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PREMATURE FAILURE3/9/2023 You must have heard many times of the term "premature success." Well, there's also what I call premature failure. Premature failure is when you just started to fail and not when you have failed and tried hundred of times but didn't find an ounce of success or simply an opening for a reiteration. Premature failure is giving up way too early when in fact, the pains of any early startup or journey or first few steps are always longer, harder, and perseverance-required than in any other stages. It is just what it is. An indication of something that must be done, evaluated, and relaunched again. Realistically our concept of failure is flawed in a sense that we always have high expectations of our initial actions. We allow this momentary discovery elude us of the benefits of the real results that come after many tries and retries. We see a well-polished book and we thought that the author must have written it in one go while watching Netflix or a new app that we install in our tablets and phones had been imagined and developed with a matter of months just by talking to friends. We seldom see the behind the scenes of product development of many companies whose tasks is to lower customer barriers to acquiring, using, and marketing their product for them. We often don't look at how the after-office hours of business would look like when this means revamping everything that they think great about their product to build a better one. Start-ups know this by heart. But the non-profit sector doesn't, not even those who are serving a purpose-centred mission. There is an idealistic notion that they should be successful at their campaigns because they have lofty goals. That the public should be donating more, supporting more, the government giving more budgets because the needs are greater and that squares a lot of the wrongness in society. When that didn't happen, they blame it externally rather than look within their own limitations. Honestly, this idealism leads to regular failure. Regular failure is what we need. Regular failure is premature failure. Regular failure becomes the necessary ritual to attain the next level of competency. The culture in the purpose sector should be stripped away from idealism to pragmatism. Regular failure is under appreciated. Premature failure is not the time to make a direction-changing course of action yet. Ask more questions and listen attentively to market signals. Go back to the drawing board and recalibrate. Stay in the learning mode until you get it right. And when you get it right, do you really want to change course?
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THE TRUTH IS SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE1/20/2023 You want an honest feedback so that you can improve your work. The first group will tell you what you want to hear, all the good things sans the not-so-good ones for fear of discouraging you. The second group will tell you all the worst things that you have done and how it negatively impacted them. Fine, if that is the truth. Yet, we live with this two polar opposites all the time without the real benefit of honest constructive feedback, in our workplace, in organizations, and sometimes in our own families. It cannot be that worst but it can't be that too great either. For improvement's sake, it is better to be honest than to be lying about someone's performance. However, how you deliver this is very critical to the outcome you're seeking. What does it take to create an atmosphere where honest feedback is taken and given constructively?
For some situations, you will never know where you actually sit, having two of these polar opposites received from different quarters. Perhaps, the truth is somewhere in the middle. It is up to you to weigh both things. What matters is that you're improving everyday while others are busy taking successful people down.
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CREATIVITY BLOCKS1/8/2023 I was binge-watching The Offer this week and I can't imagine that when they're making The Godfather film in the 70s, the executives have a way different vision for it. It was proposed that it will be set in the 70s not a period film, shot in Kansas or St. Louis, or with a young and cheap director (which they did), actors that can work for cheap or for free, and more. The Godfather as we now know is one of the best American films ever produced and highest grossing film of all time.
There was the Mafia disturbance and interference, sabotage inside the production units, difficult actors and crew members, logistical issues, budget pressures, and other millions of minutiae problems but the logical business mindset clash against the creatives is a major highlight for me. It wouldn't be the Godfather that we know or at least the shadow of that success if it not for the creatives standing up for the authenticity and integrity of the film. It will not be a success if the executives had their way about the logo, the budget, their preferred actors, the locations, and even how it will be marketed and distributed. The dalliance with the Mafia is a film of its own and the way it was handled was, unfortunately the best possible course of action, albeit Machiavellian. The business context set the stage for how these films were supposed to make money that will save Paramount from being sold off to a bargain and leave more for the future viability of its corporate owner. There are many management lessons here for which this page won't be enough. How ironic it is that film businesses are creative businesses; they are meant to marry the business logic of efficiency and financial performance using the creative breakthrough ideas of their time as a distinct competitive advantage. While these sounds easy to do, the Offer allows to understand that it boils down to how they see themselves as partners of the venture that either had to sink or swim together or get out of the way for the other's success. While in the film the business guys weren't one-dimensional and turned the other leaf, in reality, so many of the films of the past and the present are produced on ruthless business criteria as a hedge for failure. As the audience, we just don't know the costs of these wars inside these organizations. But we know that we have yet to see another Godfather or another film with both smashing commercial success and unparalleled artistry in decades. |