Netflix's Culture | Compete to Create | Simple Decisions
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.” Viktor Frankl
Good morning, coaches!
Today we have articles on why you need to surround yourself with positive people and endure through hard times, podcasts on the culture of Netflix and the sports psychologist who works with Pete Carroll and the Seahawks, and the Golden State Warriors’ owner on the power of simple decisions.
If you have any feedback or content you think could be helpful for other coaches, feel free to reach out or leave a comment.
Here we go!
ARTICLES
Your Big Life Plan: Jon Gordon reminds us that regardless of what we are enduring, it is part of our life’s path. Incredibly successful people like Albert Einstein, Beethoven, and Muhammad Ali all faced incredible adversity in their lives and had people think they would not amount to anything.
But when times are tough and your bills are bigger than the balance in your checking account; or when your business has slowed down and you’re not sure what to do next; or when your future is uncertain and all feels hopeless... these are the times when you need to realize the most - that you are part of a bigger plan. There is greatness in you. There is a Big Life Plan for you.
To Be Successful Get Rid of The Losers in Your Life: If you’re reading this, you clearly want to improve and become or stay successful. There are going to be people who don’t like you doing so. Even if these people are good friends of yours, you need to keep your distance and be sure they don’t bring you down or take you off your path.
I believe losers are people that accept losing as a way of life, and their main purpose in life becomes bringing down others with them. Losers are people that complain about their situation in life but are too lazy to make the necessary changes to improve.
PODCASTS
Freakonomics Radio: What if Your Company Had No Rules? This episode is guest hosted by Maria Konnikova and she talks to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings about his new book, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention. Hastings has no rules and actually views them as a hindrance on the company’s ability to continually adapt to changing times. He explains what led him to believe that’s the best way to run his business, how it allows for Netflix to be more creative and nimble, and why he has a policy of not hiring ‘brilliant jerks.’ [September 12, 2020–56 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Google | Breaker | Website Link
You have to watch out as a leader that you become so good at one thing that you’re not good at the skills necessary to continue to thrive. This is where it really helps to have a model where a company is organized around flexibility rather than exploiting the last bit efficiency of some current model.
Jon Gordon’s Positive University Podcast: Compete to Create with Dr. Michael Gervais. Dr. Gervais is a high performance psychologist who works closely with Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. They came together to create an audio book called Compete to Create: An Approach to Living and Leading Authentically, which distills a lot of the ideas they try to implement with the Seahawks. He talks about a lot of the ideas they cover in the audio book, including focusing on being fully present, shifting your mindset from being anxious and afraid to aspiring to greatness, and why “talk, teach, train, test” is a great saying to help you think about how you want to train your players or employees. [August 27, 2020–59 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Google | Breaker | Website Link
We know from traditional psychology that rapport accounts for 60–70% of the impact on change.
Note: if you want to listen to one of these podcasts, click the link at the end of the description to play it on the app of your choice. You may need to scroll back within your app to the date the episode released. If you are listening on a computer, I suggest using Overcast.
MISCELLANEOUS
Simple Decisions (via Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook Executive and Golden State Warriors Part Owner)
"What I’ve learned over time is that I’ve really made my life much harder than it needed to be. I have overcomplicated a lot of decision making. As I’ve gotten older, what I realize is that the best decisions are the ones that are really instinctive and the most simple. You can use enormous amounts of data and find all kinds of clever ways of slicing and dissecting things. But at the end of the day, the simple decisions tend to be the best and most defensible and most enduring decision.”
Members of a group become lazier as the size of their group increases. Based on the assumption that “someone else is probably taking care of that.” Makes me think of a player being lazy on defense because someone else can “help.”