Not even a month has gone by since Netflix’s decision to split their company into two separate services and already they have decided to abandon the idea of Qwikster. Why such a sudden flip-flop of executive decision making strategies Netflix? Could it be you just don’t fully understand your consumers after being a company since 1997?!If you woke up this morning with an e-mail from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings you already know that this news was somewhat sudden and completely out of corporate left field, but unlike the original Qwikster announcement, this new message of throwing out the idea of the separate DVD-by-mail service was welcomed. In my experience of strategic decision making, you don’t plan one thing and do a complete reversal shortly after, you have to be confident in your decision.

MANY were outraged with the idea of splitting up the company into two entities, one providing just streaming and one providing their DVD-by-mail service, and just as soon as the message was settling with the acceptance of this change Hastings pulled the rug right out from underneath everyone’s feet and ditched the Qwikster franchise. Could it be he was upset that he was unable to claim the @Qwikster name on Twitter? (Perhaps researching Twitter names first for availability would have been a smart decision).

It was a rash and ridiculous move to do this to loyal customers, but now to have the motion completely reversed, in my opinion, is showcasing a lack of leadership and solidarity in the company. Make a decision and stick with it sir. I’m glad you decided to make this decision, but your unwavering decision making skills makes your customers, more importantly your stock holders, question your power of judgement and leadership responsibilities.

But the thing that really makes no sense is the lack of acknowledgement of the video game upgrade that would have come along with Qwikster. Will Netflix continue on the path to video games-by-mail or have they completely scrapped that idea too? Nothing is known because Mr. Hastings never mentioned it once in his blog post:

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.

While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.

We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we’ve added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.

We value our members, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get movies & TV shows.

Thank you.

-Reed

You need to acknowledge every little bit of what has happened since your last big announcement, you can’t just take away something without fully responding to everything you were planning to change in the first place. Video games-by-mail was going to be a part of Qwikster yet you failed to tell us what would happen to that plan. I’m sure many would appreciate a video game rental service from your company, but not with this kind of attitude.

Mr. Hastings, you need to have a pow-wow with all of your corporate staff and map out an escape route for your ridiculous PR stunts you have been pulling in the last year. After you have CONSIDERABLY thought about all possibilities AND OUTCOMES you sir need to take a long vacation away from everything about Netflix where you can perhaps achieve a sense of clairvoyance so that one day you may steer your company in the right path before you lose any more direction than is absolutely necessary that hasn’t been lost already.