Twiggys climate quest draws on Netflix culture for a workplace with no bosses

Staff who join Andrew Forrest’s quest to tackle climate change will receive a hefty pay packet and a workplace where rules have been replaced by values, where they can take as many holidays as they like and have no immediate boss.

At Fortescue Future Industries, employees decide where and how to work based on their “team’s productivity â€" your personal brilliance and your team’s brilliance”, an internal document staff obtained by this masthead reveals.

Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest’s new green venture, Fortescue Future Industries, is taking a modern approach to workplace culture. Credit:FFI/Twitter

Applicants wanting to join the now 600-strong Fortescue subsidiary are given a five-page document explaining its workplace culture, and are told “we don’t mind if you wake up one day and you decide to take a day off”, and, when it is time for a break, “your holidays and their length become your decision”.

Fortescue chair Dr Forrest said FFI’s challenges were entirely different to its iron ore mining parent so a different approach to culture was required.

“We have observed dozens of the most successful companies, including our own, determining what works and what fails and why,” he said.

“At FFI we work hard and fast to achieve the great things that others just talk about.”

FFI Culture document

To University of NSW professor of management and organisational psychologist Frederik Anseel, FFI’s new culture looks a lot like an approach made famous by Netflix a decade ago.

“The theory is that a workplace that offers both great freedom and responsibility will attract the brightest who, unshackled from bureaucracy, will focus on work and self-manage towards the end results,” Professor Anseel said.

“There’s a war for talent and trying to attract those people requires, probably, a unique culture.”

Australia’s richest man agrees.

“If you keep doing the same thing, the same way, you get the same result,” Dr Forrest said.

“We know that we have to think and act differently to get the results the world needs for the planet to stop cooking.

“It comes down to deep trust which we have in our colleagues and empowering them.”

Forrest has committed to transfer up to 10 per cent of Fortescue’s enormous profits to FFI.

The miner’s recent annual results indicate $US1 billion ($1.4 billion) is waiting in the kitty for possible investments.

Dr Forrest wants a “light-speed organisation based on professional freedoms and responsibilities”.

Instead of ticking boxes on company forms, FFI workers must ask themselves if they are acting in the best interests of FFI, according to the FFI Culture document seen by WAtoday.

There is plenty of leeway in how to answer that question.

“This is not a hoax, this is not a joke, this is not some gimmick,” the document says.

However, life at FFI is not a free for all, and workers must use the flexibility within the constraints of getting the job done.

Interestingly, before taking leave the workers are instructed they must make sure they have appointed someone smarter than themselves to maintain momentum in their absence.

“At FFI we work hard and fast to achieve the great things that others just talk about.”

And “great things” involve nothing less than tackling climate change by decarbonising what a renewable power grid cannot: heavy transport and industry.

The solution is hydrogen that, whether burnt for heat or consumed in a fuel cell for electricity, emits nothing but water vapour.

In particular, Dr Forrest wants green hydrogen made by separating hydrogen from water with renewable electricity.

He says the alternative of ‘blue hydrogen’, made from gas with the significant carbon dioxide emissions either buried or offset by planting trees, is a “lie” and calls its proponents such as Santos and Woodside are fossils.

Dr Forrest’s green pursuit is ambitious on multiple fronts: moving from mining ore to developing technology; simultaneously greening trains, trucks and ships as well as cement and steel; and doing it all in a hurry.

Every minute a screen at FFI’s Perth office counts down to the first production of green ammonia, a hydrogen product, in Tasmania by June 30, 2023.

As well as excessive precision, the countdown demonstrates an aggressive schedule. Fortescue’s proposed 250-megawatt plant at Bell Bay is 25 times the size of most announced in Australia to date and so far published progress is just a non-binding land deal.

Workers have no boss

FFI offers a flat hierarchy with “no reporting lines” and “connectivity through the whole organisation.”

Professor Anseel is sceptical about the absence of managers.

“Somebody needs to take responsibility for decisions,” he said.

US online shoe store Zappos famously adopted a “holocracy” of self-management.

“Every decision ended up in endless meetings and talks because nobody makes a decision and everything needs to be endlessly discussed,” Professor Anseel said.

But FFI chief executive Julie Shuttleworth said her workers were not constrained by reporting lines.

“People are empowered to go directly to their target â€" to move across functions, geographies and reporting lines to get the job done,” she said.

“We have ‘clusters of achievement’ and a small number of clear, empowered decision-making clusters.”

Netflix’s culture became famous when it was published as a slide deck in 2009.

One Netflix dictum that “adequate performance gets a generous severance package” appears in the FFI document as “FFI is generous to its people and kind when it lets them go” with two months’ pay offered if the employee is not wanted after their six-month probation period.

Talk in Perth engineering circles suggests FFI is paying similar to Netflix’s top-of-the-market rates for talent.

Such a culture can also become very cutthroat, according to Professor Anseel.

“Everyone wants to get results because you want to stay in the company because you’re paid very well,” Professor Anseel said.

He said Zappos had been compared to a kindergarten playground where cliques formed and those on the outer were bullied.

“I’m not saying it’s going to go that way,” Professor Anseel said, but added that careful management would be required to avoid a corporate jungle.

Ms Shuttleworth said FFI hires were the best in their field globally, or had the potential to be so, making appropriate remuneration important, while ensuring value for money.

To avoid a highly political office, FFI spends a lot of time weeding out those who would be incompatible with its new culture.

“Speed of decision-making is critical at FFI â€" with one exception â€" employing new colleagues,” Ms Shuttleworth said.

“Our values and philosophies are embedded in everything that we do and will help to avoid cliques and infighting.”

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Peter Milne covers business for WAtoday, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald with a focus on energy, mining, construction and property.Connect via Twitter or email.

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