much effort, work day and night, can’t even be called a superstar?
- (ii) Why some managers spend so little time, respected by numerous of people, did not hands-on the work - maybe work for themselves (a.k.a not selflessness), was consider a superstar?
- (iii) How about venture capitalists or investors? Seems like they “contribute” to the company as well, are they superstars too?
- (iv) Is it possible even I’m so talented in the field I work, but not contributing anything to company, I am still a superstar?
- (v) Is it possible that even you got all 9 values in the list, you are still not superstar?
These questions arise mainly because the superstar culture was mentioned and everywhere, but what the term really means is vaguely defined and thought through in depth. I tried to search up some keywords related to the topic (e.g: “How to spot superstars”, “Evaluate superstar team member”, etc), but none of them answered my question.
The superstars culture was widely known and popularized, but vaguely defined at a fine-grained details, causing other companies and startups have hard time evaluate and spotting superstar in their team, having hard time replicating the culture.
Allocation pitfalls
Problems- Because “superstar” is an umbrella terms that generally is interpretted as “A super talent guy who can do everything extremely good”, superstars are sometimes overexpected and allocated to do different things out-of-scope from time to time
- Onboarding process was neglected assuming and expecting that a superstar would figure it out on themselves without any help
Here’s some questions to think about allocation:
- Superstars are universal for everything or respected to narrow expertise?
- Should we train superstars or just let them do the job they do because seems like they best at that?
- Are superstars nature or nurture?
- Could everyone be a superstar if we place them in a right place?
Rethinking: Superstars
Some leaders when reading about netflix culture but just focusing on the “How”, but lacks the deepest reason “why” they follow such culture and value such behaviors at the first place. Once you start seeing expected outcome of hiring Superstars - or hiring in general, it’s much easier to answer questions laid down above.
History and context
Before Netflix, Reed Hastings co-founded Pure Software, a company that experienced rapid growth. However, Hastings felt that the company's culture deteriorated as it grew, becoming more bureaucratic and less innovative. This experience profoundly influenced his approach to Netflix's culture, leading him to prioritize flexibility, innovation, and a lean operational model to avoid the bureaucracy that can stifle creativity and efficiency.
The superstars culture was born to maximize the business efficiency at Netflix by focusing on hiring the best talents - so called Superstars.
Superstars’ definition must closely tied with business outcome
Understanding the history of the invention of the Netflix culture helps you understand that the culture was invented to bring the best thing for the company - not for the employee. The benefits and enjoyment of employee are just the bi-product of that. Whether someone follows 9 value behaviors or not, the business outcome is the final judgement.
You cannot hire a superstar pianist then put in your SaaS company and tells that he’s a superstar - of course technically he’s a superstar, but so what? But say if you host a bonding event for the company and a pianist play serves as a gift from the company to show gratitude towrads all members, then that’s a different story.
Business relevancy is an important factor for a superstar, and a person an only and only be a superstar if they contribute to a business (or an angle of a business)Hard to replace, easy to scale
Along with
Business Relevancy A superstar should possess some of the 2 fundamental standards:Unique skills and resources: they contribute directly to the company’s expected outcome using their unique skills or resource- whether it’s revenue, customer satisfaction, or built technology
- this would justify why the company needs an employee at the first place, to solve a business problem
Multiplier: they are expected to be multiple times more efficient than hiring an average person- this would justify why Netflix have the willing to pay employees “top of their personal market”, simply it because it will have better ROI
- that’s why they’re called superstar, ..duh?
Hence the final formula should be:
(Unique) outcome = Business Relevancy * Unique Skills * MultiplierThanks to the formula we line down above, superstars definition will hence be written:
Superstar (n): a uniquely valuable person, who can leverage their unique skills and other resources to maximize the business outcome, in a way that the business remains unique and competitive
The two factors
Understanding
business relevancy is the primary requirements for a superstar, we can now rest assured that it should be mandatory (and not optional).Let’s study the other two factor
Unique Skills and MultiplierUnique skills
Unique skills are skills that one have that the society haven’t yet be able to easily train or replicate another person to do so they can’t not replace the person.
These skills including (but not limited) to:
- Skills of working with machine: Software Engineer, Mechanics, Doctors, etc.
- Skills of working with people: Managers, Coordinators, etc.
- Skills of working with capital: Venture capitalists
- …
Multiplier
The closest analogy to Multipler i found was the concept “Leverage” in business and wealth creation.
The simplest leverage is that one can use is time, the outcome will be proportional to time spent (assuming that skills are utilized for meaningful purpose), you can simply create more outcome.
But time leveraging is boring, because it is limited and reduced through… time. But don’t get me wrong, employee who spends more time to maximize the outcome in businesses are highly valued because they also project influence to other employees and managers.
If you have unique skills, that’s great (it’s 1-to-1 value conversion). But if you can use leverage way the “scale” your skills (meaning 1-to-n), you’re unstoppable.
These leverage includes (but not limited to):
- People. The ability that one can leverage a network of people to work for them on their idea
- Technology. E.g: build once, use multiple times, by multiple users
- Social network & Media. E.g: leverage their social identity and network to get more reaches and influence
- Process: you’re able to create an operation process that a large body of people can follow and produce the same result
- Capital: this one is self-explanatory..
- etc.
The 4 quadrants of the superstars (or valuable people)
To become a superstar for a company, one should either have a unique skills or they must use some form of leverage to scale their impact.
ㅤ | Have unique skills | Don’t have (or need) unique skills |
Use multiplier | The super star
e.g:
Elon Musk has unique skills in technology and influence million of other people in his network to follow | The amplifier
e.g: Managers, Venture Capitalists, Influencer |
Don’t use multiplier | The speciali
e.g: Software Engineer, Mechanics, Doctors, etc.
| The non-superstar
e.g: not gonna mention here but you can assume a job that doesn’t require unique skill set and does not need multiplier |
Unique skills are obviously needed for a superstar. But multipliers are more challenging and abstract (at first) to understand, one could interpret it as a “clever way of maximize outcome without spending substantially more effort”.
The ability of influence other people (a form of leverage) is one of the most crucial form of leverage that often time underrated and taken for granted - because it sounds so easy to do such thing and it sounds so effortless, just going around and talking to people, that’s totally not true.
It must be something intersection between being knowledgeable, being thoughtful, and having some kind of charisma,.. to have such kind of leverage - Leverage’s something to earn, not a skill to acquire.
Superstars must be put in the right context
Lastly, superstars must always be put in right context. I see there are numerous case where’s the company filled up so much task and those who can “fill the gap” be called superstar. That certainly not true.
The fact that you spend more time to do more task out-of-scope (which oftentimes, is replaceable) is useful, but not necessary. The company can totally hire someone else to do that, spend less, get better ROI. If the business outcome is not high, you’re either not a superstar or… not “allowed” to be a superstar.
Archimedes once said, "Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world,”.
If you expect a lot of things from a superstar so much, you should better write it down, line by line in bullet points of what you would expect from a superstar for that role, as a baseline. Then whoever superstar that may be, suffice the business expectation with some creative and innovation added from their superstar factor on top of the baseline.
I love how the MACE framework of Kent Nguyen loops “context” into evaluation when it comes to performance review:
External factors such as bad allocation of jobs, uninspiring colleages, should also be looped in evaluation session, proper allocation needs also to be performed to maintain the superstar status of each member...Sometimes you just don’t need superstars
Constantly looking for superstars are tiring when you have a lot of work to do and a lot important role to hire. Good news is not every role requires the superstar factor. Any roles that is short termed, or don’t require innovation creative mindset, you can loosen the superstar requirements - such as administrative role, operations, etc.
But also in this case, make sure to clarify clear scopes, definition of done, … to make sure the output match the business expectation.
Some might argue that they must be a superstar to be inspiring and set good example to other members. Is it necessary? Or just useful?
Sum up
Just like other relationship like friends or lovers, and any other professional relationship (either employee, investors, or contractor), evaluating who’s valuable to join our network is a crucial part of setting up a strong and sustainable employment relationship.
Here is few key take away from the blog:
- The current process of replicating the Netflix cultures suffer two problem:
evaluationandallocationof superstars
- Superstars definition must be tied closely to business outcome
- Specialists who know how to amplify their impact are unstoppable (unicorn 🦄)
- Superstars must be put in the right context
- Sometimes.. you just don’t need superstars
FAQ
Let’s review what we have thought through today and answer the previously mentioned questions:
- (i) Why some guys spend so much effort, work day and night, can’t even be called a superstar?
- The guy should either:
- not placed in the right context to do perform their unique skills (perhaps he was allocated to do only junk tasks)
- not having unique skills and multiplier
- The guy has already use time as a leverage and nothing else, but
times spent * skillsdoes not converge to a unique and competitive business outcome
- (ii) Why some managers spend so little time, respected by numerous of people, did not hands-on the work - maybe work for themselves (a.k.a not selflessness), was consider a superstar?
- Possibly they’ve mastered the art of using leverage, they know how to rally and work with large group of people or… simply they have capital resource (e.g: investors)
- (iii) How about venture capitalists or investors? Seems like they “contribute” to the company as well, are they superstars too?
- Yes, according to definition we formed above, they have capital as leverage. But to more lexically correct, they should be framed as “valuable person” than a superstar - because superstar oftentimes misinterpreted as an employee
- (iv) Is it possible even I’m so talented in the field I work, but not contributing anything to company, I am still a superstar?
- Then you’re not a superstar. It’s because superstars’ definition must closely tied with business outcome
- (v) Is it possible that even you got all 9 values in the list, you are still not superstar?
- Possibly. The 9 valued behaviors are inputs (along with unique skills and multipliers), where superstars’ business outcome is an output. The output is how you transform 9 valued behaviors.
