Your Brain Says No...Really Means Yes!

Hello! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It’s actually my favorite holiday. It just kind of sneaks up on you without pretense or hype, and asks only for reflection, a little contemplation perhaps, and a quiet, personal offering of appreciation. To sweeten the deal, it provides permission to indulge in wonderful comfort foods, the preparation of which, creates wafting aromas that somehow stick in your brain and become the impetus for the great anticipation in the year that follows. Perfection.

Speaking of reflection and contemplation…

Way back in the 90s, Neva and I produced a daily daytime talk/magazine show for NBC called Real Life. If I do say so myself, it was a fresh and inventive take on the daytime format, let’s call it ahead of its time, that unfortunately got bumped from the schedule after a season by Aaron Spelling’s not so fresh and inventive soap, Sunset Beach. Not bitter…much, but I digress. I bring up the show because it was the epitome of a start-up operation. Neither one of us had ever done a network talk/magazine show before. We had a basic idea. We were presented with an opportunity, and we made up the rest as we went along. Things changed daily, heck sometimes minute to minute, based on which spaghetti noodles had stuck, which quarter-hour had spiked or not in the national overnight ratings, or which network executive had a bug up their behind that day. Neva and I, along with our team of amazing, raw, talented, and highly energized staffers, poured over scripts, stories, performance, you name it, to the tune of 15-17 hours a day. So very glam. Kids? What kids? Where are the kids? Did we eat dinner tonight? Last night?

If you’ve ever been a part of a start-up operation this sounds painfully familiar. Constant reflection, evaluation, and course correction are part of the incubation process. Quite literally the price for a shot at keeping the dream alive. Is this working? If not, why? What changes need to be made? Was the original premise flawed and can it be saved? It’s akin to watching a candle flickering against a turbulent wind, knowing if it goes out the dream goes with it. Agility and fluidity (and major insanity) are absolutely essential lest you become one of the many start-ups each year - 90% actually - who end up only able to reflect on what might have been.

No matter how consumed a start-up is with generating the product or service they’ve created, time must be dedicated daily to that sort of step-back, take a breath, evaluation of the routine or, frankly, nothing else will really matter. You just can’t afford to let things ride or…fall in love with an idea and become blinded to its flaws and failures. The margin for error is razor thin at best.

The Personal Journey…

Likewise, many Life Coaches have their clients go through a similar sort of individual process, especially at this time of year. A brutally honest self-evaluation of where things stand with job, finances, relationships, passions, hobbies, etc., the goal of which is to shed those things not bringing result or happiness in order to clear room for new pursuits that offer greater return and fulfillment. Make no mistake, this mindset, whether being adopted by an individual or those launching a new project or business is not only extremely hard, but also completely counter intuitive. Our minds and bodies fight it tooth and nail. In fact, the attributes that go into the start-up mindset conflict with human nature in a major sort of way. We are creatures of habit. We do fear change and will almost always opt for the comfort of our form-fitting rut over the scary, wind-blown cliff’s edge of the intriguing but unknown. It’s normal but, here’s the thing: That pattern of human behavior, though normal, is a killer, literally. It seems our comfy, safe, rutted out space actually blinds us to a slow but definitive journey into the abyss where we eventually just fade away. I remember reading a Dean Koontz horror novel years ago about a virus that infected the earth’s population and, over time, turned everyone into quivering blobs of goo. Pretty sure, in retrospect, it was a metaphor for our fear of change

The Freakish Twist…

As it turns out, the very thoughts, emotions, and feelings that lead us to defend our safe space and eschew the path not taken, are all bold face lies. That’s right kids, our brain and body routinely lie to us and create feelings, emotions, and even sensations, that guide us directly towards failure instead of away from it. In my head I’m picturing a Tim Burton styled Mother Nature laughing her ass off. In our humanities defense, however, our cells, neurons, and synapses, are still programmed to interpret discomfort as a threat to survival. Brain remnants left over from the days when the Sabre Toothed Tiger was one of the primary causes of death. Anyway, when the brain and body kick into survival mode it leads to the creation of narratives in our head that tell us to run away from and denounce that thing causing the discomfort. But here’s the second part of the cruel joke. We humans thrive on challenge, new growth from learning, and taking actions that scare us just a little bit whether it feels like it or not. In other words, while one part of us is saying NO, NO, NO…runaway!!! The brain is stimulated, nourished, and even euphoric. It grows. The aging process slows. All good things! Absent those experiences, however, atrophy, decline, decay, and death are the sequence that follows.

Take curiosity, for example. When we’re curious enough about something to want an answer, the first feeling we typically have is trepidation, especially if finding the answer requires talking to a stranger or exploring a new space. But, if we push through that and satisfy the need to know, our brains reward us with a flood of dopamine, which makes us feel happy, satisfied, and often motivated to do even more. The Start-up Mindset…

The Factory Mindset…

One of the downfalls of long-standing businesses, like, hmmm I don’t know, let’s say the media, for example, is they’ve forgotten that constant evaluation never ceases to be a necessary priority. That success doesn’t relieve the responsibility of always being willing to remake the business based on the market circumstances. Typically, the time between looks in the mirror tends to grow longer and longer until, eventually, companies look inward only when prompted by crisis or pending doom, and often by then it’s too late. The attention or fix is focused on resolving the immediate problem pushing the true cause even deeper into its core.

Let’s face it, most newsrooms are factories in every sense of the word. They operate on rigid deadlines and are serviced by templates, routines, standard outputs, and established rules of operation. Their agility is limited to slight variations of theme brought about by breaking news or instant specials, familiar variations using the same familiar tools and systems. Change in a newsroom is usually slow, incremental, painful, and almost always fought against by a calcified culture resulting from the factory nature of its existence. In other words, the antithesis of a start-up. You see where this is going…

Make Yourself Uncomfortable…

So, here’s an idea…for the next 30-days let’s play a game called the Real Life Challenge in honor of our really good show that was big footed by Aaron Spelling and the ditzy suits at NBC (Ok, a little more bitter than I thought I was). Think of your newsroom as a startup operation freed from the shackles of history, culture, tradition, sacred cows, union contracts, etc., and re-imagine what it might be - fresh and anew - in today’s world. Ask yourself the hard questions like, what irreplaceable service do you provide your community? Are you getting a solid return on your resource investments, and if not, how would they be better deployed? What priorities would you establish based solely on audience need. What niches would you fill and how would you fill them? How will you stand out and survive when the odds seem to be tilted against. And, perhaps most importantly, what ideas scare you the most. Be curious about them and embrace the initial discomfort. Talk to strangers. Lots of strangers. Feel the dopamine rush of learning new things and create an outline for something new even if it’s more blue sky than anything else. It’s a beginning and just maybe the start of a new habit, a new routine that becomes a priority and leads you into a new way of thinking altogether, because whether you’re working at the oldest TV station in America - looking at you WRGB in Schenectady, New York - or a brand new hyper-local newsletter, the start-up mindset is a must. Take it to the bank.

And, if you’re a person unattached to a media organization, LUCK-EEEE you!!! - kidding of course, maybe, sorta - but take the Real Life Challenge yourself. I’m going to. Look at the irritants, the baggage, the return on your most precious investment - time. Take stock of the things that prompt intrigue and curiosity and then dive in, or at least put a toe in the water. Learn to play the guitar. Meet your neighbors (could be a bridge too far). Take acting lessons or learn to bake. Your brain, your body, will superficially rebel and prompt you seek out the comfy, rutted, confines of your sofa, but know in the deep recesses where it counts the most, they’ll be cheering you on wildly.

And Finally…

Last week we closed out the Three Headlines Coming Soon series with this one - #3 Mega Consolidation: The Shrinking of American Media - which predicted the consolidation of at least two mega media companies like Paramount and NBC/Universal.

Needless-to-say, had to chuckle when I saw this headline a couple of days after Bob Iger’s return to Disney - “Why Bob Iger’s Ultimate Power Move May Be Selling Disney to Apple.” While I do think it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibilities, I just don’t see Apple being interested in things like theme-parks (a very tough business in many ways), a broadcast network, or television stations. That’s a lot of asset baggage that wouldn’t necessarily be easy to divest. Really the only thing Apple would want is the studio and the archive - Disney’s greatest value overall. That said, I suspect there will be whole lot of tire kicking going on over the next year to 18 months. Stay tuned.

Thank you for taking your valuable time to read the newsletter and a special thanks to all of you who have weighed in and created some very thought-provoking dialogue along the way! Have a great rest of your weekend.