Former Netflix Chief Talent Officer Teaches us How to Run a Company Smoothly

Netflix’s former chief talent officer, Patty McCord, joined the Netflix family way back in 1998 when the company was just starting out in the business world. She contributed a lot to the company’s growth; from a five-word expense policy and a belief that employees should be treated as adults. This approach to running a company that’s been viewed 16-million times on Slide share (Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg described it as “possibly one of the most important documents to come out of the valley.”

Central to the Netflix approach to business was the statement: “We are like pro sports team, not a kids’ recreation team. Adequate performance gets a generous severance packaged,” noted the culture desk.

“Since leaving the company in 2012, McCord has advised promising start-ups like Harry’s Grooming and Warby parker. She’ll be speaking at CEO Global Network’s Great CEOs Speakers Series during the month of June, in Toronto.

In an Interview with the Canadian online business news, McCord mentioned her approach to managing people and how she grow into understanding the concepts involved explaining that “she spent her early career days working in recruiting”. “But recruiting is quantifiable, it’s business-focused and you have to understand the jobs that people do. And when you work in recruiting, you feel like it when they go because it creates a new position that you can recruit for, “she says. ‘So you learn very quickly that there is no such thing as a person you can’t live without. People move on their careers and you can live without them”.

Contrary to popular beliefs that companies need to change how they build their benefit packages, McCord agreed saying that “If you look back at when those policies were born, it was when men were coming back from World War 11. There were more jobs than there were people to do them. So companies needed to distinguish themselves with healthy benefit packages in order to attract the best people”, she says. She believes that anyone working for what he/she isn’t happy about should be given the privilege to leave the job. “If somebody comes to work unhappy every day, then they shouldn’t do that, they should go somewhere where they are happier”.