Keynote Session from LeadsCon 2010 – Learning from Failure
On opening day of this year’s conference, held at February 23-24, LeadsCon attendees packed the Mirage Hotel Las Vegas conference room to hear from Douglas Merrill, author and Chief Operating Officer of New Music and President of Digital at EMI Music. Jay Weintraub, LeadsCon founder, did the introductions and welcomed Douglas on stage.
“Apparently April 1st is a bad day to announce your resignation from a company,” Douglas Merrill quipped at the start. When Merrill decided to leave his former position as the CIO and VP of Engineering at Google in 2008 on a self-appointed quest “save the music industry”, two press releases were required to notify people of his resignation.
Beyond the PR awkwardness of leaving Google on April Fools, Merrill has overcome much adversity to reach his goals. Born in Canada, Merrill was deaf from age three to six due to an infection in his auditory nerve, according to InformationWeek, and still carries an accent in part derived from his Canadian voice coach. He also happens to be dyslexic which makes both math and reading difficult for him.
His speech was informative, although I found myself wondering how it applied to the lead generation industry. While not specifically focused on the lead generation industry, it centered on the concept of innovation and how the structure that drives innovation isn’t the same for all organizations.
One interesting observation Merrill shared was a time when he found innovative structure was more than just allowing engineers one day a week to do whatever they wanted.
“To be innovative and successful, you need more than an idea; you need to have a structure that won’t kill your innovation. The type [of structure] you need depends on what kind of innovation you are doing. Most innovations are not transformative; they make small changes.”
Merrill also discussed the need for an open communication system where in a junior person can tell the boss he is wrong. He suggested one of the ways to do this is by hiring a diverse team:
“A diverse workforce is key to finding solutions. More opinions equal better ideas. Great ideas come from junior sales people, accounting, etc. and everyone in an organization has great ideas and an open communication system fosters this type of thinking.”
“What you have to focus on are not the innovative transformations, but the little ones day by day,” he said. “Good ideas come from everywhere in the organization.”
One of the main themes of the keynote was the idea that part of the problem with innovation is the structure. Douglas Merrill illustrated this point using the example of the military as a vertical structure where a small number of workers do a lot of work for a boss, who reports up to another boss, etc. In this structure it is very easy to escalate an issue up the chain; however, it is very difficult to go sideways, because you already know what you are going to do.
He said, “In contrast, if you don’t know what you are doing, going horizontally from side to side is more important. One is not better than the other, they are different.”
While at EMI, Merrill learned a valuable lesson. He thought the same structured approach at Google would work in the music industry. Quickly he learned that the same approach doesn’t work for all companies. The right structure for success depended upon the culture of the organization and the problems trying to be solved.
The music industry defined success in terms of record sales. However, in 2007 concert sales went through the roof and iTunes was selling 12 singles for every album sold. Merrill stated the music industry needed to listen to their customers and provide music in the format the consumer wanted. For example, Limewire’s biggest users were also their highest buyers of music. They just wanted to preview the music first.
He closed by sharing that your company has to build and foster a culture that enables open communication. You must create a structure where people feel safe to tell the boss that they are wrong, giving them the room to be innovative.
