- After revolutionizing the industry with mail-based DVD rental, they became the pioneer in movie streaming—and not long after that—produced their content. The goal has always been the same: to increase their subscribers' experience.
Be ↗ Innovative = ↗ Fun + ↗ Money
Tired of crappy organization culture, high turnover, & low performance?
ICUV is here to save you.
What the Hell is ICUV Anyway?
ICUV is a set of values. It summarizes the innovative DNA of successful companies (Netflix, Google, etc.) and collaboration frameworks (Holacracy, Scrum, etc.).
Consisting of just five sentences, ICUV is your best start in shaping a better organization or team culture. More than installing a framework.
Scroll down a bit to read those five sentences.
Innovation Culture's Unique Values
click to understand its Why
Happier user is the only key to a real income increment.
Innovative or not, only users will decide.
Nothing beats the satisfaction of improving a user's life.
Brilliant ideas are initially weird. If it's not, everyone will have it. The more people assess a weird idea, the less likely it will be approved & executed.
Innovations were born from a lot of trial-errors. The more people needed to decide, the longer time it'll takes, the fewer trials could be conducted.
The more people needed to review & approve an idea, the harder it will be to revise that idea (decision → Decision). Slow adjustment blocks innovation.
When someone isn't brave enough to criticize her/his senior's idea, she/he wouldn't even think to criticize her/his boss's idea. Her/his team will foolishly stumble upon a rock that they've already seen.
Innovating is an intense activity. It demands a lot of energy, focus, & time. Thus, misscommunications & interpersonal conflicts are inevitable. Holding grudge = holding a time bomb.
Innovations were born from a lot of trial-errors. The better idea we have, the fewer trial-errors we need to face. That's why, the ability to criticize & build each other's ideas is essential.
Innovation is not a sprint, nor marathon. It's an exploration. There isn't any clear defined finish line; consequently, there isn't any racing path. Running as fast as you can is contra-productive for most cases. Not only it's tiring, it's also distracting.
A tired mind produces a lot of bad ideas. Bad ideas reduce the quality of the trial-errors. Not only at the ideation, it also introduces many technical issues in the execution. Valuing output's quantity more than outcome → getting less & worse output.
Innovation itself is already a pursuit of growth—especially on UX. It's technically hard. Zero growth mindset prefers status quo & stagnates competency.
Always assume there's a competitor out there. If it turns out there's no, at least you've already been in a better position, competition-wise & money-wise.
Decision making requires enough understanding of contexts. Any individual or small team need to be intelligent enough to implement ICUV number 2 above.
For some, innovation is a matter of life or death. In 1973, a Kodak's employee invented digital camera, but it was dismissed. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection.
The Proofs
click to validate ICUV pattern in real world
- There's no reimbursement limit, as long as the employee can explain that it's in Netflix's best interest.
- After following Reed Hastings (Netflix Founder & CEO) along the day, Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook COO) was shocked by how few decisions Reed needed to make.
- Disagreeing openly with your peers, reports, and even bosses are encouraged.
- No micro management:
- Unless in an emergency, a staff-level employee has full authority on each responsibility. It's encouraged to be brave enough to say this to your manager, "I know you disagree, but I'm going to do X because I think it is a better solution. Let me know if you want to specifically override my decision."
- 'Context' over 'control'. The success of the Mighty Little Bheem series is the result of staff-level decisions, guided by many cascading contexts from Reed to his direct manager.
- Not only disagreeing openly are encouraged, "you only say things about fellow employees that you say to their face" is also brainwashed.
- Employees are encouraged to keep asking about their Keeper's Test score, which is all about how hard she/he will fight for you if you have plan to resign. This score can sparks some discussions about personal improvement plan.
- Employees are encouraged to give constructive feedbacks in person & as early as possible.
- In 2019, after the annual 360 surveys, Reed mailed all employees, telling them how grateful he was for the feedback. And even summarize the criticisms & constructive feedback he got.
- Ted, one of the senior executives, dictated the constructive feedback he got in 360 in front of all of his reports.
- Some teams are routinely conducting Live 360 sessions, where all of the team members praise & criticize each other at the dinner table.
- No limit on vacations—and the managers are encouraged to give example by taking a lot.
- Disagreeing about delivery time expectation is also encouraged.
- The best perk of working at Netflix is stunning colleagues. Managers are encouraged to fire their reports who got no hope of increasing their Keeper's Test score. A six-month salary allowance is given to help the fired employee find a company that's better suited for their career growth.
- Salary is based on an employee's market price, plus some bumps. Employees are encouraged to apply elsewhere once in a while & attend networking events, to know their market price better.
- There's no bonus. Employees are trusted to give their best.
Sources: jobs.netflix.com/culture, Netflix's culture deck, No Rules Rules book
- This is Google's first principle: “focus on users, and everything else will follow”. You can read the elaboration at Google's philosophy page.
- Google labelled their employee “smart creative”, which have full authority in building successful innovation in global market. Anyone can use 20% of working time to develop his/her own idea, Gmail is one of the results.
- Sensitive informations such as quarterly results, project's progress status, others employee progress status, are accessible for every employee.
- Google define 'smart creative' as someone who dare to disagree with her/his own boss. This Sergey Brin story is one of some interesting real stories on this.
- Google create timeline for their initiatives but rarely publish it. So it's easier to postpone the launch if shit happens or the estimation was wrong.
- For Google, a 'smart creative' must has technical knowledge, business expertise, & creativity. Most likely you will face at least an engineer, a marketer, and a manager in a Google job interview.
Sources: How Google Works slideshare & book.
- Small & frequent releases
- Long-term & mid-term roadmap are fluid.
- In end of every sprint (not more that one month), there's a live discussion between the developers, Product Owner, and stakeholders regarding the User experience of latest product release.
- Product Owner has full authority of product roadmap, his/her performance is measured by business outcomes, not outputs.
- Developers have full authority on delivery time estimation & engineering practices (if it's not mentioned by company's convention).
- Scrum Master is expected to be brave to enact Scrum rules, even to top stakeholders.
- Product roadmap must be transparent. So, every stakeholder can argue with Product Owner directly.
- There are activities such as sprint review, sprint retrospective, and daily scrum, which are designed to discover & mitigate problems as soon as possible, as a team.
- Estimation couldn't be translated to deadline. Developers have full authority on delivery time estimation.
- Not only the workload of a sprint, the long term delivery time estimation also comes from developers consensus.
- The goal of Scrum Team is to keep maximizing the product's value.
- Because of the respect for their delivery time estimation, developers are expected to be more accurate in estimating.
- If developers finish sooner than estimated, they won't get any reward.
- There's no sub-division of developers, being a T-shaped professional is encouraged.
- A retrospective is conducted every sprint, a clear action plans for improvement are expected. Improving the quality checklist (Definition of Done) is encouraged.
Source: Scrum Guide.
Holacary & other findings on pattern will be post elsewhere. Subscribe.
How Does ICUV Solve My Problems?
I understand. Blindly copy-paste Netflix/Google implementation might be unwise. They are more or less aligned with ICUV, but they also have their own unique values & circumstances. So, subscribe to get a print-ready PDF full of company-agnostic 27 action plans based on ICUV, which you can immediately apply to your team. Hopefullly it will fix your team culture (organization culture, if you're the CEO), lower the turnover, & boost the performance.
SubscribeBonus: monthly innovation ideas you can steal
(or at least, steal its mental models).
Even with Netflix, Google, & Scrum proofs above, are you still unsure to subscribe? No worries.
Learn The Foundations of ICUV (for free!)
What is 'culture'? How can we measure it? Can a team, its company, & its nation have different culture? What is 'innovation'? Is it really mandatory for a business to innovate? Master all of the answers down below.
- What is Culture?
- to be continued...