…is one you can talk to. I find little more therapeutic than coming home to a good conversation. Party friends, work friends and game buddies often make lousy roommates. Find someone with whom you can vent or philosophize. Same applies to the person you marry. Sex only lasts so long – make sure you’re with someone you’ll still be relieved to see and talk to everyday when you’re old and broken.
Feedback Waterfalls Should Defy Gravity
In most organizations, feedback, performance reviews and criticism flows in only one direction: from top to the bottom. As a manager, the taboo of upwards feedback frustrates me. I am not perfect, nor can anyone else be. We all have a lot to learn from others, especially those who suffer our leadership every day. As often as possible, I ask for feedback from my team and peers. Those not afraid to be honest with me or answer my candid questions can help me identify noteworthy, correctable faults. A win-win for everyone.
Invite punishment-free feedback from your team on a regular basis. If you’re worried people won’t be honest with you (or if you do not trust yourself from taking criticism personally), create an anonymous feedback pipeline. After a while, your team will come out of their shells and be straight with you colloquially. As important as it is for you to make decisions quickly as a leader, it’s equally or more important for your team to call you out on your bullshit as quickly as possible before things go astray.
Excuses Are Better Than Nothing
Things don’t always work out. We all get it. No big deal. But if you’re going to flake, at least give the courtesy of an explanation. Most of the time, good excuses can cure ill will. A strong explanation may be the only thing that can win you a second chance. Even dishonest excuses are better than nothing. Any effort to empathize with the inconvenience or disappointment you impose is better than no effort at all.
If you flake all the time, excuses run their course. Nothing can help you then.
Broadcast Contracts Will Kill Hollywood
It does not surprise me that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show on television. Without cable, I have no way to watch it. I’d happily pay $20 per month if HBO GO was open to people without cable subscriptions. Unfortunately, that’s not that case. None of HBO’s shows are available on iTunes, Netflix, Hulu or Amazon. I have no way to watch any of HBO’s shows except pay a $75 per month cable subscription for a television I don’t have, wait for them to come out on DVD, or pirate them. I’m a good boy with little expendable time, so I avoid Game of Thrones altogether. But 25 million people have not been angels and found the show through whatever means necessary. Who knows how many more people opt out entirely and forever pass the show by?
I’ve said before that Hollywood should concern themselves less with piracy and more with audience access. Simple supply and demand metrics – audiences demand content and providers are failing to supply to increasingly popular internet channels. It’s the whole industry’s fault for inciting piracy. They are missing out on an expanding margin of customers. In defense of HBO and others, production companies have entangled themselves in lucrative and restricting contracts with cable partners. To offer direct-to-consumer digital distribution would breach their contracts and deprive them of their single strongest revenue source. For most companies like HBO, that may never happen – at least not until everyone has internet televisions or the cable providers themselves die.
Broadcast contracts may be a reasonable excuse for holding content back from web distribution. But if companies plan to stand behind that excuse, they need to stop making such a big deal about piracy. By threatening or incriminating millions of people who cannot access your primary distribution method, you are alienating potential evangelists of your content and failing to understand the trajectory of your market. Web television is not a trend. In five years, most motion picture content will be consumed online – on connected televisions, game consoles, mobile devices or computers. To fight or deny this is foolish and egoistic.
I left Hollywood because no companies were willing to put the engineering muscle behind personal distribution channels. Beyond sheer web design and database builds, online services require customer service and billing infrastructure that can cost a lot of money. Fortunately, these things are getting easier and cheaper. An independent production company with enough content to leverage could easily set up shop on the web with a very controllable investment and small handful of people on the tech side.
If you want a sustainable career in the movie business, start or work for a company with full digital rights. Careful signing onto productions with traditional broadcast contracts and no digital rights – these opportunities, no matter how lucrative, are sinking ships. If they cannot find a way to breach contracts soon, they may not survive the next wave of liberated web-savvy competitors.
10 Reasons Why My Mom Is Better Than Your Mom
- You can talk to her about anything (except maybe computer semantics).
- She cares less about jewelry, makeup or fancy houses and more about good art, people, travel and food.
- She never says no, but she will give you a good example of why it might be a bad idea.
- She is straightforward and honest (no passive aggressive crap).
- She can have loads of fun without turning into a sloppy, embarrassing mess (thank you, Mom, for your alcohol tolerance).
- She works her ass off and still finds time to feed her family.
- She is creative, handy and inventive (I’ve never met a woman who can reuse wine corks like she can).
- She puts up with and endorses nerdiness like few other women can.
- She stops at nothing to serve her friends, students, coworkers and family.
- She never gives up without a fight and always forgives you.
I love you, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.
Old Acquaintances and Second Chances
People change. Sometimes enough that they mature into completely different people. Strange to be back in my hometown – I’ve noticed that many old friends have an aversion to other people they knew in high school and have not seen since. Why shy away from folks you used to know? Perhaps you both have changed into a more compatible pair. I’ve seen many partnerships form between people who did not respect each other when they were younger. Some started businesses together. Others got married. You never know who you might bump into or connect with on a fresh level. At the very least, it’s worth the introduction. Avoid trading numbers if the reintroduction fails. But do not close your mind on outdated memories and awkward nostalgia. Ignore the past and give second chances where possible. You might build some great new relationships out of the deal.
Hours Cannot Define Success
The public cares little about how long Olympians train or how many practices football teams suffer before playing a game; the public cares about gold medals and victories. Big wins define success. Many successful companies grew by the hand of all-nighters and sweat, others by beer and four-day work weeks. What matters at the end of the day is attitude, strategy and inspiration. With a team on the same page and in good mental health, the engine can plow forward full steam ahead. Through calculated innovation and disruption, an organization can leapfrog the competition overnight. If everyone believes in what they are doing and work hard to make a difference, anything is possible. Long work days are symptomatic of success and passion – hardly ever the source. Man hours do not scale an organization – that’s industrial era nonsense. Asking your people to work longer days will not shovel fresh coal into the fire. The message should be: care more. If your team does not inherently care a lot, then find different ways to get them charged. Set the vision. Plaster a mission statement to the wall. Whatever it takes to remind everyone why they wake up everyday and come together.
Looking Back & Forth
It’s very difficult to routinely switch gears between inward-facing and outward-facing responsibilities in an organization. One minute, you’re hunting outside for growth opportunities. Next, you’re back home taking care of chores and drama. It takes a special kind of person to juggle both simultaneously and not twist his or her head off looking back and forth all the time. One of my mentors in college made a point to hunt outside in the morning and clean up internal messes in the afternoon. By batching his processes, he was able to oversee a very large company and scale it with relative stability. I struggle to build that structure into my day-to-day management, but I see how necessary it is to find focus and routine in your operations.
Just Ask
We preoccupy ourselves with speculation. More than half of our stress comes from inferred details that may not even be true. We can keep working ourselves up over nothing. Or we can just ask. Ask the truth. Try to get to the bottom of things. You don’t need to be confrontational. If it helps to fight ambiguity with more ambiguity to sound less direct or confrontational, that’s fine. However you do it, just do it.
Exercising A Healthy Attitude
Charles Swindoll said, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” It’s all about attitude and what you take personally. If you don’t let things bother you, life rolls on pretty pain-free. I do not promote ignorance, however, so people with an inherent “whatever” attitude disappoint me with how disconnected they are from the people and issues around them. You need to care – often care a lot – to make a difference in this world. It takes the balance of a monk and the stamina of an olympian to put your heart everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It’s exhausting and you need to make sure you stay in good shape to keep the balance alive. My brother said it well: “If you don’t have the energy to be positive, it’s impossible to be positive – your health is your first priority.” Your reaction to life depends solely on your frame of mind. If you are mentally or physically beat to hell, it’s pretty difficult to muster a positive reaction to anything. Make a point to sleep well, eat well and take real breaks. Take care of yourself. With a healthy mind, you can meet life with a healthy attitude and virtuous reactions. Otherwise, you will foster an exponential geyser of negativity that will only drag you down and keep making life worse.
Craig Ormiston 