No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, reviewed

Review of No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meter. See more on their website here, shortlisted for the 2020 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award

ABOUT THE BOOK

Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention

There’s never before been a company like Netflix. Not just because of its unique position as a leader in both the worlds of entertainment and technology; or because of its growth as the world’s leading streaming entertainment service, with over 193 million members in 190 countries. Netflix is a revolutionary company because of a counter-intuitive and radical management culture, which defies tradition and expectation.

When Reed Hastings founded Netflix, he developed a corporate philosophy and a set of management principles which would make Netflix one of the most inventive companies in the world. This meant rejecting the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance and hard work is irrelevant.

At Netflix, you don’t try to please your boss, you practice radical candour instead. At Netflix, employees never need approval, and the company always pays top of market. When Hastings first devised them, the implications of these principals were unknown, but over time they have inculcated flexibility, speed, and boldness throughout a successful and rapidly growing organisation.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current Netflix employees and never-before-told stories from his own career, Hastings elaborates on these controversial principles at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. This is the full, fascinating, and untold story of a unique company taking over the world.

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, reviewed

This book proved to be a great read. Yes, it is interesting to hear things from the perspective of Reed Hasting, the founder of Netflix. But it works even better to have Erin Meyer involved in the book, to call BS and dig deeper on those areas that sound good on paper, but need to be examined to see if they really work. On a repeated basis Meyer ensures that Hastings is questioned on the aspects that we all wonder how the might actually work in practice.

Netflix introduces the concept of an uncounted vacation policy, which theoretically means there are no limits to how much you can take. Except what has happened in other companies has been that the no vacation policy, has become a ‘no vacation’ policy, especially if the management does not lead by example. Which is something that has happened in other companies, resulting in employees taking little to no holidays for fear of not conforming to an unspoken cultural statement. In Netflix Meyer assessed that Hastings had taken at least five weeks off, and wasn’t even sure if it was perhaps even more than that.

Similarly the concept of sun shining is discussed and advocated, a policy of radical honesty and feedback. Here again Meyer is quick to outline the ways in which this could fail or lead to unintended negative outcomes. Hastings and Netflix have clearly been on an interesting journey, with mistakes made and bumps in the road, all of which have been examined and attempts made to learn from them. All of this makes for an interesting read, and not just a hagiography of how wonderful they.

All of these elements ensure that this is an interesting and thoughtful read. It may or may not win the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award but it is certainly a book that is provoking, insightful and well worth reading.

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