FUTUREPROOF.

Recruitment & Corporate Culture in the Post-Coronavirus Economy (ft. Patty McCord of Netflix fame)

April 02, 2020 Jeremy Goldman Season 1 Episode 64
FUTUREPROOF.
Recruitment & Corporate Culture in the Post-Coronavirus Economy (ft. Patty McCord of Netflix fame)
Show Notes Transcript

We live in uncertain times with respect to job searches, right? That’s an understatement, I know. But that’s why we wanted to bring you one of the sharper minds on what the post-coronavirus job market *could* look like.

Patty McCord is a human resources consultant and executive. She was the chief talent officer at Netflix where she was monumental in establishing its corporate culture of empowering employees but only retaining excellent performers. She joined Netflix in 1998 where, with CEO Reed Hastings, she created a presentation about Netflix culture, Freedom and Responsibility, which has been influential in other startups and businesses. Heck, Sheryl Sandberg even called it “the most important document ever to come out of the Valley.”

Patty’s book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, was published in 2018, and became one of Amazon’s best-selling business books.

On this episode, we discuss:

  • How important it is for corporations to display empathy is during these trying times
  • The impact COVID-19 has had on the employee-employer relationship
  • How companies can still have powerful cultures even when everyone is remote
  • What hiring might look like in a post-coronavirus society

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.

spk_1:   0:00
culture is the stories you tell culture is the way you interact with each other as opposed to what you say you're going to do.

spk_0:   0:09
Hi, I'm Jeremy Goldman, and this is future proof. We live in uncertain times with respected job searches, Right? That's an understatement, I know, but that's why we wanted to bring you one of the sharper minds on with the post Corona virus. Job market could look like. Patty McCord is a human resources consultant on executive, and she was the chief talent officer at Netflix, where she was monumental in establishing its corporate culture of empowering employees and retaining excellent performers. She joined Netflix back in the day. In 1998 we're with the CEO Reed Hastings. She created a presentation about Netflix culture, freedom and responsibility, which has been influential, and other startups and businesses. Ah, heck, Cheryl Sandberg even called it the most important document ever to come out of the Valley. So Patty's book, Powerful Building A Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, was published in 2018 and became one of Amazon's best selling business books and one of my personal favorites of the last five years, call shut up and let Patty take it away. So, uh, Patty, welcome to a future proof.

spk_1:   1:30
Thanks for having me.

spk_0:   1:32
I'm really excited for this conversation as I feel like you probably wrote one of the more impactful books that I read in the last few years. So that's Ah little Fanboy moment for me to say that. But the first thing that I really like to ask everybody is, you know, who the heck are you and what do you really do on a day to day basis?

spk_1:   1:52
Well, as we started earlier in this conversation, that's changed a lot since we're all kind of grounded at home. At least I am. So, um, when I'm home, I work in my garden and walk my dog and then spend a lot of time podcasting and doing webinars and doing a lot of stuff on the computer. And during normal times, I travel a lot. I travel all over the world and speak two different groups and talk to them about culture.

spk_0:   2:19
Yeah, and I think that that's a very accurate but get incredibly modest way of describing kind of Ah, your stature and what you've accomplished. Ah, which all have people already be bored to death of all of your accolades from the intro. So, um but yeah. I mean, I feel like in some ways, you know, obviously we're talking during, you know, incredibly challenged and unprecedented times. And I think, you know, I really wanted to talk to you because, you know, you have really talked about ah, building a strong culture, you know, inside organizations. And I'm wondering, I feel like there are 17 different ways that can tie into the current, you know, Cove in 19 epidemic. Like how companies show empathy towards their employees or their customers or how to deal with the layoffs responsibly. So so many different threads. I'm gonna shut up and let you pick one.

spk_1:   3:17
Well, you know, I've been thinking a lot. So one of the fundamentals of foundations of what I talk about is that you know, if if you think about work as an activity that adults do to accomplish something that matters, right and that's really what you're what work is about satisfying customer or client or a constituent of some kind. Then if you think about that as your activity, I always invite people to use give people a lot of freedom and a lot of responsibility to accomplish things on their own, be really responsible for it and not be tied to the way we have set it up toe work. You know, you got to come in the office at nine. And you've gotta leave in five and you know, all that kind of stuff. And what I found is this has profoundly moved us all its first talk about employers. You know, the employers who manage productivity or, you know, talk about how that person works hard instead of what they accomplished. Now I have to focus on accomplishments because not everybody's at work, right? So that idea that you're going to trust people to do the right thing is absolutely in play now because you literally can't check up on them. And the way that you did before And that idea that people have to be managed and supervised all the time in order to do the right thing has taken on a lately different, you know, way of operating. Now, you know I can't tell you all the companies I'm Silicon Valley, so people are unbelievably leveraging technology because you know we're working with Zoom or any other kind of, you know, virtual way to communicate with each other. And we're collaborating on documents with slack or box or, you know, whatever it Microsoft off, whatever you're doing there. And so now we're actually creating really virtual collaborative work environments that are very different than how we've traditionally worked. I think it's a really exciting time. I mean, I think we're gonna when all is said and done, we're going to step back and go Do we really need all those meetings?

spk_0:   5:31
It's interesting. Yeah, I really do think that there will be some good things to come out of this. And of course, that's not to say that this is a thing that anybody would have wished for and and it and get you know, it. Sure, that same positivity, which is Well, this is happening. How do we make the best of it? How do we draw some interesting things out of it that can power us forward?

spk_1:   5:54
Yeah, I also think we're now realizing, you know, that we've had this sort of fixed idea about what workers are on what employment ISS And, you know, I was thinking yesterday I was struck by how many companies talk about their relationship with their employees. As you know, you're the employee and I'm the employer, and all we matter to each other is when you're there being employed to do work for us, right? And now we're realizing, as we probably always should have done that. People have very broad responsibilities, you know. They're adults working from home now, while trying to teach, their Children were realizing now that we're not just dealing with the employees and the employer, we're dealing with the whole ecosystem of family and responsibility and all of the things that are adult. All of our boys are adults all of adults are dealing with, and so we can't separate out as we often d'oh. Well, that's a family issue. That's your business, not mine, right. But now we're realizing it's like, Well, we've got to start thinking about how we all watch out for each other and this whole system that we're part of not just this one on one relationship between and ploy an employer.

spk_0:   7:15
Yeah, I mean it. It's weird because I creed with what you're saying in that, you know, some companies will come out of this with a stronger culture, in part because they've made the right moves during this crisis to be good to people and at the same time I always doing. On the other hand, you know, the thing that I kind of get a little concerned about is obviously unemployment is going to spike. And if I'm a moment despite it, does that create a disincentive for companies to care about culture? If they say, well, we're going to get a lot of great candidates anyway, even if, ah, we don't promote culture in the way that we used to, That's That's my worry and I don't know if that's accurate. Think about

spk_1:   7:58
well, I 1000% hope you're wrong, but you know things. That employment was tied beforehand. So I I doubt that people are gonna come back and think, Oh, you know, there's this pleather of people who aren't working. I think it's gonna stratify into different types of work. I mean, you know, I'm ever the optimist. I'm I'm hoping it will make us stop that step back and realize how important our teachers and firefighters plumbers, you know, the people who restaurant workers are because they're the ones that are gonna be hurt.

spk_0:   8:36
Yeah, I think that it's certainly going to be on one hand. You see this? Ah, you know, domino effect. But another hand, it's clearly gonna be impacting some areas greater than others. And e, you want to go back to a point that you were talking about about trusting your people? Uh, and now you kind of have to trust your people. And my view on that wasn't part of it was because I started an agency where initially most of the people were remote for out of the time. So I always looked to hire people who I trusted in the first place and simply because I felt it was always important. And my view was always let people work from home when it's going toe, not decreased productivity, because you're gonna maintain better relationships with people. So my thought is, you know, shouldn't you just be hiring people who you trust in the first place? Ah, and and have that as part of your hiring process?

spk_1:   9:32
I mean, I couldn't agree with you more, and I would have said, Yeah, that's the only way to operate when I was a Netflix. I mean, I made it part of, you know, I said, we hire fully formed adults and we try and find out. You know, as much as we can, about their ability to be to take a lot of responsibility and take a lot of initiative in the interview process. And if it turns out we're wrong, then we try and picture that we correct that mistake easily. But since then and since I've been talking to you, no larger, more establish corporations, man, that the old school way of tops down pyramidal, hierarchical management is alive and well. And you know, there is a whole school of particularly HR people whose think that it's their job to create guidelines and rules and processes and documentation to keep us from those evil employees that might sue us if we don't watch out, you know, and now that sort of that that, you know, tight, hold on everybody and asking for permission and getting approvals. I just I'd be interested to find out how those things are happening now that people you know don't fill in the form or go ask permission. Or so I think that it's it's upending us in a really great way, realizing that you know most 99.9% of the people in the world, I wanna do a great job and feel proud of the work that they do. I honestly believe that. And this is a real opportunity for people to step up and do that.

spk_0:   11:11
How about the idea about creating a strong culture when people are remote? I don't know if there's any data on this, but you know, our teams that are largely remote Do they have cultures that are generally weaker? Or is that because I think that there are some people well, who are a little bit old school in their thinking and the automatic? We assume that and you do lose something if you never get face to face time with your team? Uh, maybe, Ah, I'm totally wrong. But what have you found?

spk_1:   11:43
Well, I think it's the age old question of a first of all you and I coming to the same place about what we think Culture iss. All right, so if you're San Francisco startup and you think culture is the bartender showing up a three so that we can play pool together, then this is going to be difficult to maintain that culture. Right? Um but I s Oh, I'm very anthropological about culture. So it depends on on what our, um are common definition of culture is. So here's what I think it ISS culture is the stories you tell culture is the way you interact with each other as opposed to what you say you're going to do, right? So you say we're open and honest and transparent. But everybody knows only certain people have certain information, Right? Um, it's about how you communicate to people, how frequently communicate to people and closing the loop of what is what you said. What they heard right. And it's the way people behave. I always say it's the way people behave when no one's looking. And now is the ultimate time to know that, right? So, people, everybody will learn a ton about their culture. Because how people are gonna treat this moment, right? Are people going to deliver without being told? So are they going t o be able to reach out and ask for information rather than assuming somebody else knows, right? Our leaders communicating in a really consistent way so that everybody understands. You know how how people are coming together to deal with the issues at work. I mean, so that sort of And you remember, you used to say best practices was tops down communication, right? And so if you do the the black, the speech in front of everybody in the company, everybody here is the same thing at the same time. A little bit different. You know, when you've got 15 people on a zoom podcast, right? So I think we'll really start thinking about that and start seeing where you know, we're doing a good job or not doing a good job. And I think things will, you know, it'll expose our weaknesses and also expose, you know, cos particular strength.

spk_0:   14:03
One thing, as you were talking about that that just struck me it dawned on me is that you are goingto have companies that are going to hire people remotely in that they're going to be interviewing them over a computer or a phone where the previously would have done that face to face. And I'm wondering if that is something that has inherent. Like, are we worse judges of character. If you're meeting somebody for the first time remotely versus is that kind of like a cynical old school way of thinking that says that you lose something when you're not seeing somebody face to face or do you actually lose something? When you're having that first experience with somebody and they're not directly in front of, You

spk_1:   14:47
know, I don't know. I think it's kind of a trade off. I mean, I've been doing video interviewing for 20 years now, right? Because many companies air global. So I mean, I've always interviewed people. I remember interviewing somebody from Japan, and I thought that's an interesting background and I realized, Oh, that's in your closet because they're your clothes in the background, You know, it was a quiet spot, so I'm sure that's why that person went there. So, you know, let's let's just play it out On the one hand, Yeah, of course, you lose that. You know, the human connection of being in the same room and maybe in other ways, maybe you're not as nervous, you know, because you're you're prepared and you know what it's gonna be like in a video conference and I think we'll just learn a lot from it. I think technology has evolved so much now that I find video conferencing really intimate and really, you know, I like seeing people's body language in their faces and what's going on with them. But maybe it'll keep us more honest, right? Maybe we'll say, Um, I just, um, interest in what you have to say, not in how you look or who you are, right?

spk_0:   16:04
Yeah, I think that it's certainly hopeful. Ah, and I think that that's one of those things were you know, you hope where something like this winds up turning into AA lot of really interesting, resilient cultures that pop out of it, right? So I mean, I think I don't know if you followed, and it's certainly early on since we're recording this on March 26th and so probably beat live relatively soon. But is are there any companies that you've seen that have responded pretty well in this crisis, or even in in previous crises that are worth paying attention to and just kind of show how strong their cultures are?

spk_1:   16:48
Oh, you know, every company has a culture period, right? And so I think that the companies that have moved to more mobile, remote collaborative um you know, collaborative using collaborative software, for example, right, Kate having information accessible by, ah, lot of people rather than pass down the food chain. I think those companies are going to be more nimble here, right? So one of the things that I've been consulting larger companies about in the last couple of years is larger. Companies realize that the way they operate is has worked for a really long time. But the problem is it doesn't really scale for the future because it's not quick or nimble enough, right? If you gotta wait for four people to give you permission and go down the food chain and make a presentation to management and have them go back and you know, think about it and decide what to approve, it's just slow. And so you know, the workforce of the future is much more nimble, and it's much more volatile. Right? People move from job one job to the other more frequently, so I think that companies that have already gotten their arms around, how did we do that now will be the ones that are stronger as we come through this because things were gonna change fast.

spk_0:   18:09
Yeah, and I know that that's yeah, it's the agility, I'd say of the companies that are able to I mean, frankly, I've been impressed to some extent about companies that have been forced to change their models on a dime and without new interesting ways of servicing customers and putting out new advertising that they hadn't previously expected, that they were going to run, you know, like manpower, hours and ingenuity that went into that. And I guess you're right. There's something really interesting about the resilience of certain companies that have been that we're not expecting to have to do anything like this, But they just had a culture that, you know, promoted. I would imagine certain types of values that allowed them to Tiu to do these things that quickly.

spk_1:   19:03
Yeah, you know, I'm thinking as we're talking that, um you know, in my life and my experience, I've been around a lot of innovative people, and people like to talk about harnessing that ability in every employee, right, getting something from them all. And what my experience has been is when people are most willing to step up and most willing to think creatively and most willing to participate is when the answer isn't known, right? You know, I remember when I was at Netflix, I I remember loving that I had unequal voice to everybody else because I was a consumer and we were making it up. Just because you had a more senior title doesn't didn't mean you knew anymore about what we were doing than anybody else. Because we're literally making it up. And I feel like we're in that time right now, right? Some of the greatest innovations or learnings from this time are gonna come from. You know, any employee who was working remotely is gonna have come up with a good idea, and it's gonna spread quickly. And that's, um and I talk a lot. You know, my book is called powerful because I hate the term empowerment. But I think right now some of the ways we're working give everybody a lot of equal power to make a difference. So it'll be interesting to follow that c c. Where we secure from stories about

spk_0:   20:30
Yeah. I mean, I think the idea of empowering people is so critical. But also, I feel like to get those people through the door that you want to empower in the first place just to make sure that you got the right talent, uh, under, you know, within the organization. And what's interesting to me is obviously you've got a lot of experience in the talent. Ah, Arena. Ah, and I think that there are a lot of companies out there where, you know, you try to bat 100% AA or bat 1000. Sorry, I'm since the meteor baseball has

spk_1:   21:06
been, you know,

spk_0:   21:07
things, right? Everybody wants to bat 1000 but is there any way I mean, what's the best that you can realistically bat? When when you're trying to bring people into your organization, It just seems to me that even the best organizations flub it. Maybe I making up a number here, but 17% of the time,

spk_1:   21:29
Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts on that. I mean, um, usually when we flub it, it's because we're not really sure what problem we're trying to solve. So we say, you know, you see to be a smart guy and you seem to have what we think it's going to take to solve this problem. And so let's give it a go or you promote somebody into a job. You're like, Well, you're you're breathing and you know the company. So let's give it a try, right? And sometimes you just It just doesn't work out. There's two reasons. So when it doesn't work out, one of them is. And all of the time I'm not one of the reasons. The reason is because you hired the wrong person, and sometimes it's because you didn't really know who the right person waas and sometimes it's because you really like the person, but they can't do it. So I have a very distinct methodology about hiring. And here's how it goes. You imagine your team, your company, your division, whatever in six months and in six months, this team is performing. Amazingly, not just a little better, but in unbelievably like Oh my God, everybody's just stunned by the level of work they're getting done. The quality of work you're getting done, the customers you're making happy Oh my God! And it's very important. Have a time frame on it. Six months to a year because that's all. We can really realistically project most of us and and it gets you past the Sunday So in six months, if this team was performing amazingly, what would be occurring then? That's not occurring now. And I want you to give me all your metrics and you're no morals. There's more revenue. We have better customer retention, whatever it is. But then make a movie of it. Are there more meetings? Are there less meetings? Are people heads down and working hard or people brainstorming crazy ideas and trying a bunch of them? Are people working better cross functionally what's occurring differently? Then it's happening now. Then you drop down and say, Okay, in order for that to happen in six months, what would people know how to need to know how to do? And a lot of times in smaller companies. When you get to that point, it's that you need more people have experienced with scale or complexity is very common started problem, right? You have all these people that work hard, but nobody knows how to do it. It's scale. All right, so now you say what? What people need to know how to do in order to accomplish this thing that's gonna make us amazing in six months. Then you say, What kind of skills and experience would it take for? People don't know how to do that. The cops, that with me, right? And then who do you got? And now you know what's missing right now? You know what problems you need to solve that no one on your team can solve in that time, period. And that's who you hire the problem self. You do not hire five more software engineers, three more accounts payable clerks. You hire people with the capability of accomplishing that particular thing in that particular time frame. So now when you go to interview, you're not interviewing to see Do they have the right acronyms on their resume? Do they have 5 to 7 years progressive experience doing this right now, you're saying it. Can this person really contribute to the team's success in a particular period of time? Because I know you're right. My whole background is in talent, so I'm a recruiter from way back. So I know all the dirty little secrets that we tell each other. I know that most job descriptions air written to either a describe someone who left that you wish hadn't be. Describe a fantasy person that doesn't exist or c put whatever it takes to get it approved, right? Yeah. It's one of those things are are you want to hire

spk_0:   25:17
and and also the in my mind, I think that I've consulted and worked with a lot of startups and especially smaller startups where you have somebody who am not saying this is every CEO. But I have seen a lot of people who they just make decisions off of emotion where they have a certain feeling.

spk_1:   25:38
Yeah, yeah, obviously when I see here is when I see No, I'm looking for somebody really confident, really smart. A good decision maker, Quick on their feet. Good looking. Someone just like me. Yeah, E. I wonder why nobody has any new ideas in the whole team is virtually clones of each other.

spk_0:   26:01
Well, I was going to say I think that there was somebody and I made this mistake and I think that you know the mistakes you make are you. Sometimes you have to make them for yourself before your going to be able to move forward. You can just read them in the book sometimes, unfortunately, and I had a younger creative director. Ah, that worked with me. I felt like I got along with her. Well, on a personal level Ah, and we I didn't realize, you know, only in retrospect that this was somebody who I had a lot of things in common with me, and I kind of appreciate it all these things because I saw them and myself, uh, from a moral caliber perspective. Let's just say they had a different, you know, ah, set of ethics than me. I'll just say and did not work out well, my second creative director at the same company with somebody who I never hung out with personally and was not somebody who I would but yet we balanced each other out in a very strong manner that allowed it allowed us to perform much better. I was deliberately looking for the opposite, but I think that afterwards it dawned on me that this was the person who solved the particular problem, that we were okay, as I want to be around them.

spk_1:   27:24
Yeah, and I think his leaders and managers as we go through our careers. We learn about that right? We learn about putting together teams of lots of different people who had value in lots of different ways, right? My experience was almost the opposite. So I was commuting a really long distance, and my have twins and my twins were like two. And my son was five, and it was just really, really horrible. So recruiter called Mi Teoh recruit me to a company that was five minutes from home. Now, you know, I've been interviewing all my life, So I went to this company and I talked them into hiring me. I mean, I just made them think I was the best thing since sliced bread, right? They had to hire me. I was gonna be amazing. And I didn't pay any attention, really, to interviewing them. I just wanted to do it for the right reasons, because it was five minutes from home. We were so wrong, creature. It was just It was I knew, like, in the end of the second week, I had made a terrible mistake of I was supposed to spend most of Friday afternoon in the file room filing, and my my manager said to me one time. You know, you have a lot of ideas, but we've had the moan, they don't work. So we'd like you to just stop thinking so much, E s. I mean, it was my fault. I made them hire me, right? It was just like I felt terrible about it. And I'm you know, and I want to do the right thing for my family. Linda, you know, all the things you learn and what I learned there was these people were so different than me. This is a very, very administrative rules following file filing HR department. And these were really, really, um, administrative people. And although I was terribly suited for this team, I learned to appreciate who they were. And when I went on to create larger teams of my own, I learned to appreciate the skills that people had, who woke up in the middle of the night and thought, Oh, my God, spell their name. Wrong. I may have to commit Harry care because I could never have done those things right. And so, like in your experience. So I remember when I put together my first big HR team, the first person I hired with somebody completely opposite because I had to have that. I knew how important the balance with. So that's you know, that's the other thing. So you know, we're talking a little bit about talent about hiring, and I've come to the conclusion that I think the job of management is simply to put together amazing teams that get incredible amounts of work done on time with quality that, you know, serve the customer. And that's it, right. You don't have to own somebody's career for the rest of their lives. You don't have Thio understand everybody's psychology. You need to put together teams that accomplish stuff. I say that your job is a manager is to create resume worthy activities,

spk_0:   30:35
in part because we're talking about, you know, at a point where there's gonna be a lot of disruption, certainly higher unemployment, and I think we were just talking about you know, it being your fault, your own words, right about being persuasive, getting somebody to hire you into culture or, you know, an organization that you didn't quite fit into. And I think that the thing that I'm just thinking about now is you're gonna have this world where a lot of people are going to need toe work. And some people might try to fit themselves and be that square peg in a round hole or whatever the saying is, And to really try to sell themselves for something isn't necessarily right because they need a paycheck. And this is just the thing that I'm imagining. Like, how do we sort better kind of lake and Harry Potter. They've got putting people in tow all of the right houses, and I just want to be able to do that for the economy at large. And I know we're on the jewels, but isn't there a more efficient way to kind of make sure that, you know, person A goes to company A where they're going to fit in and succeed better than they would at Company B?

spk_1:   31:46
Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't think there's gonna be a universal global methodology to sort this out. I mean, I think that a lot of companies air just gonna higher, you know, as they get bigger. And as things get better, they'll just fire back people. That left right. Um and then I think that it's a great opportunity for people for no future employees to start thinking about what they want to write. So it will be about partly for people trying to find the best fit for them, probably knowing more about what they love, what they don't having been forced to work in a way that maybe people weren't comfortable with. So, you know, we've had up turns in downturns in the economy. Don't get me wrong. This one is. I don't know how to predict it because it's so drastic. But I think if we can get moving again, the most important thing to get started is just to get back. You know, when people get back to work and then some of those things will sort themselves out like they always do.

spk_0:   32:52
Yeah, no, I think we can certainly hope, and I think that Ah, it seems like it's one of those things that I'd often talkto people who are essentially more or less futurist and prognosticators using data toe figure out. Here's where we're going to be on. And then there are people who just advocate for a particular, uh thing being in the world without trying to necessarily predict what it will be, but just to try to more or less effect and create the future, Right? E think that maybe you're in that latter group if I have a guess,

spk_1:   33:26
huh? Yeah, you know, mostly because the latter half of my career was always in start ups and it it you know, this from working with startups. ITT's just always about creating future. You know what I can when I could sell to it? An early state CEO. You know, I'll say to them, you know, there's only three endings to this story. You get bigger, you get smaller, you get eaten small, smaller death. So you know what you want to dio is you wanna plan for be excited about build the muscle for change and not ever try to keep things the way they are because you'll die.

spk_0:   34:06
Well, it's another thing that I know that you've written about which I think is so interesting is that you hire for a particular ah situation. And sometimes you even have a early stage CEO and the company gets bigger and they're not the right person to work for that company anymore. In that capacity, simply because it's a different company than it was getting. And it seems to me what's interesting is that now will we have company. Is that let's say, need to reach you on the fly, maybe wanna rehire while there are things they might say. Well, you know what if I had to do this all over again? Our company looks radically different now, and maybe I need to invest in different spills in different positions

spk_1:   34:53
are and

spk_0:   34:54
then previously.

spk_1:   34:56
I think that's the real opportunity here. I mean, particularly in the function that I come from. This is now is the real opportunity to say well, with everybody you know, scattered all over the place. Is the annual performance review really the best tool for giving feedback? You know, Hang, do we really need to have 11 levels of approvals to get anything done when I think the people who are you know, people are going to make the right decision? I mean, I think this is a really great opportunity for us tow pause every so often and say, What is it that we're not doing? That we always thought was important? Maybe we should just stop doing

spk_0:   35:36
yeah, Yeah, I That's why, especially for a long pause, I think that, uh, given the fact that virtually everybody I'm home, I had a bunch of, ah different keynote type of ah, speaking things happening. Obviously not happening now, Uh, because it's a long enough period where everybody anticipates it will be long enough that forces people to do that type of think. And I think maybe if this was six or seven days of an interruption, that wouldn't be enoughto Yeah, that reset you're talking about.

spk_1:   36:10
Yeah, yeah, but this is I think this is going to be long enough to do it. I'm already seeing people think about it differently, you know? And I you and iron that you and I are in the same boat. And so now you know, the same company that invited me to, you know, stand on stage and be inspiring now, now wants me to get a gun, a webinar and help people answer questions of how we're supposed to work like this. It's and I and I think it's back the fundamentals of how we start. It's like it's gonna have to start with assuming that people are adults who planned to do the right thing.

spk_0:   36:45
Yeah, I think it's so true. No, I really like that point. Not just because I made it also, but also because it's I I might have read it from you. Ah, first, to be honest, so you get credit for it. But now I think that Ah, if you if you had to I guess, you know, just leave people because I know you've got to run in a minute. But you had to leave people with, you know, one word of encouragement in terms of their career development if they're working from home and they weren't expecting it or even if they've had an unexpected layoff where they couldn't have even imagined that occurring, you know, 12 months prior. You know what, uh, words of advice might you have?

spk_1:   37:26
Oh, it's a good time for that self reflection part right to sit down and make literally, you know, fold the paper in half and make that list of on the rider the things that I absolutely loved to do and, you know, to find out what I have, I call it my algorithm for success. It goes like, this is what you love to do that. You're extraordinarily good at doing something. We need someone to be great at. One more time is what you love to d'oh that you're extraordinarily good at doing something. We need someone to be great at. So you want to look for that fit as an employee and as an employer, right? So that your hiring somebody who's going to be really great and care about this thing and and how you know what that ISS is that day that you get in your car on the subway, rhe whatever it is or to hang up the phone right and sit back and go Damn, I'm good. That's that's what you love to do, right when you feel like you've really accomplished something and when you find yourself like, just like I do know, I'm gonna procrastinate because I do not want to do this thing. That's something you don't love to do, probably because you're not very good at it. And when your earlier in your career you don't Noah's much about those things because you haven't done them before. Right thing, This story I didn't I didn't know that team was gonna hate me I probably should have, but I didn't write. So now is a really good time to start thinking. And I always recommend that everybody does this whenever they're thinking about changing jobs or changing their lives. Which is what have I learned that's going to help me Have the next experience be a really great one That's gonna add to Mike career as a journey. Yeah, that's what it is. All right,

spk_0:   39:12
people, I think are gonna have Ah, look at this as a major fork in the road and maybe think. Well, hey, my journey should actually look a lot different than it had been going and a blessing in disguise for everybody because I want to be realistic. But I think that for a lot of people, they might wind up looking at like that because they do have that moment to reflect. You were just talking?

spk_1:   39:33
Yeah. And that, you know, shell shocked reality of like, Whoa, I had this all planned out. This'd it's wasn't on the calendar, right? That's no, no, no. I was gonna work three years here and then two years there and then get promoted, and then I would have this title and then

spk_0:   39:53
So So really, I got so much out of that conversation in part because of the timing, but in part because Patty's an amazing individual s Oh, thanks so much for making the time, Patty McCord. If you like what you just heard and this is your first time here. Welcome. And be sure to subscribe. Apple podcast. Who will play stitcher Spotify? The choice is yours. And if you're a longtime listener, please remember to rate and review future proof as that's the number. One way we get the show in front of people like you. Once again, I'm Jeremy Goldman, and you've been listening to future proof.