Calendar-Defended Proximity
Connection to the front line won't happen by accident as you rise — you have to fight your calendar for it.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 87%
Stone's system for staying genuinely close to individual contributors as she rose to CTO of Netflix: bi-weekly bookable office hours, AMA sessions at varying group sizes, and an absolute commitment to responsiveness. The insight is structural, not sentimental — none of it happens unless you actively fight to preserve the time, and its second-order effect is approachability, which opens an unsolicited flow of information from the org that a leader otherwise never sees.
Origin
Elizabeth Stone's personal practice as VP of Data and Insights and then CTO at Netflix. She pairs it with her observation that her closest professional relationships (including the mutual connection who introduced her to this podcast) came from investing in people she worked with.
Core principles
- 01As your role changes, connection stops happening by default — it only survives if you make it a priority.
- 02Bookable, recurring slots beat good intentions; put the structure in the calendar.
- 03Vary the intimacy of the format — 1:1 office hours and AMAs at different group sizes serve different purposes.
- 04The point of the sessions isn't the sessions — it's that they make you approachable enough that people message you unprompted afterwards.
- 05Responsiveness is the price of approachability: if you don't reply fast, the channel closes.
How to run it
- 1
Put bookable office hours on a recurring cadence
Stone runs bi-weekly office hours where anyone can sign up for a slot. They're roughly 20 minutes each — she admits it can feel like speed dating — but they let her meet a wide range of people and hear what's top of mind.
Pro tip Slots that book out months in advance are the signal it's working. Don't kill the format because it feels rushed.
- 2
Run AMAs at varying group sizes
Hold ask-me-anything sessions with teams of different sizes, choosing the size based on how intimate you want it to feel. Truly anything is fair game — the point is for people to get to know you as a person and for you to hear real questions.
Pro tip Be candid about what you can and can't answer. The willingness to say 'I can't answer that' is what makes the answers you do give credible.
- 3
Convert the sessions into an always-open channel
The real return is approachability: after these sessions, people know they can Slack or email you directly. Hold yourself to responding as quickly as you can, because that is what keeps the channel open.
Pro tip This is the same 'don't make people wait on you' standard that underpins the whole high-bar culture — it compounds here.
Watch out If you run the office hours but let inbound messages rot, you've spent the time and killed the payoff.
- 4
Defend one-on-ones as sacred, and accept your limits
Preserve significant time for genuine 1:1 conversations where you're fully present and genuinely curious about how someone is doing and what they're excited about. Stone admits she multitasks in 30-person meetings — the trade is deliberate.
Pro tip Presence is a resource with a budget. Spend it where the human connection actually happens rather than pretending to be present everywhere.
Watch out Your executive assistant will hate this. Stone acknowledges her EA would cringe at how much time she gives to 1:1s.
In the wild
Even as CTO of Netflix, Stone keeps bi-weekly office hours with sign-up slots of about 20 minutes. People book them out many months ahead. She acknowledges it can feel like speed dating, but it lets her meet a large number of people and hear directly what's on their minds.
→ A durable flow of communication between Stone and her organisation that she says she wouldn't want to do the job without.
Stone notes that some of her greatest friends and connections are people she met professionally — she worked closely with the husband of the friend who introduced her to this podcast, at both Analysis Group and Lyft. Her framing: you get back what you give.
→ A community built from work relationships that has served her across four companies, and a rationale for investing in people that isn't purely instrumental.
Common mistakes
Assuming connection scales with your role
Stone's core finding is the opposite: as her role changed, connection 'just wouldn't happen' unless she made it a priority. Seniority actively destroys proximity by default.
Running the sessions but being unresponsive afterwards
The office hours and AMAs exist to make you approachable. If people then message you and you don't reply, you've taught them the accessibility was theatre and the channel closes for good.
Trying to be fully present everywhere
Stone openly admits she isn't present in 30-person meetings where she's multitasking. Pretending otherwise spreads your attention thin enough that even the 1:1s stop being real.
Is it for you?
Best for
Executives whose role has scaled past the point where they naturally see front-line work, and who feel the information flow drying up
Not ideal for
Leaders of very small teams where daily contact already exists, or during genuine crunch periods where the calendar cannot absorb the load
From the transcript
“a lot of it is how I spend my time and fighting to preserve opportunities to connect with people so examp examples would be I…”
“little like speed dating for 20 minute slots but I get to meet a whole bunch of people and hear about work here what's top…”
“then I do as me anything sessions with team of different sizes depending on how intimate we want it to feel”
“what I have found as my role has changed is that it just wouldn't happen if I didn't make it a priority”
“the one-on-one conversations I treat as being pretty sacred”
From the episode
How Netflix builds a culture of excellence
Elizabeth Stone (CTO)