Comment by codeflo
2 years ago
> When Netflix made the decision to move from mail-based rental to streaming, they did not allow leaders involved in rental business to any meetings involving the company future planning.
I wonder, who was the “they” that successfully made such a decision? In most places, there wouldn’t be any senior leadership that isn’t “tainted”, so to speak, by the previous business model. Even a freshly appointed CEO is ineffective if not supported by the bulk of the organization. I wonder how Netflix managed to solve this.
A different example, from Amazon. The top down directive from Jeff was to build every new initiative in total secrecy completely cut off from rest of the organization. To an extent even the building would be cordoned off for other employees. Kindle reader, Eco line of devices, AWS and so on.
I guess the reason was to let them move fast and deliver 0-1 product without being shackled by existing strictures, including the leaders with vested interests. They would hire whole division worth of people within weeks. The downside was a whole bunch of duplicate systems, as everyone would build their own payment processor, order management, UI etc. The results are starting to show as AWS is struggling to piece everything together as coherent higher order offerings. Like there are some two dozen ways to control access, a dozen ways to deliver notifications and so on.
Really? Very interesting!
Where can I read more about this?
Reed Hastings was a founder and principal initial investor. He owned 70% of the company, so it was probably down to him.
There was a recent thread where Bezos was quoted as being against bet the company moves. I get where he’s coming from, ideally you’d avoid getting into that position, but faced with a fundamental technological shift like that, sometimes it’s just the right thing to do.
As an aside I’ve been at two companies that were sunk by mismanaged bet the company moves. In both cases they actually had plenty of time to change course, but management was so heavily invested in their pet project that by the time reality has punched them in the face hard enough to wake them up, it was too late.
Even many founders find it hard to turn around the ship that they built, the forces of institutional inertia work against them as well. I wonder if he simply ignored most of the existing organization and management, and more or less stealth-founded a new startup inside the old one. Even that is not easy.