CULTURE CLASH: HOLLYWOOD VS. SILIWOOD LEADERSHIP (Silicon Valley)

I've been thinking a lot about how a new form of leadership is being born, discovered, or perhaps like gems hidden underground, uncovered when it was always there the whole time.

 

SPLITSVILLE

My professional career was generally split between Hollywood and entertainment industry creation and Silicon Valley, technology type creation and development.

 

CONTROL FREAK?

 

Coming from the Hollywood style of creation and leadership, I understood and learned a more militaristic, hierarchical style of how things work. Predicated on a desire and a belief that everything could be planned, scheduled, and more or less controlled I/we believed that every shot could be well planned, well scheduled and highly anticipated.

 

OUT OF CONTROL? 

 

And despite the many ways and places where this system breaks down, or is at least imperfect, for large groups of expensive people, there's a definite logic to this approach.

The challenge is how to stay open to the creative shifts and unexpected magic. How to roll with unexpected delays (whether foreseeable or not) and find the opportunity. What wants to happen that we did not plan or schedule, but that the addition of will add to the value and understanding and excellence of the "whole?"

 

OUT-OF-CONTROL FREAKS?

 

The software/technology modality is more about all voices being heard and accepted. Software development recognizes that all members of the team have a special expertise and point of view.

But more importantly, great software teams, and team leaders, understand and accept that things are moving changing developing and morphing as we code and build them daily.

AND . . . THAT'S  A CUT

 
This wouldn't necessarily work on a film set. A film project that starts as a drama and morphs into a comedy would probably not really work. (Although unfortunately, it may have inadvertently happened occasionally in the history of cinema.)

But my point is that somewhere between the linear highly scheduled methodology of film production and the guided amorphous underwater creation of software, are lessons to be learned for anyone seeking to create and lead a creative team in business.

 

SYNTHESIS OR ANTI-THESIS?

 

The Leadership Trainings and Workshops I'm developing will help creative professional learn and integrate the best of these divergent leadership styles to form a new model of creative collaborative leadership for all creative industries and companies.