The beautiful thing about 2nd year MBA is that all the (painful) “core” learnings of business has already occurred. You know your DCF’s, you can value anything from startups to century old companies. You get how M&A works (at least in theory). And marketing and accounting is set. 2nd year is where business schools get to flex their creative power and demonstrate the muscle of their network.
The arc of classes now reach “capstone” levels and it’s time to put away the PowerPoint lecture notes and case studies, and it’s time to bust out the guest lecturers. That’s the true mark of an exceptional program in my opinion—the level of those practitioners who come in and give up 90+ minutes of their time to handle any question you and your classmates might have for him/her.
Often precluded with some recent articles and/or the obligatory case, these classes are worth far more in their unfettered access to legends in their field than any other classroom learning could provide.
It’s the power of the school, and most notably the reputation of the professors (adjunct or tenured) teaching the class.
We MBA students spend all this time trying to get introductions, coffee chats, a brief second with these legends at a conference, and here in class, they come being paraded in the same fashion as we used to parade our puppies and turtles in kindergarten “show & tell.” Except this time, instead of being a furry friend you can pet for an hour, it’s a seasoned billionaire you can pick the brains of.
In one such class, we dive into incumbent media companies to assess whether or not they face, have faced, or will face an existential threat. Besides being an SAT and 68 pt Scrabble word, existential in this context means will technology or any other type of threat faced by these companies lead to demise–demise of their core value, their defensible moat, their unique skills and abilities.
In media, it’s pretty easy to name many radio and music, cable and tv, news and magazine.
It’s something we millennials have been experiencing and hearing since we were old enough to care. We’ve been force-fed a panoply of ways in which our habits and behaviors matter (perhaps leading to our generation’s inflated sense of importance).
Instead of WWJD, it’s now WWMD–what will millennials do.
And so for most of the class, the consideration of threats were all obvious. Rise of digital media, cable cutting, streaming services, etc. etc. It’s so obvious, why did the CEO and executive team wait this long, how could they not see it, [insert any ex post facto question you’d like].
The class was remarkably well taught with its “what-every-MBA-craves” simple framework, minimal PowerPoint slides, energetic professors, and awesome–and I mean AWESOME–guest speakers. Some talked about missteps, being blind to the threats, executive with risk aversions, short term moral hazards, and other endless stream of excuses. Some talked about the “bold and decisive” actions taken by the heads, the forward thinking and long term focus of leadership, and the remarkable celerity yet patience the board acted to address the threats.
Revisionist history on both sides I’m sure, but let’s face it, it will always favor the victors.
While entertaining and engaging, most guest lectures hit on the same high and low notes that entrepreneurs in the media space have been singing to me ever since I reared my head from the silent cubes of the corporate world into the raucous madness of startups.
That is, until it came time to discuss the NFL.
Why were they a topic of discussion? I asked myself as I used my phone to make some last minute pickups for my fantasy football team.
How could they possibly be facing any threat? I thought as I walked home wearing my NY Giants beanie (a friend of a friend played for them…don’t hate).
I just couldn’t think of how the NFL would be facing an existential threat I muttered one last time as I opened a Cowboys themed beer and turned on my Xbox to play Madden ’17. (Okay that part didn’t happen because I don’t own a TV in my NY apartment nor drink beer, but it’s pretty darn realistic).
The fact is, the NFL is everywhere!
It has gotten some flack for poor ratings, hot-button political issues, and player brain injuries. But those will die down, the election is over, awesome games will pick up, and the NFL is doing a lot of good for player safety.
So…what threat? There was an almost unanimous response from the class as we scoffed at even the slightest thought of there being a threat–there was even agreement with the international students (who are still insistent that the only true sport and use of the term is ‘futball’).
The existential threat argument is this: football is dangerous, it leads to concussions and other events which can lead to long term damage and death. The results of this damage will motivate parents to prevent their children from playing and thereby removing the popularity of football from the youth and high school levels. This will weaken the religion known as football and the holy grail that is the NFL. The inherent violent nature of the sport (part of its allure) cannot be avoided and therefore the threat is that it will lose popularity in every corner and small town of America. The removal of that influence at the local level will thereby weaken the multi-billion dollar machine and it will eventually fall.
The argument follows that beautiful PowerPoint framework so beloved in our class and applied to all the prior cases we so readily acknowledged.
But here, with the NFL…well that’s just silly.
I’m one of those who laughs at that thought, and brought up (fairly strongly) that it’s just an over reaction. I see the NFL as being so pervasive in everyday life, how could I not laugh at the thought that it might be facing an existential challenge. All these challenges its facing will blow over and we’ll be right back at the awesome machine that is Sunday, Monday and sometimes Thursday night mainstays.
There is no existential threat.
Until it hits me. This is the first example where I’m not part of the change–not part of the group that would force the threat upon the incumbent. With all the other examples, I’m already part of the change. I use Spotify and have never owned a mainstream CD. I stream on Netflix and don’t pay for cable. I get my news for free through the web and don’t pay for a newspaper.
But this, this NFL threat I’m so fully immersed in the status quo. I AM the incumbent. I AM like the 45+ year-olds who insist on getting their news delivered in print in the morning, who want the cable bundle, the physical CDs.
I am part of the current system. And that’s the hardest factor to admit, to see, and to react accordingly.
I am on the inside, comfortably set in my ways and behaviors. So too are my classmates, and as such our questions mirror exactly the same type of questions that I’m sure the newspaper publishers, music and movie execs, and others posed back in the day.
“What are you going to do to replace the 8+ hours of content that NFL provides? There’s no way it would be replaced.” This ironically coming from a guy who’s helping a startup in the e-sports industry gain traction. The younger generation (a la things like Twitch) spend hours watching professionals play video games.
“I would always pay for football. That’s the one thing I care about in my cable bundle, and even if they go direct over the top, I’d pay a lot for it.” This coming from the person who’s developing an app which seeks to change your behavior: to get you away from your local bar in favor of another that has a more favorable gender ratio and less of a line.
Even I caught myself falling into the behavior of thinking in similar manners as those who fail to catch threats do, “Just because a few over-protective parents prevent their children from playing won’t matter. Those kids probably aren’t that good anyway. Those who have the talent will go on regardless. And it’s just a small number of over reacting parents.”
Reflecting on that, I could almost see myself saying the same thing back in the day in a newspaper board room discussing the rise of blogs and internet media. “Oh it’s just some random amateurs posting articles to a small handful of readers.”
The major point here is not about the medium or the threat, the major point is: are you assessing threats as someone who is inside the system or outside of it.
Are you part of what got the company, industry, sport to where it is today? Will that same perspective be valid in thinking about where they will go tomorrow?
It reminds me a lot about a book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith et al.
The main premise is that what got you here (your position/level of success), won’t get you there (where you want to go next).
We delude ourselves about the cause of our achievements as succeeding solely by our own skill, brain power, optimism, and choices (ignoring others, luck, and fact we have some bad behaviors that we were still able to achieve success in spite of those bad behaviors).
Ultimately though, those bad behaviors (fact that football players suffer major brain injuries) will lead to the downfall and inability to continue the success onto the next level of achievement (popularity with the next generation).
I’m not arguing that the NFL is facing an existential threat. It could be, it could not be. What I am simply pointing out, is that it is immeasurably more difficult to ascertain threats when you are part of the status quo, when you aren’t representative of the threat you are trying to assess.
The mental models and frameworks, the best practices and lessons learned are accumulated and taught for a reason. Not to be fodder for the next viral blog post or click-bait article that you forget in about 5 minutes, but rather to be consciously applied to the current reality.
The question is, will you apply it? Or become another lesson learned.
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
- What got you here won’t get you there, we delude ourselves about the cause of our achievements as succeeding solely by skill, brain power, optimism, and choice (ignoring others, luck, and fact we have some bad behavior that got us success in spite of)
- People will do something only if it can be demonstrated that in doing so is in their best interest as defined by their own values, typically think other part is wrong, doesn’t apply to us, or we attack other party
- Half of the leaders don’t need to know what “to do” just what to stop doing, flaws of interpersonal intelligence not of skills
- Major flaws: Winning too much, adding too much value, passing judgment, destructive comments, starting with “no” “but” or “however,” telling world how smart we are, speaking when angry, negativity, withholding info, not giving proper recognition, claiming credit don’t deserve, making excuses, clinging to past, playing brown-nosing favorites, not saying sorry, not listening, not expressing gratitude, punishing the messenger, passing the buck, excessive need to be me (excuse for bad behavior), goal obsession
- Flaws revolve around information and emotion
- Get feedback from 8-15 people, with boss involved on who you should ask, offer that it to be anonymous, enlist co-workers, focus on “how can I do better”
- Apologize, advertise change, listen, thank, follow up, feed forward
- Feed forward: pick 1 behavior want to change and ask person for 2 suggestions on how to improve this, no threat, defensive mechanism, spiral up
- Successful people stack the deck in their favor and make it easy on themselves to succeed
- Stop letting staff overwhelm you, acting like you’re managing yourself (when dealing with others), checking the box, being prejudiced about employees, notion that you know what they want, what they know, hate their selfishness, and can always get someone else—although some people are unsalvageable—create work environment that appeals to meaning, family, and dreams
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