Netflix founder Reed Hastings was eight when he moved to a new school in Washington DC, where a bigger boy, called Calvin, used to organise fist-fights in the playground.
We probably all know, or have known, a Calvin: the work colleague whose bad attitude infects the behaviour of those around him or her.
Netflix applied this lesson when it laid off staff in 2001. In his new book No Rules Rules, Mr Hastings writes that the company realised it “had a handful of people who had created an undesirable work climate. Many weren’t great at their jobs in myriad little ways, which suggested to others that mediocre performance was acceptable, and brought down the performance of everyone in the office.”