The New York Times bestseller
Shortlisted for the 2020 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the
Year
Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings reveals for the first time the
unorthodox culture behind one of the world's most innovative,
imaginative, and successful companies
There has never before been a company like Netflix. It has led nothing
short of a revolution in the entertainment industries, generating
billions of dollars in annual revenue while capturing the imaginations
of hundreds of millions of people in over 190 countries. But to reach
these great heights, Netflix, which launched in 1998 as an online DVD
rental service, has had to reinvent itself over and over again. This
type of unprecedented flexibility would have been impossible without the
counterintuitive and radical management principles that cofounder Reed
Hastings established from the very beginning. Hastings rejected the
conventional wisdom under which other companies operate and defied
tradition to instead build a culture focused on freedom and
responsibility, one that has allowed Netflix to adapt and innovate as
the needs of its members and the world have simultaneously transformed.
Hastings set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing
innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls.
At Netflix, there are no vacation or expense policies. At Netflix,
adequate performance gets a generous severance, and hard work is
irrelevant. At Netflix, you don't try to please your boss, you give
candid feedback instead. At Netflix, employees don't need approval, and
the company pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised
these unorthodox principles, the implications were unknown and untested.
But in just a short period, their methods led to unparalleled speed and
boldness, as Netflix quickly became one of the most loved brands in the
world.
Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, bestselling author of
The Culture Map and one of the world's most influential business
thinkers, dive deep into the controversial ideologies at the heart of
the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of
the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and
past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told
stories of trial and error from Hastings's own career, No Rules Rules
is the fascinating and untold account of the philosophy behind one of
the world's most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.
