Lessons from 40 Years of SNL

Like 23 million other people, I watched the 40th anniversary special of Saturday Night Live this past weekend. I laughed at the latest installment of Jeopardy, mourned Chris Farley all over again and enjoyed the comedy of Louis CK and Jerry Seinfeld.

There were a lot of laughs but also some awkward moments, such as Eddie Murphy's return. It was like he hadn't been on a stage in 35 years. As uneven as the show was, it still produced a lot of laughs and it also was a reminder about an important business / life lesson. Life is uneven.

I read an article in the Hollywood reporter about Lorne Michaels, the genius of SNL that has been a mainstay of the show for 40 years. He created and continues to lead SNL and put together what was the spectacle of the 40th anniversary special. He had this to say about SNL, specifically as a response to the question of whether he has ever felt satisfied with the show.

I used to say that on my tombstone would be the word 'uneven' because [the show has] never been described any other way in a review. It's only cumulatively that you sort of go, "Oh yeah, that." You can't be perfect for 90 minutes. We don't do spectacle and don't have much of a wide shot, so when you see somebody going into lens and taking it to some level that you hadn't seen even at dress rehearsal, it's a magical thing. I believe there's at least one or two of those in almost every show.

This quote made me think about the unevenness of life and specifically business. You can't 'bat a thousand' yet the cultures in many of our organizations expect or even demand perfection. Co-workers use your stumbles as opportunities to score political points and managers lose their ability to allow mistakes as a result of having previous decisions second guessed.

Fear of Failure is Hurting America's Entreprenuerial Standing

As Americans we are hard wired from generations dating back to Ellis Island to be a part of the opportunities that America created.  We were risk takers, crossing the Atlantic against all odds in the search of a better future.

But our sudden and startling transition to a market based on fear was driven home by a headline in the USA Today in December 2013 - “Is too little market fear something to fear?” Do you mean to tell me that we don't have enough to fear that we now have to worry about not having enough fear?

A recent study by the Brookings Institute shows that in 2008 for the first time in at least decades (but possibly in the nation’s history due to poor historical data) job destruction now outpaces job creation - see chart below.  It isn’t that companies are failing more on a percentage basis, but rather there is a drought of new business creation - and our own personal fears of failure or risking the safety of what we have today is a big reason for this trend.

Each year the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) publishes an annual report on the environment for entrepreneurship around the world.  The GEM is a research program initiated

in 1997 as a joint venture between academics at London Business School in the UK and Babson College in the United States. From its first survey in 1999, GEM has grown into a consortium of more than 400 researchers from 99 economies over its 14 year history.  In the 2012 report it had this to say about the environment for new business creation around the world:

Risk-taking can pose considerable challenges for potential entrepreneurs. Universities and business schools around the world can generally teach the basics of entrepreneurship, boosting peoples’ abilities to perceive opportunities and their skills for starting businesses. A key stumbling block, however, is one’s inherent fear of failure. This can counteract the drive to start a business, even when the expected returns from entrepreneurship have better prospects than the next best alternative. People may have differing levels of fear of failure and conditions in the institutional environment, such as bankruptcy legislation, which could deter would-be entrepreneurs.

While obviously reflective of the economic environment in those countries the startling evidence in the report shows that those countries with the most to lose in terms of real economic value (meaning opportunity cost of leaving a high paying job, blowing through a savings or retirement account, etc) were the countries showing the most fear.

An Inside Look at Pixar's Bravery

Courtesy of Pixar Animation Studios

 
I was excited when I heard that Ed Catmull was releasing a book earlier this year.  It is not as though I knew a lot about Ed, but I had read about him in previous tomes on Steve Jobs and because of the perspective of those other accounts I had assumed that it was Jobs' magic touch that had given Pixar it's DNA.

However, when you consider that Ed has been a constant from the earliest days in Lucas Films to the Steve Jobs run standalone Pixar and now under the control of Disney - you start to realize that he has been a bigger part of the magic than perhaps people really understood.

As a result of this book the spotlight is being shown on Pixar as a business and there have been some great articles of late discussing the magic that is Pixar.  One of the more comprehensive reviews is the recent article in Fast Company.  If you don't have time for Ed's book in the short-term then you must read this article for a nice primer - chances are you'll be wanting more.

The article gives some amazing insights into not only the aspects of Pixar's culture but some of what created and continues to sustain that culture.  It is important to understand some of those aspects because they have been extremely successful.  Consider the following:

• 14 consecutive #1 box office hits
• Over $7 billion in world box office receipts

Some of the great quotes from the article that provide insights into a brave organization include....

"They threw you into a lot of different things to try and eliminate fear from the creative process," he says. This meant improv classes, drawing classes, learning from people who were the best in their field--all in the interest of attaining confidence in your own artistic ideas. “Fear is the biggest killer of creativity,” Schlumberger says. “In order to cultivate a strong creative environment, you need to make people comfortable in expressing their ideas."

Corporate Bravery's Tribute to Breaking Bad

I ran across this great article about David Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, my favorite show on television (just making my biases known), and the managerial lessons we can learn from television show creators in Fast Company magazine.

Some of the highlights include

• The relationship of the runner, the second in command, and the creator and how that relationship is critical to the success of the show.
• Management styles in general for show creators
• How the creative process can be successful

I will leave you with 1 good quote from the Q&A session that highlights the fact that a successful show must have writers without a fear of rejection / failure - but the article as a whole is a must-read:

A show runner needs to create a safe space. To be a writer in these rooms is to be rejected constantly. It’s brutal. So the ability to inspire people despite rejecting them is really important. A writers room on the one hand is a professional atmosphere, but it’s immensely fraught with all the things you think would happen if you put a bunch of creative, neurotic, striving, competitive, insecure people in a room together and told them to bare their hearts and face rejection or acceptance.

Ursula Burns - Xerox CEO

Meet Ursula Burns, the current CEO at Xerox.  She was the first African American woman to head a Fortune 500 company and the first woman CEO to succeed a woman CEO.

While those accomplishments alone would be strong enough to qualify as a trailblazer, there are many other things about her ascension to Xerox that buttress that label.  I was introduced to her recently by the BusinessWeek issue on interviews.  During the interview she had a couple great quotes that hit at a couple of factors that influence the level of fear in an organization and influences the culture of corporate bravery among managers and leaders.

The first is individuality which she embraces and nurtures.  On that aspect she has this to say about how that aspect of corporate culture at Xerox helped her become the leader she is today,

Q: You’ve said Xerox (XRX) was a company where you could grow into yourself. What does that mean?A: They didn’t try to spend a lot of time trying to make me into something else—kind of fit into whatever would have been a normal hire. When I first entered the company, they just thought I was smart and said, “You go do some stuff.” And they kept giving me things to do. 

She continues in the interview with a great response to a question on failure,

Q: And you’ve said it takes a long time to recover from mistakes.A: We’re going to make mistakes. We just try to make mistakes where you can make them fast, so you’re not five years into the damn thing and realize, “Oh my God, that was a bad move. And we just threw billions of dollars after it.” Fail fast and make sure that you fail early. So the challenge is this whole balance.

While they may not embrace mistakes they understand that mistakes are a key part of the trial and error process that creates breakthrough products, services, and business models.  It appears to be a culture that doesn't punish mistakes and stifle creativity.