"It's the Singer, not the Song"

I watched "The Aristocrats" recently. For those of you haven't seen it yet, I won't spoil it for you; I think it's worth a rental. In a nutshell, the directors take a number of different comics and portray all of them telling their own version of the same joke; several of them even elaborate on it and relate their perspectives on the joke, it's place in comedy, etc. It's kind of like a documentary...but funny! I enjoyed the movie, but two things stuck with me:

1) Kevin Pollack's impression of Christopher Walken. First off, I like Christopher Walken. He seems to live in between multiple worlds! I like that guy. He is effective in multiple genres (drama, comedy, music videos, etc.), and while he doesn't seem to take himself seriously he does seem to take what he does seriously (to paraphrase my comedic philosopher / college roommate of many years ago). Plus, he's got his own style with which he does things. Which leads me to...

2) ...the title of this blog. One of the comics mentioned it when they were relating their perspective on the joke. And my mind (as it often does) riffed off of that and onto another tangent -

Leadership. An important word that often comes across as trite, and frequently trivialized with glib lip service. What is leadership? How do you identify it? How do you measure it? I've been thinking about this off and on for about a week. I had a conversation with a professional colleague, and we got around to the subject of leadership. In my opinion, if you don't have it or can't exhibit it with how you live, let alone how you do your job, it will come across as an ephemeral, taunting muse...you can see it, but it's just out of reach. You can see that you don't have it.

I think I've still got a lot to learn (which I think is part of the reason why I'm still around), but I am fortunate that I have had many leadership experiences from an early age. I think my first real leadership role was in the Boy Scouts, when I was about 12 and I had to get a bunch of older, teen ager boys to not just listen to me and do what I asked, but also to support me. Now that's a scary challenge for a young lad...

So, what is leadership, and how do you judge a leader? Most of the definitions I've read are tautological, and don't shed any new light on the subject (see Wikipedia or Merriam Webster's Dictionary for more data). My Dad used to quote Shakespeare's Henry V and the speech King Henry gave to his troops before the Battle of Agincourt (known as the St. Crispin's Day speech).

I'll give you my definition (and how I identify it), and then tell you how I measure it. I'm going to skip the obvious characterizations of title, office, majority party, etc., and focus on the more personal characteristics of Leadership. As with good Modern Art, "I know it when I see it".

There are two aspects to it - the internal and the external. The external can be seen through an individual's behaviors and measured by the results he produces. The internal is tougher to see or evaluate.

The external is what everyone sees; the internal is what everyone wants to know.

I've always like books of quotations, and I think Voltaire summed it up best when he referred to it as “...the fruits of labor, the price of courage.” You measure it by one's results (“...the fruits of labor...”); you identify it by the “...price of courage.” (how one makes decisions, especially difficult ones; how they use what they stand for in life to guide their actions).

Essentially, when it comes time to make a tough decision, how will one decide? Unlike the stock market, I think a person's past performance in this realm IS a good predictor of future performance. Leadership comes from one's character, and that doesn't really change too much after about age 7.

This is what I thought of when I heard the quote I used for this blog's title. It was mentioned in reference to the telling of a particular joke. I heard it in reference to how one leads in life (business, family, self, etc.).

Bad Boys

I first saw this a few weeks ago and laughed when I saw it. I hope you too enjoy this juxtapostion of "Star Wars" and "Cops"!

Who's Sorry Now?

Apparently, the video game industry is. Still. And I'm not sure why.

It seems to me that most of the articles out there written about the video games industry generally have at least one of the following two themes present in the article:

1. “I'm sorry that video games seem so violent to you (a non-video game playing person or organization). They aren't to us (the video game industry), because we know that they are just made up worlds we've created to play in, and frankly we don't take ourselves that seriously anyway.”

2. “Hey everybody, we're a real industry and you should take us seriously!”

I think it's time to relinquish the second one. With video game budgets reaching the sizes of some feature film budgets, development cycles stretching out almost as long as feature films, and industry revenues in the same neighborhood as the motion pictures industry, I think the video game industry should admit that they have "grown up” somewhat and just get on with the business. I don't hear the likes of Youtube, Facebook or Myspace apologizing for a huge marketplace presence or multi-hundred million dollar valuations (after only a few months and a modest business model). Video games, as a genre, have been in existence for over 40 years (NOTE: for a brief, cool look at this, check out my friend's recent visit with a living legend – one of the, if not THE, industry founder – Ralph Baer).

The USA Today had two big stories today related to video games:

- one profiled the new Wii from Nintendo and a Q & A with Reginald Fils-Aime, Nintendo of Americas new President and Chief Operating Officer

- one profiled 4 video games as examples of how "games can be helpful"

See what I mean? I think these were pretty informative articles, but I don't hear similar undercurrents in articles about Ford, NTT Docomo, Pfizer, etc.

What I think is interesting about this, however, is that it seems to be ubiquitous; there isn't one particular writer, editor or publication taking this tack. It seems fairly prevalent.

So what's it going to to take to change this? I think the industry itself has to change and move itself forward. One of the things that struck me at E3 this year was not the ubiquitous Booth Babes. It was what I call the lack of originality in the content. Generally speaking, the new game releases broke out into the following categories:

1. Themes:
- "Dungeons and Dragons" genre (these would be the Worlds of Warcraft, etc.)
- "shooting games" (could be FPS' like Unreal Tournament, Call of Duty, the various vehicular combat simulations, etc.)

2. Line Extensions of Existing Franchises:
- almost any game that uses one or more of the following: Star Wars characters or story lines, Marvel comic heroes, Disney characters, any new movie or TV show release (Desperate Housewives??? Really? So "desperate housewives" are playing video games now, it's not just 13-year old kids in the basement?)

3. "Casual Games""
- in quotes because even though everyone in the industry seems to have a certain perception about it, it's coming across to me as "We know there's an undefiend market segment out there, and we think that it happens to be the bulk of our target market. However, since we can't quite define it very specifically, we're going to "throw a lot of stuff" at it (i.e. - subscription revenue models, ringtones, Bejeweled and "classic" game knock-offs (or re-published versions), etc.) and see what sticks". No risks here...these are all merely "investments in micro-markets."

One of the latest market perspectives to gain a lot of attention has been articulated by Chris Anderson, and his notion of long tail economics. With enabling technologies like the internet, I personally think this is the first era where we can actually see these dynamics play out in real-time. Examples:

Success - Cable TV. Bruce got it wrong when he said there were 57 channels with nuthin' on - there are literally over 500 channels (depending on your service provider and package) with nothing on - except those shows that are really of interest to you. And if you can find something unique enough for you, head over to Youtube or MySpace

(potential) Failure - Satellite Radio. What was supposed to be a great revolution to revitalize the medium is actually turning into a losing business venture (at least for the foreseeable future). What's great about satellite radio is the broader spectrum of offerings (literally). What's bad about it is getting it paid for - either through subscription revenue (which is another en vogue business concept these days, that shouldn't be applied as ubiquitously as people seem inclined to do so - but that's another blog I'm cooking up), or by charging advertisers higher rates to reach a more refined audience. The Wall Street Journal reported today that XM Satellite Radio and Sirius are losing significant amounts of money at a time when they forecasted to be making significant amounts of money.

What I object to, however, is this concept being applied "everywhere". The crisis isn't a lack of content, it's a dearth of creativity. It's imagination. The technology already exists. Stop apologizing and let's get on with the business already!

As I said to the panelists at E3, if I'm wrong and long tail economics apply here, then there really is a market for Aunt Bea's Quilting Smack-down!, and I will be here waiting to try it out, with virtual knitting needles on my cell phone...who's the Developer and Publisher willing to put their money where their mouth is?

Why start blogging...

"Just what the world needs..." I thought in response to the latest person who said I should start blogging. "...someone else to share their opinions on whatever, so whomever can read them, for whatever reason."

What is this fascination people seem to have with blogging, anyway? Does everyone really crave to be heard that much?!?!? At any rate, I've succumed to the overwhelming requests for me to start blogging (that's a total of 3, including my dog Casey, in case you're keeping track). And so we begin...

I expect that this blog will mostly be related to business - ideas I've come up with, interesting observations, juxtapositions of various things, etc. I'll probably deviate from that path now and again, and hold forth with my opinions on music, movies and whatever else comes to mind.

I hope you enjoy the time you've wasted here on my blog. Do share your comments.

Cheers!