Nobody from Netflix has been to jail, and that's kind of surprising

Instead of an autobiography of Hastings, or a history of Netflix (which no doubt would be incredibly well read), the book is based on the culture Hastings has sought to establish at Netflix, which is worth more than $US220 billion ($309.5 billion).

Hastings, 60, was planning to tour Australia to promote his book, which he wrote with INSEAD Business school professor Erin Meyer. But COVID-19 put an end to those plans.

Hastings thinks information will leak in the future, but is calm about Netflix dealing with it, believing the benefits outweigh the potential negatives.

"As we grow, I'm sure stuff will leak eventually. So, I don't want to set that up as the litmus test because the odds are against us as we grow. It's really an apocryphal story that you can share a lot more with people than you think," he says.

"There are risks of sharing, but there's risks of alienation in not sharing also. The point is, most management teams drive to safety because they don't want to see that leak. But when you run your organisation like the security services run theirs, there's real cost to innovation, buy-in and understanding."

The practice fits into one of the three core management tips on which Hastings has based his book: high levels of candour. The second is to create "high talent density" – in other words, hire the best people and get rid of those who aren't up to scratch. (Netflix' famous culture deck states "Adequate performance gets a generous severance package", although that may clash with Australian labour laws.) The third tip is to remove control systems such as leave and expense approval.

Hastings admits he continues to work on constantly receiving feedback – part of the candour approach. Netflix encourages a culture of constant feedback, but it must be constructive, so it needs to be delivered with thoughtfulness rather than as a put down.

"They call it right or flight. My tendency would be more to fight ... and I start arguing with you as opposed to exploring it. I have to remind myself, and I try to think about it like exercise," he says.

"When you're running or doing push-ups, it hurts, and the hurt is making you stronger, so directly linking the pain. So the emotional stress that I'm feeling right now – you telling me this stuff – is like the burn of muscles and is making me stronger.

"If we all give each other feedback that's not rough, not destructive, but it's really constructive, given with good intent – 'Here are things that you can do better' – that's a lot more positive.

High-performance culture

"At one extreme, you've got super politeness, very fake, no real communication. At the other extreme, you've got the drunken fool who's just spouting off anything that's in their mind. Just because we say we don't want to do the falsehood traditional thing, doesn't mean we want to go to the drunken fool."

Netflix' high-performance culture seems confronting and at times appears harsh. McCord, who famously helped develop the way the streaming business approaches human resources and culture, became of victim of it and was asked to leave.

"Think of a great athlete. You could be injured at any moment and end your career. Yet the only way to thrive is to put that out of your mind – to have the strength of discipline to not focus on the potential for disastrous injury and to go play your heart out," Hastings says.

"We try to get people to tap into that positive energy. Yes, notionally there is risk, like for your job or whatever, but focusing on it is only going to make it worse. You've got to have the strength to avoid that, and if you can't, just like if an athlete is always thinking about getting injured, they're not going to play well, maybe they're even more likely to get injured. So there is some skill to focusing on the positive outcomes that are possible when you work with great people.

"When you look at the different surveys of employee satisfaction at Netflix, it's incredibly high because we've attracted the people who want to play with great colleagues and are able to focus on the positives."

It is hard to argue with Hastings' results. The company has evolved from a mail-order DVD business to a back catalogue of TV shows and movies via subscription video-on-demand into a fully fledged global streaming and Hollywood studio giant.

In 2020, Netflix scored 24 Academy Award nominations, more than any other studio, with Martin Scorsese's The Irishman collecting 10, Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story earning six, and The Two Popes bringing in three. Disney, with its 21st Century Fox acquisition in 2019, as well as Pixar and Lucasfilm, reeled in 23 nominations.

"If I were starting a company next week, I would do 90 per cent of what was in that book," says Hastings' co-writer Meyer, who admits that her own crash course in Netflix culture was confronting.

"Those principles of the keeper test, the adequate performance, the feedback dinners, the transparency, letting go of controls ... anyone in any company, in any organisation who wants to have more innovation and higher performance can learn a lot from this method, even though they may not apply everything from the book."