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Organisations are collections of people interacting, and so if you’re looking to change your business to drive performance, start by understanding your culture. Our MD and Founder Charlie Kneen, sat down with Kenny Temowo of Netflix to discuss ways of facilitating a learning culture.

As a business owner who has to devise structures and methods to drive team performance and commercial success, I was chuffed to have had the opportunity to chat with my friend and ex-colleague Kenny Temowo at Netflix on our latest ‘Learning Lab’.

I was initially slightly cynical about the topic of conversation, 'Learning Culture'. I’ve been outspoken in pointing out that ‘Learning Culture’, or lack thereof, is often seen as a reason for a lack of engagement with organisational learning. Whereas the real reason for this lack of engagement is that most of it is content-led, and that content is neither useful, practical, or available at the point of need.

But anyway, I’m a changed man, at least to the extent that I appreciate that learning culture is a ‘thing’ worth addressing, if not for the reason that many L&D leaders become preoccupied with it. In preparing for the Learning Lab, I did a bit of reading up on Netflix’s cultural approach and their famous ‘Culture Deck’. In particular, this HBR article brought home the hard edge of running a business that balances performance, benefits, and commercial success.

The short story is that Netflix appears to aggressively manage its culture – it's an approach with extremes at both ends of the scale. As an example, the ‘Keeper Test’ is a question posed to line managers during regular performance conversations: “Would you fight to keep your team member?” If not, the process follows: Should the team member still be there?

It’s beautiful in its simplicity and a very direct way manage people. This is where the need to ‘hire adults’ comes in. Netflix favours honesty and transparency over secrets, but equally a very generous severance package appears to keep the wheels of talent management greased.

There were loads of other interesting anecdotes from the Learning Lab, and a few that I intend to apply immediately at Solvd. I’ve listed a few below, and asked the good Kenny to add some more that we didn’t happen to discuss.

‘Farming for dissent’

What is it?

Before a decision is made, stakeholders are asked to rate their confidence in the decision -10 to +10. The goal is to uncover concerns that people are too afraid to raise. There are countless examples throughout the world of business, where colleagues prefer to go along with something to avoid ‘putting your head above the parapet’.

Incident Reviews and ‘Sun Shining’

What is it?

Reflection is essential in an industry where set safety is paramount, and where taking creative risks can mean showing content that doesn’t always land the way Netflix might like. An incident review is used for larger issues, and people are invited to suspend judgements about the actions and decisions made by the people involved, in order to see what can be learnt. For smaller everyday situations, Netflix uses ‘Sun Shining’ as a term to shed light on ‘wins and misses’. This all serves to promote ongoing learning.

Role-modelling feedback

What is it?

This is an obvious one, but Kenny reminded me it was a good idea. At Solvd, we use a very simple spreadsheet to gather ‘What’s going well?’ and ‘What advice do you have for me?’, but there’s certainly more emphasis needed on asking for feedback when giving it. It’s so important that leaders don’t feel entitled to give feedback and aren’t willing to open up to personal improvement at the same time.

“What’s on your heart?”

What is it?

A question that prompts people to open up about how they’re feeling outside of work. I just thought this was a really powerful question, and the use of language is authentic and human. At Solvd we have something similar –‘vibe scores’ – on a Tuesday and Thursday: A rating 1-5 of how we’re each feeling. We track this over time to see where our annual vibe dips are and if any team members need particular support.

Transparency and Open Q&A

Netflix seeks to promote honesty and transparency. One tool they use is an ‘Open Q&A document’. This is a simple Google document where any employee can ask a question of the Executive Leadership Team. The answer history can be seen by all new employees. This is meant to help set the tone and foster a culture of openness between managers and their teams. Similarly, visitors will notice that most lockers in the Netflix offices do NOT have keys. Again, this is all about creating an atmosphere of trust and openness. The challenge for Netflix, Kenny acknowledges, is how they continue in this vein, as the company scales.

First principles thinking

First principles thinking — an approach to solving problems and generating original solutions — comes from the tech world and was made famous by megalomaniac Elon Musk. It’s the idea that everything you do is underpinned by a foundational belief, or first principles. Instead of blindly following directions or sticking to a process, a first principle thinker will constantly ask, “What’s best for the company?” and, “Couldn’t we do it this other way instead?” “If we had a blank canvas, what would we do?” The Netflix culture of not tracking vacations and not having an expense policy, all comes from this first principles approach (i.e. not simply doing what has been done before). Netflix tries to build this muscle in its employees.

Learning is not about learning content, or the latest AI-blah-blah learning platform. Organisations are collections of people interacting, and so if you’re looking to change your business to drive performance, start by understanding your culture. Chat to us if you want to work with a partner who deeply understands how to research and design initiatives that shift the dial. Once again, a BIG thank you to Kenny for getting involved and sharing his experiences at Netflix.

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