So this example is something we often use at Mrlifeadvise when we meet corporate clients that are in the age range of 35-45 years, when we are pitching ourselves for management consulting gigs in person.
So the similarities are quite easy to see for a trained eye, between a successful company and a successful tv-show.
And that is the cast and the employees, both will make or break the tv-show or the company.
So let us give you an example of a very successful tv-show that many might remember and that is Dawsons creek, that was filmed in Wilmington North Carolina.
So a show without the beautiful back drops of LA or NYC, that many shows has often taken advantage of.
But they built the cast 100% right from day one, and that is what made this tv-show so successful that we see people talking about it even 20 years later.
So if we look at some of the cast members that we could call management in a company, we have James Van der Beek as Dawson, we have Joshua Jackson as Pacey, we have Michelle Willams as Jen and of course Katie Holmes as Joey.
So this is your CEO, COO,CFO and head of HR in these 4 people.
Then you have the support cast that would be mid level management in a company. And here you find actors like Mary Beth Peil as Evelyn Grams Ryan, we have Kerr Smith as Jack , we have Mary Margret Humes as Gail Leery and of course Busy Philipps as Audrey Liddell.
Not to forget the underrated Meredith Monroe as Andy McPhee, who was by far the oldest of the so called high scholars on the show, she was almost 30(29) when she starred on her first episode in Dawsons creek.
Then comes what we would call the workers of the company, and we can see the same in the cast of Dawsons creek like Dylan Neal as Doug Witter, we have Nina Repeta as Bessie Potter, these actors played the older brother and sister to Pacey and Joey.
And then you have the guest stars that came in for awhile to improve the show like Sasha Alexander as Gretchen Witter, these will be your employees that you are not goanna be able to hold onto for many years, but they will work for a year or two and improve your business and then move on to bigger and better things.
But then you see on the reunions that it is the lead cast together with mid level management that counts, the rest is just supporting actors.
And that is the same in many companies that it is the management and mid level management that you see and here from.
But this is what makes 1 out for 50 tv-shows on the same topic to become a world wide megahit!.
While out of the other 49 tv-shows many only have one or two season before being cut for week viewer ratings, and very few people remember them 20 years later.
And the same thing goes for start up companies that if they have the right cast (the right people) all in the same place at the same time, then it becomes that big success.
And this is how you need to look at building teams and the workforce of a company.
Figure out who your lead cast will be, figure out who your midlevel management will be, and then let them then hire the support cast (the workers).
So this is easy to say and understand, but it is really difficult to do in real life, when you are putting together either a tv-show or building a company.
You need a lot of luck to go with your hard work to get that hit!
And only time will tell if you where able to get it right or not.
Dawsons creek was lucky enough that they where able to keep the lead cast together for all 6 season.
Because keeping the lead cast together that works well with each other is the key to keep the ratings up as a tv show, and the same goes for a company, that losing key people early on or in the middle of growing your business is really hard to deal with.
And usually you can not replace these actors or people very easily.
Without going into to many other tv-shows, we can clearly see one other mega hit show that came out in 2003 called The O.C that had Ben McKenzie as Ryan Atwood and Mischa Barton as Marissa Cooper in the lead roles as a modern Romeo and Julia story.
So this show was a mega hit for 3 seasons, but then Mischa Barton left the show in the last episode of season 3 and the season 4 was cut to only 16 episodes, before being axed.
So with tv-shows and with companies the best plan of action is to keep the team together for as long as possible, and you need to understand that high personal turnover is almost always bad for any tv-show or company.
So this is a way to easily identify the similarities between a hit show and a very successful company.
Take care.
Mrlifeadvise.
