Presentation: Passion, Grace, & Fire - The Elements of High Performance

Within each of us, there is potential. Our potential is expressed in specific and unique ways depending on our desires, aspirations, and affinities, which then drive the development of specific skills, experience, and work style. Under the right circumstances, with the right tools and support, potential is converted into impact - the ability to take an idea or a goal and bring it into existence. At its best we see individuals and teams on fire, relentlessly rising to the occasion, doing what seems to be impossible.

As leaders, our job is to identify and promote human potential to bring out the best in our team members. We must first understand how potential manifests within ourselves so that we can ignite in others and bring it into alignment with business strategies and goals. If we are successful we inspire a sense of ownership, which is critically necessary to overcome the most significant challenges. We must also seek to orchestrate that potential and sense of ownership at every level of our organization, sometimes even seeking to influence the broader industry at large. If we do our job well our people, teams, and business will thrive. Our impact and contributions will be significant and meaningful. 

In this talk, we’ll delve into the elements of high performance - passion, grace, and fire. To illustrate the power of this elemental approach we’ll focus on a pivotal period at Netflix when the demands on engineering to quickly deliver multiple, parallel, large-scale technical transformations was the norm. The transformations ultimately enabled a global, scalable, reliable, and successful streaming platform. By the end of the session, attendees will have a deep understanding of what really matters when trying to build, shape, and guide teams to high performance. Whether attendees are leaders or individual contributors they will walk away with a set of methods and tools for applying that understanding in their own work to great effect.