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Fireside Chat with Erin Meyer

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Fireside Chat With Erin Meyer 1) The beginning of a great chat session between Erin Meyer, the Author, Speaker, and Cultural Expert and Karthik Chidambaram, Founder & CEO at DCKAP (00:00-03:30) Karthik Chidambaram: So Erin, that was a great talk. I really enjoyed, been taking some notes ​ as well throughout the talk. I have some quotes from you and I feel we can actually frame some of these quotes in our offices. So let me actually read some of the quotes I thought were really cool. “Individual performance problem is not an individual problem, it's a team problem.” So that was very, very interesting. “And managers don't like to fire employees.” I thought that was very cool as well. “Performance is contagious”. One thing we really loved is, “feedback is superpower”. We would like to frame that and stick it in our office. Feedback is superpower. Thank you Erin. We are really honoured to have you join us. Really appreciate it. Let me actually start by asking, how did you start working with Reed Hastings? You did talk about this a little bit in your book as well, but as you live in Paris, you're not exactly his neighbor. How was it working with him and how did the magic happen? Erin Meyer: Yes. Let me just say Karthik. I'm sorry. I just saw my own visual and I see it's ​ gotten all dark around me. So since I'm in Paris, it’s getting to be nighttime. When I started, I had the right lighting. I'm sorry that I looked so washed out. Okay. Thank you Karthik. You are right. I had a very funny experience when I met Reed. I wrote my first book, ‘The Culture Map’ in 2014. And when it first came out, I had a small publisher and it wasn't getting a lot of reading. It built up very slowly. So one morning I woke up and I opened my email as I always do. And I had this email in my inbox and I'm just going to read it to you because I have it word for word here. It said, ‘Erin, I was in the Peace Corps, Swaziland. So I was in the Peace Corps like you were. Now I'm the CEO of Netflix. I loved your book and we are having all of our leaders read it. I'd love to have coffee with you sometime’. I just loved that example because it shows the self-deprecation of Reed that instead of having his assistant contact me and say, ‘Oh, you know, Mr. Reed Hastings would like to set up a time to talk with you’, he just said, ‘Hey, we were in Africa together’. So then I started doing work with his organization. They were getting ready for their rapid international expansion, which they did in January of 2016. I worked with them on getting ready for that international expansion. Karthik Chidambaram: That's awesome Erin. Actually we found that in you as well. While ​ we've been preparing for this conference, you made us feel very comfortable and yeah, that was really nice. And I think that's something we can learn from Reed and you. So thank you. 2) Get hold of tips from Erin Meyer to operate with freedom and responsibility (03:32-05:30) Karthik Chidambaram: You talked about freedom in your talk and that was pretty cool. And ​ you're also raising two boys and of course school is the first place that we are all part of. Do you find that schools these days are preparing children to operate with freedom and responsibility? The reason I ask is I also have two kids, a daughter, and a son. Erin Meyer: Yeah. Well, I think it's such an interesting question because if you think about it, ​ most of our value systems around companies were set up for the industrial era and what I mean by that is that during the industrial era, there was a strong focus on error prevention, consistency, and replicability. I know in many of your listener’s organizations, they still have, maybe in major parts of the company that the main goal is error prevention, consistency, and replicability. But in growing numbers of workforces, in growing numbers of teams and organizations, we're finding today that the main goal is no longer error prevention and replicability. It's fresh thinking. It's trying to be innovative, try things out, fail sometimes. And I want to tell you my kids are raised here in France. I have these two boys, Ethan and Logan. They're ages 15 and 11. I clearly see in the French school system that they have not transitioned from the industrial era. I think that the US has maybe doing a better job with that. But what I mean is that there's still a strong emphasis in the school on not making mistakes. Like I'm getting it right. How many did you get right, how many did you get wrong, and teaching the children to prevent error instead of teaching the children to think freshly. I think that's a very interesting thought when we think about how to raise our children to be successful in organizations of the future. 3) Feedback is superpower! (05:30-08:47) Karthik Chidambaram: Well, definitely provide them a lot of feedback too. In your talk, you ​ mentioned ‘praise in public and criticize in private’ and that's something I've read as well. But then, what do you think of this feedback culture? Do you think that's going to work for everyone or is it more for companies like Netflix? Your thoughts there? Erin Meyer: Well, I really think that this depends on how much you've invested in high ​ performance, but also what kind of personalities you've allowed to have on your team. One of my favorite quotes at Netflix is ‘no brilliant jerks’. And when we were talking earlier about Nick, you remember Nick, right? Nick was the interloper and William Phelps’s study. You remember that when he acted jerky, the others on the team all started acting jerky also. I think many of us can think of times in our lives that we've seen that dynamic. That one person on the team was jerky and just seemed to get everyone kind of jerky. So I actually feel the first employees that we need to get rid of are the ones that are jerky because if you got a lot of jerky employees, then those feedback dinners, there's no way they're going to work. It's only once you really have employees who are ready to help one another. And maybe I'll add that at Netflix they have some guidelines for giving feedback and you can use these to. I call them the four A's. So the first is that when you give feedback, it should always be with the aim to assist. So we don't give feedback to get frustration off of our chest. We don't give feedback just because we feel like, ‘Oh, that guy made me angry’. Feedback should be given only with the aim to assist. Secondly, it should be given only when it is actionable. So there's no point in me giving you feedback about something that you can't act on, but if it's clear to me how you could act in order to improve your performance, then I clearly want to give that feedback, right. So aim to assist and be actionable. And if I'm those two things, then the last two ways are about how to receive feedback. So when I receive feedback, you remember your amygdala starts going off, right? Your alarm starts going off. That means your trigger is to defend yourself, fight or flight to defend yourself or to hide. But what they say at Netflix is appreciate the feedback. Show appreciation, ‘Thank you. Thank you Karthik for that feedback. I appreciate it. It's not easy to get feedback like that. I appreciate it.’ Then you can go into the corner and let your amygdala go off for a while. The other one is accept or decline. So if you really managed to get a high feedback superpower in your organization, then you're going to get a lot of feedback everyday. But that doesn't mean that you have to take it. I mean, you can take some of it and then others, you can think, ‘Okay, I listened and I thought about it, but I don't think I'm going to take it’. But yeah, I don't think that has to be Netflix. I think any manager who really sees how giving that feedback could improve performance can work step by step to get this, get this feedback culture instituted. 4) Learn more about the Keeper’s Test from Erin Meyer (08:48-10:55) Karthik Chidambaram: Feedback is superpower. That's cool. That's awesome. And you also ​ talk about firing your hardworking employee for if he is mediocre and things like that. In the book, you also talked about the keepers test. Essentially, if I were leaving today, would you work hard to retain me? And that's what the keepers test is all about, right? In your talk also you mentioned it. So what about the emotional part of a person who's getting fired? Let's say, for example, you are working for Reed and you do a good job.
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