Rants to Close Out the Summer

Over the last few weeks, I finally completed watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. Given that I’ve probably seen every Seinfeld episode at least twice and Curb came out 25 years ago, it’s a wonder why it took me so long to do it.

In the show, Larry David is self-involved, easily irritated, and a savant at saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Thus, it was distressing whenever I would agree with his takes on social etiquette or see ways that we’re alike, including driving the same car, falling asleep during the musical Hamilton, and disliking surprise parties (“Surprises are dangerous!”).

What I loved about the show is that when Larry David gets worked up about a subject—usually a perceived slight—he shares epic rants about his perspective. In that spirit, I started thinking about the things I’d rant over, and I’ll share a few in the coming weeks.  

I hate stories about companies missing out on the digital photography wave.

If there’s one thing that’s sure to spark an epic eye roll or heavy sigh for me, it’s hearing about how Kodak or Polaroid were suckers for having missed out on digital photography. 

This example from the book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, & Total Nonsense is typical of how the story is told: “[Kodak and Polaroid] had impressive R&D efforts and people who were deeply knowledgeable about digital photography, but Kodak’s slowness to act on that knowledge has deeply wounded the company, and Polaroid’s more pronounced inability to capitalize on its deep knowledge of digital photography ultimately led to its demise.”

The intended lesson is that companies should constantly disrupt themselves to avoid becoming obsolete, but those stories always leave out the word “iPhone”! The mobile device makers were the ultimate winners in digital photography, and there’s very little reason to believe that Kodak and Polaroid would have been able to make the difficult shift from legacy film to digital cameras…just to do another complete transformation to create cell phones. It’s ridiculous. 

It also bothers me that the Kodak and Polaroid stories typically conclude that they should have pursued digital photography alongside their legacy business. It’s hard to imagine a worse suggestion. If they were to make the kind of transformation that history suggests would have been necessary, it would have almost certainly required a “burn the ships”-style decision to abandon everything they knew and orient the entire business around the new and unknown space. That’s the courageous decision—not investing a little more in the side business!

Mostly, I get offended by the judgmental vibe of those kinds of business stories. Look at these short-sighted idiots! 

Like we could have done better. Even with perfect insight into the future, it wouldn’t have been obvious that Kodak and Polaroid should have moved away from their legacy business. And if people were so good at having and acting upon foresight, we’d all know someone who had proactively quit their soon-to-be-AI-disrupted knowledge job and gone back to school for nursing or a skilled trade. But we don’t. 

Most of the organizations I’ve worked with facing difficult strategy situations don’t struggle to see the issues. However, the challenge is that the options they develop to face those issues often fall within 20 degrees of the status quo. If they have truly radical solutions—burning the ships, betting the farm, going out in a blaze of glory—those options aren’t given authentic consideration or analysis. 

For example, I once told a nonprofit leader during an annual budget process, “If you have an idea that would have a really awesome impact on the people we serve in the next year but put us at risk for being out of business the following year, at minimum, we should talk about it.” However, I’ve never seen such an idea raised in a non-crisis situation, and I suspect it’s because those ideas seem somewhat ridiculous without imminent storm clouds on the horizon. 

I’m not suggesting that we should make riskier decisions in our organizational or personal lives. But it’s worth considering that the seemingly-logical-but-wouldn’t-move-the-needle strategic ideas may be those that feel most safe, while the most interesting strategic moves may be closer to the edges of our thoughts than is comfortable.