Protecting Yourself Against Disruption

From a strategic standpoint or from a leadership standpoint, what did you learn from that period in time, where Blockbuster Online was fighting Netflix and how it evolved from there?

I was a mid-level director, at the time, so I didn’t have a lot of responsibility at the leadership level. But it’s so easy, especially for somebody who comes from a technology background, to now see how old school industries have been totally disrupted by technology. I think my biggest takeaway from that is, if you don’t reinvent yourself, if you don’t try to break down your own direction and approach and how you go to market, then somebody else will. You’ve got to constantly be thinking about, how is this going to get better? How do we evolve it? We weren’t fast enough. We were losing so much money on the brick and mortar side, we didn’t have enough time to catch up on the online side and we started too late. There was just a reticence from the top levels, to move in that direction. For me, I always take from that experience, what can I do, to keep thinking about what’s going to happen. How could somebody disrupt me, in our business that we’re in?

How do you keep reinventing yourself in that way, to prevent that happening?

There’s a few things to do, from that standpoint. I’m a big believer in user research and understanding where your holes are. At Blockbuster, we knew we had a major hole, with late fees. Nobody liked late fees and it was a massive issue with consumer sentiment, to Blockbuster. I’m a big believer in listening to consumers, on a regular basis, and understanding where your holes are and then trying to solve for those holes. If you’re a start-up, that’s exactly where you start. You try to find where the gaps are, in the marketplace, where things aren’t working well and then you go attack it.

I think, sometimes, established companies forget that that’s what they need to be doing. For me, I also like to do regular strategy sessions, to understand what’s going on in the marketplace, what’s happening with the competition? What are some of the things that they’re focused on, that we’re not? I think that’s super important, to keep on top of what’s happening in the marketplace.

It’s almost like you have to build people around you, as well? You need to build a team around you, to keep you in check or keep challenging you, different ways of thinking?

Yes, for sure. I learned a big lesson when I moved to the UK with Expedia and Hotels.com. That lesson was, surround yourself with diverse skillsets, at the leadership and executive level. Everybody is going to bring their own kind of backgrounds, their understanding, their cultural differences, all that, to the table. It’s so important, especially when you are running a global business. Yes, you’re going to disagree, from time to time, but I think, as the main leader of a business like that, it’s listening to what’s important in those conversations and then helping the group to come to a decision about how to move forward. Sometimes, there will be some that don’t always agree with everything, but at that point, your team needs to disagree and commit. The important part there, is the debate and bringing up the learning and the diversity that comes with having that type of team, at the executive level.