Business Lessons from the New Barry Diller Book
I recently read the new autobiography from Barry Diller, Who Knew. Barry does not share my politics, is not someone I have ever met, his personal life confuses me, and he is essentially one of the most successful media and entertainment executives of all time - not a finance or Wall Street guy. But nevertheless, his story has always fascinated me - a non-college graduate working in the mailroom at William Morris Agency to become a personal assistant to an executive at ABC to running ABC’s home movie department to becoming the CEO of Paramount by age 32 to becoming the pioneer CEO of 20th Century Fox to becoming the brainchild behind QVC to eventually aggregating a media and internet empire that includes Expedia, People Magazine, Vimeo, Tinder, and Home Shopping Network – seriously, what is there not to love in all that?
I love business biographies and this one did not disappoint. I thought it would be worthwhile to share a few excerpts that I found especially choice.
I will start with these three that I am reasonably obsessed with, all geared toward a similar takeaway:
“I had one philosophy about new ventures: If you like the idea, get on with it. Don’t over-analyze it, don’t waste time making decks and projections where it’s absolutely certain, absolutely, that they will be wrong, high or low. Don’t do anything other than shake the idea back and forth until you resolve that the only known is … it’s a good idea. And then you can just get on with it. Make mistakes and correct them as fast as you can, and eventually there will be fewer mistakes. This is the way non-geniuses succeed. I don’t see things clearly in the beginning. I can’t see around corners. It’s the process I prize - the rocky road from idea to implementation. The consternation and thrill of pulling it through to success is the most gratifying work.”
And similarly, this:
“Why do you pay attention to these research people? Why do you accept their prognostications as if they’re science? It would be better if they came in wearing headdresses and bones around their necks because they’re just witch doctors who give you false security over a process that is definitionally insecure.”
And this:
“Rather than using instinct, they were trying to predict the public appetite, which I said then and say now, over and over again, simply isn’t possible. Neither is using research to help make decisions. No amount of research on ideas is worth the paper it’s printed on. Data can tell you what has happened, not what will happen. Data is often harmful to instinct, and I believe this to be true for making not only creative decisions, but many business decisions. Structured information, often narrows the sea just when you need to broaden it out in the spaces between information and real understanding. Over training, our brains on data loan doesn’t confer in advantage, and it can be a deterrent if it’s the only decision-making component. That’s often the problem with MBA students, who come armed with all the business tools in case studies but little simple human instinct. I do not believe that using instinct rather than deep, hard numerical, or fact based data to help with decision-making is the lazier process. Too much information can overload, overcomplicate, and obscure. What is at the essence of any proposal: is it a good idea, and does it make any common sense?”
It’s a consistent theme in Barry I resonate with immensely – trusting instincts, and believing in the illusion that some data, research, or analytics can ever do the work for you. This is not anti-data or research; rather, it argues against using data as a crutch – as a replacement for the reality of risk. Good ideas take risk appetite, and our instincts are important to drive good ideas. Over-thinking things can be a bigger problem than not thinking about things at all (or at least the same level of problem). I am always for the use of anecdotal and supportive data to reinforce a decision, but I never want The Bahnsen Group be a company that replaces our own risk-taking instincts with something people call “research” that is really a pacifier meant to keep us from doing bold things. This is not a carefree, reckless, “trust your gut” approach to business – the risk mitigation is there in his quotes: When mistakes are made, correct them quickly. I want The Bahnsen Group to be an organization that develops the wisdom to have good ideas, the courage to act on them, the self-confidence to not rely on consultants, “research”, and “data” to drive our actions, and the flexibility to course correct as needed!
*****************
“Davis was an incredibly effective conniver, but he had no ability to actually manage and grow the unbelievably complex business he was now in charge of. He was very proficient in public relations, very savvy at up-from-the-streets devious scheming. He wasn’t capable of devising any go-forward strategy.”
This ditty about Martin Davis, who took over the Gulf & Western conglomerate that owned Paramount after the legendary Charles Bluhdorn died, captured something far more common than most realize. Regardless of what it says about Davis, which I am sure is true, Diller is capturing here a systemic issue amongst a massive amount of empowered people in corporate America: They may not be talentless, but their talents are in being corporate schemers, not operating a business or devising a coherent strategy. If I could list the people I have known or done business with that this applied to, let’s just say I would get sued by a lot of people …
*******************
“I look for people who I think get it, and getting it is relatively rare. I put them in the cauldron with me to solve gnarly creative problems. I can help them grow, help them hone their instincts, remove excess baggage. I hate the word ‘mentoring.’ It’s too pretentiously formal a word and has become far too formulaic for a process that best works naturally. God knows, I’ve paid millions of dollars in fees to headhunters over the years, but I find it to be generally a bad investment. What I always used to say to headhunters, until I finally stopped saying it because I stopped talking to them, was ‘find me the number four, number eight, number twelve, number eighteen person in an organization, the person who is unique because of their energy and edge. Go by the theory that under a rock is a good thing rather than a bad thing, and turn the rocks over.’ I’ve learned that most of the people who are supposedly qualified with big prior positions are mostly retreads.”
There is more than one point here I am obsessed with. The last sentence in particular: I am sure plenty of impressive resumes and Linked In profiles look good on paper … I am also sure they are often unmotivated, overrated, unimpressive journeymen - who made their career the appearance of achievement, and not achievement, itself. I also agree that sometimes the best hires have an energy and an edge that trumps a particular past title or credential. And I most certainly agree that mentorship is only mentorship when it is organic - formulaic processes for mentorship are not mentorship; they are for classrooms.
*********************
“What you truly need [to succeed in business] are instincts and willfulness. It’s that alchemy that makes for a significant career. Having specific goals on that path forward are often detriments. Better to just take opportunities whenever they come and not overplot.”
And this:
“Opportunity came from the unintended consequences of disconnected situations that reconnected in serendipitous ways, as if some cosmic hand had been at work.”
One of the things I will never understand is why more people do not understand the benefit to just being present, being engaged, suiting up and showing up, so that the miracles of spontaneous order in a market can work.
****************
“Like almost everything in my life, iteration - one dumb step in front of the other, course-correcting as you go - is the only process I am any good at. I’m best building things from scratch. I’ve learned I’m not a very good shepherd of things already built. I don’t add much value to ongoing successful businesses and I wish I were a better manager who had training in dealing directly and effectively with the 30,000 employees under our tents. I think I was most impressive when I built up from just an idea, where I was the first employee and made every decision. I feel so much more able assembling all the pieces, where I can touch each of them directly.”
My company has always done best when it builds things, and our successful building always originates from our own ideation. Some prefer to build inorganically, and that is fine - M&A is an important part of economic growth. But Barry is not talking about all people’s skill set here - he is talking about his - and it resonates with me. Taking over the good work someone else did and then optimizing is fine, but it isn’t for everyone. It isn’t for me. Barry was a builder, and I suspect a lot more entrepreneurs are builders than they are fixers and especially custodians.
****************
I wrote more about this at my B2Bahnsen Substack as it applied to my own thought process when I left Morgan Stanley to start The Bahnsen Group. But it is worth re-posting Barry’s quotes here:
“I had been thinking about something I hadn’t yet acknowledged to myself: that Fox wasn’t really mine; that however I acted as if it were, it wasn’t. I thought then and think now that a good employee does believe and act as if the company belongs to them. But of course that’s an illusion, one I’d been able to keep full faith in with the three companies I’d worked at for a quarter century. But suddenly the reality that this was an illusion couldn’t be denied.
Either you are or you aren’t.
It’s a harsh and binary concept, and not subject to equivocation. Either you are the principal or you’re not. The rationalizing powers of a good employee are endless. Good employees make decisions on a company’s behalf as if they own it. I acted like a principal, but I wasn’t one. I was an employee, and whatever position and power I had could be revoked at any time. I had gone about as high as a corporatist could go. I’d run two studios. I was making more money than anyone in the entertainment business. But as rarefied as all that was, it could be taken away in an instant. All that power flexed so naturally was devolved from real power. I was craving real independence and had a need to stand on my own. And the only way to do that was to take action, but at such risk.
To be truly independent, beholden to no one but yourself, unprotected by the mothering of a corporation - for a lifelong employee that is a daunting proposition. And thus those words - either you are or you aren’t - were banging around my head with increasing force. You can do all the things executives have been doing since since executive-ing began, fantasize and rationalize all you want, but that binary about independence rules: Either you are or you aren’t.
Most people in the entertainment community are living a kind of pretend life. Most of them talk all sorts of big games: they talk about going out on their own, they excuse away their status, they act big and important. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being an employee. I was a productive one for thirty years, and it served me better than well. Being protected is a good thing, often the only way to accomplish what you hope to accomplish. But if you yearn to be on your own, untethered, than you must take action.”
******************
“It’s the timing, stupid, for most great business careers.”
I also addressed this more thoroughly in my recent B2Bahnsen substack. No one is saying - not Barry, and not me - that great business careers are made only by fortunate timing. One can overcome bad timing, and one can fumble away good timing. Our responses to various circumstances are profoundly important. But to not recognize the providential reality of timing in how our own careers and business circumstances unfold is arrogant, foolish, and ultimately, may doom us to future poor decision-making as it distorts our own understanding of reality. Timing matters. And having the humility to see this matters even more.
*****************
Barry Diller is an American icon whose story is inspiring on multiple levels. He is not a hero or mentor of mine, and the things I do not care for about him are many. But his new book offered takeaways worthy of being absorbed, just as his own life story is one very few could ever hope to emulate. Learn to your own benefit, ignore to your own peril.