[Me] The great leadership genius Sid Caesar has died
[You] He wasn't a leader, he was a clown!
[Me] So are many "leaders" I know
[All] Ha, ha, ha
Clown, maybe? Comic genius, for sure. But, there was nothing foolish about his leadership skills or insights!
What does it take for a sponsor of a runaway hit television show to pull the plug on its sponsorship at the apex of its success? How about selling so many products that it no longer had money to invest in the sponsorship? In the mid-1950s, the producer of Admiral television sets ended its sponsorship of Sid Caesar's award-winning, market-leading comedy show, because the demand for its product had grown so spectacularly during the show’s initial season that the company no longer had discretionary money for advertising. To meet the increased demand for television sets, the company had to invest all of its available capital in its manufacturing capacity, and that meant canceling the very advertising promotion that had fueled the demand for the product in the first place.
Hard to believe? Not if the team that wrote the show included: comedian Mel Brooks, who went on to create a number of pioneering movie comedies, including Blazing Saddles; Woody Allen, who later came into his own as an Oscar-winning scriptwriter and filmmaker; celebrated producer, director, writer, and comedian Carl Reiner (creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show); Larry Gelbart, who created of the M*A*S*H television series; and, Neil Simon, who was destined to become one of America’s most successful Broadway playwrights. They were, according to one commentator, “the greatest writing room since William Shakespeare wrote alone."
The leader of this team of extraordinary talent, and commensurate egos, was a young comic genius by the name of Sid Caesar, whose goal was to raise the level of comedy entertainment above the then currently popular crude slapstick, and to do something more that tickled the intelligence of the growing, and increasingly sophisiticated television audience. Caesar was following the lead of his producer and mentor, Max Liebman, who believed that: “One thing we take for granted on our show is that the mass audience we’re trying to reach isn’t a dumb one, it has a high quota of intelligence, and there’s no need to play down to it.” This willingness to believe that the customer was superior to the traditional diminishing stereotype held by most players in the industry led Caesar to offer a television show that actually stretched the viewer through reference to politics, contemporary affairs, and the arts, as well as being entertained.
To accomplish this, Caesar formed a team where competition among new ideas, rather than competition between idea-creators, was the norm. This was a group of ambitious and talented knowledge professionals, with big egos and high-testosterone, yet the way that Caesar directed their activities, and at the same time stayed out of their way, represented an extremely demanding, but effective, leadership role to play. As a result, energies were high, and competitive juices flowed, but everyone still felt that they were “involved” in everything that happened within the team. As Neil Simon put it: “I went home to watch the shows and I laughed and laughed, and my wife says, “That’s your joke, isn’t it?” And I said, “I dunno.” We never knew. They all came so fast.”
Caesar, as leader, set up a market place for ideas, where ideas were created and then chosen and survive or not, based only upon their contribution to the team’s goals, rather than on the power or position of the individual coming up with the idea. He believed that "polite teams get polite results", yet the group’s vision was clear, understood and ennobling; Caesar wanted to change how the market defined comedy, and he and his team did just that. The team, each and every member, knew who they were and what they were trying to accomplish. They had a leader who licensed them to create “big change,” and who trusted them to deliver. And, of course, it was a team that, as a result of all of this, was legendary in their accomplishments.
Caesar played the role of leader, perfectly. His presence in the cramped and chaotic "writer’s room" was both intimate and direct – this was leadership as a contact sport -- yet, at the same time, he allowed individuality to flourish as well. That meant that he was able to listen to his team and learn from them. Like a great band leader, he was able to back off and let his team members pursue their own solo performances: he hired great people and then he let them be great. As Larry Gelbart remembered it: "[Sid] had total control, but we had total freedom.”
It was this balance between “freedom” and “direction” that was the hallmark of Sid Caesar’s leadership style. Although frequently portrayed as chaotic, it was anything but. Neither anarchic, nor democratic, this was a team of strong egos that, nonetheless, had a strong central leader whose decisions, once arrived at, became the rule. Yet, no one felt left out of the “governance” process. Indeed, the crowded physical nature of the work-space, the transparency of communications, and the direct conversations fostered team success. It was also a precursor of the learning organization. The open and intimate atmosphere inspired the exchange of knowledge, which, according to Carl Reiner: “… was like a college. Everybody learning from everybody else. It was absolutely amazing.”
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Bill Fischer is the co-author of Virtuoso Teams (with Andy Boynton, FT/Prentice Hall, 2005), which included a chapter on Sid Caesar and his writing team, as well as: Reinventing Giants (with Umberto Lago & Fang Liu) (Jossey-Bass, 2013), and The Idea Hunter (with Andy Boynton & Bill Bole) (Jossey-Bass, 2011). Bill tweets about innovation and China at @bill_fischer
