You Can't Expect A Team To Push Boundaries If You Don't Participate In The Challenge Yourself

This is the second in a series of 8 newsletters about thinking and working differently—accompanying the web series The Making of Resignation . Thanks for reading!

***

For you've watched HBO's Succession, you know the scene. Though even if you haven’t, I bet you’ve seen this one in real life:

The boss walks in.

He (‘course it’s a he; it’s Succession) tells his Minion,

“Go make this crazy thing happen.”?

The Minion says,

“Uh… I don’t think that’s possible…”

The boss says,

“F***ing do it, Greg, or I’ll feed your face to piranhas!”

The Minion exhales and says,

"Okay."

The Minion then walks into the room of a worker lower on the totem pole.

The Minion says,

“I need you to make this impossible thing happen.”

The Worker says,

“Uh… but it's not... possible…”

The Minion insists:

“Just… just do it!”

Then the Minion walks away.

The Worker then works overtime to do the job, pulls it off in a barely-acceptable way, and now is ready to accept any recruiter’s cold INmail about another job.

We can’t push boundaries if we don’t push; but there’s a right and wrong way to do it with our teams.

I’m a huge proponent of taking on ambitious, dare I say impossible, challenges.

Anything that’s been done the same way for a long time is in danger of me saying, “this can be better.”

I like it because impossible challenges force us to use lateral thinking. Great ideas can come out of forcing ourselves to do things that can't be accomplished by simply spending more hours doing the same.

However, if we just lob impossible challenges at people and walk away, that’s called “being terrible,” not “being innovative.

This is the meta theme of today's webisode of The Making Of Resignation. If you missed it, yesterday I shared the opening episode of an 8-part web series about how we used new technology to make a TV show outside of Hollywood, using Star Wars-style virtual production techniques . For the next few workdays, I'll be sharing each episode along with innovation lessons from them—things we can all take away as teams even if you're not in the video/film business.

The first episode ended with a teaser for what was to come:

After using storytelling to get a great team on board with our ambitious vision, we then had to execute something that felt impossible…

The only way to proceed in this kind of situation, I strongly believe, is for leaders to dig in and take on the “impossible” challenges together with the troops. No one should be treated like a Minion on Succession.?

So as you’ll see, in Episode 2 below, my partners and I—the director, producers, and department heads—personally went in to collaborate with our team on finding the solutions to challenges rather than pushing them off. And when someone did need to come in for extra hours to figure something out, we made sure that we leaders were the ones to do it.

This is not to say that my team wasn’t frustrated with me at various points. I’ve still got plenty of room to grow and miles to go. But if there's one thing that motivates me, it's to not be Tom Wambsgans.

Without further ado, here’s Episode 2 of The Making of Resignation:

***BTW, if you missed Episode 1, it's here .***

Stay tuned next week for Episode 3.

— Shane

P.S. (I know it's a binge-y world. So if you’d like to skip ahead and watch the whole web series now, you can do so by?subscribing to our Substack here .)?

Partner credits & shout outs:

Shot at?Resolution Studios ?and?Smash Virtual ?in Chicago.?Technology by?SHOWRUNNER .

Directed by Brandon XIV.

Exec produced by?Snow Productions ?and?Chicago Media Angels .

Virtual art & Unreal Engine work by?Miller Creative ,?Prysm Studios .

Production design by?Big Works .

Gear & awesomeness from?2nd Decade ?and?Camera Ambassador .

Sound and music by?Noisefloor .

BTS series by?Zaxie Films, directed by Jack C. Newell.