Stone frames Netflix's famous cultural traits—high agency, minimal process, pushing decisions deep into the org—as a deliberate system engineered to produce excellence, not just perks for their own sake. ✦ AI generated
Elizabeth Stone · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-07-19 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 39:18
I've thought about all those aspects of the culture at Netflix as excellence as an operating system. So the goal of all those cultural elements wasn't the end goal in themselves. It was instead a very strongly held opinion that you get to excellence by giving people a lot of agency and accountability, by pushing decisions as deep in the organization as possible, hiring great people who can be trusted to have good judgment and make good decisions.
verbatim transcript · starts at 39:18
39:18incredible. I've thought about all those aspects of the culture at Netflix as this is going to sound a little bit nerdy, but excellence as an operating system. So the goal of all those cultural elements wasn't the end goal in themselves. It wasn't let's just make sure people have as much responsibility as possible or let's you know, we don't like process. So let's make sure that we don't have any of that.
39:42It was instead a very strongly held opinion that that you get to excellence by giving people a lot of agency and accountability. By pushing decisions as deep in the organization as possible, hiring great people who can be trusted to have good judgment and make good decisions. And that ends up driving incredible outcomes plus a lot more motivation and sense of responsibility. It means every person on the team can feel like I'm
40:10being given a lot of keys and a lot of accountability for what happens here and I myself feel like when you know you're carrying that level of trust and accountability, you want to do your best work. And so there's something that feels very intuitive about Netflix's culture has always been aiming at excellence. And when you have great talent and you give them the ability to do their best
40:35work without micromanaging it or drowning it in process, you actually get much better outcomes. And so I do think that the newer era companies are picking up on something that is feeling very familiar to us. And it it's not something that comes easily. So having culture is not a static thing. Culture needs to grow and evolve as a company gets bigger, the types of problems you're solving change. But the notion that like
41:00we're going for excellence and trusting that exceptional talent needs to be able to do their best work. That's unchanged and something that I think continues to be a special sauce for us. >> I love this concept, excellence as an operating system. It's very uh systems thinking, he he might say, for how to set up a company. >> Exactly, Lenny. >> [laughter] >> So for people that like everyone