At three separate occasions over the past two weeks in the office, certain people we deal with at Just For Laughs were described as "All Talk/No Action."
In all types of business this archetype is a pain-in-the ass, but because showbiz is a business of many promises made and relied on, this type of behaviour is even more aggravating...and damaging.
Making live shows and television shows are hampered by what I tend to call a 3-D Domino Effect; in other words, something small tumbling here today rapidly festers into something chaotic and potentially catastrophic somewhere else tomorrow.
That said, when someone makes you a promise, you'd like to put it behind you and depend on it as you go about building the fragile house of cards that is the ecosystem of show business.
No wonder we're so disdainful of those who re-neg, or just as bad, never deliver on their supposed words of honor. Now, no names (sorry gossip mongers!), but suffice to say that a few people made our lives much more difficult since the arrival of August, with its tight post-production TV schedules and mad pre-production of our Sydney, Australia and Toronto events.
During the aforementioned separate occasions, we discussed the behavior we long for; in other words the opposite of All Talk/No Action. I mentioned that when I was at Airborne Mobile, I had a sign printed and hung over my door so that any time someone entered or exited, I would be forced to read it. The sign read:
Never Promise More
Than You Can Deliver;
Always Deliver More
Than You Promised
This spawned the need for an icon, a prototype, a mascot for someone who is All Action and No Talk, the antithesis of our nemesis.
And that, in turn, spawned this week's learning--the creation of our new hero, one who embodies the behavior and reputation for all of us to aspire to:
A Mime on Red Bull
Long may he (or she) live!
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By the time you read this, I'll be on some safari in a distant somewhere of Kenya. Amazingly, I am taking a vacation of two weeks, and instead of going radio silent, I've decided to re-publish two of my favorite posts from the six years that I've been doing this.
With over 1,000 posts to choose from, it wasn't easy to pick just two, but I chose a couple whose lessons were re-learned over the past month, so at least there's a relevance.
And with that, I now board my flight to Nairobi via Istanbul to enjoy a new adventure or two...and perhaps a couple of new lessons for us.