Ben,
Have you read the books "Good to Great" and "Built to Last"? They are management/organizational design books that take a look at hugely successful companies and compares them to mediocre ones to determine what characteristics make them successful. One of the main points of both is that, to be successful long term, a company needs to set goals and strategies for itself based on its values. Put simply, it means that the highly successful companies don't set macro financial goals usually, like "do everything we believe will make money". If you are thinking along these lines, I think you would find both books really interesting.

Hey Bryan,

I haven't although I'll add both to my reading list. Thanks for the recommendations. My thinking above is based on the concept of commander's intent, which I borrowed from the military (and I first heard about in Made To Stick). The basic idea is that the stated goal needs to be clear and simple enough that no matter where someone is in the chain of command, they can use it as a metric to guide decisions.

So less "Rudius is a media company in a post 2.0 world" and more "Rudius creates great content". I don't know what the first one means whereas the second one is easy. If a decision helps create great content, I do it. If it doesn't, then I don't.

That's what Hollywood needs. They need to redefine what they're doing and make it easy for everyone, inside and outside their organizations, to understand.

Ben,
I remember that part from Made to Stick, and surprisingly, I didn't see the parallels in the theories until just now. While Made to Stick looks at it from more of an operational standpoint (governing your decision making), Good to Great and Built to Last look at it more from an organizational culture standpoint. They found that in companies that had more value-oriented goals, employees (and the organizations as a result) were much more productive and focused. Applied to Rudius (and I'm obviously assuming here), the main motivation is to create great content. All the employees are driven by the organizational goal of great content, rather than just making x amount of dollars. That difference in the goal is very noticeable in how much personal ownership you all take in the company and what it offers.

As for Hollywood, they are mirroring a lot of the comparison companies in the studies. They are just reacting to things as they come rather than, in your words, redefining what they are doing. They are losing their purpose in the muddle of everything they are trying to branch out to to counteract the changing times and technology. In one of the books, they quote a former CEO of Merck as saying "Our goal is to take care of people. Do that, and the profits will come." (or something along those lines) Hollywood could learn a lot from reading that.

I think you're exactly right about Hollywood. They're reacting to a changing market but not getting out in front of it. They need to get out in front of it or they're always going to be behind the ball and vulnerable to someone coming along and eating their lunch.

That's the problem with being successful for so long. Success often makes you blind to changing forces, the mentality being 'This is working great, why would we fix something that's not broken?'

Ideally a company should always be questioning its success. It should always be reorienting itself so that it doesn't end up blindsided by some fundamental shift. Of course, that's much easier said than done.