HR Blog

Making Some Noise

At Spotify, we’ve made it our business to make some noise. We’re not content to sit idly by and wait for others to forge new paths, we want to learn faster than the world around us is changing. In short, change is our constant. We’re dedicated to relentless innovation, ensuring our technology stays relevant, easy to use, and easy to scale. 

The Spotify rhythm

We believe that the speed of iteration beats the quality of iteration, which is why we’re not big on bureaucracy. To us, complicated processes and guidelines can kill innovation. We’d rather just stay focused and prioritize ruthlessly. It’s kind of like your personal To Do list, just on steroids.

And in the spirit of transparency, we’ll admit that being process-light sometimes invites a little bit of chaos into our everyday. We embrace it. A little bit of chaos forces you to think in new ways, break out of your old patterns. It keeps us fast, focused, and inventive. 

Working fast means acting with consent, not consensus. 
Even if the majority can’t come to an agreement, it’s important to keep moving, take a chance, and execute. As long as we’re always making grounded and informed decisions, we shouldn’t be afraid to make a bet. Because here, getting ideas out into the world takes precedence. 

Our old mantra; Think it, Build it, Ship it, Tweak it still stands strong in the way we think and act. Growth is just part of our design thinking. Everything we do, plan and develop – people or platform is with the growth mindset in mind. 

But, let’s face it. Most of you have heard that being Swedish, you like consensus. You might also have heard that we stay away from conflicts in the lines of once bitten, twice shy… Stressing consent, not consensus is a big thing for us but an important one. A vision without execution is hallucination. And speed comes with trust and with trust there is no need to seek consensus all the time. When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks enough. 

Dream big, act fast

We believe in maintaining that relentlessly resourceful start-up spirit. Complacency is our enemy, we take smart risks and set the bar high as we continually think, build, ship and tweak. We strive to stay receptive and flexible, adapting and acting on what we observe. Learning is everything.

We work hard to find the best way to get things done, even if it’s not the most obvious way. And then we do it again and again. When we go, we go hard.

The beat goes on

When we win, we celebrate the success together. When we fail, we celebrate the new valuable information that we learned. 

Failure is an important part of our process. It’s the best indication that we’re trying something new, that we’re reaching for what’s next. And an undesirable outcome doesn’t mean that the wrong decision was made, it means we took an informed risk, as you must when pursuing innovation. If it worked, we would’ve won big. If it didn’t, that’s ok. We move on, keep trying, and give each other the freedom to fail again. We don’t fear mistakes but we refuse to repeat them.

This extraordinary rhythm requires extraordinary people. We seek those who have the creativity to discover, the accountability to deliver, and the courage to embrace complexity as well as polarity. Being part of the Spotify band means staying passionate, nurturing your curiosity, and welcoming (and oftentimes even driving) change.

You can read more about how we roll in The Band Manifesto.

Explore Similar Posts