Book Review & Notes: No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

Rating: 9/10

Notes

• The book is structured into 3 parts/tips for building a great organization:
  1. Increase talent density 
  2. Increase candor 
  3. Remove rules/policies/procedures
• Netflix believes in paying its ‘rock-star employees’ a little bit above top of market – this is known as the “rock-star principle” in Silicon Valley 
  • And if someone ISN’T a rock-star employee – they don’t hire them 
  • They must be a ’stunning’ employee in Hastings’ words 
  • it’s better to have one employee that’s amazing, then have 5 mediocre ones
    • Save the salary that would go to the other 4 and just hire one person who’s incredible
• What’s more – is that having mediocre performers on your team can drag the whole team down 
  • It sends the message that mediocrity is acceptable 
  • It may even be demotivating to top performers
• Netflix discovered this when they had to cut 30% of their workforce and productivity actually went UP!
• Netflix doesn’t have an expense-approval process
  • It just tells its employees to “act in Netflix’s best interests”
    • Every so often, receipts are audited so that people that abuse the system are caught 
  • Hastings estimates that this may cause the company about 10% more than if they had rigid controls
    • But it’s worth it! A strict policy would alienate creative types; the types that enable Netflix to thrive – the top performers in their field
• Netflix also has no vacation policy – people take as much as they want and when they want
  • Save for certain exceptions, like accounting not being able to take vacation in early January during their busy season 
• BUT – Hastings notes, it’s critical that c-suite executives model this ethos by taking LOTS of vacation themselves and talking about ti loudly 
  • Otherwise a no vacation policy becomes a ’no vacation’ policy 
  • So Hastings takes at least 6 weeks of vacation each year – and many others do too
  • It’s a system built on trust – they TRUST people to do the right thing 
• On Candor 
  • It’s DISLOYAL to NOT say something when you disagree with someone
  • Your loyalty, if you’re part of Netflix, is to Netflix as a company 
    • Your goal can NOT be to please your boss
    • If you don’t think something will work, you better say so
  • Whisper wins and shout losses 
    • If you’ve screwed up, let the company know 
  • If thinking about corporate reorganizations, let the company know – i.e just be straight with people and trust that they’re intelligent adults that can handle and deserve the truth 
• Give people raises before you have to
  • Ensure you continue to pay them top of market 
  • This means 30% raises some years and zero the next, rather than the standard 2-3% cost of living raises that most companies offer irrespective of performance 
• On that note, do AWAY with performance bonuses 
  • Rather than $200k with a 15% bonus, just offer $230k
  • Studies show that people are far LESS CREATIVE if they feel that their compensation depends on hitting certain targets
  • You want to give them enough money to feel secure, but not tie their compensation to performance in a way that will create stress and stifle creativity 
• If it wins, celebrate it. If it fails, sunshine it.
  • Sunshining is the process of loudly talking about your failures with the whole team, but more importantly, telling everyone what you LEARNED and how you can do things differently in the future
    • It’s critical here for the bosses not to make a big deal over the failure, but really just to highlight the learnings
• Netflix employs what’s called the “keeper” test, which invites managers to ask of their employees:
  • “If this person came to me and stated they were leaving, how hard would I fight to keep them?” 
    • If they’d fight hard, then that person is a stunning employee
    • If not, then they should either be immediately given steps to improve or let go with generous severance
• Most places have performance improvement plans (PIPs) in place to help struggling employees
  • But Netflix would rather get rid of the underperforming employee right away, and use that money the they would have paid them over the next few months to just give them a generous severance 
    • This saves them the intangible cost of having an underperforming team member for several months when they could be instead focused on replacing them with a stunning employee 
• Netflix doesn’t think of themselves as a FAMILY, but as a CHAMPIONSHIP SPORTS TEAM
  • In a family, you don’t let go of underperforming players
  • But in a pro sports team, you routinely swap players in and out, doing whatever you think you can do to give your team the best chance to succeed
    • This makes sense to me as a better model for organizations
• I like his point about staring at what you want, rather than staring at your fears 
  • Experts have shown that by focusing on what you fear, you’re more likely to create that very situation
• Rather than building a top-down hierarchical model, Netflix is more like a bottom-up organization, where the leadership is like the roots of a tree and the subsequent team members are the branches
  • Reed Hastings, as CEO, sets the direction of the company with a broad vision- the root
  • A VP takes that vision and then has the freedom to decide how best to implement it in their given area – the first branch 
  • An informed team captain then has the power to decide which individual movies and shows to order based on guidance from their VP – the final branch
• At Netflix, this whole concept is called leading with context, not control
  • They don’t tell their team members what content to buy, how much to spend, etc. – they set the direction, and then trust that their people will make the right decisions 
• A great example of this is how Icarus, the Oscar winning documentary, was purchased
  • They bought it at the Sundance film festival 
  • The leader of documentaries wanted it, but it would mean outbidding every other company and pay an unprecedented amount for a doc, so he went to Ted Sarandos, the COO
  • Ted didn’t say yes or no, he simply asked – “is it the ONE?” – meaning, is it the documentary that is going to be a hit or an Oscar-winner 
    • And said that if it was the one, then they should spend whatever they needed to
    • That’s CONTEXT, not control
    • Control would have been stating that the company could only spend amount of dollars on the project and no more
• At Netflix, you have to do what’s in the best interests of the company. Your job is NOT to please your boss
  • Otherwise, you get into a “the emperor has no clothes” situation 
• But aren’t their situations where you really lead with control? When a culture of “freedom and responsibility” (a famous Netflixism) just doesn’t cut it?
  • YES! It depends on your industry
  • In some industries and for some tasks, preventing errors is paramount
    • Ensuring a surgeon operates on the correct knee for example – you need a strictly regulated process for that
  • But for creative companies, it’s WAY more important that they focus on innovation 
    • The risk of playing it safe when errors aren’t fatal is that you’ll get left behind and die, out-innovated by more daring companies 

• Overall, a really excellent, list, breezy read
  • Which isn’t to say it was light on substance
  • It was succinct, nothing wrong with that 
  • One of the best books I’ve read on creating a great organizational culture

90 days of a Plant-Based Diet: Day 9

It’s been a little over a week that I’ve been eating an entirely plant-based diet. As I mentioned in my last post, my intention is to go a 90 full days without consuming any animal products, and then re-assess at that point. That means no meat, fish, eggs, dairy, nor honey. I feel like 90 days is a reasonable length of time to give this lifestyle a try, while allowing my body to adjust to the diet and to see what benefits, if any, I experience.

While it’s been such a short time, I thought today would be a good time to share my initial impressions of eating this way.

Reduced Need for Sleep

This seems to be the most notable shift so far. According to my iPhone sleep tracker app, I’ve slept on average 6 hours and 54 minutes each night for the past 7 days. That’s not totally accurate, as it doesn’t factor in weekends when I don’t set an alarm. However, I notice a marked difference in my energy levels throughout the day. I’m not crashing in the afternoon as often, and I don’t feel the urge to take nearly as many naps. When eating animal products, I would always seem to need to nap unless I got a full 8 hours or more of sleep per night. If this could be a long-term shift, I’d be thrilled, as feeling like I need a nap in the middle of the day is super annoying 😉

Saving Money

Animal products are expensive! What’s remarkable is that they’re as expensive as they are despite the fact that they’re heavily subsidized by government (read: your tax dollars), and that they don’t include negative externalities baked into the price (such as increased greenhouse gas emissions).

I haven’t even been particularly price-conscious with the plant-based foods I buy. I’ve been trying lots of new recipes, buying fresh veggies, herbs, spices, etc. and the cost is still a fair bit less. This is a really great benefit of plant-based eating.

Of course, some plant-based food is very expensive, partly because it doesn’t receive the same subsidies that the meat industry does. At my local plant-based ‘butcher’ shop in Toronto, YamChops, two frozen impossible burgers costs $12. That’s quite a bit, and far more than you’d pay for beef alternatives. Still, you could also go to the grocery store and get a haul of rice, beans, lentils, and quinoa for under $20. So while a plant-baed diet certainly can be expensive, it doesn’t need to be.

Increased Interest in Environmental and Social Issues

This is one I’ve experienced before when I’ve experimented with vegetarian and vegan diets. It’s hard to describe precisely, but I’ll give it a try. It seems as though once you make a commitment to living more consciously, you become interested in all the other ways you can make a difference. It feels like pulling at the threads of a large tapestry. Once you decide you care enough to learn about animal agriculture and all of its problems, you automatically start to care about other issues facing society today. You start asking questions like: How can I reduce my plastic consumption? How can I positively influence others to shift their lifestyles in positive directions? How can I lower my carbon footprint? And so on.

And so these past few weeks, I’ve been doing tons of reading and watching of documentaries, doing everything I can to learn about many of the environmental and social issues humanity faces today. This may seem like a small thing, but for me it’s proving to be an enormous benefit.

There have been so many times in my life when all I wanted to do was to numb myself, eat junk food, and watch re-runs of tv shows I’ve already seen a million times. There I was, telling myself i wanted to read, tackle a new project, invest in a hobby, or go exercise. And yet, so often I couldn’t summon the will to do these kinds of things. It’s literally as if my brain didn’t have the bandwidth to participate in anything but the most mindless of activities. This of course would lead to depression and feeling like I was wasting my life. I certainly am not unique this way. Numbing oneself seems to be the favourite pastime of many people in our society today.

The fact that I don’t currently have the desire to numb myself, that I want to engage in mentally strenuous tasks and keep learning is something for which I am extremely grateful. I don’t think this kind of desire is something that you can switch on and off at will. You can’t force yourself to want to do things you don’t. But I believe that you can make adjustments to your lifestyle so that healthier options become more naturally appealing to you. This mindset, which may be at least partly attributable to the plant-based diet, is my favourite part of the changes I’ve noticed thus far.

Peace

This one is also a bit strange. I genuinely seem to feel greater peace on this diet. I feel less anxious, like whatever might happen to me is okay.

I also feel far less cognitive dissonance. You know what’s hard? Eating factory farmed animals and eggs and dairy when you publicly state that you’re against animal cruelty. If you were to ask anyone on the street if they were against animal cruelty, virtually every single of them would say yes. And yet, most people are still willing to eat factory farmed products, despite the fact that many of us in today’s day and age know about the horrors of animal agriculture. I myself was one of those people. I said that I was against animal cruelty, and yet I actively supported it with my spending power. Not needing to do these kinds of mental gymnastics – eating factory farmed animal products while still imagining my behaviour is ethical – has significantly eased my conscience.

—

I’m really looking forward to seeing what other changes I might experience over the course of the next 81 days. Like I said in a previous post, I really don’t know if I’ll be able to stick to a vegan diet. I’m all too aware of how easy it is to be excited about ideas initially, only to have that enthusiasm wane as time goes on.

I doubt that I’ll stop being convinced that a plant-based diet is the more compassionate, ethical, and sensible choice for most people. I believe that the environmental and animal-welfare cases are overwhelmingly in support of a plant-based diet, and I think it’ll get more and more difficult for me to justify eating another way.

In any event, I’m really optimistic and excited to see where this journey takes me 🙂

Going Vegan

Today marks 6 days without consuming any animal products. As of October 20th, 2020, I finished all the remaining animal products left in my fridge, and it’s been only plant-based food since. I made the decision to lean into veganism several weeks ago, but my fridge was still populated by dozens of eggs and the like, and I didn’t want to just waste the food.

I’ve dabbled with veganism before, and it will be interesting to see if this time is any different. About 10 years ago I was vegan for 2-3 months (I don’t remember exactly), before I got a job at a steakhouse of all places. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine why I would ever take that job. But I was young and excited to work at a trendy restaurant, despite it conflicting with my burgeoning values centred around animal welfare.

As part of our training at this restaurant, we were asked to try all the items on the menu. Not wanting to appear difficult, or crazy for being a vegan who went and got a job at a steakhouse, I dutifully complied.

So my goal this time around is to beat my record and go 3 full months. That would take me to January 20th – the same day as the United States presidential inauguration coincidentally. It’ll be a nice and easy date for me to remember. I like that this takes me through the Christmas holidays too. It’ll be an extra fun challenge to deal with the pressures of not eating the traditionally-consumed animal products around this time, such as the Christmas turkey and litany of chocolates, cookies, cakes etc.

Since that initial vegan experiment 10 years ago, I’ve played around with a LOT of different diets. Keto. Carnivore. Paleo. Low-carb. Free-range.

My most notable shift was seeking to eat animal products produced in less harmful ways. I started shopping at farmer’s markets, buying grass-fed beef and pastured eggs only. I knew about the horrific problems associated with the meat, egg, and dairy industries, and thus tried to circumvent these issues by becoming what I considered to be an ethical consumer of animal products. I varied between being strict about this, refusing to eat factory farmed meat whatsoever, and being lenient, such as buying mostly ‘better’ meat and eggs while still ordering animal-based food at restaurants.

Why am I running this experiment again? I think that deep down, I’m convinced by the vegan argument, and I’ve suspected that they’ve been right all this time. But, at the same time, I think that I’ve lacked the courage and wherewithal to actually commit to this lifestyle.

I’m convinced that it’s unbelievably cruel to factory farm animals. I’m convinced that it’s wrong to mutilate them so that they are more suitable to farm environments. I’m convinced that it’s wrong to artificially inseminate a cow, take away her baby calf, and sell the males to the veal industry. I’m convinced that animal agriculture is one of the most destructive things we do to our environment, and is implicated in a cornucopia of problems, from ocean dead zones, to greenhouse gas emissions, to wide-scale deforestation of the amazon. I’m convinced that even the so-called more ‘ethical’ ways of farming animals still involve a good amount of suffering when the animals are shipped long distances to slaughterhouses, before they are prodded into chutes, strung upside down, and have their throats slit. I’m convinced that doing this, if it is not truly necessary, is immoral.

I don’t want to pretend like I’ll necessarily be able to hold this mindset though. This is because I’ve tried in the past, been convinced by all the same arguments, and yet could not summon sufficient empathy to make a permanent transition to a vegan lifestyle. So all I can commit to right now is taking this day by day, and seeing how it goes.

However, I do know that I want this to be a longer-term transition. I want to maintain a stronger empathy for animals and the planet. I want to make choices every day that align with my values, instead of just giving lip service to compassion while continuing to perpetrate cruelty. I already feel better after just a week of living this way. I feel less cognitive dissonance, recognizing that this is a much more authentic way of living for me.

If anything, I feel a little embarrassed that I haven’t made a more diligent effort at veganism until this point, a few months away from turning 32. But at the same time, I’m choosing to be gentle with myself, and leaning more into this direction now, while looking for ways to make it a sustainable and permanent lifestyle shift.