I clicked through a tweet by @dharmesh of OnStartups.com the other day and came across this uber-enlightening deck about the type of culture they try to build inside of Netflix. (At 128 slides that’s a whole lot of culture) My summary here won’t do the deck justice, you just have to read it for yourself. But to summarize I’m including a few points of what I learned from the deck and plan on applying to my future endeavors, peppered with my own personal input:

1. Don’t waste time working with dumb people. Instead find and retain smart people and pay them well.
2. Reward creative thinking and ideation at every level, “A good idea doesn’t care where it came from.”
3. No matter what size an organization is, project team sizes should always remain in the hands of 3-4 individuals. At a certain point teams become in-efficient so less is more when it comes to team size.
4. Policy/procedure is unavoidable when dealing with a large operation and customer base, the key is to continually revisit and evaluate those policies to see if they’ve become obsolete or inefficient

With that said, there is one thing I have to disagree with. Netflix seems to pat itself on the back for having “no vacation policy” vacation policy. I worked at a large interactive advertising agency who also followed this pseudo policy. On paper it sounds like a dream, however in practice moral and social pressure prevent employees from ever taking advantage of the full vacation they have coming to them. That three week tour of Europe you’ve been dreaming of you’ll probably never take, because who the heck wants to have that conversation with their boss.

Instead what happens is a lot of resentment for those who take advantage of the policy and a lot of competition amongst the die hard workaholics to wear the “I never take a day off” merit badge. I prefer the mandated vacations you see in the financial industry where people work 80 hours a week but they’re required to take a full two weeks off once they hit a certain amount of hours.

Aside from the vacation policy, the presentation, “Netflix Corporate Culture of Responsibility and Freedom” offers a rare insight into a highly successful publicly traded company that has managed to eschew the norms of most public companies for the benefit of not just the bottom line but their employees as well. I’d be very interested to see what Blockbuster’s culture deck looks like.

(Disclosure: I’ve had a Netflix CD lost in my apartment for close to three months and am to lazy/scared to find out how to remedy the situation, as a result I’ve resorted to Instant Play selections only…B-O-R-I-N-G)

Paired reading recommendation:  Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap…and Others Don’t by Jim Collins