TruthWorks

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Nov 2026

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Are you ready to dive deep into the world of work, culture and leadership? Join Jessica Neal and Patty McCord each week as they chat with expert guests and explore the issues affecting the workplace — from AI and mental health, to making layoffs and combating toxic cultures. Featuring global industry leaders and specialists that are passionate about reshaping the way work today. Listen in as we redefine the rules to work for us, not against us. Episode 1 of TruthWorks launches March 19! Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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November 10, 202646 min

ChatGPT Changed A Decade Of Work Overnight: Stack Overflow CEO!

In November 2022, ChatGPT came out and traffic on Stack Overflow went up, not down. A huge flow of ChatGPT-generated questions and answers hit the site, and its community decided to ban ChatGPT. What the company had been building for about a decade changed, in his words, "over a moment's notice." Prashanth Chandrasekar is the CEO of Stack Overflow. He came to the US on a college scholarship to the University of Maine in 1998, worked in consulting and banking, spent seven years at Rackspace, and took his first CEO job at Stack Overflow in 2019, three months before the pandemic. Host Jessica Neal talks with him about leading through the ChatGPT shock, the trust gap in AI, and why the shift ahead is a people problem. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN How a college scholarship to the University of Maine led to his first CEO job at Stack Overflow Starting as CEO three months before the pandemic, when people stopped marketing and stopped hiring November 2022: why ChatGPT sent traffic up, and why the community banned ChatGPT answers The radioactive metal idea: protecting a human-curated corpus from AI slop "Chief repeat officer": the email he has sent the company every Friday for seven years Why only about 6 to 7% of developers in the Stack Overflow survey would highly trust AI answers in their organization How data licensing deals with OpenAI and Google helped replace lost advertising revenue Stack Overflow for Agents: launched by two engineers using OpenAI's Codex "My agent is my chief of staff": how he works with AI as a CEO Why he believes AI creates more jobs, and why you should still learn the fundamentals CHAPTERS 0:00 Preview 0:32 Truth Works intro 1:20 Welcome to Truth Works 3:00 An immigrant on a scholarship to the University of Maine 5:31 "Go get some operating experience": Rackspace 6:52 First CEO job, three months before the pandemic 7:40 What Stack Overflow is 9:35 November 2022: the ChatGPT moment 11:26 Traffic went up, so the community banned ChatGPT 12:17 Radioactive metal: protecting a human-curated corpus 13:24 "Quite terrifying": how scared was he? 14:16 Leading through the hardest transformation 16:32 Chief repeat officer: an email every Friday for seven years 18:27 Teach it to learn it 19:42 Sponsor: Manifest Law 20:32 The trust gap: only 6 to 7% highly trust AI 22:40 Privacy, security and scattered knowledge 23:41 Stack Internal: decision-grade knowledge 24:09 Licensing deals with OpenAI and Google 25:15 The viral chart: simple questions gone, hard ones growing 27:10 40 to 60% better answers with Stack Overflow data 28:11 Advice for companies: it's a people problem 30:10 From behind average to everyone using AI 30:41 Stack Overflow for Agents: built by two engineers 32:46 How big companies should redesign how they work 33:50 50,000 to 100,000 employees: go big or go home 35:01 Where is the ROI? 35:50 "My agent is my chief of staff" 36:41 A better CEO post-AI? 37:15 Will AI take the jobs? 40:16 Freelancers and new companies as the job engine 41:18 Liberal arts or computer science? 43:01 The calculator lesson: learn the fundamentals 44:44 Something to take into your week ABOUT THE GUEST Prashanth Chandrasekar is the CEO of Stack Overflow, the developer question-and-answer site founded in 2008. He came to the US from India on a college scholarship to the University of Maine in 1998 and studied computer engineering, then worked in operations consulting and, after business school, in banking. In 2012 he moved from New York City to Texas to join Rackspace, where he spent seven years building its cloud businesses around AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. He became CEO of Stack Overflow in 2019 and has led its move from an ad-supported public site to an enterprise company, including its enterprise product, Stack Internal. ABOUT THE SHOW Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal. Each episode is an honest conversation about why work is hard and how leaders can make it better. This episode is sponsored by Manifest Law, Findem and True Search. #TruthWorks #Leadership #AI #StackOverflow #FutureOfWork #Developers #AIAgents #CEO

November 3, 202657 min

Your People Will Forget 99% Of What You Do As A Leader!

Two of Chris Dyer's former senior executives got bonuses, promotions and raises when he sold his company. Over drinks on a rooftop they told him, "We're still really mad at you": they would give up all the money and all the titles to be back working in the old company. What they remembered was not the policies or the perks, but four or five moments. Chris spent more than two decades building companies and studying culture. After 9/11 he walked away from a safe job and the worst boss to start his own company, rebuilt its culture during the 2009 recession as it grew to thousands of employees, and sold it at the end of 2021. His latest book is Moments That Matter. Host Jessica Neal talks with him about designing culture on purpose, the moments people actually remember, and why AI starts with people. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN How 9/11 pushed him out of a safe job and into starting his own company Why the 2009 recession showed him the culture problem was his fault The electricity lesson: new technology only pays off when you redesign the system around it The ostrich meeting: delete your whole inbox in front of your team after vacation "If you're wired, you're fired": how to make time off real What happened when every employee got the monthly P&L Why we remember only about 1% of what happens to us, and the seven moment types Why not all moments are created equal, and the one a leader cannot miss AI: start with people, then process, then the tool CHAPTERS 0:00 Preview 0:24 Truth Works intro 1:12 Welcome to Truth Works 3:06 9/11, the worst boss and a job that squashed his soul 6:41 2009: "It was totally my fault" 7:53 The electricity lesson: redesign the whole system 9:48 No email on vacation and the ostrich meeting 16:33 If you're wired, you're fired 18:29 Sponsor: Manifest Law 19:19 Divorces down, marriages up: measuring culture 21:55 Every employee gets the P&L 24:02 Culture gets designed whether you design it or not 25:05 One North Star: the best place people will ever work 26:43 Moments That Matter: "We're still really mad at you" 31:59 Seven moment types 33:25 Firsts: show up when it happens for the first time 37:30 Not all moments are created equal 38:48 The client who dropped the F-bomb 50 times 43:10 Overdoing moments: the on and off switch 45:27 Culmination moments 47:12 AI and thriving through relentless change 49:17 Start with people, then process, then the tool 51:27 Connecting AI to your email, calendar and bank 54:04 Something to think about this week 55:56 Where to find Chris (the non-dread one) ABOUT THE GUEST Chris Dyer is a former CEO, entrepreneur and keynote speaker who has spent more than two decades building companies and studying culture. He started his company weeks after 9/11, grew it to thousands of employees, and sold it at the end of 2021. His latest book, Moments That Matter, is about recognizing the moments that have an outsized impact on people, leadership and organizations. His keynotes include Thriving Through Relentless Change. Keynotes and booking: chrisdyer.com ABOUT THE SHOW Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal. Each episode is an honest conversation about why work is hard and how leaders can make it better. This episode is sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm. #TruthWorks #Leadership #CompanyCulture #MomentsThatMatter #EmployeeEngagement #FutureOfWork #AI #Management

October 27, 202651 min

Stanford's Humor Teacher: Your Joke Can Fail And Still Make Your Team Trust You!

Why do so many people do everything right, finish the course, earn the certificate, and still end up exactly where they started? Connor Diemand-Yauman was one of Coursera's early employees, where he and Jessica worked together, until an Uber ride changed his path: the driver had completed a Coursera course, earned the certificate, and was still driving. Connor and his Coursera colleague Rebecca Taber Staehelin went on to co-found Merit America, the nonprofit that trains low-wage working adults for better-paid careers. Fast Company named it the #1 most innovative education company of 2026, and a University of Virginia analysis of its first 3,000 graduates found an average raise of $22,500. Host Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, talks with him about founding, leading, taking feedback, and why humor belongs at work. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN The Uber ride that turned two Coursera employees into nonprofit founders Why access does not equal opportunity Why growing from 15 people to 500 feels like "constantly birthing a new organization" The founder's ripple: why a passing idea in a meeting can land as a tsunami How to take your co-CEO hat off so your team can push back "I am never as clear as I think I am": clarity as a leader's job The Netflix feedback that changed how Jessica leads: "It's not about you" How to take hard feedback without getting defensive Why humor builds trust, and the trait Navy SEALs value alongside stoicism CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 0:40 Welcome to Truth Works 1:17 Introducing Connor Diemand-Yauman 3:32 Catching up: a baby on the way 9:14 The Uber ride that started Merit America 11:16 Access does not equal opportunity 13:15 Constantly birthing a new organization 14:45 Work you'd do for free, with people you'd hang out with 15:54 Sponsor: Manifest Law 16:44 Founders are always being watched 18:17 Small ripples, big tsunamis 21:12 Name the hat you're wearing 23:31 Clear is kind: "I'm never as clear as I think I am" 25:07 Netflix: "That is your job. It's not about you." 29:26 Taking feedback: "Thank you, I'll think about it" 33:47 David Inc.: banking negative feedback 34:45 Is This Working?: his podcast and Katie Couric 37:46 Humor: Serious Business, his Stanford class 39:51 Why humor at work builds trust 43:15 Your joke can fail and still work 46:10 It's just work: we make it too serious 47:09 SEAL Team Six: stoicism and levity 48:03 Something to think about this week 48:19 Purpose is a state, not a destination 49:48 Thank you, Connor ABOUT THE GUEST Connor Diemand-Yauman is co-founder and co-CEO of Merit America, a nonprofit that helps low-wage working adults train for and move into better-paid careers. He was an early employee at Coursera, where he helped build the company's business with organizations, teaches Humor: Serious Business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and hosts the podcast Is This Working? ABOUT THE SHOW Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal. Each episode is an honest conversation about why work is hard and how leaders can make it better. This episode is sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm. #TruthWorks #Leadership #MeritAmerica #Coursera #Stanford #Humor #FutureOfWork #Nonprofit

October 20, 202652 min

From NASA's Mars Lander to a $1B Startup: Why Engineers Will Run the Next Decade

What does it take to hire, lead and keep the best engineers in the world while your company grows faster than you planned? Bryce Strauss, co-founder of Nominal, went from flying NASA's Juno spacecraft at Jupiter and working on the InSight Mars lander at Lockheed Martin to building the testing software behind rockets, aircraft and energy systems. Nominal has raised $182.5M from Sequoia, Founders Fund, General Catalyst and Lux, and reached a $1B valuation in 2026. Host Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, asks him how he hires, how he leads, why he turned down a near-perfect hire after one dinner, and why he tells every candidate the risks of joining. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN The leadership rule a Sequoia partner gave him: be the most demanding and the most supportive leader people have worked for Why "talent arbitrage" is the way Nominal plans to win The hire he turned down after one dinner, and why it mattered Why he asks every final candidate to stack-rank the risks of joining Call signs and bomber jackets: celebrating a year at the company Holding the bar: performance reviews built on values and tempo Why big institutions now trust a vendor, not the AI labs, to bring them AI Why the next ten years belong to mechanical, electrical and aerospace engineers CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 0:57 Welcome to Truth Works 1:35 Introducing Bryce Strauss 3:36 From rural Texas to aerospace engineering 4:39 Lockheed Martin, Juno at Jupiter and InSight on Mars 6:42 Nights and weekends: the seed of Nominal 7:18 Harvard Business School and building a company from scratch 8:00 Why mechanical engineers have been underserved 8:45 $180M raised and a $1B valuation 10:06 The Reed Hastings parallel 11:41 What's hard about building and scaling 13:46 The talent arbitrage machine 15:03 Sponsor: Manifest Law 16:40 The hire he had to turn down 20:59 Putting engineers in front of customers 23:04 People systems are products too 25:15 Leading as an engineer 26:07 Most demanding, most supportive: the Sequoia lesson 29:11 Ground truth 32:19 Honest interviews: "we're getting a C in this" 34:27 Stack-ranking the risks of joining 35:14 Rituals: lunch, call signs and bomber jackets 38:52 Celebrating people, not tenure 41:04 Holding the bar 45:51 The hardest problem right now: the AI moment 50:11 Something inspiring for the week ABOUT THE GUEST Bryce Strauss is co-founder of Nominal, which builds software for testing and operating hardware, used by aerospace, defense, energy and industrial teams and by the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. Before Nominal he spent seven years at Lockheed Martin Space on NASA's Juno and InSight missions. ABOUT THE SHOW Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal. Each episode is an honest conversation about why work is hard and how leaders can make it better. This episode is sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm. #TruthWorks #Leadership #Hiring #Startups #Engineering #Sequoia #Nominal #Aerospace

October 13, 202651 min

$500M Search Founder: This is why Most Executive Hires Fail!

Why do so many executive hires fail, and how do you spot a bad hire before you make the offer? Brad Stadler, co-founder of True Search, has spent 25 years in executive search placing CEOs, CFOs and leadership teams at venture-backed and growth companies, and in this episode he explains what is broken in executive recruiting and how founders, CEOs and boards should hire leaders today. Brad started as an auditor at Arthur Andersen, went on only two job interviews in his life, and moved into executive search at Howard Fischer Associates and Heidrick & Struggles, where Netflix was one of his clients. He then co-founded True Search, an executive search firm and talent platform. Host Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix and an expert in culture and talent strategy, asks him how search firms really work, how True pays its people differently, why he stopped doing searches himself, and how AI is changing what makes a great executive. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN How an accountant who never planned it ended up in executive search Why executive search felt superficial for so long, and what True set out to change How compensation inside search firms really works, and why True made it transparent What you can't fix when you hire someone: the baggage they bring Why the "three-time CFO who took a company public" is often the wrong hire How True uses data from the last 20 similar hires to set realistic expectations Why founders who don't make recruiting their top priority lose The signs in an offer process that say you should walk away Why "there's no opportunity in certainty" CHAPTERS 0:00 Trailer 0:42 Truth Works intro 1:30 Welcome and introduction 3:39 From Arthur Andersen auditor to executive search 6:54 Two interviews in a whole career 8:39 Leaving to build a firm 12:24 What was broken in executive search 14:19 Netflix: the client who got it 16:24 How superficial the industry was 20:19 Starting True Search 22:09 How compensation really works in search firms 24:14 The baggage new hires bring 26:24 Building True differently 29:39 Why he stopped doing searches 30:54 What makes a great executive is changing 33:14 Hiring with data, not anecdotes 36:54 Recruiting must be the founder's top priority 40:44 Hiring CEOs: beyond checking boxes 42:54 When to walk away from a candidate 48:24 There's no opportunity in certainty ABOUT THE GUEST Brad Stadler is co-founder of True Search, an executive search firm and talent platform working with venture-backed and growth companies. He previously worked at Heidrick & Struggles and Howard Fischer Associates, and began his career at Arthur Andersen. ABOUT THE SHOW Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal. Each episode is an honest conversation about why work is hard and how leaders can make it better. #TruthWorks #ExecutiveSearch #Hiring #Leadership #Recruiting #Founders #Netflix #TalentStrategy

October 6, 202651 min

Stanford Meeting Expert: Your Packed Calendar Is Not Work!

Why do we keep sitting in meetings we know are a waste of time? And why do 75% of employees say AI makes them more productive while only 13% say their company sees real value? Dr. Rebecca Hinds has studied both. She leads the Work AI Institute at Glean, holds a PhD from Stanford, and wrote the USA TODAY bestseller Your Best Meeting Ever. In this episode of Truth Works, host Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, asks her what actually fixes meetings, why AI is not showing up in company results, and what leaders should do about both. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN Why a packed calendar became a status symbol The 4D CEO test for deciding if a meeting should exist Why there is no conclusive evidence that agendas improve meetings The 27-minute meeting and the calendar cleanse Why two productive people with AI can make the whole system worse "Botsitting": the 6.5 hours a week workers spend supervising AI Why copying NVIDIA's management style is dangerous What the best CHROs are doing first on AI CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 0:27 Welcome to Truth Works 1:06 Introducing Dr. Rebecca Hinds 2:36 From Stanford swimmer to studying how organizations work 5:38 Why we can't stop having bad meetings 7:25 Meetings as a status symbol 9:24 What Netflix tried 10:39 Treat meetings like a product 13:10 The 4D CEO test 15:43 The truth about agendas 18:25 Parkinson's Law and the 27-minute meeting 21:09 What to do tomorrow: the calendar cleanse 23:57 If you don't own the meeting 27:23 The AI productivity gap 29:42 The hamster wheel of AI slop 31:22 Redesign the work, don't layer AI on top 35:52 Everyone is a manager now: delegating to agents 38:18 Good friction and where not to use AI 40:44 Flattening, layoffs and regret 45:15 Why what works for NVIDIA won't work for you 46:14 Advice for the CHRO 49:59 One thing to take into your week ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Rebecca Hinds leads the Work AI Institute at Glean and previously founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana. She is the author of Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done. ABOUT THE SHOW Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal. Each episode is an honest conversation about why work is hard and how leaders can make it better. #TruthWorks #Leadership #Meetings #FutureOfWork #AI #CHRO

September 29, 202642 min

Why your Employees Feel More Productive but your Revenue Doesn't Show It! - Findem

Nate Sokolić started and sold companies in college, spent three years in executive search at Russell Reynolds, then led the firm's AI strategy, where he brought Findem in and rolled it out globally. He now works at Findem, helping HR leaders and talent teams adopt AI. Shane Driggers has spent close to 30 years in human resources, starting in Bay Area startups during the dot-com boom and most recently serving as Chief Talent Officer at T-Mobile. He now advises growth-stage companies. Most companies are already using AI. Employees report that they feel more productive, and budgets for tools and tokens keep climbing. Yet very few leaders can point to the result in product innovation or revenue. Nate and Shane argue that the problem is rarely the technology. Companies are adding AI on top of workflows and org structures that were designed for a different era, and they are letting the tools set the strategy instead of starting with the problem they want to solve. In this episode, Jessica sits down with both of them to talk about what it takes to make AI deliver measurable outcomes, why the people function has one of the biggest opportunities in the business right now, and how recruiting is changing from searching keyword profiles to getting verified, finished work back from AI agents. In this conversation, Jessica, Nate and Shane discuss topics such as: ◼️ Why "tech wags the tail of strategy" and how that derails AI programs ◼️ Why employees feel more productive while the business sees no gain ◼️ How to redesign work from a blank page instead of rebuilding the past ◼️ Why AI is creating a new wave of tech debt inside large companies ◼️ How to decide which work should be human-led and which should be AI-led ◼️ Why HR leaders must be human thinkers, business thinkers and systems thinkers at once ◼️ How the CHRO role quietly became the company's chief AI strategist ◼️ Why the best AI adoption starts small, proves ROI, then expands year by year ◼️ How recruiters can search for real experience, like a CFO who has taken a company public ◼️ Why shifting from SaaS tools to AI agents changes how companies buy and use software ◼️ How Findem Studio produces market maps, succession plans and talent inflow/outflow reports ◼️ Why every AI output needs to show its work before a leader can trust it ◼️ Why transparency is the most valuable currency a leader has in an anxious workplace This episode is sponsored by Findem. Findem is the AI infrastructure for people decisions. Its People Intelligence platform turns fragmented people data into context teams and AI can reason over, and act on. The 3D People Graph connects billions of data points across individuals, companies, and time. Expert labeling translates that data into consistent, evidence-backed signals about experience, capabilities, and relationships, with explainability behind every insight so teams can act with confidence. Findem's agents and enterprise applications run on this foundation, and partners can build on this infrastructure and bring the same intelligence into their own products. Findem is trusted by FedEx, Intuit, Nutanix, and Emirates. Learn more about Findem: https://www.findem.ai/platform Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, bringing honest conversations with the leaders shaping the future of work.

September 22, 202648 min

How A 27-Year-Old Built A $5.6B AI Company In 21 Months! - Max Junestrand

Max Junestrand, co-founder and CEO of Legora, explains how Legora became the fastest company in history to grow from $1M to over $100M in annual recurring revenue (ARR), in 21 months. He joins Truth Works hosts Jessica Neal and Peter Clark live from Legora's office. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHO IS MAX JUNESTRAND? Max Junestrand is the 27-year-old Swedish co-founder and CEO of Legora, an AI platform for lawyers, law firms and in-house legal teams. He studied computer science and business, worked at two Y Combinator startups, and is not a lawyer. WHAT IS LEGORA? Legora is a legal AI company founded in Stockholm, Sweden and backed by Y Combinator. It helps lawyers review contracts, research case law and draft legal work. Legora serves some of the largest legal institutions in the world across Europe, the UK and the US, employs 900 people, and acquired five companies in 2026. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW LEGORA STARTED - Founded in 2020 by a psychologist, an engineer, a physicist and a lawyer - Max joined in 2023, after the release of ChatGPT - Started with €50,000 in angel funding before Y Combinator - Rejected by Y Combinator once, accepted on the second application - Built inside Mannheimer Swartling, the largest law firm in the Nordics, for nine months Before Legora, Max applied to 400 jobs and got two interviews. Both rejected him. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW LEGORA HIRES AND SCALES - Headcount grew from 250 to 900 people in one year - 0.3% of applicants receive an offer - Max personally interviews every director-level hire - Recruiting is treated as a privilege, not an obligation - Performance reviews use a 1–5 scale with direct feedback - The company is office-first with almost no remote work ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEY FACTS FROM THIS EPISODE - $1M to $100M+ ARR in 21 months - A contract review estimated at $44M was completed in 4 days - A third-party study found Legora helps lawyers catch missed errors in 71% of cases - Legora builds for where AI models will be in 3–6 months ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE → How did Legora grow so fast? → Why did Legora's team move into a law firm? → How do you hire at scale without lowering the bar? → How do you give hard feedback in a culture that avoids it? → How do you build one culture across Stockholm, London and New York? → Why is it becoming unethical not to use AI in legal work? → How will AI change the work of lawyers in the next two years? → Can legal AI improve access to justice? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ "You can just do things. You can be a little bit unreasonable in your ambitions." — Max Junestrand, CEO of Legora ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT TRUTH WORKS Truth Works is a podcast about building companies and the people behind them. Hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, and co-host Peter Clark. Legora: legora.com Legora careers: legora.com/careers Sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm. #Legora #MaxJunestrand #LegalAI #AIforLawyers #YCombinator #StartupGrowth #Hiring #TruthWorks #JessicaNeal

September 15, 202652 min

He Studied Gallup's Data for 25 Years: Here's What Makes People Great at Work

Marcus Buckingham has spent more than 25 years studying what makes people extraordinary at work, and his newest research points to a word most businesses are too nervous to use: love. In this episode of Truth Works, host Jessica Neal sits down with the co-creator of StrengthsFinder and author of First, Break All the Rules to talk about why Net Promoter Score barely predicts anything, why not one of the world's top business schools teaches the most powerful force in business, and how even a Netflix-level performance culture can accidentally train its best people to feel afraid. Marcus traces his own fascination with talent back to a UK brewery with two thousand pubs, the unlikely origin of Gallup's decades of research into what separates great performers from everyone else. He walks through the "five feelings," control, harmony, significance, warmth of others, and growth, that decide whether a customer or an employee ever ends up loving a company, and why skipping the order backfires every time. The conversation also gets personal: what Marcus calls "red threads," the parts of a job someone loves for no explainable reason, why no one else can spot yours for you, and what happens when AI starts writing your performance review before you have said a word to it. Marcus closes with the idea he calls mover and maker, that every person is, whether they notice it or not, making an experience for someone else in every single interaction. Guest: Marcus Buckingham, researcher and author of First, Break All the Rules, Nine Lies About Work, and Love + Work Host: Jessica Neal Subscribe to Truth Works for more conversations on leadership, culture, and what actually makes people great at work. #TruthWorks #MarcusBuckingham #Leadership #Netflix #WorkCulture

September 8, 20261 hr 7 min

How 2 Netflix Leaders Took "No Rules" Global! And Where It Almost Broke - Alix and Marta

Alix and Marta were the people who had to make Netflix's culture work outside America. Alix moved from the US to build the Amsterdam office and Netflix's European headquarters from a handful of desks; Marta, a Venezuelan-born recruiter who had just scaled Booking.com from 5,000 to 15,000 people, read the Netflix culture deck and assumed it was "American BS" until she flew in to interview and find out. Together they built the HR function for EMEA during the company's fastest international expansion. In this episode of Truth Works, Jessica Neal and Patty McCord sit down with both of them to talk about what happened when a Silicon Valley operating system met European labor law, "work to live" and a workforce that expected HR to keep the peace. We get into: - Why the culture deck was never a values poster: it was the practical rulebook for how you behaved or got fired - The first time "adequate performance gets a generous severance" was said out loud in Europe, and the reaction it got - Alix's first real piece of constructive feedback, delivered to a senior male executive with Patty sitting in the room - Being "too American": the well-intended US executives who piled onto EMEA and stalled local agency for years - Why the fix was slowing down and explaining behaviour with examples rather than pushing harder - Same destination, different path: how Amsterdam, Tokyo, India, Silicon Valley and Hollywood each got there differently - The people who wanted Netflix to admit the culture didn't scale, and why it did - Whether European regulation is holding back the continent's startup ecosystem, and why Spotify is the exception - Why culture change fails unless the founder or CEO personally drives it - Their consulting firm, two years in, and why they refuse to sell the beautiful transformation deck - Why every consultant is now an "AI transformation expert" and nobody knows the future of work Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix. This episode is sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm.