I thought I understood Netflix’s feedback culture after writing about the 4A Feedback rules and the Keeper Test. Then I read Chapter 8 of No Rules Rules and realized there was an entire layer I had missed — one that makes everything else look tame.

Netflix calls them Live 360s. Once a year, teams of eight to twelve people sit down at a restaurant for a multi-hour dinner. They go around the table, one by one. And each person receives face-to-face feedback from every colleague in the room — what to start doing, what to stop doing, and what to continue doing.

No anonymity. No written reports reviewed in private. Just you, a steak, and seven people telling you what they really think.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

How It Started: The Plumed Horse

The Live 360 format emerged from an experiment Reed Hastings ran with his own executive team. They met at the old Silicon Valley Netflix building at 100 Winchester, in a conference room nicknamed The Towering Inferno. Reed paired his direct reports — Leslie and Neil went to one corner, Ted and Patty to another — for a speed-dating-style feedback exercise using the Start, Stop, Continue method.

The pair exercises were fine. But the group discussion afterward was transformational. So Reed escalated. The next session happened over dinner at The Plumed Horse, a restaurant in Saratoga. No agenda except feedback. Ted Sarandos volunteered to go first.

“David, Patty, and Leslie all gave Ted feedback about how hectic his one day in the office was for everybody else. ‘When you leave on Wednesday afternoon it feels like a jet boat came through and left a massive wake behind it,’ Patty explained. ‘It’s stressful and disruptive for the entire office.’” — No Rules Rules

After that session, Ted reorganized his schedule — longer trips to Silicon Valley, more phone calls ahead of visits. He saw how his actions were affecting the team and changed because multiple people told him the same thing at the same dinner.

Leslie Kilgore Refused to Be Anonymous

When Netflix first tried written 360s in 2005, they offered anonymity. The logic was obvious: people would be more honest if they didn’t have to sign their names.

Leslie Kilgore, the CMO, refused. She signed every comment. Her reasoning was devastating in its simplicity:

“It just seemed backward to tell our employees all year long to give feedback directly to one another and then at 360 time to pretend the comments were coming from a secret source. Everything I was writing I had told them anyhow. I just did what felt natural given our climate and signed my name.” — Leslie Kilgore, No Rules Rules

By the second round, a majority of employees followed Leslie’s lead. By the third, everyone was signing. The anonymous option died — killed by the culture, not by management.

Sophie’s American Problem

The most striking story belongs to Sophie, a French communications manager at Netflix’s Amsterdam office. At a Live 360 dinner in November 2016 at the Waldorf Astoria hotel — she describes it as a “dark and stormy night” with a crystal chandelier over a big wood table — Sophie’s American colleagues delivered their feedback.

“My colleague Joelle began by telling me that I need to improve my communication skills. She said I lose the listener’s attention and take too long to get to the point. I was like, ‘Me? A poor communicator? I am a communications specialist! My greatest skill is my ability to communicate!’” — Sophie, No Rules Rules

Then the rest of the table piled on. “You’re too theoretical.” “Your messages aren’t crisp enough.” “Your writing loses the reader’s attention.” By the seventh person, Sophie was fuming.

The twist? She was right that she was a great communicator — in France. French communication follows a specific pattern: introduce the principle, build up the theory, address challenges, then arrive at conclusions. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Americans want you to lead with the conclusion. Neither style is wrong. But Sophie was communicating in French style to American colleagues, and it wasn’t landing.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

Two years later, Sophie reported:

“That dinner happened two years ago and was the most important developmental moment for me in the past decade. I’ve made enormous strides with my adaptability. I hated that evening at the Waldorf, but without it eventually I would have failed the Keeper Test. I don’t think I’d be at Netflix.” — Sophie, No Rules Rules

Ted Reads His Own Negative Reviews

Larry Tanz, VP of content, came to Netflix from Disney in 2014. In his second T-staff meeting, Ted Sarandos told the room that the written 360s were coming up and everyone needed to be giving candid feedback.

Then Ted said: “We just finished a round of 360s with R-staff. I’ll just read to you the feedback I received.”

Larry was stunned. In his entire career working for Disney’s Michael Eisner, he had never seen a boss voluntarily share their negative reviews.

Ted read feedback from Reed, David Wells, Neil Hunt, and others — skipping the positive comments and reading only the developmental ones. Items like: “When you don’t respond to emails from my team, it feels hierarchical and discouraging.” And: “Stop avoiding overt conflict within the team; it simply festers elsewhere.”

Ted read them like he was reading a grocery list.

“I thought, ‘Wow, could I be brave enough to share my feedback with my own staff?’” — Larry Tanz, No Rules Rules

Larry could. And did. And it cascaded through his organization.

The Bungee Jumping Principle

Ted Sarandos explains why leaders should go first with a story from 1997 in Phoenix. At a work event, there was a bungee jumping station in the parking lot. Nobody was jumping. Ted went first.

The guy running the station offered him a free second jump. Why?

“‘Because I want all your colleagues gawking at you from the restaurant to see that you’re happy to do it again. If they see it’s not so scary, they’ll be ready to try it also.’” — No Rules Rules

That is the Live 360 in one sentence. The leader jumps first. The team watches. And when they see the leader survive the feedback — even welcome it — the fear dissolves.

Why This Matters

I have worked at companies with anonymous surveys, 360 reviews mediated by HR, and “open door policies” that were anything but open. None of them produced the kind of transformation that Sophie described. None of them got a VP to restructure his travel schedule in a week.

The difference is that Netflix’s Live 360s are uncomfortable by design. They are meant to be the developmental equivalent of a dental cleaning — something you dread, something that hurts a bit, and something you’re grateful for afterward. The rule is 25% positive, 75% developmental. Any “nonactionable fluff” — things like “I think you’re a great colleague” — gets shut down immediately.

The result is a company where a French communications specialist learned to adapt her style across cultures, where a VP reads his own negative reviews to model vulnerability, and where the CEO tells his board they should replace him the moment someone better is available.

For anyone leading a team: you don’t need Netflix’s budget to run a Live 360. You need a restaurant, a group of eight people you trust, and the courage to go first. The feedback will be uncomfortable. That’s the point. The alternative — silence, gossip, and mutual misunderstanding — is far more expensive.

Sources

• Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, Penguin Press, 2020 (Chapter 8: A Circle of Feedback)