In recent
months, two movies of Telugu movie superstars raised huge expectations but
failed to live up to them. While Sardar Gabbar Singh, starring Pawan Kalyan in
the lead role, and also scripted and pseudo-directed by him released about a
month ago disappointed viewers, the even more recent release, Brahmotsavam,
starring Mahesh Babu in the lead role, threatens to be an even greater
disaster. In fact, Brahmotsavam was a greater shocker because it seemed to have
all the right ingredients: the handsome and elegant Mahesh Babu as the central
anchor, three glamorous heroines Kajal, Samantha and Praneeta, an ensemble star
cast of over 30 veteran stars, soulful and peppy music by Mickey J Meyer, gorgeous
sets by Thota Tharani, breath-taking cinematography by Rathnavelu, an editor
known for slickness, K Venkateswara Rao, famed choreographers Raju-Sundaram, a
production house that splurges, and above all, a director who has track record
of successful family entertainers in the past, Srikanth Addala.
Brahmotsavam
was also notable for an intense level of promotions starring all the major
stars and the music director and director in the 3 week run-up to the release,
with clips and talks which underwrote the feel-good value of the movie, driving
up viewer expectations sky high. After a great pre-release extravaganza, the
movie released in over 900 screens globally. It is remarkable that from the
very first show, there was a negative view about the movie across regions and
across viewers, most of it centred on a meaningless and meandering second half,
and all the songs wasted in the first half in rapid succession. Although the
movie team has tried out a rear guard action by chopping off 18 minutes of
draggy scenes in the second half and one song, there has been no improvement of
the sentiment. The author has held in some of the previous blog posts that
movie making is a highly enterprising creative endeavour and offers valuable
management lessons, both from successes and failures. Brahmotsavam too offers
important lessons, both for movie making and enterprise management.
Calibrating investments
The general
expectation is that if an enterprise is able to commit huge resources, either
as investment or expenditure, it will be able to build world class
infrastructure and business. While there is some proportionality between
resources and outcomes the curve of proportionality tapers off after a stage. In
fact, expenditures beyond what may be called ‘functionality’ level tend to be
sunk costs with declining levels of returns. The phenomenon may be comparable
to what a specific piece of sponge can absorb. Brahmotsavam has a
super-gorgeous mounting of a movie but the movie as a visual treat made
possible by a lavish budget (by Indian standards) of Rs 750 million but had
little meaning without consistent emotional tether (which would have required no
investments of such scale).
In business
too, luxurious offices and gold plated factories have a visual impact but beyond
a functionally utilitarian scale, they add more costs and overheads than value. Internal value generation at increasing
levels, which is hard to come by, is required to cater to increased investments.
Alternatively, investments have to be
tailored to the value that can be created.
Synergizing expertise
Expertise is
the key to success. The foundation of Brahmotsavam was to have the best expert
in each field contribute to his or her department being top class. Indeed, the
assumption played out well individually, there being nothing to fault any
department in terms of cinematic excellence. However, together it made incoherent
sense. Potentially, experts took specialized views rather than a comprehensive
view of the movie, and the movie director was more preoccupied in providing
each stalwart with a sub-canvas commensurate with his expertise, rather than
building a more holistic total canvas with appropriate embellishments from all.
In business
organizations too, having too many experts could lead to functional
specialization but business sub-optimization. The CEO would more often than not
be preoccupied with satisfying the individual domain needs of expert CXOs
rather than do what is holistically good for the enterprise.
Roles to drive numbers
Closely allied
with having more technician-experts on board, Brahmotsavam had even more stars
for the screen. In a movie of 150 minutes having more than 30 plus veterans
would only mean not more than 5 minutes of screen time for each star. With the
hero Mahesh being required to be in every scene throughout the movie to carry
it on his able shoulders, each veteran’s average screen time has been even
lower. Rather than tight story telling what emerges in such a scenario is a
visual spectacle of all stars vying for screen space. In low cost economies the
tendency to over-deploy people is endemic; seen in movies as much as in
businesses.
Having too many
people lumped into a value chain is less productive than their being spread out
across the value chain, in a role based manner. When a technical or operational
bottleneck occurs it is the qualitative ingenuity of a few rather than
quantitative redundancy of a mass that works.
Book rather than chapters
Brahmotsavam is
much like a classic case of a book with an inspiring title and having a few
chapters that are brilliant and several which are weak. The movie certainly has
its beautiful frames and touching moments which reflect the theme in the first
half but there are also several frames which run away from the theme as the
hero takes off on a rather meaningless pan-Indian journey to connect with some
spread out relatives. A book must be interesting to read cover to cover; so
must be a movie from start to finish. Continuing emotional connect with the
reader or viewer underwrites success in both the cases.
Enterprise is a
series of projects but is an unending book or movie. Participants in an
enterprise, employees or investors, look to a continuing story that is
engaging. The moment a project wanes, and gives the feel of a ‘done chapter’,
and in fact has more such disappointments in sequence or in store, enterprise
starts becoming an emotionally and economically losing proposition.
Directorial deficit
All said and
done, the director remains the central anchor for a movie. Only he or she holds
in his mind a mental picture of how he or she would convert the emotional theme
to visual frames. He alone knows why he has engaged the stars and technicians
he has engaged and the results expected of them. In Brahmotsavam, the director
has failed in his primary role, probably with the misplaced belief that
conversion of the concept of his earlier successful family movie set in rural background
into an urban setting would provide a similar success. He is also responsible
for all the deficiencies listed above, again due to excess of confidence and
infallibility. Sometimes, directors are hamstrung by weighty producers and
stars which also impacts their delivery on screen.
The CEO of an
enterprise wields a similar powerful role. The growth script or turnaround
script can only be in his hands. Those CEOs who do not exercise this right and
obligation or are not allowed to exercise such a role by the promoters and
boards could lead to sub-optimal, if not disastrous, results for their
companies.
Expectations management
The modern
society grows on expectations. Expectations management which is relatively new
is different from advertisement management which has been age old. While the
latter largely explains what a product or service stands for, and only subtly
raises expectations, expectations management through a series of leaks, chats,
promos presents an alluring image of great things to come. That said, there
must be some link between the delivered reality and promised utopia. The issue
with Brahmotsavam is that expectations were driven to crazy heights by focusing
only on the good parts of the movie. Those who were exposed to such feel-good
promos expected that the entire would pan out like the promos and were highly
disappointed when things did not turn out as promised.
Companies are
well within their rights to promote their products. In fact, it speaks of the
collective confidence of the corporate sector that they are able to openly
present futuristic features without concerns of copying by competition. That
said, expectations have to be set in realistic zones to be able to deliver on
them.
Customer supremacy
Even after the
high profile debacle, the stars and the makers of Brahmotsavam must be
wondering what hit them and why things went wrong. The reason lies in the
possibility that all of them took the viewer for granted, and assumed that
flashes of brilliance would suffice to impress the viewers. The fact, however,
is that the user has his own way of feeling the experience which develops as
one sees the movie. While many reasons for viewer dissatisfaction can be
adduced as above there may indeed be no one reason why the viewers reject a
movie. It can only be related to rather qualitative phenomenon of user
experience.
Enterprises are
not immune to failing to gauge user experience. Apple has tasted many successes
by providing a great user experience on its iPod, iPhone and iPad products but
has failed to provide the same user experience with its Apple watch. The customer
continues to be supreme in judging a new product regardless of the past
successes of a firm.
Open to feedback
One can have
open-to-sky ambitions with a relentless focus and unremitting faith in the
goals and processes. In fact, such
passion is needed to fuel growth ambitions. However, as with many things the dividing
lines between healthy ownership of a concept and unhealthy possessiveness, and
between positive commitment and blind obsession are indeed thin. When a movie
is taken with a few overarching themes (eternal family sentiment, charismatic Mahesh
Babu, best-in-class departments, successful director etc.,) everyone believes
that the success is assured. The makers must, however, be open and sensitive to
feedback, which alone can course-correct disasters in the making.
Enterprises
tend to be far less interactive and open-house oriented as movie houses are.
Yet, if movie houses themselves suffer from myopic or obscured approach towards
open feedback, the asphyxiating situation in tightly run enterprises can only
be imagined. The need to facilitate and receive continuous feedback in an open
manner and respond to that meaningfully is quite evident.
Result not a sum of parts
We are all
aware of the constant exhortation that organizations must aim at synergy,
whereby the sum is more than a mere addition of numbers. As this blog post
illustrates parts are extremely critical but even the best parts cannot
automatically make for even a viable product, let alone the best product. Just as
in a mechanical watch all components must be fine-tuned for perfect assembly
and perfect operation, every product and a project whether it is moviemaking or
product manufacture must have parts that are fine-tuned in a success formula
that is, in the overall, cohesive, balanced and integrated. Without coherent,
balanced and unified thought as well as execution, the result of an endeavour
may not even be a sum of parts!
Hopefully, the
lessons of Brahmotsavam will be learnt. There was once a movie, Dil Se, made in
1998 by an ace director (Mani Ratnam ) with a star hero (Shahrukh Khan) and
some of the finest technicians ( A R Rahman and Gulzar, for example) which
raised huge expectations as a visual and musical masterpiece but turned out to
be a huge box-office disappointment. Both the director and actor (and, of
course other technicians) picked up the pieces and went on to make great movies,
individually and collectively, post-failure. All stakeholders of Brahmotsavam,
likewise, would hopefully bring out their collective best in their future movie
endeavours.
That said, why
should anyone, movie makers or enterprise leaders, fail at all when success can
be assured with some sensibility and sensitivity as well as some reflection and
introspection?
Posted by Dr CB
Rao on May 27, 2016
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