Is GE modeling Its Work Approach After Hollywood? Blackbelt is!

“Talent is our greatest asset and our biggest hurdle,” said every company ever.

Earlier this month, I began a series on the evolving landscape for running and scaling a company in a tech-first world. In my first piece, “The Quietest Giant — COOs Need to Ready Themselves for AI,” I explored the key areas to prepare for AI implementation, one of which admittedly deserves a deeper dive: AI and people management.

Let’s start with the people part. Blackbelt was started with a shared value and purpose to do incredible work with great people. We hand select just the right talent — seasoned, experienced people that are a “Blackbelt” in their discipline — for the right problem.

Some believe this is the future of how teams will work, but that future is here. At GE, for example, CIO Jim Fowler says the company is evolving to a “future-ready” company. This involves people coming together to solve specific problems, which he calls “mission-based problems.” Once solved, the teams disband and move on to apply their “Blackbelt” skill set to solve the next problem.

Sound familiar?

The Blackbelt Talent Initiative

It’s what we do as part of The Blackbelt Talent Initiative — which I often reference, but to recap: At Blackbelt, we hand select teams to ensure we are bringing the best talent to each and every client we work with (one of the core benefits of being an independent agency overseen by industry veterans). We believe that each project deserves to be served by those who have experience, passion, and understand the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead. Therefore, we employ what is referenced as “the Hollywood Model:”

“A project is identified; a team is assembled; it works together for precisely as long as is needed to complete the task; then the team disbands. This short-­term, project-­based business structure is an alternative to the corporate model, in which capital is spent up front to build a business, which then hires workers for long-term, open-ended jobs that can last for years, even a lifetime. …

With the Hollywood model, ad hoc teams carry out projects that are large and complex, requiring many different people with complementary skills. The Hollywood model is now used to build bridges, design apps or start restaurants.” — What Hollywood Can Teach Us About the Future of Work, The New York Times, 5/5/2015.

Implementing this process at our company has allowed us to onboard faster, ideate more effectively and produce superior partnerships with our clients.

Here’s how we’ve put this into practice:

/// A game-changing fintech client sought out a very specific approach, tone and feel for the launch of the brand on the national stage. They aspired to be Fitbit… so we called our friend, the global executive creative director (ECD) for Fitbit who was in fact the mind behind the brand work our client had in mind. The ECD came in and spent 6 months of time, love and labor to build a brand vision and execute an integrated campaign that drove an increase in brand preference from seven to two in the category and an increase in monetized clicks by 200 percent.

/// In a launch assignment for a new wearables brand, we needed to produce a photo-realistic CG animation in the vein of an Apple product video in order to position the wearables company as a credible competitor to the Apple Watch. We looked to our network and engaged the boutique VFX house, MakeVFX, who has worked on some of Hollywood’s biggest successes from Titanic to Fight Club.

/// We were tasked to design the product, package and launch plan for a new vodka brand and bring it to market. The target market for the vodka is women in their thirties who value natural ingredients and thoughtful design. Knowing this discerning and taste-led demographic, we brought in a Blackbelt in beverage package design for this specific market segment: the mind behind The Skinny Girl brand, who successfully led the vodka brand’s launch.

The Future of Talent and AI

This method of resource, team and talent management has proven to be successful — both in the eyes of our clients and for our company — yet I can’t help but be drawn to discussing how this will be effected by AI.

AI platforms will manage our talent, seek out talent, find talent that has historically been hard to find, and in some cases AI-based platforms and robots will BE the talent. It’s going to be an evolutionary and revolutionary problem for all COOs of scaling businesses to consider, understand and take advantage of… and we are ready.