Entertainment service. We produce and distribute Television Series and movies. Around about 20 years and have about 200 families around the world who are the members. Host is there a connection where he had 900 movie titles. Reed hastings we started 22 years ago and there is some connection to that. Were competing with blockbuster and parted and that was we were competing with video stores just in the u. S. Rated thousand 2007 when we started streaming. Roughly the same time the youtube did. Host aaron how did you get involved in this book project. I study cultural differences in the workplace. In first came across in the culture when i read but any people have, netflix culture added that things that we put on the internet in the beginning. Erin is the things like added performance with a generous severance. That really shocked me because in my department, we were at the time focusing a lot on psychological spacing to create motivation. So. The company is not focusing on psychological spacing but other things. There were other things like the fact they had notification policies no travel policy. Things that really kind of got me thinking about how cultures like that can actually work in an organization. So ive been working and doing a lot of research parted and thought there would be something really interesting to learn from this company. Host we are book connected you to write. Reed hastings absolutely and i was fortunate to be recommended by a friend. And i read aarons first book. And its exploration of a corporate exploration. And it spoke to any of the challenges that we had in terms of netflix so is a fantastic inside so the night looked at it and asked her to be a speaker. Iand netflix. And then she would be a perfect one is what i realized. In a good student observer of culture to write the book. It and the part of having a coauthor is like any people, i run a lot of ceo books. And every time i read them, wonder what it is really like in the middle of the company. Okay, shes a professor, and has open access to over 100 netflix people throughout the world. It and have her write honestly about the reality. And some of the readability about the book comes from that tension between me doing that theory and we are talking about the reality is the employees experience. It. Host and an unfinished draft of the chapter. To the employees. It. Erin meyer yes and im sure hes happy to hear about that again. The importance of the transparency. And i learned that that level of transparency spearheaded by me. So with the experiences that i have worked late in this chapter voted snow where near fresh. A senate and started working on a couple of weeks later i was doing interviews at the Amsterdam Office with netflix it and with one of the netflix employee said to me, when i was reading the chapter that you wrote. I was like what. And she said oh yeah, we said that chapter out to the managers. And netflix. And i said all of the managers. And when i found out was that when they talked about transparency, he means really healthhealthy everybody even bei finished. Host you said i love the netflix culture for his honesty and content. Erin meyer that was my first reaction before i started to read the interviews and really understanding netflix. Think thats actually one of the reasons that reid was really interested in me involved in this book. And then his belief as to why that kind of Corporate Culture can lead to success. I remember feeling shocked and i remembered about a part of this that was about candor. And what it says which sounds fine. What assesses do not say without somebody, which would not say to their face. And of course, most of us spent a lot of time at work talking about people. So just couldnt imagine how that could actually semen organizinorganization. Host ordered some of those advantages. Erin meyer one of the first things i did was to bring in a team and give a presentation. We were in cuba at the time. I was giving this keynote. All of the Vice President in the company were there. I thought it was going well. But they seemed really engaged. And that it was time for me to get activities. I got down from the stage and i started Walking Around in one of the women he was talking with great hand gestures. When she saw me, she beckoned me over. And she said to me in front of a group. I was just saying to my colleagues here that the way youre presenting this information, when you asked, we look for questions. Were not getting the diversity. And then she said, i dont think we can take this to heart. The core information giving. I was like oh my gosh. But then i had about three minutes to think about how to reorganize this structure of the discussion. So when i walked back on stage, i didnt different. And staged at the presentation. So thats what we see with this kind of candor. And netflix is that sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it feels kind of inappropriate. But almost always helps improve performance and that is fantastic. Host typ why were you holding a conference in cuba. Reed hastings it was a symbol of we want to entertain people and including cuba. Host do you have a real presence in cuba. Reed hastings in our last four years, this was about five years ago. The hoax of opening up the intranet in cuba has diminished rated so we were on her way to a great presence there which we have a very strong presence in mexico and any other latin countries. But not yet cuba. Host talent density in your book no rules rules. What is that. Reed hastings to accomplish something hard, event have ten amazing people who work well together then 20000 good people who dont work well together. But if you go with people who are very talented in any cases a small number can be very effective. That is talent density. Host is it normal culture. Will first of all, when you hear the word culture center. What you think about. Erin meyer my first book was about natural cultural differences. And really was never interested it until he came across his company. Because what i see is almost every company that i look at, Corporate Culture is like aspirational dreams. Thats what we would like this company to be like. One of the first times ever i see the company where what they say a culture is a living company. Could this culture be taken to a quarter of gm and implemented their . A great point. We had 200 years of factories providing enormous gains to our cultures and a topdown system. You have a senior boss and all the workers who never make a mistake and assemble and a perfect car or perfect pharmaceutical or perfect airplane and the manufacturing paradigm is strong because it is very valuable and the topdown culture is wellsuited to a factory. Then you have Creative Work. It used to be very small and it has grown to be a substantial part of the economy and over influenced by the factory paradigm. With Creative Work you want to increase variation not decreased it like in the factory. And Creative Work you want to experiment and learn and try many things and it is fluid, think of it as virtual is the goal in our culture and sterile is the goal in the factory, you want clinical perfect repeatable stuff in a factory and in a creative environment you are managing on the edge of chaos to get the best ideas. As the Creative Sector has risen we havent figured out the right paradigms for Creative Work and the netflix culture is incredible employee freedom where there is no rules. It is a hard way to manage because you are managing on the edge of chaos, you have these conferences about culture, context, that are very helpful but think of it as a set of paradigms suited to Creative Work. Our culture is not suitable for safety work or manufacturing work and it is the beginning of new paradigms for Creative Work. Host writing a book is an old medium to put your ideas down, isnt it . We First Published these ideas online on slide share and there have been 20 million views on that. We are in the new format. We wanted to do a book treatment where we took time to edit and write out the stories and reedit in a polished, well thought through version of the story and those who see a much cooler explanation. After your in depth study of netflix, erin meyer, where are your criticisms . We were asking whether there is a place for this kind of culture in more traditional manufacturing, what struck me as i was doing this research at netflix, any area of any Company Seeking to be more innovative or flexible or try to reinvent themselves more quickly can benefit from these principles of netflix so you might be working with Mission Michelin tires, certainly there are areas of the company focused on ionization. Any organization as a team leader, anyone who wants to get more innovation can learn from a fertile environment. You asked about criticism. One of the things about doing something edgy like that is there are always difficulties with that. One of the big things that comes up is it if you have a challenge, some people are nervous whether they will lose their jobs and a lot of thinking about that, that burden of worry when taking advantage of that intensity. You have a story comparing npr to netflix being a team. We need to talk about that whereas most Companies Think about their organization as longterm security, put up with one another, you have bad behavior. We kind of try to get the best moment and changing year by year or month by month based on that time. I dont agree with what aaron said. Anytime you hear an organization, they intuitively know a family we admire was put together no matter what. It is not the way corporations work. In your book no rules rules netflix and the culture of reinvention you write that employees are not allowed to let me drive this company off a cliff. That is from an early quote with my coceo, choosing how many dvds to buy for a certain film, that will not be a popular film, he ordered less than he would have and we ran out and customers werent happy. I said why did you do that . Use it wasnt going to be popular. I said you have to do what you think is right to help the customers and the company. You cant be trying to please your boss, youre not allowed to let me drive the bus off the cliff, you have to fight for the benefit of the company and we say dont seek to please your boss, seek to please the customers and grow the company. We want people to actively think independently, not just implement your bosss wishes. They should tell them, the idea is to get everybody through the company, how to best grow the company and if they do you get the tremendous results we had. Stockholder, the ceo, you say you dont have an office at netflix but at the same time there are inherent qualities that do what you want. A direction, an example, talk about what is important, customers and how they want to relax after a hard days work and other times they want to be pushed, tried to bring the Customer Experience to talk about culture, not that i dont want some things, we also want some things, and disagreements come out of that. To for ceo to let go of that control . An interesting process that was implemented, he has strongly made it clear that he wants people to be clear with him when they have a candidate for him. And what the boss is doing and dont express that, to give feedback, and celebrates it whenever it happens. How do you find how long do you think. A lot of time to think night and weekends. Trying to understand what they are working on talking through. Various situations, and for this person or that person, and too many men. It is not limited to one area, try to abstract that a little bit to a broad range of storytellers, and and and know what is going on, and an organization rather than fixing a particular problem. Is the geographical area of Silicon Valley, indispensable to what you do . Certainly are culture and i come out of the Silicon Valley culture, and at this point, half of employees at Silicon Valley, super important to what we do, two thirds of a majority of us employees in hollywood, we are an entertainment company, they are tech power. And they are pretty good, pixar and disney plus, all the other Entertainment Companies are getting tech infused. When i started working with netflix they were ready for enormous international expansion, since i study and write about cultural differences, in 2016 we were moving around the world. Something we are interested in researching is how provocative and surprising Corporate Culture leading to this enormous innovation and flexibility could be implemented in countries around the world like japan and brazil, talking about how to take your Corporate Culture which might be useful to you at your headquarters and to figure out how to make that work in direct contrast with the National Culture you move into so that is an interesting part of the story. Bill gates and Sheryl Sandberg come up in the book. From ceos in Silicon Valley. It is quite variable, those particular people you mentioned have longstanding relationships, Silicon Valley is a competitive place, netflix doesnt compete, we compete with other Entertainment Companies like disney and hbo. Tech leaders you mentioned are very friendly because it is not too competitive. With Entertainment Companies that are more challenging. We cant finish this, do you have a chance to talk to patty mccord . I talked to patty a lot. Patty is a great storyteller, incredible memories. Reed hastings was pushing him for more stories. Whenever that happened, there was a story to provide. An important character in the book. Who is she, Reed Hastings . Our founding head of hr with us over a decade, pioneered to give us permission to push us that we can be great for employees if we focus on giving them a fertile environment that stretches them and that became the way we oriented them. It was vacation time. We dont know, 10, 12 hours in a day and in the old days we counted vacation, 46 weeks a year, why do we care between 46, 50, measuring 8, 12, industrial hangover we talked about, that everybody take what they want and it worked out great. I try to set an example of taking vacation and being physical about that. We have unlimited vacation and they dont but it is a powerful symbol of Employee Trust with no risk. As patty mccord used to say we dont have a closing policy either but no one has come to work naked. Societal norms work fine for many things such as it is good to Wear Clothing in the office and what is important to. Reed hastings, on the evenings and weekends, what have we achieved in the last 22 years . What we have to achieve and how hard it is. It was a dissatisfaction, success to date, build a company that entertains the world, connects people, people learn so much through entertainment and other countries, cultures, genders, all kinds of things we went through entertainment and exposure, the internet around the world, 6 billion mobile phones and a tremendous opportunity to continue to grow and we are just getting started. Big threat in the long run is not making a mistake but lack of innovation, no rules rules netflix and the culture of reinvention is the name of the book, erin meyer and Reed Hastings are the coauthors. Watch booktv coverage of the National Book festival this weekend, this Virtual Event hosted by library of congress features on my daughter discussion and live call in segments. Today at 7 00 pm eastern, gail collins with her book no stopping us now. Since the 1970s there has been a transformation. She joined us for live discussion taking phone calls. And historian john meacham, truth is marching on. Repeatedly in the american south, 50, 60 years ago acted in the tradition of an early christian saint. Followed by a live call in segments where we take your questions at 7 00 pm eastern, cosmos. The first cosmos, the second possible public. It is coordinates in space and time. She will take live calls and tweets at 7 30, Rick Perlstein discusses reaganland. We will take live calls starting at age 40 p. M. Watch booktv coverage of the National Book festival this weekend on sunday during a break from the National Book festival live at 9 40 p. M. Trump supporters diamond and silk take the viewer phone calls and talk about their book uprising on cspan2. We are live online, veteran war correspondent and author Scott Anderson will discuss his new book the quiet americans 4 cia spies at the dawn of the cold wara tragedy in 3 acts