Treat employees like adults | Patty McCord

TED Business

TED

Business, Modupe Akinola, Ted Business Podcast, Business Leadership Podcast, Ted Talks Business, Ted Modupe, Ted Talks

4 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The pandemic showed HR consultant Patty McCord something she has been espousing for years: workers are adults, with responsibilities and obligations. It seems obvious, yet at work, so many people are treated like children: too much oversight, micromanaged, with rules that get in the way of performance, rather than enhance it.

But before you go set everyone free, how do you separate the rules that liberate from the ones that constrain? In this episode, hosts Corey Hajim and Modupe Akinola wrestle with this question. Hang on till the end, for a never-before-heard framework that helps you make sense of which rules to keep and which to let go.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:07.5	Hey, Medupe, have you heard about the Netflix culture deck?
0:11.8	I have, I've, I've heard about it since it came out.
0:15.5	So one of the big themes of this very famous Netflix culture deck that really made the
0:22.6	rounds in Silicon Valley when it was written is sort of this idea of treating people like
0:28.6	adults. Like you set a mission, you set a purpose, you, you create values for a company.
0:35.4	And then you let people decide how they're going to deliver on those things. You let them
0:41.4	decide things like how many vacation days am I going to take? How am I going to travel?
0:47.2	Because this sort of mission and purpose has been communicated and ingrained in people's
0:53.7	hearts and minds. And this makes them more flexible and more nimble and more innovative
0:59.4	and creative and look at Netflix. What do you think about all that?
1:05.3	Sounds good in theory, but you know, I'm not sure how well that would work in practice
1:10.7	or across organizations. Right. Well, so a lot of people are skeptical
1:14.8	like you. And our next speaker was integral in writing the Netflix culture deck. Her name
1:20.3	is Paddy McCord. And she's kind of fed up with people thinking this isn't possible. And
1:26.2	especially after spending a year where we've all kind of had to act like adults, but she
1:32.4	has some interesting insights into this. And I think we should listen to this talk together.
1:37.3	I think we should do. This is Ted business. And I'm a dupe Akinola, a professor at Columbia
1:46.2	Business School. And I'm Kori H. M. Ted's business curator. And after a quick break,
1:51.1	we'll hear from Paddy McCord.
1:59.0	Support for this podcast comes from BCG. There are so many urgent questions in the minds of business
2:04.6	leaders today. What will the economy look like in six months? Should you be investing in
	...

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