The Secret Weapon of Successful Tech Leaders: Rethinking Culture
Often referenced as one of the ‘most valuable documents to come out of SIlicon Valley’ (Sheryl Sandberg), and viewed over 5 million times, the Netflix Culture Deck developed by Reed Hastings and Patty McCord gives leaders a new perspective on how to get the most out of your people, in a way that everyone wins. It's a 145 page read but really worth absorbing their insights.
Whilst Netflix was ‘born’ as a tech company, there are many maxims here that will be hugely valuable to tech leaders (and leaders in general) of legacy companies, particularly those struggling with fast technology but slow change, or environments where leadership want to overlay experimentation and learning with structured processes and efficiencies focus, which typically has the same effect as bonding oil and water….
Some statements that I loved from this Culture Deck were:
In procedural work, the best are 2x better than the average. In creative / inventive work, the best are 10x better than the average, so there is a huge premium on creating effective teams of the best.
Values are what we value
A great workplace is not about espresso, lush benefits, sushi lunches and nice offices. A great workplace is Stunning Colleagues
We help each other be great. The more talent we have, the more we can accomplish, so our people assist each other all the time. Internal cutthroat or sink or swim behaviour is rare and will not be tolerated.
Look at any successful digital transformation or tech leader - one common theme is their ability to rethink culture and create high-performing teams that set their organisation apart. But it's not just my opinion. A Boston Consulting Group study of 40 digital transformations showed that companies that focused on culture instead of just implementing new technology were five times more likely to achieve breakthrough performance than companies that didn’t.
So, if you want to improve your technology success, take a look at your culture today.
Look at how your people think, act and interact to deliver desired results. On a scale of 1 - 10 where would you score your team? Why is this? What could you change or explore to get a different result?
In addition to the points I shared above, consider the following strategies:
Radical Transparency: enables you to co-create
Break the hierarchies and silos, which results in secrecy, assumptions and people operating without the full picture. Look at progress and challenges: What are we learning? Where do we need help? What’s coming down the track? How are we sharing this?
Radically Collaborative and Curious
Unpack Values - what they truly mean, look and feel like. When you are clear on your values, your team has the reassurance of behaviour expectations and the power of meaningful teamwork. Just look at the details which Netflix shared in this. It’s worth doing this well.
Be flexible in who you work with and how. As we get more mature and experienced in our respective fields, we can tend to make assumptions or simply not consider other perspectives or approaches. Actively encouraging a culture of curiosity and collaboration, bringing diverse perspectives to the table will garner more project support, better decision making and greater wins for the business at large.
This curiosity is what leads to experimentation, flexibility and new value - failure (within reason) becomes expected as you expect people to push the boundaries.
Radically clear and committed
Culture comes from the top down. If you want a more progressive culture with high performing people, it must come from leadership to be effective. In many ways, culture is the leader and the leader is the culture. Look at Atlassian, Netflix, Amazon (yes, questionable ethics but still very influential).
Kindly challenge leaders to not think in terms of hierarchy, but in terms of competence, knowledge and contribution. Airtime and support should be granted not on how long you serve, but how you serve.
Another huge drawback I see in organisations struggling with digital transformation is scheduling of meetings with leadership. If a major decision or project update needs to be addressed, it should not have to wait six weeks to get in front of the right leaders for help. All too often I see Project Owners present huge and complex powerpoints to leaders who are already overwhelmed with the detail, have 15 minutes left until lunch and just want to get to the end. This is a culture that is not committed to the success of technology.
If people see leaders making time to address and support the technology, they are going to buy into it more easily. Why? Because they are visibly committed and clear about why.
In summary, building a high-performance tech team culture is no accident—it’s a deliberate process that combines clarity, direction, and commitment. For tech leaders, this culture isn’t just a tool; it’s their secret weapon in an ever-competitive landscape.