Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos finds the most powerful leadership lessons come not from standard business management books, but from a 1902 Joseph Conrad novella he rereads constantly: Typhoon.

Sarandos rarely reads traditional management literature, turning instead to fiction to ponder leadership, he said in a Wednesday interview with CNBC. Typhoon is his favorite book. It follows a steamship captain and crew who are caught in a ferocious storm at sea and forced to make decisions under extreme pressure. The work is based on events in Conrad’s own sea life and explores the effects of making life-changing decisions under high stakes. 

Sarandos called the novella “the most powerful leadership story I’ve ever read.” He says he goes back to it “over and over” because each read reveals something new about leading through uncertain times. “I get something different in the book every time I read it,” Sarandos told CNBC. 

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He acknowledged that on the surface, Typhoon does not sound like a typical management story. However, he says that the story’s intensity reflects what leaders face when plans go wrong, mirroring real-world leadership challenges. 

Sarandos first read the 82-page novella about two decades ago. He initially thought the main character was a reckless person who needlessly endangered himself and his crew. With subsequent rereads of the book over the years, Sarandos’s perspective has shifted. He now sees the character as a leader dealing with incomplete information and an undesirable outcome. 

“Now, what I see is that when you go through life, and you go through business, you make a lot of decisions that don’t turn out the way you thought they would,” Sarandos told CNBC. “The real leadership test is: How do you manage through that?”

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Sarandos joined Netflix in 2000 as head of content. He has experience making decisions autonomously, especially big, risky financial decisions. For example, about 10 years into his role at Netflix, Sarandos allocated $100 million to fund the company’s first original TV series, House of Cards.

He said that if the show failed, Netflix would have overpaid for a show, which it did all the time. However, if it succeeded, the company “could completely transform the business as we know it,” he told CNBC.

House of Cards ended up being a massive success. The show earned a number of awards and became one of the most popular shows on Netflix for a time. 

Sarandos isn’t the only business leader who mines novels for insights. Jeff Bezos has drawn lessons from Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. The Booker Prize-winning book is about a butler reflecting on his life.

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