this is one of my favorite descriptions of a company. it is from Netflix and came to me via Matthew Monahan (CEO of People Search Media):
We're a high-performance team, not a family.
A strong family is together forever - no matter what. A strong company, on the other hand, is more like a pro sports team: it is built to win. Management at every level has the responsibility that professional coaches have - to recruit the players and forge the teamwork that makes great performance possible.
To accomplish this, we seek to fill every position in our company with exceptional performers. In many companies, adequate performance gets a modest raise. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance package.
For us, the cost of having adequate in any position is simply too large, when we could have extraordinary. Extraordinary performance means excellence in the nine values described below. Plentiful extraordinary talent makes for a high-functioning company.
The benefit of a high-performance culture is you experience the exhilaration of working with consistently outstanding colleagues. You do your best work, you learn the most, and you achieve the highest professional satisfaction, when you're surrounded by excellence.
A great workplace is not how many perks are offered; it is how stunning are the colleagues.
