Evaluating a Leader: Jessica Neal Chief Talent Manager of Netflix (Research Paper Sample)

Management Analysis Project: Evaluating a Leader
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Management Analysis Project: Evaluating a Leader
Introduction
Jessica Neal is the Chief Talent Manager of Netflix. She has been with the company since 2006 when it was dealing with renting DVDs until now when the company is specialized in streaming on-demand content (Larcker & Tayan, 2018). Even thorough in the midst of between 2006 and 2019 she managed to work at different companies such as Coursera and Scopely, she finally returned to Netflix in June 2017 as the Human Resource manager for the product engineering team. Jessica stands out as a passionate and result-oriented leader who fervently contributes to the overall success of Netflix. Furthermore, her opulence in knowledge as well as experiences from working in different positions, as well as companies, makes her an admirable character. This paper conducts a management analysis of Jessica Neal. To achieve this objective, the paper will look into her vision, establish whether she is a leader or manager, identify her source of power, and evaluate her based on her ability to embrace transformational leadership skills.
Vision
Jessica Neal exhibits three primary secrets to leadership vision success. One of the secrets involves defining and communicating the vision. As the current, Chief Talent Officer of a company that continually faces different evolutionary challenges as well as the need to scale in terms of producing more attractive and engaging content, Neal has managed to create a vivid as well as an aspirational picture that helps define the future of Netflix. According to Netflix’s official website, the company’s vision is to become the leading and best global entertainment distribution service provider (Larcker & Tayan, 2018). Further, the company aims at being involved in licensing media content globally while at the same time creating markets that are accessible to all filmmakers. From her current position, Jessica has managed to lead and direct employees’ talent in a way that communicates and upholds the above-mentioned vision.
Her second secret to vision success is strategic thinking. Hitherto, Jessica has managed to align the human resource at Netflix in a way that they understand the purpose of the company, embrace its vision, and work towards the identified growth strategy. Even though strategic thinking might be the rarest of most executive skills, it has significantly helped in terms of defining and working towards the achievement of Netflix’s vision. The third secret to Netflix’s vision success has been planning and prioritizing (Snell, Bateman, & Konopaske, 2017). As a leader who has been in several positions that entail the management of teams, she has been able to use acquired knowledge and experience to structure, plan, and execute the company’s leadership vision. As a result, the team that she heads is constantly achieving closure as well as key wins that relate to the company’s vision.
As the chief talent officer, Jessica Neal occupies one of the crucial positions that at one point was being occupied by Patty McCord as the company’s Chief Talent Officer. Patty was known for his ability to incorporate pattern recognition and common sense into the company’s HR structure. Furthermore, Patty established a culture that refrains from compromising Netflix’s dream team. Hitherto, Jessica has managed to not only replicate but also improve on these factors. Jessica is more observant when it comes to employee patterns based on the performance as well as the behaviors of individuals who had already been hired by the company. With such an approach, she has been at a better position of making
In her leadership position, Jessica has managed to create an ethical climate whereby every decision that involves her office is made based on being either right or wrong. In this regard, succinct analyses of possible outcomes of a decision are conducted before she embarks on the decision. Even though most decisions are pegged with risks, Jessica appears to be aware of possible risks. In this regard, she always comes up with a contingency plan to cover undesired outcomes.
Leader/ Manager, and Rationale
Jessica Neal is both a leader and a manager. As a leader (strategic leader) Jessica has managed to create a strategy that communicates the company’s vision. At her current position, she has managed to create a picture of what Netflix through the talents of its staff members see as possible as well as inspire and engage Netflix employees to work on turning the vision into reality. Netflix represents a company that is continually susceptible to disruptions. However, Jessica together with other staff members has embraced most of the disruptions and utilized innovation as a practical tool of responding to the aforementioned disruptions. Netflix is continually innovating different approaches to content creation and distribution based on consumer preferences (Hoch et al., 2018). Based on her performance as a leader, she has managed to be unique as well as relevant. She is self-aware and continually works towards actively building her unique and differentiated way of leading Netflix’s talent team.
Jessica’s leadership skills can also be seen from her ability to take risks. For instance, she has continually been faced with the challenge of guiding the production of attractive and engaging content that will maintain new subscriber growth. As a way of responding to this challenge, Jessica has been able to lead her team into producing more content that targets specific international markets. Even though subscriber growth represents a hard-to-forecast metric due to the increasing new markets that the company is focusing on, the risk taken in channeling more capital in the production of more specific content has the potential of fostering viral success to the company. Lastly, Jessica focuses on the long-term growth of Netflix and not just short-term results. According to Larcker and Tayan (2018), Jessica together with the company’s director and the entire team are motivated to continually develop and improve the content in a way that resonates with targeted audiences. Furthermore, most of Netflix’s leadership with Jessica being one of them tends to stay motivated even without being rewarded on a regular basis.
On the other hand, in her managerial capacity, she has created goals that aid the realization of Netflix’s vision. Nonetheless, she has promoted the culture that was earlier developed by Patty McCord who was the company’s first talent manager and used it to communicate expected competencies as well as behaviors among employees. Apart from taking risks, Jessica manages these risks. As a manager, Jessica is constantly perfecting existing skills while at the same time adopting some of the proven behaviors. Furthermore, she has built systems and processes that aid in attaining desired outcomes.
Source of Power
According to Snell, Bateman, and Konopaske (2017), having power while at the same time using it effectively is crucial to effective leadership. Jessica enjoys legitimate power based on her position as the Chief Talent Manager of the company. In this regard, she is at a position of guiding leaders who are under her as well as employees by giving them directions that they ought to comply with. It is important to note that Jessica has legitimate power by the virtue of the position that she holds. However, this does not approve of her as a good leader since good leadership is derived from supplemental leadership skills.
Besides legitimate power, Jessica also has reward power. As such, she influences her team based on the fact that she determines employees who will be rewarded and those who will not be rewarded. It is because of the reward power that employees work hard while at the same time embrace creativity to be noticed and be rewarded according