We can find inspiration anywhere, sometimes when we are least expecting it, often from a surprising source or from an individual who when they speak everything makes complete sense.
My recent moment of such inspiration came from listening to a ‘Fireside’ chat on Linkedin between between Simon Chan who is the communitech VP of talent, Academy & future of work and Patty McCord, Former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix.
The thing that struck me throughout the 30 minute chat was the clarity of thought, simplicity of vision and utter common sense to the approach deployed when compiling the now famous Netflix ‘Culture Deck’ which by the way took 10 yes 10 years to complete all 127 pages to which more than 100 team members contributed to and has now been viewed more than 20 million times over the years.
You would think a document making such an impression would be like an ‘Apple’ keynote but no, it is a simple powerpoint which is where the magic lies, the words and purpose jump of every page and the values are all interconnecting but they really did live by every word which is why it is so refreshing not just to flick through and think how cool it would be to deploy this in my business but to listen to Patty talk about the journey from creation to building this manifesto which became the heartbeat of the business.
Patty was asked “what was the hardest sell to employees from the deck,” she replied “Adequate performance gets a generous severance package.” It’s a pretty blunt statement of our hunger for excellence she said, The best thing you can do for employees is hire only ‘A’ game players to work alongside them, excellent colleagues trump everything else she said.
She went onto quote some guiding principles which shaped their approach to talent using the five following tenets..
1) Hire, Reward and tolerate only fully formed adults.
2) Tell the truth about performance.
3) The companies expense policy is five words long “Act in Netflix’s best interests”
4) Managers own the job of creating great teams.
5) Leaders own the job of creating the company culture.
They instituted 360-degree reviews which were intentionally kept simple, people were asked to identify things that colleagues should stop, start, or continue.
Great teams accomplish great work, and recruiting the right team was the top priority so the jobs of management isn’t to control people, it’s to build great teams.
She also believes that people want to do work that means something and everyone in your company should understand the business no matter what role they have.
It was also vital that the company needs to live out its values and that every company should be excited for change, never more so than now when businesses are pivoting for survival as their models adapt.
Candidly she shared that “all start up ideas are stupid,” if they were easy then they would have been done already!
Key take out’s and there were so many to remember.. “Your company does not have to be like the other ones,” really important in today’s climate was “How do you celebrate remotely when you achieve a milestone?” “ What is the heartbeat of communication that matters most to your team now?” “ You don’t always need to be creating something new to be innovative” and a favourite of mine “Stop doing stupid stuff that doesn’t matter”
Patty believes that there is no such thing as best practice any longer thanks to Covid and only defining new practice matters.
Now i am sure that this may not fly with everyone but i found her approach just the tonic i needed to evaluate my purpose and ways of working which aligned to my values and i am now clearer on my vision as a result.
Patty has a book out which unsurprisingly is quite the thing right now and selling really well, it’s called ‘Powerful’ and i may just treat myself as while i have never been a business book kind of operator i found her insight and experience an inspiration.
