Hey, Teacher, Leave Them Kids Alone!
Why too many rules just get in the way
Every so often, there are brilliant books that make you think differently.
One of those for me was No Rules Rules.
The book is co-written by Netflix's CEO, Reed Hastings, and Erin Meyer. It is a book about how the ‘no rules’ culture of Netflix has helped to provide and sustain their competitive edge.
Rules and top-down controls, it seems, get in the way. Holiday policy? Travel and Expenses policy? It's not needed, apparently. Why? Because they are created to prevent people from doing the wrong thing, require paying people to police them, and create a bureaucracy that gets in the way of a culture of freedom and responsibility.
There are three steps to building a culture that can benefit from ‘no rules’:
Firstly, you need a high “talent density” in the staff. Typically, high talent does not like to focus on controls, but they are also expensive compared to the market. This is all very well for a high-tech firm that can invest profits into salaries, but surely impossible for schools that operate with fixed budgets. However, let’s not fixate on that for now…
Secondly, you need to encourage a culture of “candour” in order to provide an effective feedback loop about…
