By Hank Moore, Corporate Strategist™
After a 50-year hiatus, the first live television musical production extravaganza, “The Sound of Music” starring Carrie Underwood, recently aired. This television special got a lot of attention because it was unique that it was live, just like the Broadway musical on which it was based.
Truth is, that throughout the decade of the 1950s (the Golden Age of Television), there were comparable live television extravaganzas regularly on the air. Many of them were consistently great. They were live, in real time. They had top talent behind them. They were well-rehearsed. They had the adrenaline of “going live” and they shined with luster.
Among those crown jewel television moments were:
- “Our Town” starring Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, and Eva Marie Saint.
- “Requiem for a Heavyweight” starring Jack Palance and Ed Wynn and written by Rod Sterling. It was the premier show for The Playhouse 90 television series.
- “The Petrified Forest” starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Henry Fonda. In it, “Bogey” reprised the 1930s Broadway hit and movie that launched his career.
- The Ford 50th Anniversary Show, a two-hour program starring Ethel Merman and Mary Martin. This was the first so-called “television spectacular” and set the tone for thousands of others since.
- The first Beatles appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for U.S. television. The Beatles topped that by performing for the first time “All You Need is Love” that was broadcast live in 24 countries.
I have those and other live TV gems on DVD. I watch them to experience the magical energy of live performances.
Many of us remember writing the college theme paper the night before it was due. We recall compiling the case notes or sales projections just before the presentation meeting. The truth is that we do some of our best work under pressure. We might think that the chaos and delays of life are always with us, but we handle them better when on tight timeframes.
Before you know it, you’re on a deadline again. Even though the tasks mount up, you have a knack for performing magnificently under deadline, stress, and high expectations. This is not meant to suggest putting off sequential steps and daily tasks. Learn when deadline crunch-time is best to accomplish the optimum business objectives. I’m a big advocate of Strategic Planning and Visioning. Every company needs it but rarely conducts the process because they’re knee-deep in daily minutia.
I know from experience that planning while going through the “alligators” is the most effective way to conduct the process. By seeing the daily changes resulting from the planning, companies are poised to rise above the current daily crises. I recommend that diversity audits, quality control reviews, ethics programs, and other important regimen be conducted as part of Strategic Planning, rather than as stand-alone, distracting, and energy-diverting activities.
Those of us who grew up working on typewriters know how to master the medium. You had to get your ideas on paper correctly the first time, without typographical errors, and with great clarity. The first time that I worked on a computer was when I was 40 years old. I took that typewriter mentality with me when I had to compose a brochure and do the desktop publishing graphics in the same two-hour window where I was learning how to work on a computer.
There were years where I kept the typewriter on the work station next to the computer. When I had five minutes to write a cohesive memo and fax it off to the client, I wrote it on the typewriter. Though I wrote all my books on computers, I wrote the modern technology chapters on the typewriter to make points to myself that the readers could never have grasped.
In mounting your next Strategic Planning Process for your company, go back and analyze what elements from the past can be rejuvenated as your future. That’s a trademarked concept that I call “Yesterdayism”.
With planning and organizing, you can meet and beat most deadlines without working in a pressure cooker. Don’t work and worry yourself into exhaustion over every detail. Sometimes it makes sense to move the deadline to the 11th hour. Having too much time to get projects accomplished tends to breed procrastination.
Here are my final take-aways on the subject of doing your best work when on last-minute deadlines:
- Learn what working style goes best with you.
- Care about deadlines.
- Prioritize the real deadlines apart from the artificial or self-imposed ones.
- Review the work that you’ve done on tight deadlines. Analyze what makes it different.
- Know your own strengths and limitations.
- Work on your own timetable.
- When working with teams, determine the best compromise working tempo.
- Get your “to do” lists in order.
- Evaluate your progress.
- Remove the distractions in doing your best-focused work.
- Ready…Set…Be productive.
This article was written in one hour, just before the impending deadline.
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Hank Moore has advised 5,000+ client organizations including 100 of the Fortune 500, public sector agencies, small businesses, and non-profit organizations. You can contact Hank by email at hankmoore4218@sbcglobal.net, by phone at 713-668-0664, or visit his website at www.hankmoore.com.
