Progress is Beautiful

I recently had some time to read “Me, Myself & Bob” by Phil Vischer.  If you don’t know who Phil is, he’s the creator of the popular children’s video series ‘VeggieTales’.  If you grew up in any sort of churched background, chances are you probably have a seen a couple of his creations from time to time. And if you didn’t grow up in a churched background, chances are that you’ve probably still seen or at least heard of them. That’s how big they are.

Now, if you don’t know the story of the collapse of ‘VeggieTales’, let me fill you in.

Phil created the Veggies in the mid-90’s. It was a lot of hard work. He sacrificed a lot to just make one episode. Finally he did. Then he made another, and another, and things started to pick up. He started signing large distribution and marketing contracts. He needed to hire more staff, so he did. Things went humming right along for the next several years. The Veggies were huge. In fact, at the height of ‘VeggieTales’ popularity, his company, Big Idea, had a yearly revenue of over $48 million dollars. You could say things were going alright. At least that’s what everyone thought. In reality the leaders of his company, whom Phil had put in place, made a series of terrible business decisions and were effectively sinking the ‘VeggieTales’ and the entire company of Big Idea.  A couple years go by, many more poor business decisions were made, people are fired, many of the his hard working staff are laid off, and ultimately a lawsuit which they lose bankrupts the company.

After doing nothing but working day and night for 15 years to build Big Idea, Phil lost everything.

Of course, when you read the book, there’s a lot more detail involved but here are a few things I learned from Phil’s experience.

1. Build a team that is working toward the same goal.

One of the most obvious mistakes the Phil points out (and frankly is easy to see while reading through the book) is he lost the ability to motivate his team towards the vision or goal he had when he set out to create Big Idea. The company grew so big so fast, and they began hiring based only on talent, he no longer had the ability to cast the vision for his company. Half the people he had hired didn’t share the same goal or ambitions he did. The company ultimately became ineffective as a result.

2. Know who you are

We’ve all probably heard this one before, but it’s good to keep in mind. Knowing your weaknesses can actually become one of your biggest strengths. By knowing your weaknesses you know the areas you need to improve on. Whether that is personal improvements or professional, get people around you who can help you make up the difference. It also helps to know your weaknesses when it comes to decision making. By leaning on your own understanding and not seeking wise council you likely make bad decisions. You can learn to know when to defer to others instead of trying to do everything on your own.

3. Bigger isn’t always Better

While it is always helpful to have more resources and more people from time to time, it also can reduce the ability to pursue potential opportunities. The more things and people you have the the more permanent overhead you’re responsible for on a continual basis. I think this lesson has the potential for more impact in ministry than in business. Too often I found this to be an area of contention for ministry leaders. The excuse of we can’t do ‘this’ and we can’t do ‘that’ because we don’t have the people or the resources gets old real fast. One of the most fascinating things I found in reading this book was how large of an impact Big Idea was capable of having with the most skeleton animation/production crew by comparison. And it wasn’t until they started getting larger that they began losing control. I’m not advocating that you don’t hire any additional help, because as you grow it needs to happen. However, just make sure you’re hiring for the right reasons and make sure you absolutely have needs to meet before you just start throwing resources and people at problems or potential roadblocks.

4. Better pay doesn’t equal happier staff

While I found this interesting, I probably wasn’t extremely surprised. When it came time to lay staff off as a result of the the financial state of the company, most employees said they would have taken a pay cut if they could stay on and continue working at Big Idea. They loved working there. Money wasn’t the only motivator for world class animators leaving Disney to come join the efforts at Big Idea. Don’t automatically assume it’s the reason people are coming to join you were you are. Doesn’t mean you should make them flat broke, but know it’s not always the main reason. Generally speaking, people are drawn to join something for other reasons then to just get paid. Value that.

I loved reading this book. If you get some time, I’d encourage you to check it out. You can pick it up here on Amazon.

You can also see what Phil is up to now and read more about what happened on his blog.