Mad Men

One of the Leading Creatives crew sent me an interesting question:

"Completely random but regarding the blog: have you considered tying it into Mad Men in some way?  Given the popularity of the show, you could review parts of certain episodes by looking at the management style of Sterling Cooper.  Things are a bit different now, of course...just a random thought that I'm throwing out there."

An interesting idea, and one I'll consider.  The only logistical problem is, I don't watch the show.  The crew member who wrote does, and I asked him about writing some posts himself, but he's in grad school and already has enough writing to do.

But this gets away from my real question, which is: can we learn about leadership from television?

The answer is a definitive "maybe."

Both fictional shows like Mad Men and "reality" shows like Project Runway or Top Chef may provide some useful case studies, or starting points for discussions.  The fictional shows can be useful for seeing problems, though you need to be careful about adopting the solutions they come up with; remember, they've got a team of writers figuring out how to resolve a situation in 60 minutes with time for commercials, so they might not be too relevant in the real world where you operate.  With the reality shows, well, if nothing else you can see some of the personalities you might be facing and you can be thinking about how you would deal with them.

One advantage to using a popular show as the basis for this blog, or for your own in-house training or even discussions with peers, is that it provides a common frame of reference.  Lots of people might not have read Daniel Pink's latest book (even though they should) but they may well have seen last night's Mad Men.

So yes, if I can make time for it after my other shows (I'm not sure how helpful Lost and Family Guy would be for this blog) I may try and do some writing around Mad Men's themes.

And if anyone else wants to take a crack at it, let me know!