The Friday Thing #712

Thanks for all the notes back about YearCompass – seems like it’s a hit.

The Friday Thing #712?is about leadership - told from the profession of the showrunner. I had misunderstood what this job was until recently so for the sake of clarity before we dive in, a showrunner is "the person who has overall creative authority and management responsibility for a television program".

This morning I got an overdue haircut and spent a while talking with my cosmetologist about the notion of apprenticeships. We both lamented the demise of this approach to education here in the US and in the UK. We also talked a lot about BMX bikes but that's for another edition.

Later in the day, this notion of apprenticeships showed up again when I stumbled across an essay from Javier Grillo-Marxuach titled The Eleven Laws of Showrunning . Given I am on holiday/vacation, I decided that I could afford myself the time to read this twenty-five-page PDF and though I didn't immediately recognize Javier's name I soon realized I was familiar with his work - notably Lost. I'm not quite sure what drew me in to reading his essay - perhaps it was the courier font that made it feel like a movie script of the allure of a list. Regardless, I read it from start to finish and realized it's more a manual for leadership than an essay solely for the aspiring showbiz employee.?

I will say that while I don't agree with everything Javier writes in this essay, 90% of it is leadership gold. Here are a few of my favourite passages:

The snippet above is a lesson I continue to learn - that procrastination is the enemy of progress (duh). More than that, it leaves others guessing (at best) and making things up (at worst). As leaders, we owe people decisions and direction.

The word "script" in the snippet above could be replaced with the word "plan" or even vision. It's on my mind as I think about my new role and how we can be more planful with single page briefs or vision statements of the work to be executed. Oh, and there is that word procrastination again....

Leaping onward to a snippet from the 7th law below...

I highlighted the line here about the writer's room as the “forge” of the show because as Microsoft shifted to digital events over the last 16+ months, our Studios team began to host writer's rooms. They became a powerful convening place where discussion was had, debate took place and decisions were made. In many way, they’re where the show got made. In the new leadership team in which I operate, we have a recurring meeting every Monday for 90 minutes. It's not a writer's room per-se, but it forms the same function and is how I now think about that meeting. Discuss, debate, decide.?

From the 8th law in the essay comes this passage below which is a bit meta as I freed my own mental bandwidth to read twenty-five pages (alongside and a ton of other vacation reading) and that is what got me to writing this edition. And I love the combination of vision and storytelling he conveys.

This final snippet, also from the 8th law is my favourite passage of the entire essay. Here, Javier is talking about the lure of post-production video effects - but it holds true for all work. If you find yourself doing a lot of late editing, it's because there wasn't the right plan or vision up front.

That's all for this week. I hope you get chance to read The Eleven Laws of Showrunning - it's a brilliant document, beautifully written and chock full of life and leadership lessons.?

Happy Friday,

-Steve