Unbossing: Reed Hastings from the Mountaintop!

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past.Edition 295.

We have entered the age of Debossification.

An age where zones of control are being replaced by zones of influence.

Where the future does not fit in mindsets of the past.

An era of where smart leaders acknowledge that every career has a midnight hour and one should exit at five to 12.

It is a time not just of learning but unlearning.

Announcing a new podcast Unbossing, a series of conversations where amazing leaders share the key insights about modern leadership in tectonic times.

Unbossing is hosted by Drew Ianni and myself who are co-founders of The Athena Project which helps seasoned leaders increase their intelligence, enhance their influence and deepen their impact via relevance, resilience and relationships. Athena is wide spectrum and human first versus title or company or budget obsessed. Our partners include BCG (Boston Consulting Group), SAP, The University of Chicago Graham School, QA, Northwestern’s Medill School and many others.

Unbossing is produced by Gayle Troberman and David Alberts the co-founders of Bubbler Media in partnership with iHeart Media. Ryan Martz is our incredible engineer and editor.

Our upcoming guests are extra-ordinary leaders from a range of companies include David Kenny the Chairman and former CEO of Nielsen and Chairman of Best Buy, Ann Mukherjee who was the Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard North America and President of Global Snacks at Pepsico, Tariq Hassan most recently the Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer of McDonalds US, Sarah Personette the CEO of Puck and former Chief Customer Officer of Twitter and Jim Lesser who was the Creative Chairman and CEO of BBDO SF and is now the Chief Brand Officer of Service Now among many many amazing leaders.

Our first guest is Reed Hastings the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Netflix! Reed today is the majority owner of Powder Mountain and on the board of the AI pioneer Anthropic.

Unbossing is available on every podcast platform around the world:

Spotify Link Apple Link iHeart Link .

10 learnings from Reed on Unbossing:

1. Team not Family.

Companies are teams and not families.

Similar to sports every employee needs to be skilled to retain their position. To stay in a team one must be at top of one’s game and competitive. Players can be asked to leave a team but one cannot be cast out of families.

2. “Best Selves” not “Whole Selves”.

Nobody is looking for employees to bring their whole self to work, warts and all. People should bring their best selves.

3.”Radical Candor” should not mean just radical .

Reed believes that Netflix may have come off as too competitive a culture from the outside in the early days. Radical by itself is just plain mean. Today at Powder Mountain the internal mantra is “Big Hearted Champions”.

4. Fear is a double edged sword: Fine in moderation but bad in excess.

The fear of being beaten by Blockbuster or falling behind on streaming to Hulu or not understanding the nuances of local cultures kept Netflix perpetually improving. But this did not stop them from taking big risks of original programming and global expansion.

5. Market product fit is a combination of competitive strategy, timing and trends.

Netflix rode the growth of e-commerce but kept away from Amazon categories, while benefitting from DVD’s which were easy to mail replacing VHS. Find a trend, keep away from a big competitor and align with a technology shift.

6. Sometime one can be too early.

One of the big mistakes that led to a 70 percent stock price drop was the Netflix decision to focus on streaming by spinning off the DVD business. It was the right idea but 3 years too early. It is better though to be too early than too late.

7. Maniacal focus while adjusting to environment are key.

Netflix focussed on every aspect of operational excellence on mailing DVD’s from reducing error rates to postage rates. Then they switched their focus to streaming (so much so that they tried to spin of their dvd business) and then to globalization which required fine nuances and understanding of cultures.

8. AI is bigger, broader and faster than all that has come before and its real impact is still to be understood.

As a board member of Anthropic and one who has seen previous technology shifts, Reed believes that AI is going to be much more impactful than the technologies that have come before and will have a far broader impact on humanity than just the current productivity tools. AI will also move much faster than most people assume. Therefore it is important that companies and leaders think far wider and deeper to prepare themselves, their teams and companies.

9. Luck is far more central to people’s success than it appears.

Reed believes a great deal of his success was due to luck. The fact that no one bought Netflix in its early days, or that competitors were late to understand streaming or that DVD’s rather than other formats such as DIVX (which Netflix did not carry) succeeded. While things worked out very well financially for Reed he recommends that people should focus on what they like doing and what they believe gives them joy vs defining themselves or fixating on financial outcomes.

10. No Rules.

Reed suggests that we are in a world of reinvention and it is time for no rules.

Reed has taken his best thinking and co-written a book called No Rules Rules where he shares advice such as:

Hard work is irrelevant.

Be radically honest.

And never, ever try to please your boss. (The ultimate Unbossing move!)

Take charge of your future by listening to the entire conversation with Reed and subscribe (free) to hear from amazing leaders every two weeks as they discuss Unbossing!

Here is the Spotify Link and here is the Apple Link and here is the iHeart Link .