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No Rules Rules cover art

No Rules Rules

By: Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
Narrated by: Jason Culp, Allyson Ryan
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Hard work is irrelevant. Be radically honest. Adequate performance gets a generous severance. And never, ever try to please your boss.

These are some of the ground rules if you work at Netflix. They are part of a unique cultural experiment that explains how the company has transformed itself at lightning speed from a DVD mail order service into a streaming superpower - with 125 million fervent subscribers and a market capitalisation bigger than Disney.

Finally Reed Hastings, Netflix Chairman and CEO, is sharing the secrets that have revolutionised the entertainment and tech industries. With INSEAD business school professor Erin Meyer, he will explore his leadership philosophy - which begins by rejecting the accepted beliefs under which most companies operate - and how it plays out in practice at Netflix.

From unlimited holidays to abolishing financial approvals, Netflix offers a fundamentally different way to run any organisation, one far more in tune with a fast-paced world. For anyone interested in creativity, productivity and innovation, the Netflix culture is something close to a holy grail. This book will make it, and its creator, fully accessible for the first time.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Erin Meyer, Reed Hastings (P)2020 Penguin Audio

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Awful

After reading THAT WILL NEVER WORK which is by the first CEO of Netflix and who it all started I had really high hopes for this book and it was a massive let down.
Lets start with holidays or vacation to our American friends. Oh how we laughed when it is said that Netflix dont have a policy and employees can take what they want. Then we are told that 54% of Americans dont take their full vacation entitlement. But then we can only deduce that Netflix staff take even less as they are subtly pressured to take very little at all as Netflix only have the very best staff and the rest are asked to leave with ' generous severance packages'.
But are they? There is a whole section on a Netflix representative in India that does really poorly and has feedback to him that whilst in India he is really not sociable by continually looking at his watch watch when out for dinner with major clients. He takes the feedback well but if Netflix only have the very best staff how is this person allowed to keep his job in what is a major client interface role.
The whole we only have the best people thing reminded me of Jack Walsh and the General Electric debacle of each year firing the bottom 10% of people. Its not liberating and its not fair as the CEO is not in the firing block each year.
Besides as an investor Ive long felt that Netlix is the worlds largest Ponzi scheme. More and more revenue has been achieved especailly with the lockdown, but the actual profit is really really low ( and dont start about the lack of corp tax in the UK). Netflix will say that this because they need to build up a really large own studio work to protect them from the studios, but even Amazon was able to show profit from AWS and later from retail sales. Netflix is not showing this direction and 90% of the content is tosh even if they are getting some awards.
I feel that Erin Meyer sold her soul to the devil in this book as only a cursory glance to employee feedback from Netflix shows it is below average for a large tech company and its industry as a whole and Im not just speaking about only looking at Glass Door.
So in summary. Im not impressed and I didnt learn anything from this book. That will never work was brilliant in the initial story telling and I understand more now why the first CEO left. If you like the work practices of Sports Direct, Amazon you will like this. And I do mean work practices, which this book preaches. If you want a great book on the start and success of Amazon read the everything store.

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Too many self-pleasing comments

Too often ‘the audience all read my book’ and ‘person x complemented me on my book’, this info doesn’t add to the content of this book.

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Very mixed

While the core idea of creating a culture of freedom and responsibility really does work, this book is delivered rather arrogantly. Chapters on working with different nationalities are basically how to make them more American, rather than actually understanding and partnering with them.

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Bloated

This book is a bloated and drawn out version of Powerful. Avoid this and check out Powerful by Patty McCord instead.

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One for Blinkist

Like so many of these types of books there are some good insights but the anecdotes are on the pithy side and the key-aways could be summarised in a lot less than +7h.

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Egotistical BS

To say I hated this book is an understatement. It reads like CEO polishing his ego. The ideas put forward are all found in other books and most have been tried in other companies. As someone who has worked in Tech Internationals, I can see and agree with some of the criticisms levelled at them, but the options put forward against these bad practices are similar in that the put the company first, employees are just tools to get used and replaced. To suggest that people are only useful when they are considered Top Talent and that they understand that they will be pushed to leave as soon as they are no longer so is barbaric. Everyone has a yearly 'Keeper' review with their manager and they all understand that when performance dips you go, no PIPS , just paid off to go with a healthy severance (4 months pay). A company that claims that they are booming because they have a policy of only high talent density compared to others are just waiting for their competitors to take those people to somewhere that puts employees before shareholders.

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Excellent Read/Listen

though provoking concepts. Love it. It gave many insights and different ways at looking at organizing and organizations.

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How Netflix became successful, it was all culture

Fantastic insight into the Netflix working culture which likely was the key differentiator for them becoming the media powerhouse they now are.

This book being co-authored by Reed Hastings (Netflix founder) and Erin Meyer (author of The Culture Map) made this book even more powerful, especially for the final chapter on Going Global.

You will likely get the bulk of the useful information within this book in the first hours, specifically after you have read about the pyramid/dots and the 4A's for feedback.
The first two sections in particular I personally found fascinating and of most use as there are lessons for several companies I've worked at, will work at and perhaps create myself. Section 3 (3 chapters) I found less applicable unless you are ALL IN on the Netflix way but still of some interest.

Section 4 on going global feels separate to the rest of the book but is where Erin's mapping of Netflix to the Culture Map and the advice on specific countries really is useful. Overall, Netflix seems closest to the Dutch working culture and in this way you can really see why they've been so successful.

The book offers fantastic real life examples and Reed's candor really does lead by example throughout.

Also in keeping with the book's main themes on candor:
The one piece of feedback I would share is perhaps they doesn't highlight enough that this culture is only transferable to companies that 1) have a large amount of creative roles, 2) have healthy balance sheets/funding and 3) wish to be the #1 place for talent, company with the best of the best employees.

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Fresh approach to business

Revealing the process step by step was very informative, I liked the real life examples too

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Refreshing view on how to organize a company.

So many interesting ideas in here. Netflix sounds just like the kind of place I would want to work. I liked also the fact they shared both the positive and negative experiences of their approach.

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