Herding Cats – 4 Leadership Lessons from Top Publicist Jeff Ballard

Herding Cats – 4 Leadership Lessons from Top Publicist Jeff Ballard

Charlie Sheen, Chandler Massey, Johnny Depp, Paula Abdul, Zac Efron, Rob Lowe, John Davidson, Dick van Patten… This is just a short, partial list of the people Jeff Ballard works with, and has worked with in some cases for nearly 30 years, as one of the top publicists in the entertainment industry.

Often CEOs will say that leading people is like herding cats.  And too often, many leaders are unable to help some of their most talented managers reach full potential.  Highly capable people can have insights that are hard to understand, and can be impatient to take action.  In far too many cases organizations lose highly talented people because the leaders are unable to maintain long-term relationships and coach/assist those people productively.  Or, even worse, the highly talented people are misunderstood and the organization pushes them out rather than figuring out how to get the most out of them.

Think of Steve Jobs.  Fired by Apple, he later went on to great success at Pixar.  And returned to save Apple from bankruptcy.  Yet, few leaders – or organizations – would even have considered hiring him.  Because they don’t know how to get the most of someone so highly talented.

As a publicist for some of the top actors in Los Angeles, Jeff Ballard has worked with, assisted the growth of, and become long-term friends with some very talented people.  And layered on top of this is the impact of celebrity, and chronic media frenzies that can position and reposition these people in the public eye – as well as the eye of producers.  What most CEOs would consider a once-in-a-decade set of issues for helping a developing high-performer move their career forward is literally daily activity for Jeff Ballard.

And through all of this he maintains some of the longest known relationships in what is widely considered one of the most fickle industries in America.  In the fast changing entertainment industry people are often dropped like chattel as trends shift.   Yet, Jeff Ballard’s clients stick with him for decades, and wax eloquently about how he has helped them to grow as people, and move their careers forward.  While you’ve probably never heard of him (unless you are in the entertainment business,) Jeff Ballard has developed some of the sharpest leadership skills anywhere.

Charlie Sheen, Conner Greene, Jeff Ballard on set of "Anger Management"

Charlie Sheen, Conner Greene, Jeff Ballard on set of “Anger Management”

How does he do it?  How does he help highly talented people to achieve even greater results year after year?

1 – Be helpful.  Seriously.  Don’t just hang around.  Don’t wait to be asked to do something.  Be helpful.  Every interaction is an opportunity to help someone.  Think about how you are creating opportunities to help people.  Think about their capabilities and their goals and always be helpful.

Too often leaders take their relationships for granted.  Or worse, they see people in their network as a route for the leader to accomplish his goals.  They see others as someone who can help them.  One of Jeff’s great skills as a leader is seeing his role as helping others.  The more he helps others, the better things work out.

When Chandler Massey lost his phone, and he needed to do some interviews, Jeff ran to a store, bought a phone and a plan, and got the technology in Chandler’s hands in time for the interviews.  This seemingly small thing was critical to the success of that event.  But it demonstrated that by focusing on how to help, Jeff was willing to do what was necessary – whether big or small.  And that builds long-lasting relationships.  Chandler thanked Jeff by giving him his Emmy award.

Part and parcel with this, make sure you are only building relationships with clients, and your ecosystem, where you can add value.  Too often leaders will take any business.  Explore any relationship. But if you over-reach and take on a client, acquisition, merger, new product, new project, etc. where you are unable to really add value – unable to really help accomplish the goal – bad things will happen.  So think ahead, and understand how you can be helpful.

2 – Add value fast.  Every chance you can.  Fix things – even things that may seem unimportant to you our outside your wheelhouse.

Dick van Patten once asked Jeff Ballard what to do about a broken sauna.  Although far from his job, Jeff quickly took a look and then actually fixed the sauna.  When producers are looking for actor A to be on a show, like Entertainment Tonight, for a variety of reasons this may not be a good fit.  But rather than saying “no” – or worse, just letting requests go unanswered – Jeff will look quickly to understand the producer or media person’s needs and come up with a value added answer.  Jeff constantly thinks about recommendations where all parts of his ecosystem could possibly help meet their needs.

When you constantly think about how to add value – and immediately – then people respect you.  And they learn to trust you.  When you are helping people reach their goals they listen to what you say.  They are open to discuss alternative solutions.  Far too often too many leaders think of themselves as “great deciders.”  Or as the person responsible for making a “yes” or “no” answer and then moving on – leaving those around them to solve problems for themselves.  But great leaders listen, and think about how to add value.  Quickly.

3 – Separate talent from the person.  Everyone is unique.  Not everything a person does is on the direct path to greater success.  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t talented – and able to continue to perform at superior levels despite something that didn’t go so well.  Don’t be so foolish as to let the talent slip away because you are having issues with the person.

For actors, or sports celebrities, this can be easy to see.  The media reports on something they say, or do, and it is easy to become negative about that individual.  But, the next great performance (a movie, TV show, concert, CD, home run, winning goal, etc.) demonstrates that the person has talent.  Leaders have the job of getting the most out of the talent – and not trying to manage the person – or worse, losing the talent because of “personal issues.”

Far too often organizations end up losing highly talented people because of the “black mark” syndrome.  An up-and-comer does well for several years, but then something misses.  For example, passionate effort to launch a new product or business creates conflict in the organization, and he shouts or otherwise acts out.  HR is called in, and the manager is rebuked and forewarned — but worse he is now “marked” as problematic.  All that talent is forgotten, undeveloped – or it simply goes to a competitor.

People are people.  Some are easier to work with than others.  But what’s important is whether they have talent, and whether as a leader you can bring out the most of that talent.  Leaders don’t have the job of “changing people” (which far too often they really try to do,) but rather of helping people around them cultivate, develop and demonstrate their talents.  If we focus on the talent we achieve far superior results while helping the person achieve their personal goals.

4 – Stay relevant, and keep those around you relevant.  The world changes quickly.  It is easy for leaders to expect those in their network – and especially their inner circle – to become complacent.  To rest on their laurels of past success.  Which all too quickly leads to problems.  So it is critical that leaders constantly look around for what is emerging, and keep reminding their network of what is necessary to remain relevant.  A pat on the back lasts one second, but helping someone stay relevant sustains their success far into the future.

Leaders can become so fixated on “performance” that they dehumanize those they coach.  If, instead, they focus on providing guiding lights to people they can encourage them to adapt to change.  They can help those they work with to stay current and growing.  Too much time is spent reacting to what just happened, rather than figuring out how to achieve the long-term goal.

Jeff works constantly with his clients to understand what the market is seeking now, and will be seeking in the near future.  Rather than reacting to events Jeff and his talented clients spends considerable time discussing what outcomes are desired, and whether or not a planned activity will lead to that outcome.  By focusing on future relevancy Jeff leads clients to become proactive about achieving their goals. He helps them to make decisions today which are directed toward a future goal, rather than reacting to an historical event.

Over and again famous clients and top producers compliment Jeff Ballard for his honesty, integrity and loyalty.  But these are not simply attributes.  Many of us have these attributes.  Rather, these are outcomes from Jeff Ballard’s long history of constantly helping people in his network, adding value quickly toward solving their problems, constantly focusing on bringing out the talent rather than chastising (or managing) the individual, and keeping everyone relevant and proactive rather than falling into patterns of reacting to something that already happened.

Jeff Ballard’s publicity firm is far from the largest in Los Angeles or New York.  Yet, he helps clients who are famous, as well as new talent such as Conner Greene who you probably do not know.  And no competitor can offer the long-term track record of performance Jeff has provided.  Regularly clients who move to large publicity firms return to Jeff, seeking his counsel and advice in recognition of his leadership – generally absent from his competitors.  Repeat business that all leaders seek, but don’t often achieve.

The next time you find yourself struggling to lead the people in your organization think of Jeff Ballard.  His insights about leadership, rooted in the complex and difficult world of media publicity for celebrities, could help you be a far better leader in your organization.

 

Will Steve Ballmer Be a Good LA Clippers Leader?

Will Steve Ballmer Be a Good LA Clippers Leader?

Anyone who reads my column knows I’ve been no fan of Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft.  On multiple occasions I chastised him for bad decisions around investing corporate funds in products that are unlikely to succeed.  I even called him the worst CEO in America The Washington Post even had difficulty finding reputable folks to disagree with my argument.

Unfortunately, Microsoft suffered under Mr. Ballmer.  And Windows 8, as well as the Surface tablet, have come nowhere close to what was expected for their sales – and their ability to keep Microsoft relevant in a fast changing personal technology marketplace.  In almost all regards, Mr. Ballmer was simply a terrible leader, largely because he had no understanding of business/product lifecycles.

lifecycle slide  Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates, who did a remarkable job of taking a start-up company from the Wellspring of an idea into one of the fastest growing adolescents of any American company.

Under Mr. Gates leadership Microsoft single-handedly overtook the original PC innovator – Apple – and left it a niche company on the edge of bankruptcy in little over a decade.

Mr. Gates kept Microsoft’s growth constantly in the double digits by not only making superior operating system software, but by pushing the company into application software which dominated the desktop (MS Office.)  And when the internet came along he had the vision to be out front with Internet Explorer which crushed early innovator, and market maker, Netscape.

But then Mr. Gates turned the company over to Mr. Ballmer.  And Mr. Ballmer was a leader lacking vision, or innovation.  Instead of pushing Microsoft into new markets, as had Mr. Gates, he allowed the company to fixate on constant upgrades to the products which made it dominant – Windows and Office.  Instead of keeping Microsoft in the Rapids of growth, he offered up a leadership designed to simply keep the company from going backward.  He felt that Microsoft was a company that was “mature” and thus in need of ongoing enhancement, but not much in the way of real innovation.  He trusted the market to keep growing, indefinitely, if he merely kept improving the products handed him.

As a result Microsoft stagnated.  A “Reinvention Gap” developed as Vista, Windows 7, then Windows 8 and one after another Office updates did nothing to develop new customers, or new markets.  Microsoft was resting on its old laurels – monopolistic control over desktop/laptop markets – without doing anything to create new markets which would keep it on the old growth trajectory of the Gates era.

Things didn’t look too bad for several years because people kept buying traditional PCs.  And Ballmer famously laughed at products like Linux or Unix – and then later at entertainment devices, smart phones and tablets – as Microsoft launched, but then abandoned products like Zune, Windows CE phones and its own tablet.  Ballmer kept thinking that all the market wanted was a faster, cheaper PC.  Not anything really new.

And he was dead wrong.  The Reinvention Gap emerged to the public when Apple came along with the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad.  These changed the game on Microsoft, and no longer was it good enough to simply have a better edition of an outdated technology.  As PC sales began declining it was clear that Ballmer’s leadership had left the company in the Swamp, fighting off alligators and swatting at mosquitos with no strategy for how it would regain relevance against all these new competitors.

So the Board pushed him out, and demoted Gates off the Chairman’s throne.  A big move, but likely too late.  Fewer than 7% of companies that wander into the Swamp avoid the Whirlpool of demise.  Think Univac, Wang, Lanier, DEC, Cray, Sun Microsystems (or Circuit City, Montgomery Wards, Sears.)  The new CEO, Satya Nadella, has a much, much more difficult job than almost anyone thinks.  Changing the trajectory of Microsoft now, after more than a decade creating the Reinvention Gap, is a task rarely accomplished.  So rare we make heros of leaders who do it (Steve Jobs, Lou Gerstner, Lee Iacocca.)

So what will happen at the Clippers?

Critically, owning an NBA team is nothing like competing in the real business world.  It is a closed marketplace.  New competitors are not allowed, unless the current owners decide to bring in a new team.  Your revenues are not just dependent upon you, but are even shared amongst the other teams.  In fact your revenues aren’t even that closely tied to winning and losing.  Season tickets are bought in advance, and with so many games away from home a team can do quite poorly and still generate revenue – and profit – for the owner.  And this season the Indiana Pacers demonstrated that even while losing, fans will come to games.  And the Philadelphia 76ers drew crowds to see if they would set a new record for the most consecutive games lost.

In America the major sports only modestly overlap, so you have a clear season to appeal to fans.  And even if you don’t make it into the playoffs, you still share in the profits from games played by other teams.  As a business, a team doesn’t need to win a championship to generate revenue – or make a profit.  In fact, the opposite can be true as Wayne Huizenga learned owning the Championship winning Florida Marlins baseball team.  He payed so much for the top players that he lost money, and ended up busting up the team and selling the franchise!

In short, owning a sports franchise doesn’t require the owner to understand lifecycles. You don’t have to understand much about business, or about business competition. You are protected from competitors, and as one of a select few in the club everyone actually works together – in a wholly uncompetitive way – to insure that everyone makes as much money as possible.  You don’t even have to know anything about managing people, because you hire coaches to deal with players, and PR folks to deal with fans and media.  And as said before whether or not you win games really doesn’t have much to do with how much money you make.

Most sports franchise owners are known more for their idiosyncrasies than their business acumen.  They can be loud and obnoxious all they want (with very few limits.)  And now that Mr. Ballmer has no investors to deal with – or for that matter vendors or cooperative parties in a complex ecosystem like personal technology – he doesn’t have to fret about understanding where markets are headed or how to compete in the future.

When it comes to acting like a person who knows little about business, but has a huge ego, fiery temper and loves to be obnoxious there is no better job than being a sports franchise owner.  Mr. Ballmer should fit right in.

Using Innovation to shift – Kindle and newspapers (Boston Globe, New York Times)

Today Yahoo.com picked up on Mr. Buffett's recent comments, with the home page lead saying "Buffett's Gloomy Advice."  The article quotes Buffett as saying newspapers are one business he wouldn't buy at any price. Even though he's a reader, and he owns a big chunk of the Washington Post Company (in addition to the Buffalo, NY daily), he now agrees there are plenty of other places to acquire news – and for advertisers to promote. 

I guess the topic is very timely given the Marketwatch.com headline "N.Y. Times hold off on threat to close Boston Globe".  Once again, in what might remind us of an airline negotiation, the owner felt it was up to concessions by the workers, via their union, if the newspaper was to remain in business.  After squeezing $20million out of the workers, the owners agreed not to proceed with a shutdown – today.  But they still have not addressed how a newspaper that is losing $85million/year intends to survive.  With ad revenue plunging over 30% in the first quarter, and readership down another 7% in newspapers nationally, union concessions won't save The Boston Globe.  It takes something that will generate growth.

And perhaps that innovation was also prominent in today's news.  "Amazon expected to lift wraps on large-screen Kindle" was another Marketwatch headline.  Figuring some people will only read a magazine or newspaper in a large format, the new Kindle will allow for easier full page browsing.  According to the article, the New York Times company has said it will be a partner in providing content for the new Kindle.

Let's hope the New York Times does become a full partner in this project.  People want news.  And the only way The Boston Globe and New York Times will survive is if they find an alternative go-to-market approach.  Printing newspapers, with its obvious costs in paper and distribution, is simply no longer viable.  Trying to defend & extend an old business model dedicated to that approach will only bankrupt the company, as it already has bankrupted Tribune Company and several other "media companies."  The market has shifted, and D&E practices like cost cutting will not make the organizations viable.

It's pretty obvious that the future is about on-line media distribution.  We've already crossed the threshold, and competitors (like Marketwatch.com and HuffingtonPost.com) that live in the on-line world are growing fast plus making profits.  What NYT now needs to do is Disrupt its Lock-ins to that old model, and plunge itself into White Space.  I'm not sure that an oversized Kindle is the answer; there are a lot of other products that can deliver news digitally.  But if that's what it takes to get a major journalistic organization to consider switching from analog, physical product to digital on-line distribution as its primary business I'm all for the advancement.  Those who compete in White Space are the ones who learn, adapt, and grow.  Being late can be a major disadvantage, because the laggard doesn't have the market knowledge about what works, and why.

This late in the market evolution, the major print media players are all at risk of survival.  While no one expects The Chicago Tribune or Los Angeles Times to disappear, the odds are much higher than expected.  These businesses are losing a tenuous hold on viability as debt costs eat up cash.   Declining readership and ad dollars makes failure an equally plausible outcome for The Washington Post, New York Times and Boston Globe.   Instead of Disrupting and using White Space, as News Corp  started doing a decade ago (News Corp owns The Wall Street Journal and Marketwatch.com, as well as MySpace.com for example), they have remained stuck in the past.  Now if they don't move rapidly to learn how to make digital, on-line profitable they will disappear to competitors already blazing the new market.

You Can’t Bully Customers – Chicago Tribune

Michael Porter wrote a famous book in 1980 on strategy called, befittingly, Competitive Strategy.  His doctoral work at Harvard had shown him that in an industrial market, you could map out the power a company has – and from that imply its future profitability.  Famous from this book was his "5 Forces" model in which companies could compare the relative strength of customers, suppliers, substitutes and potential entrants with traditional competitor rivalry to ascertain attractiveness.  An outcome of his late 1970s analysis was that if you are really strong, you can control the behavior of the other forces to dictate your profitability.  This was all pre-internet, pre-information economy.

Today (Sunday) my wife was fit to be tied (an old midwestern phrase) when she opened the Chicago Tribune and couldn't find a television schedule.  She's not much of a newspaper reader, primarily just the Sunday ads and the TV schedule.  When she couldn't find the TV schedule, she called the newspaper to ask for another copy.  But the automated response at the Trib said not to leave a message if you're calling about the TV schedule, because it was now being printed in the Saturday edition.   As you might guess, we don't take Saturday because we don't have time to read newspapers any more.  Her reaction was simple "I get most of these ads delivered in the mailbox now during the week.  If we don't get the TV schedule, we might as well cancel the paper altogether."

This, of course, is not the reaction Sam Zell and his management team at Tribune Corporation are expecting.  They think their last remaining competitor, Sun Times Corp., is most likely going to fold now that it's filed bankruptcy and seems drowned in red ink.  Following Porter's nearly 30 year old approach, they think they have little competition and no threat of new newspaper entrant – so they'll simply "force" readers to buy Saturday if they want the TV schedule.

But they are wrong, of course.  Just like every other action they've taken since Zell overleveraged the corporation in his buy-out, they continue to ignore that the internet exists.  As I pointed out to my wife, we can easily bookmark several locations to identify our local programming – including a nice layout at USAToday.com

In an industrial economy, many leaders came to believe that they could erect entry barriers which allowed them great power to run their business for high profits.  At newspapers, many felt that by being the only (or largest) local paper they had a "moat" around their business guaranteeing profits.  They felt comfortable they could raise rates on advertising, and classified ads for those looking to find new hires or sell a used car.  But of course they missed the fact that advertisers could go to the web to find customers.  And that it was a lot cheaper to use Monster.com, Vehix.com or Craig's List than a local classified ad.  So now Zell's team is trying to use his "relative strength" to push his subscribers into behavior they have avoided – buying a Saturday paper.  And, again, the team has forgotten that in an internet-connected world customers have lots of options, and given a push they'll go look for other solutions.

The folks at Tribune Corporation made a big mistake by over-leveraging their acquisition.  And they worsened that mistake by trying to use 1980s strategy post-2000.  I recently emailed books editor Julia Keller with a recommendation for promoting book reading more strongly in her Sunday "Lit Life" column.  She responded by upbraiding me for having the temerity to offer an idea to her – and concluded by challenging not only my intelligence but my own reading ability – then telling me to subscribe to the Saturday edition so I'd stop being such a luddite.  My son wrote to the Trib's Sunday auto reviewer Jim Mateja with some insights he had about hybrids as a 21 year old, and Mr. Mateja responded that since he was only 21 he wasn't old enough to have common sense, and certainly no insights a serious auto reviewer or auto executive should consider.  Bullying customers seems to have become commonplace around The Chicago Tribune.

When business conditions turn poorly it's very easy to focus on Defending & Extending what worked in the past.  It's natural to turn against those who complain, and seek out your most loyal customers for reinforcement that you're Success Formula need not change.  It's not uncommon to "write off" customers that walk away from you, saying they are no longer in your market target or niche.  It's likely you'll turn to management practices that might have worked 3 decades ago (think about GM as well as newspapers).  It's comfortable to turn to your "hedgehog concept" and try to do more of what you know how to do, primarily because you know how to do it and are good at it.

But you can't bully customers.  Today, more than ever, substitutes and new entrants are no further than a Google search.  Markets aren't as neatly and tightly defined as they were in 1980.  When you see results slip, you can't try to force them back up by bullying vendors either.  You have to align with market needs – with the direction markets are headed.  You have to look into the future to see what customers will value, and do the Google search yourself to identify alternative competitors you need to beat.  The Chicago Tribune could do a lot more to make its business valuable to people in Chicago and beyond.  A little White Space could go a long way.  Unfortunately, management appears intent on being the first major market newspaper to really fail – and folks in Chicago as well as L.A. (Tribune Corp. also owns The Los Angeles Times) may find themselves first on the curve to using web media exclusively.