Episode 145: 14th January 2021

Netflix, BBC, New Businesses, Kim Scott and Radical Candour

A new year means a new format for The Business Community and as we leap into 2021 full of hope and anticipation we continue to record via Zoom so ongoing apologies for the sound quality.

We start our discussion as we visit an article that caught our eye on CEO Secrets from the BBC which in itself is a really extensive and though provoking body of work with articles and videos on a wide range of subjects all pertaining to business. This week in particular we take a look at an article which brings together stories of people who have set up business during the Covid pandemic. Many had been furloughed and decided to utilise their time to test out a business idea. The range of ideas is broad and go some way to helping us understand why there has been a spike in the number of new businesses during 2020.

Our review this week is a book by a lady called Kim Scott who tries to educate us towards a management model that encourages ‘warts and all’ feedback. The book entitled Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity the book suggests we we approach feedback in a way that enables us to truly understand the impact of our work whether it be good or bad. In other words, radical candor is about being thoroughly open and honest with others so that when it comes to work and management, this means balancing care for your team members whilst helping them know where they need to improve.

Somewhat coincidentally (although we are happy to wear the smug pants at the amazing link we unearthed here) our profile this week is of a man whose business has been keeping most of us sane during 2020 and he has been known to adopt the radical candor approach in quite a public way. Co-Founder of Netflix and with a personal wealth of $6.3 Billion, Reed Hastings set up Netflix with Marc Randolph in 1997 as a rival to the then leading video rental brand of Blockbuster but Hastings and Randolph were ahead of the curve and changed the way of film rental to the model we have come to understand.

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