I loved the Netflix book! But most likely not the one you got excited about just a few years ago. You see, Netflix was founded by a team of two people. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. The first one in 2020 published a book called "No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention". It was written in collaboration with Erin Meyer - well known and recognized American business researcher, famous for her previous writings such as "The Culture Map". The second one is an author of “That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea” which was published a year earlier, in 2019, but somehow went under the radar for most of the people. At least it seems so if you compare the hype level. What I find amazing about those two books is how different they are. 

The “No Rules Rules” boomed almost immediately after it went out. And COVID year was a perfect period of time for that. Some companies were looking for a good excuse to adjust their head counts because of the losses they encountered due to pandemic restrictions. So, words “only A-Players” and “talent density” were thrown around in the air back and forth. Others, on the opposite, needed to handle an increased load suddenly coming their way from the people stuck in their homes and bored to death. Consequently, they were trying to suck off the job market by adopting “work from anywhere” and “unlimited vacations” policies, usually changing their usual tune on the fly. 

While reading “No Rules Rules” I got a creepy feeling like one can get from reading some religious cults literature. My brain was constantly supplying me with some visuals of people smiling at you from stock images generated by AI. Content of the book is so direct and so unbelievably naively aggressive that it strikes as almost a propaganda content. And using “personal stories” to support the narrative is not making it any better. Nice and easy going female voice reads one chapter. “Here is John”, - says the book, - “And John was not very well intended in using corporate money and choosing his words while giving people around him feedback. So, as a result of his own actions, John’s contract has been terminated. Please, do not be like John”. After that immediately following another, but male sounding, voice reading the next chapter. “And here is Steve”, - it continues, - “While Steve made his mistakes too, he recognized it and admitted that he was wrong. Since that moment Steve does the right thing and always puts company ahead of his ego driven impulses. Please, be like Steve”. Most of the things are pretty much straight forward, but somehow text sounds so creepy that sometimes I was not even sure if it was the contract or John himself who was terminated in the end.

In some parts “No Rules Rules” feels like a bunch of notes done by a traveling galactic creature that arrived on Earth just recently and is trying to establish effective ways of cooperation with locals. While reading you can easily find something like: “According to the latest research from business universities, when negative feedback is received, expressing signs of attention by leaning towards the table, slowly nodding and repeating key points while carefully listening increases the efficiency of communication by 40%”. Well, yes, I’m completely inventing the exact sentence here, so it is not a direct quote, but you got the point.

A few months ago I was watching “Bodies”. Funny enough, that was a Netflix TV series telling the story of a dead body traveling in time and a few detectives who were trying to connect the dots of this murder in different centuries. Throughout the whole thing there is a refrain which was used as a motto of a secret organization taking over the world in the most anti-utopian way: “Remember, you are loved”. That phrase was always said in the most terrifyingly friendly possible way, mainly aimed as a threat. And “No Rules Rules” style, sound and meaning immediately reminded me of the “Bodies” vibes. You are being told about, generally speaking, good things. But with an expression of a robot from “Robocop” dealing with any behavior deviations by executing an immediate death punishment.

On the opposite side, “That Will Never Work” tells you a story of a person trying to navigate his company through bumps and waves of the dot-com bubble burst. Like in any business biography examples are given and points are made, but in this case conclusions are all your own. Every page gives you something to think about while on the run or stuck in the traffic jam. There are no easy solutions to hard problems there. There are no quick shortcuts or definitive guides. Book perfectly delivers a message that in reality nobody knows a thing. Company grows in the always changing environment, so with time old solutions stop working while new solutions have not been discovered yet. And in such cases the only way out is through. Endure, think, keep tweaking things until they click, and try to survive. Good luck.

Often enough, “That Will Never Work” shares the same story as “No Rules Rules”, but gives you so much more context and some much wider angle, that you can see the logic behind every decision and guiding principle behind executive orders. For example, in both books a round of layoffs described as a necessary step for the company to survive a liquidity crisis. But when “No Rules Rules” talks about “increased talent density per person” and how beneficial it was for the company, in “That Will Never Work” you have a chance to see that many of the people were picked basically randomly and it took weeks of going back and forth to organize the termination list and land the decision. It was a necessary evil produced by the circumstances and poor management decisions earlier on the way, and not just an undeniable good and efficiency miracle which cleansed the company before a decisive jump forward it was always destined for.

Opposite to what you may think after reading my review above, I recommend both books. Yeah. I think they contain quite interesting perspectives and lessons. There is definitely something to learn from them. Some ideas to pick up. If you read “No Rules Rules” first  remember to constrain yourself from any impulsive actions before going through “That Will Never Work”. Or, even better, just start from the second one before picking the first one. In this order “No Rules Rules” feels like a list of condensed and dried action points extracted from the narrative of “That Will Never Work”. And, as usual, please, remember to think for yourself, unlike many managers and executives did back in 2020. 

Context matters, as well as your perspective. And some common sense won’t hurt either. Other than that, enjoy the reading! And let me know what you think of the books if we meet each other at some point. See ya!