What constitutes great leadership — as a business owner or industry leader? According to a book by the Netflix CEO, it’s about trust, transparency, and hiring the very best.
In the briefing, private investigator and online education entrepreneur Hal Humphreys talks about leadership in our personal businesses and our industry, highlights some PI leaders in our field, and learns a few lessons in hiring and trust from Netflix.
Hal’s been reading No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, a fascinating new book on leadership by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer, a writer and business school professor. The book tells the story of the company’s explosive growth from DVD mail subscription service to One Streaming Service to Rule Them All. And it describes a corporate culture that focuses on hiring talent and paying for it, then trusting those talented employees with implementing their ideas (without micromanaging project budgets and vacation time). The company also values a certain type of transparency, Hastings explains, in which colleagues offer critiques of a failed project with honesty, goodwill, and constructive intent. This approach discourages the kind of public takedowns and pecking-order battles that reward performative transparency, and it instills a culture of trust.
This week Hal also introduces a new recurring feature: Tip of the Week. In this week’s Tiny Advice Column, Hal suggests a sleek, simple tool that will turn your vehicle into a highly functional mobile office (and tame disorder by organizing your stuff).