Employees need freedom to choose how to work most effectively

I recently read a book about the founding of Netflix, which promised to reveal how an idea can be transformed into a successful start-up (spoilers: you need a bit of luck, and a lot of rich and influential friends). Marc Randolph, the book’s author and also Netflix’s co-founder, is very proud of the working culture established in the early days, which he describes as ‘freedom and responsibility’. However, one anecdote suggests that that freedom had its limits.