Book review - No Rules Rules

I recently finished the book No Rules Rules on how Netflix created its exceptional culture.
Let’s do a small review.

The story

The book tells the story of how Reed Hasting took all the things he learned from his first company Pure Software and used it to form the basis of Netflix. But that is only the beginning of the story as the culture of Netflix continuously evolved based on the everyday learnings of Reed and those around him at Netflix.
This story shows how, as a CEO, you can learn from everyone in the company and steer the culture in a way to help everyone perform at their highest capabilities.

The setup

Though this book is the story of how Reed formed and grew Netflix he listed the help of author Erin Meyer to do more research and write the book.
The book is built up in different sections, each one showing the next step to take to achieve the same culture as Netflix has. Besides the viewpoint of Reed, we also get interviews and snippets of Netflix employees. Both current and past.
Through this build-up, you can follow along and implement the points into your own business or team. While also seeing what the effects can be on the people you’re working with.

The flow

I found this book a very easy read.
This book is set up so you can just flow from chapter to chapter, from action point to action point.
The small snippets from interviews and internal communication mails are a nice breather in between that gives the story both room to breathe, as well as a way for the point being made to be reinforced.

For who

This book is not for everyone though. If you’re a CEO who wants to do things differently or you’re planning to start a company that wants to do things differently, then this book is definitely for you.
I also believe managers of teams could have some key takeaways from this book. While not everything might be implementable, due to some points being done in a different department you might not have control over, you can still make some great moves in your team and its productivity and happiness.

Conclusion

This book is a great read by how it’s structured and I highly recommend giving this book a read if you have a company or are planning to set up a company with employees.
Though the practices mentioned in this book is not for everyone and even if you don’t plan on using them, I think you can still learn a lot reading this book on how to build a different culture than most companies.