Failure and Old Testament Tactics
Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there. Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments. — Jeff Bezos Founder & CEO of Amazon
In mid 2015 I had a problem. We were months away from running out of money and needed to do something. There was no commercial solution. We needed to invent our way out of this. We had an Android app that sucked and needed to reallocate capital to product and engineering in NY in order to try and invent the future. We had just launched the channels with StarTimes and they were totally pissed at us for under performing and being a dysfunctional organisation. The deal was at real risk. Our foray into linear TV was turning into a total nightmare. Terrible start. I was living in NY, trying to lead the efforts to build our Android app. The Hail Mary move that would sink or save IROKOtv. Management got disgruntled. Then the negative press started. Irokotv Reportedly Laying Off Top Executives, Hundreds Others Axed. Below are a few choice cuts
The sources, who asked to remain anonymous, claim iROKO is facing a very high degree of mismanagement and experimentation which is turning to be cruel to employees and hurting the name of the firm and its investors. The informants also accuse co-founder and CEO, Jason Njoku of ‘indecisiveness, mismanagement, cruelty and riding the Nollywood fame’.
and
With this experiments, the insider says iROKOtv was firing in Lagos to hire in London expecting to sign up a new market for Nollywood but adds that London is expensive and makes no sense but just a sign of iROKO has fired its VP of distribution, lead of partnerships, lead of offline, lead of YouTube, its CTO and the its engineering lead plus the telesales team and content operations,”
and
“It’s basically a jungle run by an egoistic child,” claims another source also asking for anonymity. “They pull in talent but are unable to manage them in a humane manner. It’s an extremely hostile environment. Their ties to Nollywood are not unbreakable.”
And you know what? From the perspective of a middle manager or executive, IROKO appeared like that. For someone untuned to the sometime chaos of creation, IROKO was a mess.
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