To achieve the highest level of talent density you have to be prepared to make tough calls. If youâre serious about talent density, you have to get in the habit of doing something a lot harder: firing a good employee when you think you can get a great one.
One of the reasons this is so difficult in many companies is because business leaders are continually telling their employees, âWe are a family.â But a high-talent-density work environment is not a family.
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We learned that a company with really dense talent is a company everyone wants to work for. High performers especially thrive in environments where the overall talent density is high.
Our employees were learning more from one another and teams were accomplishing moreâfaster. This was increasing individual motivation and satisfaction and leading the entire company to get more done. We found that being surrounded by the best catapulted already good work to a whole new level.
In order to fortify the talent density in your workforce, for all creative roles hire one exceptional employee instead of ten or more average ones. Hire this amazing person at the top of whatever range they are worth on the market. Adjust their salary at least annually in order to continue to offer them more than competitors would. If you canât afford to pay your best employees top of market, then let go of some of the less fabulous people in order to do so. That way, the talent will become even denser.
With our dispersed decision-making model, if you pick the very best people and they pick the very best people (and so on down the line) great things will happen. Ted calls this the âhierarchy of pickingâ and itâs what a workforce built on high talent density is all about.
A professional sports team is a good metaphor for high talent density because athletes on professional teams:
⢠Demand excellence, counting on the manager to make sure every position is filled by the best person at any given time.
⢠Train to win, expecting to receive candid and continuous feedback about how to up their game from the coach and from one another.
⢠Know effort isnât enough, recognizing that, if they put in a B performance despite an A for effort, they will be thanked and respectfully swapped out for another player.
On a high-performing team, collaboration and trust work well because all the members are exceptionally skilled both at what they do and at working well with others. For an individual to be deemed excellent she canât just be amazing at the game; she has to be selfless and put the team before her own ego. She has to know when to pass the ball, how to help her teammates thrive, and recognize that the only way to win is for the team to win together. This is exactly the type of culture we were going for at Netflix. This is when we started saying that at Netflix: WE ARE A TEAM, NOT A FAMILY.
Therefore, the first question you need to answer when choosing whether to lead with context or control is, âWhat is the level of talent density of my staff?â If your employees are struggling, youâll need to monitor and check their work to ensure they are making the right decisions. If youâve got a group of high performers, theyâll most likely crave freedom and thrive if you lead with context. But deciding whether to lead with context or control isnât just about talent density. You also have to consider your industry, and what you are trying to achieve.