Different people think differently and every new perspective, background, and experience you bring into the business improves the business. It deepens your understanding of your customers. It illuminates part of the world that you were blind to before. It creates opportunities.

The best thing about private boards is that you can keep them small—three to five board members is best. You can just have an investor, an insider, and an outsider with a specific expertise you really need.

But you also have to remember that even with a small board, the meeting’s still not small. The room has twice as many people as you’d expect. In addition to the CEO and board members there’s a lawyer, formal observers with some stake in the company, and informal attendees, like members of your exec team.

Even the best CEO cannot stand alone, untouchable, unchallengeable, accountable to no one. Everyone needs to report to someone, even if it’s a two-person board that you meet with for an hour every few months.

There always needs to be some kind of pressure-release valve. There always needs to be someone who can shake their head and give it to you straight.

And if you do it right, you should never be a victim of your board. As CEO, you help to shape it. Boards always change based on the CEO—the board under Steve Jobs was different from the board under Tim Cook. Boards complement a CEO’s strengths and no two CEOs are alike.

You want board members who are truly, deeply excited by what you’re making. Who can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to. Who aren’t just there for the meetings but are with you day in and day out, helping you, finding opportunities for you to succeed. You want a board that loves your company. And that your company loves back.

In order to encourage our employees like Kari and their managers like Jack to shift their mind-set in the direction of experimentation, we use the image of placing bets. This motivates employees to think of themselves as entrepreneurs—who typically don’t succeed without some failures. The examples of Kari and (from a few pages back) Paolo reflect everyday life at Netflix. We want all employees taking bets they believe in and trying new things, even when the boss or others think the ideas are dumb. When some of those bets don’t pay off, we just fix the problems that arise as quickly as possible and discuss what we’ve learned. In our creative business, rapid recovery is the best model.