White Rabbit Culture

Freedom and Responsibility

Seven Aspects of our Culture

• Values
• High Performance
• Freedom & Responsibility
• Context, not Control
• Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled
• Professional Development

Values

Many companies have nice sounding value statements displayed in the lobby

• Integrity
• Communication
• Respect
• Excellence

Enron went bankrupt from fraud, and it's leaders went to jail.

Enron had these values displayed in their lobby:

• Integrity
• Communication
• Respect 
• Excellence

(These values were not, however, what was really valued at Enron)

The actual company values, as opposed to the
nice-sounding values,
are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go

Actual company values are the behaviors and skills
that are valued
in fellow employees

At White Rabbit, we particularly value the following nine behaviors and skills in our colleagues...

...meaning we hire and promote people who demonstrate these nine

Judgement

You make wise decisions
(people, technical, business, and creative) despite ambiguity

You identify root causes, and get beyond treating symptoms

You think strategically, and can articulate what you are, and are not, trying to do

You smartly separate what must be done well now, and what can be improved later

Communication

You listen well, instead of reacting fast, so you can better understand

You are concise and articulate in speech and writing

You treat people with respect independent of their status or disagreement with you

You maintain calm poise in stressful situations

Impact

You accomplish amazing amounts of important work

You demonstrate consistently strong performance so colleagues can rely upon you

You focus on great results rather than on process

You exhibit bias-to-action, and avoid analysis-paralysis

Curiosity

You learn rapidly and eagerly

You seek to understand our strategy, market, customers, and vendors

You are broadly knowledgeable about business, technology and eCommerce

You contribute effectively outside of your specialty

Innovation

You re-conceptualize issues to discover practical solutions to hard problems

 
You challenge prevailing assumptions when warranted, and suggest better approaches

You create new ideas that prove useful

You keep us nimble by minimizing complexity and finding time to simplify

Courage

You say what you think even if it is controversial

 
You make tough decisions without agonizing

You take smart risks

You question actions
inconsistent with our values

Passion

You inspire others with your thirst for excellence

You care intensely about White Rabbit's success

You celebrate wins

You are tenacious

Honesty

You are known for candor and directness

You are non-political when you disagree with others

You only say things about fellow employees you will say to their face

You are quick to admit mistakes

Selflessness

You seek what is best for White Rabbit, rather than best for yourself or your group

 
You are ego-less when searching for the best ideas

You make time to help colleagues

You share information openly and proactively

Why do we care so much about high performers?

Hard work is not relevant

We measure results, not hours.

Average performance, despite an "A for effort" results in severance, with respect

Sustained A-level performance, despite minimal effort, is rewarded with more responsibility and great pay

• In procedural work, the best are 2x better than average.

• In creative/inventive work, the best are 10x better than the average.

Imagine if every person at White Rabbit is someone you respect and learn from...

A Great Workplace is

Amazing Colleagues

A great workplace is not espresso, bean bag chairs, lush benefits, ping pong tables, or grand parties

The Rare Responsible Person

• Self motivating

• Self aware

• Self disciplined

• Self improving

• Acts like a leader

• Doesn't wait to be told what to do

• Picks up the trash lying on the floor

A responsible person honors commitments

 We do what we promise each other, our customers, and our partners

Our model is to increase employee freedom as we grow, rather than limit it, to continue to attract and nourish
innovative people, so we have better chance of sustained success

Growth Increases Complexity

Complexity

Chaos Emerges

Complexity

% High Performance Employees

Chaos and errors spike here - business becomes too complex to run informally with this talent level

Process Emerges to Stop the Chaos

Procedures

No one loves process, but feels good compared to the pain of chaos

Process-focus drives more talent out

% High Performance Employees

Process Brings Seductively Strong Near-Term Outcome

• A highly-successful process-driven company
• With leading share in its market
• Minimal thinking required
• Few mistakes made--highly efficient
• Few curious innovator-mavericks remain
• Very optimized processes for its existing market
• Efficiency has trumped flexibility

Then the Market Shifts

• Market shifts due to new technology, competitors or business models
• Company is unable to adapt quickly
  (because the employees are extremely good at following the existing processes, and process adherence is the value system)
• Company generally grinds painfully into irrelevance

Seems Like Three Bad Options

1. Stay creative by staying small, but therefore have less impact
2. Avoid rules as you grow, and suffer chaos
3. Use process as you grow to drive efficient execution of current model, but cripple creativity, flexibility, and ability to thrive when your market eventually changes
   

A Fourth Option

Avoid chaos as you grow with ever more high performance people - not with rules

• Then you can continue to mostly run informally with self-discipline, and avoid chaos

• The run informally part is what enables and attracts creativity

The Key: Increase Talent Density faster than Complexity Growth

Minimize Complexity Growth

• Few big projects vs many small ones
• Eliminate distracting complexity (barnacles)
• Be wary of efficiency optimizations that increase complexity and rigidity

Note: Sometimes long-term simplicity is achieved only through bursts of complexity to rework current systems

Summary of Freedom and Responsibility

• As we grow, minimize rules

• Inhibit chaos with ever more high performance people

• Flexibility is more important than efficiency in the long term

Value of Teamwork

The more talent we have, the more we can accomplish, so our people assist each other all the time

Helping others is a priority, even when it is not related to the goals that you are trying to achieve. You are encouraged to ask others for help and advice when needed. Anyone can chime in on any subject. The person responsible for the task decides how to do it but should always take the suggestions seriously and try to respond and explain.

We're a team; not a family

We're like a pro sports team,
not a kid's recreational team

White Rabbit managers
hire, develop and cut smartly,
so we have stars in every position

The Keeper Test

Managers should ask themselves: which of my people, if they told me they were leaving, for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at White Rabbit?

The other people should be let go now, so we can open a slot to try to find a star for that role.

Context over Control

Context (embrace)

• Strategy
• Metrics
• Assumptions
• Objectives
• Clearly-defined roles
• Knowledge of the stakes
• Transparency around decision-making

Control (avoid)

• Top-down decision-making
• Management approval
• Committees
• Planning and process valued more than results

Good Context

• Link to company/functional goals
• Relative priority (how important/how time sensitive)
  • Critical (needs to happen now), or...
  • Nice to have (when you can get to it)
• Level of precision & refinement
  • No errors (credit cards handling, etc...), or...
  • Pretty good/can correct errors (website), or...
  • Rough (experimental)
• Identify key stakeholders
• Define key metrics/definition  of success

Managers: When one of your talented people does something dumb, don't blame them

Instead, ask yourself what context you failed to set

Managers: When you are tempted to ''control'' your people, ask yourself what context you could set instead

Are you articulate and inspiring enough about goals and strategies?

Why Manage Through Context?

High performance people will do better work if they understand the context

Investing in Context

This is why we do new employee on-boarding, why we are transparent about decision-making, and why we are so open internally about strategies and results

Exceptions to "Context, not Control"

• Control can be important in an emergency

  • No time to take long-term capacity-building view

• Control can be important when someone is still learning their area

  • Takes time to pick up the necessary context

• Control can be important when you have the wrong person in a role

  • Temporarily, no doubt

Three Models of Teamwork

• Tightly-Coupled Monolith
• Independent Silos
• Highly-Aligned, Loosely-Coupled

Tightly Coupled Monolith

• Senior management reviews nearly all tactics
  e.g., CEO reviews all refunds, advertising, blog posts
• Lots of multi-departmental buy-in meetings
• Keeping other internal groups happy has equal precedence with pleasing customers
• Mavericks get exhausted trying to innovate
• Highly-coordinated through centralization, but very slow, and the slowness increases with size

Independent Silos

• Each group executes on their objectives with little  coordination
• Everyone does their own thing
• Work that requires coordination suffers
• Alienation and suspicion between departments
• Only works well when business units are independent
  e.g., package forwarding and graded readers

Highly-Aligned, Loosely-Coupled

Highly Aligned

Strategy goals are clear, specific, broadly understood

Team interactions focused on strategy and goals, rather than tactics.

Requires large investment in management time to be transparent and articulate and perceptive

Loosely Coupled

Minimal cross-functional meetings except to get aligned on goals and strategy

Trust between groups on tactics without previewing/approving each one - so groups can move fast

Leaders reaching out proactively for ad-hoc coordination and perspective as appropriate

Occasional postmortems on tactics necessary to increase alignment

Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled teamwork effectiveness depends on
high performance people
and good context

Goal is to be big and fast and flexible

Accept mistakes

 High performers make few errors. When they do, they just fix problems rapidly. Inform others of impact if necessary. Asking for help if needed.

Not every problem should lead to a new process to prevent them. Additional process make all actions more inefficient, a mistake only affects one.

When there is conflict, manage it

Some workplaces seek to avoid conflict, but we believe high performance teams often deliver their best results when they manage conflict constructively. People are expected to stop fighting each other and to search for the right answer together. Joining arms and attacking the problem instead of each other.

Compensation Rules

1. What could person get elsewhere?
2. What would we pay for replacement?
3. What would we pay to keep that person?
   (If they had a bigger offer elsewhere)

Vacation Policy and Tracking

We don't track hours worked per day or per week, so we don't tracking days of vacation either

We focus on what people get done, not on how many days worked. Just as we don't have a 9 to 5 workday policy, we don't need a vacation policy

Vacation Policy and Tracking

"there is no policy or tracking"

There is also no clothing policy at White Rabbit either, but no one comes to work naked

Lesson: you don't need policies for everything

Development

We want people to manage their own career growth,  and not rely on a company for "planning" their careers

We develop people by giving them the opportunity to develop themselves, by surrounding them with stunning colleagues and giving them big challenges to work on.

Mediocre colleagues and non-challenging work kill a person's skill development

Your Economic Security is based on your Skills and Reputation

We try hard to consistently provide opportunity to grow both by surrounding you with great talent

Welcome to White Rabbit!