Emmy Award Winning Producer Robert Carlock: “Creativity Goes Where Data Can’t”
Before his Emmy Award-winning career, I knew Robert Carlock as the fellow Harvard Lampoon staffer who made people laugh. While I toiled selling ads to Cambridge bars, hawking subscriptions door-to-door and checking the books to make sure the creative types didn’t drink away our minimal cash reserves, Robert channeled his wit and hilarity into writing. The Lampoon would help launch his spectacular career writing and producing iconic shows including “Saturday Night Live,” “Friends” and “30 Rock,” and most recently co-creating and producing the Netflix original series “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” which will release its third season tomorrow. I would go on to found and run businesses in tech — a somewhat less sexy path than show biz, but still pretty good.
In my Office Hours podcast, I usually interview CEOs of tech companies, other large companies or politicians. Despite their diverse industries and company sizes, the leaders of these organizations consistently cite the same leadership principles as key to their success. For my latest episode, I wanted to test these principles with a leader from a completely different industry (entertainment) running a completely different organization (a TV show).
What surprised me is how different Robert’s experience in decision-making as a leader has been to mine. At Zillow Group, we pride ourselves in being a consensus-driven data meritocracy, meaning ideas are backed in data, then debated (often fiercely) until we come to a resolution. This data-driven approach guides ninety-nine percent of our operations and the big bets we place; while there’s still some wiggle room for hunches, we very rarely make million-dollar investments without data to prove the concept. Not so in Hollywood, I learned.
When I asked Robert how data informed his decision-making and management, he responded with (what else?) a wise-crack that I can “hide behind my numbers” while I crush someone’s ideas. Fair — and funny — but an insightful comment nonetheless. It seems our strengths (numbers for me, creativity for him) have shaped not only our careers but also the way we make decisions. Instead of data, Robert draws largely from his intuition in deciding what is going to be funny. That’s because raw creativity, the lifeblood of comedy, isn’t rooted in numbers.
Our exchange prompted a broader reflection on my part: Some of the greatest ideas and biggest swings in Zillow Group’s history didn’t come from numbers; they came from hunches and gaps we saw in the marketplace. We didn’t have numbers to shield our decisions; we just had to make the call, stick our necks out there and be vulnerable. Once implemented, the performance of these initiatives was absolutely informed by numbers. But the original ideas? They all stemmed from raw creativity. In that way, Robert and I aren’t so different. Take “30 Rock,” the hit show on NBC that Robert co-produced with Tina Fey. They had tons of data from the broadcast network — ratings, viewership and feedback from executives — equipping him to make decisions throughout its seven seasons. But the big idea — that people would find the inner workings of producing a sketch comedy show funny — didn’t come from an algorithm.
Across companies and industries, we’re increasingly enabled with data, which means decision-making has never been more empowering. It also means that creativity has never been more important. Anyone can be taught to build a model, interpret statistics and forecast trends, and while these are absolutely critical functions that guide day-to-day decision-making and strategic planning, our value comes first and foremost from our big ideas. We have a core value at Zillow Group, “move fast, think big” — it means get things done but remember to look up, untether your creativity and find our next opportunity.
Just as the Harvard Lampoon needed numbers geeks like me to run the publication, they needed Robert’s comedic genius to be successful. It takes all types.
For more anecdotes from Robert Carlock, listen to the latest episode of Office Hours below, or read the full transcript.
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