Leadership

Netflix used this as a title slide in its 125-page culture deck (which I recently reread).

The point was simple: Values aren’t what you claim. Values are reflected by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.

Four themes stood out to me:

✅ Culture is determined by who you hire, promote, and let go.
✅ Values are nice, but only those decisions reinforce them.
✅ The higher the focus on talent, the fewer rules a company requires.
✅ Collectively, that’s how entrepreneurial spirit survives scale.

When the people-focus fades, rules multiply, speed drops, and performance erodes. That’s when bureaucracy quietly replaces the entrepreneurial edge.

Takeaway: Choices reflect values more than anything written on a wall.

What do you think matters most in building a strong company culture?

Note: The original deck has since been replaced with the link available below. You can still find the original by searching “Netflix Culture Deck.” The first culture deck was written in 2009, but I couldn’t find a specific date for the footnote.

Why do magicians make great CEOs? Kind Bars founder / CEO Daniel Lubetzky paid for his travels performing magic from the streets of Paris to Bulgaria in college. Asked how it helped him build one of the fastest growing snack companies in the US (2015):

“First of all, magicians practice a lot. It requires a lot of discipline. Second, you can’t be afraid to be a leader, to go on stage, and you learn to have presence. You need to be able to visualize and connect and create. Most important, you learn to think outside the box.”

If you can capture a stranger’s attention in a foreign country and wow them, that’s a skill set. No matter how seemingly unrelated, I believe hobbies pursued can contribute meaningfully to professional development.