Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman's Blog About Surprise

What I Learned This Week: How to Carry On

My long-time friend Aaron Rand left his morningman post at Montreal radio station Q92 on Thursday.

Needless to say, after a 26-year run, saying goodbye on-air was an emotional burden, one which Aaron handled with class and strength.

The last few minutes of said farewell were captured on camera by Steve Faguy, who not only works for the Montreal Gazette but writes one of the best--and best-named--city blogs anywhere.  The seven-minute video is well worth watching; it's touching and fascinating.

And it's also the source of this week's lesson.

At the tail end of Steve's video, at the 6:27 mark to be exact, traffic reporter Natasha Hall has to deliver her final report of a morning that has been an emotional roller coaster to say the least.  She bends, she wavers, but she doesn't break, and her grace under pressure, not to mention a hug from Rand himself, makes for highly-inspired viewing.

I must've watched this 40-second segment 20 times that day. 

Like the British WWII morale-boosting poster pictured above (and explained in greater detail here), Natasha kept calm, and carried on.  And while it won't go down in history as the most lucid sponsor promo in history, she managed to hold on and lay down the money shot--the Mazda commercial tag at the end of her report.  If I were the marketing director of Mazda, I'd play her reading of said tag to all staff everywhere as an example of how to deal with tough times in a tender but tough manner.

Whether it's at work or at home or both, we all have to deal with stuff that pushes us to the brink.  It's never fun, and we usually get through to the other side.  But there's always that one point, that most slender slice between what we have to deal with and how we deal with it, where the path to resolution is set.

We can crumble, fall and/or freak out...then face a rocky road.

Or, like Natasha Hall, we can grit our teeth, not be afraid to show our true colours, get through it and set a smooth pace for the road ahead.

Check her out below.  Then get on with your day. 

Or as Natasha says: "There we go!"

 

What I Learned This Week: Slicing The Presidential Pie

Flying home from TV and live show pitch meetings in Toronto last week, I tucked away all my notes and other stuff I planned to read and used the hour for something different and necessary--pure reflection.

And in those 60 minutes of engine-hum bliss, I asked myself one question:

"What do you do for a living?"

Yeah, I know I'm the President of Just For Laughs Festivals and TV, but what does that mean? 

All Rhetoric and PR and kidding and job description and contract aside, what does a President of this company really do?  What does a President of any company--or country for that matter--HAVE to do?

The answer was three-fold.  As far as I've seen it at Just For Laughs (and at Airborne Mobile, where I spent the last 11 years in a similar position), a President's job is comprised of a triumvirate of tasks:

1--Vision

2--Action

3--Reaction

Vision is the foresight to see what's ahead, and the planning to take advantage of it.

Action encompasses the tactics and movements needed to achieve this vision, which includes everything from motivating the staff to making the most mundane of decisions.

Reaction is the response to the unexpected problems (lots of 'em) and opportunities (not enough of 'em) that arise on a continual basis.

So far, pretty basic stuff.  Three slices of a pie.

My "real" realization was what makes a successful President, and ultimately a successful company...namely the relative sizes of the pie's slices.

Go with me on this.

To me, the "Optimum Slice Distribution" would be 30% Vision, 55% Action and 15% Reaction:

• About one-third of your time would be spent thinking, pondering, learning, questioning, dreaming and planning. 
• About one-sixth would be putting out fires or (better still, but I know the reality) jumping on new opportunities. 
• And about half would be actually carrying out and carrying on. 
  

To me, that would be a responsible use of time, would provide enough intellectual and adrenalinal stimulation, and make the job fun.

To be very frank, I'd say my job today is about 20% Vision (adequate, but not enough), 40% Action (as Springsteen sang "Mama, that's where the fun is") and 40% Reaction (yeah, I know it's a time-based and deadline-based world I live in, but this sector is dangerously over-weighted).

So, I suppose that hour-long contemplative flight may bump up the Vision part to 20.5%.  And it mos' def sparked this week's learning, namely...I gotta take longer flights.

Seriously though, as the rush begins (June and July are the two toughest months of my year), I have to remember that this job ain't an easy one, but at least I know how to make it better....both for me, and my colleagues.

It all depends on how I slice it.

And if I choose to add ice cream ;)

 

What I Learned This Week: Find The Answer, Not The Culprit

The gunshot you heard last Tuesday was the starter's pistol marking the official kick-off press conference of Just For Laughs, 2011. (Click here, too for more.)

The next one you hear may be me plugging one into my head.

All kidding aside (and in no way making light of suicide), the advent of May coincides with, for lack of a better term, the shit hitting the fan at the Festival.  Picture a three-dimensional chess game--where
every little move spawns a seismic domino effect--played out at 500 miles-per-hour and you can get an inkling of my daily existence.

So, when copious amounts of shit hits fan at warp speed, a thing or two might tend to fall through the cracks.  Or to keep the fecal theme going, shit will happen.

What I learned this week is how best to deal with this inevitability.

Two things went very wrong on Friday.  One had to do with a non-approval by a major sponsor of a TV ad campaign as we were ready to deliver the spots to the networks.  The other was a collapse of a very important part of our infrastructure.

In one case--and to protect both the innocent and guilty, I wont say which is which--hours were spent searching for who's responsible; in the other, time was used to find a way out of the problem.

The former case is still active; the latter was put to bed Friday afternoon.  So, the lesson?

Look For The Answer...

Not The Guilty Party 

Somehow, sometime, in every company, in every project, the walls will come tumbling down. 

Dealing with it depends on what you look for.

Look for the culprit, and you'll always be blind.  Finding the guilt party wastes time, energy and worst of all, takes your eye off the ball.

Look for the solution, and you'll see forever.  Finding the answer, while far from easy, is time well-spent.  It's the focal point.  Culpability should not be ignored, but dealt with later...once you've solved the problem.

In business, you're not in a court.

Your immediate response to a problem should not be trying to establish guilt or innocence.

You should be trying to establish a way out of a shitstorm.

Because the next one's waiting for you around the corner.

And with that jolly thought, have you checked out our new line-up?

Buy a few tickets and at least make this all worth my while ;)

What I Learned This Week: You Eat What You Are

Lessons.

Some are long, some are short.

Some are disposable, some are profound.

This week's is a best-case-scenario combo: brief and bombastic.

Thanks to an invite from my friend Michael Cogan at PWC, we were invited to the annual Canada 3.0 Digital Conference in Stratford, Ontario.

Given that I was embroiled in prepping this coming week's Just For Laughs line-up announcement event, I sent Parisa Foster, JFL's sharp, young Director of Digital Marketing. 

Upon her return Thursday, we sat down for a debrief, and I asked her what her #1 learning was.

Despite a two-page, single-spaced, hand-written agenda of notes to discuss, covering everything from immediate action plans to a wide-eyed Utopian vision of our company in three years, Parisa blurted out these five thunderous words:

CULTURE

EATS

STRATEGY

FOR

BREAKFAST

I didn't even ask her which one of the speakers said it; in retrospect I should've, but I was too blown away. In a nutshell, no matter how brilliant, how insightful, how well-funded and well-staffed your plans may be, they can be trumped in a heartbeat by a toxic internal working environment.

Pow! indeed. 

Just think of how important and influencing a statement that is.  After being immersed in two days of non-stop keynotes, breakout sessions and networking events about the digital future, the concept that hits a 20-something, self-professed techie geek the hardest is one of heart and soul.

Think of where you work and how you work.  And consider why it's working...or not working.

You know who you are.

Yes indeed, Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast.

Worse yet, it Spits It Up At Supper.

Fix yours, or forever be plagued by heartburn. 

And heartache.

What I Learned This Week: Do Unto Yourself

Last week it was my wife.  This week, Pow! post inspiration comes from my elder son Aidan.

He and I were walking to my office last week and passed by a gaggle of assorted candidate campaign posters (we're going through a Federal election today in Canada) cluttering up the lampposts and street lights at the corner of St. Laurent and Sherbrooke.  Just about every one of them was defaced in one way or another (for example, see below).

This is nothing new; goofy crap like this goes on everywhere there's an election (perhaps not in North Korea, but I digress...) but frankly, I've never seen it so consistently prevalent.

"There are a number of reasons I wouldn't go into politics, and perhaps this is a little narcissistic," I told Aidan, "but I don't know if I could stand the thought of my face and name being systematically vandalized like that."

"Well," he replied, "it depends on who's system does the vandalizing."

Then he explained.

"If I were a politician, I would pre-graffiti all my posters.  They wouldn't all say 'This Guy's Great!' or be totally positive; I'd mix up some insults along with the propaganda.  But I'd take the marker out of their hands and put it in mine."

Brilliant.  Subversive.  Hysterical.  And very post-modern.

Go figure that it comes from my offspring...

Scartching the surface, the idea is more profound than at first glance.

It's a cliche, but these days, in the hyper-linked, social-networkized world we live in, everybody can comment on everything everywhere.  There's no more sand in which to hide your head; ostriches are slaughtered.  Don't respond to the torrent of rumours, comments, truths, rants and/or questions about you and you're simultaneously a lame duck and a sitting duck. 

So what did I learn this week?

I discovered a version of The Golden Rule, updated for our times:

"Do unto yourself

before others

do unto you."

And next week, I await inspiration from my son Hayes to complete the family circle ;)

--------------------------------------------

(P.S.  The image above comes from a Montreal Gazette initiaive, an online repository of defaced election signs.  Check it out here.)