INVERT CONTROL

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

Case Study:

The film The Prince of Tides. Warner Bros. Directed by Barbra Streisand; starring Barbra Streisand, Nick Nolte, and Blythe Danner.

One of the overriding challenges facing anyone running a company or heading up a division or a team — regardless of its size or the specific industry that it's in — is how to improve productivity and efficiency, even incrementally. This is a paramount focus in almost all businesses, but it is of particular concern in industries like film production where minutes matter and dollars add up very quickly and the cost can be high if we miss our marks even by a little. It's also particularly top-of-mind for us because, unlike many other businesses, in filmmaking, we know at the end of any given day whether we are on schedule and on budget, and if we're not, we know how much we are behind or over. That means that finding ways to improve our productivity and efficiency isn't just a top priority; the imperative to do so is staring us right in the face.

A key mistake that managers can make when working in businesses with less visible measures of productivity and efficiency is thinking, If I can't see it, I can't fix it. Or, If I can't see it, it's not happening. And a key insight that they often fail to realize is that these metrics can be improved — often significantly — with small changes in overall management strategies and their day-to-day implementation. To consider a simple example of just how big the impact of a small change in management approach or even a small change in the specific language of a single directive can be, take the cliché line Hollywood casting directors say to actors after an audition or casting call:

"Don't call us, we'll call you."

Those six words do something very powerful, something that any manager can relate to — they save time and improve efficiency.

"Don't call us, we'll call you" instantly takes the power and control away from the actors and gives it to the casting directors.

In other words, they invert control.

Because there will be far fewer incoming (and completely unproductive) phone calls from all the actors who didn't get the part, that statement immediately cuts down on work. And it does so with a single statement.

This concept is so powerful that when computer coders wrote a line of code that essentially did the same thing — inverted control and stopped inefficient contacts within a computer program — the coders jokingly called it the Hollywood principle.

Here's what those computer coders understood:

If they could write lines of computer code that would do what "Don't call us, we'll call you" does — instantly invert control and automate better outcomes — they would have more efficient computer programs.

And here's the best part:

When you find ways to invert control with a single statement like this, you get precisely what you want with very little effort — and this is true whether you are a casting director, a computer coder, or a manager.

Or, to phrase it differently, employing the concept behind inversion of control and the Hollywood principle is a simple way for anyone to improve efficiency and productivity.

Recognizing both the simplicity and the impact of that concept, I asked myself this: What if I took the construct of inversion of control that is embedded in the Hollywood principle and applied it to building a broad system of management that delivered similarly, highly efficient outcomes for all sorts of things?

So as I learned and grew as a manager, as often as I could, I looked to embed broad procedures and coded "commands" that inverted control as they maximized efficiency, productivity, creativity, and innovation as a means to improve outcomes and bolster success — not to mention make my job as a manager easier.

And the results far exceeded what I had hoped for.

In other words, it really worked.

* * *

Let's begin with the simplest of simple examples of the Hollywood principle — or inversion of control — at work on a film set. Say we're shooting on the streets of New York City at rush hour in astough-as- they-get conditions, and over the walkie-talkie I hear a member of my production team say, "Someone go get my laptop bag." As a manager, I know that command will send a minimum of five people (production assistants, or PAs) running back to a motorhome blocks away to retrieve a bag. Since everyone on the team is trying very hard to get recognized for performance, they will all run to get that bag. But being "better" at retrieving a bag in this case is a function of proximity rather than skill — whoever is closer to the bag's location will be the one who retrieves it. So that instruction is, of course, extremely inefficient. I will have at least five team members who have left their positions unmanned, which could be problematic — and since only one person can actually get to the bag first, four of those team members won't accomplish anything. So, "Someone go get my laptop bag" is a line of code — or instruction — that isn't just inefficient, it creates worthless competition, as it also sets us up for potential cascading problems.

Yet, one simple change in that instruction — or code — effectively changes the outcome.

If the production team member had been more specific and said, "Bill, go get my laptop bag," instead of "Someone go get my laptop bag," we instantly improve efficiency and likely, in some immeasurable, incremental way, began to improve our outcomes. That simple change in wording alters the string of events that follow in a way that gives me better control as a manager — I now have four PAs manning their positions and one running for the bag instead of five unmanned positions — and while this may seem trivial, it's not. If the street corners that were supposed to be locked up* by any of those four PAs who are now unnecessarily running for a bag are compromised, it can cost us valuable shooting time. But to understand the real impact, multiply that incremental improvement by the thousands of instructions that we might issue on any given day or on any given project, and you can begin to see a clear route to higher efficiency.

Obviously, this is an incredibly simple example, and yet it demonstrates that as managers issue even mundane instructions, just as computer coders are writing code for software, we are writing...