Gain fresh ideas about creating a culture of high-performance and innovation from the former chief talent officer at Netflix. Patty McCord understands Silicon Valley from her years with the online streaming giant Netflix and other startups. Taking the lessons she learned in building strong teams, McCord creates a blueprint for revamping your own company culture.
A long-time Silicon Valley veteran, Patty earned her fame by totally overturning traditional ways that companies handle staffing, diversity, communications, and international human resources. She worked at established corporations like Sun Microsystems, Borland, and Seagate Technologies, as well as Silicon Valley startups. She offers firsthand knowledge of how startups blossom and reach IPO status and... Read More
Gain fresh ideas about creating a culture of high-performance and innovation from the former chief talent officer at Netflix. Patty McCord understands Silicon Valley from her years with the online streaming giant Netflix and other startups. Taking the lessons she learned in building strong teams, McCord creates a blueprint for revamping your own company culture.
A long-time Silicon Valley veteran, Patty earned her fame by totally overturning traditional ways that companies handle staffing, diversity, communications, and international human resources. She worked at established corporations like Sun Microsystems, Borland, and Seagate Technologies, as well as Silicon Valley startups. She offers firsthand knowledge of how startups blossom and reach IPO status and shares her insight on how growth can bend, destroy, or meld a new workspace culture.
At Netflix, Patty helped with developing “Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility.” The simple PowerPoint document, also known as the “Netflix Culture Deck” or “Netflix Culture doc”, outlined what Netflix management expected from its team. The concept was refreshing; spelling out the standards of high performance and radical honesty, while brandishing the motto of “We’re not family.” Since its debut on the internet, the document has been viewed more than 15 million times.
Patty discusses the core values in this document and how they sparked a debate about corporate culture and HR. Can the concepts reinvent how corporations handle their talent, or are Netflix’s policies of allowing unlimited vacation time putting too much freedom into employees’ hands? Netflix banished the traditional performance reviews and has no formal travel-expense rules. As a proponent for radical honesty, Patty challenges everyone to question their own long-standing practices with building and nurturing teams.
“If you’re careful to hire people who will put the company’s interests first, who understand and support the desire for a high-performance workplace, 97% of your employees will do the right thing.” – Patty McCord
In Patty’s book Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, she argues for revolutionary revisions in the way corporations handle HR. Patty is not a believer in creating a fun workspace full of perks for developers. When asking for top performance, Patty focuses on the need for transparency and honesty by management with team members.
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