Context Not Control
Your job as a leader is to give people the context to decide well — including the context that isn't flattering.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Netflix's leadership principle, operationalised by Stone into a concrete practice: she takes notes in leadership meetings and shares them with her entire organisation. Not sanitised summaries — including candid reflections on what isn't going well and problems that need solving. The candour test is whether you're willing to publish the retrospective on your own change that didn't go perfectly, rather than declaring victory and moving on.
Origin
'Context, not control' is a long-standing Netflix leadership principle from the Netflix culture deck and Reed Hastings' philosophy. Elizabeth Stone describes her specific implementation of it as CTO — the leadership-notes broadcast and the public post-mortem on her own IC-levels rollout.
Core principles
- 01If people don't have the context, they can't exercise the freedom you gave them — context is the fuel for autonomy.
- 02Push the boundary of what you share, deliberately. You can't share everything, but you should share more than feels comfortable.
- 03Transparency includes what isn't going well, not just what leadership is thinking about.
- 04The hardest and most valuable candour is about your own decisions, after everyone has already moved on.
- 05Publishing your own imperfect results builds community and trust more than declaring the change a success.
How to run it
- 1
Take notes in leadership meetings and broadcast them
Sit in the leadership meeting taking notes with the intent to share them with the whole organisation. Include the candid parts — reflections on things that aren't going well, problems that need solving — as well as simply letting people know what's top of mind for leadership.
Pro tip Even when the content is mundane, the ritual itself signals that the default is openness.
Watch out You cannot share every detail. Decide the boundary in advance rather than self-censoring in the moment, or the notes degrade into PR.
- 2
Push the boundary of what you share
Deliberately share things that push a little past what's comfortable, so the team genuinely understands what's happening across the company and what you're thinking about.
- 3
Run a public retro on your own big change — after everyone has moved on
Once a significant change you drove has bedded in, go back and run an honest post-mortem: what went well, what didn't, what would we do better. Publish it. Most cultures would consider this settled and would avoid reopening the debate.
Pro tip This is where candour is most expensive and therefore most credible — it's your change, and admitting it hasn't all gone perfectly costs you something.
Watch out Expect the instinct — including your own — to say 'we got past that change, don't reflect on it, that just reopens the early debate'. That instinct is the thing to override.
- 4
Make yourself reachable so the context flows back
Transparency is bidirectional. Be responsive to Slack and email, run office hours and AMAs, and treat approachability as the return channel for the context you're broadcasting.
In the wild
Until two years before the interview, Netflix ICs had no levels at all — every engineer was simply a senior engineer. Stone introduced IC levels, and it was a big, contentious shift (she describes it as being in a tumble dryer for a few months) because many people had joined precisely because Netflix didn't have that structure. Rather than declaring victory once the change bedded in, she ran a retro on how it had gone and shared candidly that it hadn't all gone perfectly and there was a lot they could do better.
→ Stone believes that level of candour and reflection builds a sense of community and trust across the team — where the conventional move would have been to avoid reopening the debate.
As CTO, Stone takes notes in leadership meetings and shares them with her entire organisation — including candid reflections on what isn't going well and the problems leadership needs to solve.
→ A version of transparency Stone believes doesn't exist in most companies, giving her whole org the context to do their jobs well.
Common mistakes
Sharing only the good news
Broadcast notes that contain only wins and plans are marketing, not context. The value is precisely in the reflections on what isn't working — that's what lets people make good decisions without you.
Declaring your own change a success and never revisiting it
The default cultural move after a hard change is 'we got past it, don't reopen the debate'. That protects the leader's ego and costs the organisation the learning.
Giving freedom without giving context
Autonomy without context is abandonment. People will make locally rational, globally wrong decisions, and you'll conclude that freedom doesn't work.
Is it for you?
Best for
Senior leaders of large orgs who have devolved decision-making and need people to make good calls without escalating
Not ideal for
Situations with genuine confidentiality constraints (M&A, personnel, material non-public information) where over-sharing carries legal or fiduciary risk
From the transcript
“it's part of the culture to context not control which means part of my job”
“is to make sure that people have the context they need to do their jobs well and in practice that means I take notes in…”
“I do try to share things that probably push the boundary a little bit in the team feeling like they understand what's happening across the…”
“I think it's a good example of being candid about this was a big change for us it hasn't all gone perfectly there's a lot…”
“I do think that level of cander and reflection helps build a sense of community and Trust across the team”
From the episode
How Netflix builds a culture of excellence
Elizabeth Stone (CTO)