The tactic Reed Hastings used at Netflix

Should you work for Reed Hastings, you’d higher be prepared to specific your dissatisfaction.

Good leaders hunt down crucial suggestions at any time when doable, the Netflix co-founder and chairman recently told entrepreneur Tim Ferriss’ podcast, “The Tim Ferriss Show.” Hastings even has a easy, three-word time period for the observe: “Farming for dissent.”

“If you’re a leader, it’s important to farm for dissent, because it’s not normal to disagree with your boss, right? [Normally] we learn deference,” Hastings stated. However as a result of corporations usually want new concepts and recent methods to develop, workers should be “willing to argue” with their managers at instances, he added.

“Because it’s difficult, emotionally, in most companies to disagree with your manager, we call it farming for dissent,” he added. “We have managers do things like [ask]: ‘What are three things you would do differently if you were in my job?'”

Hastings, who served as Netflix’s CEO for greater than twenty years earlier than turning into chairman final yr, stated he’d ask “50 top executives” yearly or two to “write down what would be different” in the event that they have been answerable for the corporate. He used their suggestions to experiment with completely different enterprise methods, a few of which labored.

The methods that did not work served as learning opportunities, he added.

Customers revolted on the thought of breaking apart the corporate. Netflix’s inventory dropped. Hastings publicly apologized and reverse the choice. Nonetheless, he stated the Qwickster catastrophe was his “favorite failure” of his profession, as a result of it taught him to ask for extra enter, constructive or adverse, earlier than making a giant resolution. 

“We didn’t do much farming for dissent in those days,” stated Hastings. “I was messianic, convinced this is the right move … and, it turned out that lots of people had severe doubts, but they didn’t know the other executives had doubts.”

Hastings instituted a course of the place he’d ask dozens of Netflix executives and managers for his or her sincere suggestions on any “big decisions” the corporate had within the works, he stated.

“We make everyone [submit a rating], 10 to -10, whether they think it’s a smart idea,” Hastings stated. “If we had done that at the time [with Qwickster], we would’ve seen tons of -7, -6, -8, and that would’ve been shocking.”

Doing so was a “very positive step” that helped Netflix strengthen selections going ahead, he added. At the moment, the corporate has a market capitalization of $240.2 billion.

The Netflix co-founder is not the one enterprise chief to embrace crucial suggestions from workers, a technique harking back to ex-Google and Apple govt Kim Scott’s “radical candor” philosophy.

Hastings cited Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for instance, noting Bezos’ tendency to read reviews from “discontent” Amazon customers to assist construct “a culture of high standards” on the firm. Bezos additionally suggested listening to your critics and thoughtfully deciding if they’ve a degree earlier than altering as wanted.

“You listen, you ask: ‘Are they right?’ Or, even if they’re not completely right, is there some piece of it that’s right that you can be inspired by [and] then you should change,” Bezos said at a 2018 convention.

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