No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention

Key takeaways:

I don't agree with the authors of this book in several areas. One caveat they make is that industries that are safety focused (like healthcare, construction, etc.) or heavily regulated (financial services, etc.) do not work well with many of the principles in this book.

- Rules and policy are only required if you have sloppy or bad employees. If you have quality employees, these things will be drastically less important.
- Talent Density: You are better off to have a few MVPs than many average performers. Increase your talent density by a) hiring exceptional people; and b) letting go of everyone else.
- A negative team member brings the team down more than a positive person moves it up. This point was especially impactful when thinking about negativity in leaders.
- You want to be surrounded by stunning colleagues exclusively.
- Say what you feel with positive intent. Anyone in the organization can give anyone feedback, if done well.
- When a team member comes to complain about someone to you, respond with, “‘What did this person say when you told them about this?”
- “Speak up either to dissent or to augment.”
- 4A feedback model:
1. Aim to Assist: Feedback must be given with positive intent.
2. Actionable: Feedback must focus on something the recipient can do differently.
3. Appreciate: When receiving feedback, appreciate it. Consider the message with an open mind, rather than getting defensive.
4. Accept or Discard: When receiving feedback, after considering it, you get to choose if you will follow it.
- As a leader, ask for feedback during your reviews with staff.
- If an employee is out of line, don't immediately create a new policy–address the employee. Most of these situations can be treated as one-offs.
- Pay people top of market, then expect them to be top of market. If they aren't, let them go with a generous severance.
- In many cases a top performing team member can accomplish as much as to mid-performing team members. You're better off to hire one top performer and then two mid performers and pay them appropriately.
- Teach everyone how to read financial statements so people can see how their work impacts the business.
- If you don't trust your employees to make decisions in line with their jobs, you shouldn't have them on the team.
- Give your team autonomy and ownership. Your employees should have “chips”. They can spend them on any bet they like. Don't judge them on any individual bet, but rather their ability to make good bets over time. Are you building a stack of chips, or are you running out?
- It's disloyal to the company to disagree with an idea and not express it.
- Farming for descent: If you have a new initiative you're working on, you have to go looking for people that disagree with you before you put it into play.
- When you have an idea, share it with the team. Ask them to rate this idea on a scale of -10 to +10 and include comments. This helps to gauge not only the level of descent but also the reason for it. Receiving more negative than positive responses doesn't mean you don't go ahead, but it gives you some feedback to consider before you proceed.
- We can't make good decisions without good data. We need to use some combination of gut feeling and data.
- You're not a family, you're a team. You are only on this team because of your work output. Keeper test to perform when determining whether to let someone go: Would you try to stop them from leaving if they mentioned a competitor offered them a job? If not, you shouldn't have them on the team.
- If you didn't have them on your team already, would you hire them?
- 360 feedback. Have a process where you can receive feedback from your managers, people on the same level as you, and people who report to you.
- Lead with context, not control. If your team can't handle this or you don't trust them enough for this, are they the right people? For example: “Our goal is to strengthen client relationships while managing costs. Travel if it will significantly impact a deal or partnership.” Now employees know what is expected of them, they can make decisions on their own, as long as they work toward that goal.

I really enjoyed reading this and found the book quite fascinating, getting to know the inner workings of Netflix and how their operations run, some of their policies kinda freak me out, mainly the one around expenses, but that's me.

Definitely a few nuggets I took out for myself as a team leader.

This was good! Actionable, engaging, compelling. It helps that I am aligned with the idea of providing freedom and responsibility to team members already.

First business book in a whole that hasn't felt redundant.

Good reference material, especially around feedback, even for “process and control” environments.

Netflix's corporate culture is a must! Whether you're an employee or an employer, this book will give you real insights on how to gain perspective and build a flexible, long lasting and growth-oriented team. It is highly applicable in any situation, and the improvements will hugely outweigh the risks involved in getting out of the corporate comfort of assiduous control.

Interesting Look At Business Practices Less Common Than Many Claim. Let me be clear here: I am a 14+ year professional software developer in my “day job”. I've worked for very small companies with barely 100 people and owned by a single person all the way to one of the largest companies on the planet (Fortune 50). And because I've had a 14 year career in this field as of 2021, that means this has all been done since NetFlix has been doing its thing.

And yet while I've heard that the Valley works a bit differently than the East Coast / Southern companies I've worked for, I'd never heard of several of the policies Hastings and Meyer discuss in this text. For this developer, most of them sound phenomenal, and I would love to work in environments that had them. Though there are others - “Adequate performance is given a generous severance” in particular - that would exacerbate issues I've already had at times in my career. Here, Hastings explains the reasons he adopted these policies at NetFlix and how they have grown over the company's existence. Meyer provides a degree of “outsider feedback” going around interviewing people at all levels from Hastings to the janitors and examining the claims Hastings makes.

Overall, this is a solid business book explaining these policies, why NetFlix chose them, why other businesses should - or should not, in certain situations - and how they can begin to be implemented in any company. More for Executives than heads down coders or low level team leads, though there are some interesting points even at those levels. It is absolutely something business leaders should read and ponder, and it is a good primer for those who may want to push for similar changes in their own companies. Very much recommended.

The first half of the book explains Reed's experience with leading teams prior to Netflix and then taking those learnings and applying them to Netflix culture. He talks about how to apply same or similar culture in your own team/company and why you should do so.

The second half of the book is basically Culture Map v2 on the examples of Netflix. So that's a recommended pre-reading although not necessary.

Overall a good book with many interesting points. But, as usual with this kind of books, could easily be 90% shorter without compromising the main points.

TL;DR: Trust your employees and be hones with them.

Adorei! Nem td aplicável em td lugar, mas cheio de boas provocações e insights.