Company Culture

2) Clear Roles & Decision Rights

Without clear swim lanes and decision rights, individuals on teams feel disempowered and projects tend to stall out. This often happens when leaders are hesitant to explicitly give up their own power or when they want to maintain the appearance that the team is a democracy. High-performing teams have clear roles for... See more

The thing that will endure for 100 years, the way it has for most 100 year companies, is the culture. The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.

To start with, leaders must not be afraid of their teams making mistakes. Copying from another comment: "Netflix's culture demands very strong leadership and probably works only when the company is small enough. From CEO and down, leaders in every level need to know how to set context for their teams, give enough freedom to their teams, while... See more

If you look closely, all these problems fundamentally come from:

1. Decreased skin in the game, which reduces team alignment


2. N^2 communication, which creates need for managers and specialization, which reduces individual agency and breadth of learning


3. Reduced risk tolerance, which slows everything down

#1 and #2 are inevitable results of having more... See more