There has been so much on our minds about our future.
What to do?
Can we do it?
This article really puts everything into perspective..or it makes the decisions all the more difficult...
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If so, there’s one thing you can plan on – very little will go as planned.
I never planned on being in the Entertainment business. I was singularly focused on becoming a
teacher. I was a student at New York University pursuing an MBA. I already had my Juris
Doctorate, my BA, and Master of Laws degrees, when an Executive Vice President from
Columbia Pictures came to recruit what they thought would be “the best and the brightest.”
While I absolutely wasn’t interested in a career in Entertainment, the business school felt it was
a necessity to take interviews with these large companies who often endowed them. During
our meeting, I was completely transparent about my passion for teaching and a lack of interest
in the movie industry. She respected my candor and our conversation moved to hockey – a
topic I was very passionate about.
It just so happened the Executive Vice President had a spare ticket to a professional hockey
game at Madison Square Garden and invited me to go. As a student with financial constraints
who couldn’t otherwise afford such a ticket, this opportunity was not to be missed. Her
conversation continued. Remembering my interest in teaching, she exhorted that teaching in a
classroom wasn’t the only way to teach. You could reach, touch and open the minds of an
audience of millions more people through filmed entertainment than you could ever do within
the walls of a single classroom. I was curious. They asked me several days later to interview and
have lunch with the President of the company whose offices were on 5 Avenue uptown. Heck,
that sounded like a cool lunch and I save money. That led to their invitation to fly to California,
a location I had not been, but I reminded them that I really wasn’t interested in the movie
business. They said that was alright, come anyway. I hadn’t been to California so that was an
offer I could hardly refuse.
The trip to California ended up to be a stay for the next 35 years. If I hadn’t been open to the
interview and the serendipity of a hockey game, my incredible journey in the Entertainment
and Sports industries, which continues today, would never have happened.
Is there an icing on this cake? Yes! Within six months of my new start in Hollywood, I became a
guest lecturer at UCLA which led to a professorship at both UCLA’s Anderson School of
Management and its School of Theater, Film and Television. It’s during the courses that I teach
in these schools where I often invite highly accomplished executives to converse with me and
engage with the students and myself, that I discovered many of these folks also had very
circuitous career paths.
In one of my current graduate courses on winning in the business of sports, Emmy-winning and
Oscar-nominated producer-director-writer Mike Tollin, whose credits include Radio, Coach
Carter, Varsity Blues and the documentary Hank Aaron: Chasing The Dream, admitted to never
laying out a career path. His advice to our graduate students was that everything leads to
everything and that you have to trust that the “dots will connect,” even though you may not see the connection at the moment. He shared that they must take every opportunity they get
as “make or break” and leave nothing on the table.
Pacific 12 Conference Commissioner, Larry Scott, thought he’d follow his Harvard education
with a career as a CEO of some large company, never anticipating he’d end up in the sports
business. He told our UCLA MBA students that he never had a five year plan and later
recognized that luck and believing that he was always at the right place at the right time
factored into where he is today.
Bob Bowman, President & CEO of the hugely successful Major League Baseball Advanced
Media, encouraged students to always work for the best person rather than focus solely on the
right career path. He advised if you’re given the choice between a great, great job for a less
than great person and what appears to be just an ok job for a magnificent and talented person,
bet on the stellar person every time, even if the money or job is not as good as it will pay off for
the rest of your life.
So what does all this mean for you and your career plans?
*Opportunity is always lurking. Don’t be an ostrich with your head in the ground! You
must do your job, but you must manage your career which means being constantly
vigilant for opportunities. This doesn’t mean you’re an opportunist, but that your career
is in your hands. There may not be a straight line to what you believe is your ultimate
goal. By being flexible, however, often you discover new avenues that may lead you to
your final destination. Or you may end up somewhere totally unexpected, but find this
new experience highly rewarding.
*You don’t always need experience, but experiences. While relevant experience is
desirable, having an employee with a background of diverse experiences demonstrates
that they’re not only well-rounded, but they may offer a unique lens based on these
experiences that gives a fresh perspective on innovation, problem solving and
management – all areas critical to driving competitive advantage. In this world,
interdisciplinary experiences can provide a bouquet of resources and a larger
opportunity horizon to demonstrate your talents.
*You never know who knows who. Relationships are critical to your career path to success.
Everyone you meet is an opportunity to demonstrate your passions and your personality – two
critical components that are often the deciding factors in people recommending you or sharing
their enthusiasm about you. You never know if and when they, or someone they know, may be
asked about you. During these encounters, be generous in offering your help to them. As they
say, “what goes around comes around. ”
Posted by: Peter Guber
CEO, Mandalay Entertainment, Owner Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Dodgers
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