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Hello, everyone; welcome to the Five Minutes Podcast! Today, I like to talk about a wonderful, really disruptive book I read recently. It's called No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer. Erin Meyer is a professor of INSEAD in France, and Reed Hastings is the CEO of Netflix. And this book is all about the culture of Netflix and why I'm commenting about this book in the middle of hundreds and hundreds of management books that we see released every single year. It's because this book is absolutely counterintuitive. The culture of Netflix is absolutely different and joyful, and I would say unexpected. If you compare, I would say to any kind of organization, and this has been, I would say, a quite big success for Netflix because Netflix is really becoming a super powerhouse and with, I would say, a lot of corporate rules that just do not exist. And I want just to go through them quickly with you, just to demonstrate how I would say disruptive. This cultural behaviour is at Netflix. The first one, it's called avoid rules. Try to work with the minimum amount of possible rules and it starting from expense reports vacation. So, for example, you decide how many days do you need on vacation? There is no policy saying you have 21 days, and the days must be X, Y or Z or an expense report. There is no policy like you should spend one hundred dollars or five hundred dollars an airing. They did an interview and they spoke at the Thinker's 50 events recently last November, and Reid said one thing that was incredibly powerful for me.
He said Netflix employees should make decisions that are in the best interest of Netflix, even if they are uncomfortable with that. And that's it. This is the only rule that means every single decision from your own vacation to; I would say, a purchase of a computer or an item. You make decisions always thinking about what is the best for Netflix? Not necessarily what is the best for you? And this generates a very powerful decision-making process because people are independent if they are adults if they are responsible. If you hire the right people with this right mindset, they can make decisions independently. They should only check with their boss if they are not sure about that, and they sometimes need to make decisions on ambiguity. And this is what I'm talking about for many episodes talking about this book and environment. The third one is candour, and transparency means you should not agree with someone. Just, for example, this person is your boss. Do not please your boss. Respectfully agree to disagree. And the truth is the king, and the word candour means you don't need to be arrogant. You don't need to be stupid to give the reality and to tell the truth, even if the truth is not what the other side is expecting to receive. This is powerful. This is really powerful and example, he said. Because I am the CEO of Netflix. In the past, people did not agree with my idea, but they were afraid to say that to me, and I made wrong decisions at that time.
I don't want this to happen again with anyone at Netflix. The fourth one is about hard work, he said. We don't appreciate hard work. We appreciate smart work and smart results. You will not be evaluated by the number of hours you spend at the office or the number of hours you put in the work. We don't care about that. We care about what kind of results are you providing to our customers and to the Netflix business. So it's not about time. It's not about being really a hard worker, but it's to be a smart worker. The other one is called selflessness. It's to be humble. To remove your ego. Be able to share information and be able to help people to grow. And these five, of course, there are many others. If you go to jobs dot Netflix dot com slash culture, you will see. Many of them, but why I want to share this with you is because this is a real disruption. This is a real way of rethinking the business. But finally, I don't want and read said that clearly it's not one size fits all. I'm not telling you that, OK, tomorrow in my project or tomorrow in my work; I will do the same. There is no no. He said that this worked extremely well in their context and their business, where they need to foster innovation, creativity, and these work very well.
Maybe if you are a factor or if you are a construction company or I would say an oil company, maybe this will not be a perfect fit for you. Maybe you have to have more rules. Or maybe if you are a government where you need, I would say, to be ready for some kind of scrutiny or some kind of inspection or audit. But this is absolutely incredible. And when I read the book, I said How on Earth, a multibillion-dollar company that is really shaping the view of the entertainment culturally, the view of how people are interacting with each other and they have such a freedom. Go to YouTube. Watch several videos about their employees talking. It looks like every single employee is a boss or an entrepreneur, and this kind of mindset makes Netflix extremely competent in what they do. So I suggest that you take a look at the book. The book is really, really amazing. Take a look at some YouTube videos and go on Google and check the Netflix culture slide deck. Put this on Google, and you will see more in-depth thoughts on that. I didn't talk about payment salary compensation because this was not the most relevant topic for me today. The most relevant for me today was this concept of acting in the best interest of the project. And this is stewardship and also avoiding rules. These were just amazing. So I hope you enjoy this podcast and see you next week with another Five Minutes podcast.
