Biggest Challenges Faced By A Director Business Operations At A Fortune 100 Entertainment Company
Colin's biggest challenge as Director, Business Operations isn't the role itself, but rather navigating the current uncertainty in the entertainment industry; the "massive industry changes" and resulting anxiety among artists and employees require careful communication, avoiding "false hope," while acknowledging that "nobody has the answers" to the future of streaming.
Executive/Leadership, Overcoming Challenges, Industry Realities, Communication, Stress Management
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Colin Sommer
Director, Business Operations
Fortune 100 Entertainment Company
Chapman University
USC: Master of Communication Management; UCLA: Master of Business Administration
Advertising, Public Relations
Arts, Entertainment & Media
Operations and Project Management
Took Out Loans, Worked 20+ Hours in School, Greek Life Member, LGBTQ
Video Highlights
1. The entertainment industry is currently undergoing significant changes due to streaming, cord-cutting, and the evolving business models. This creates uncertainty and challenges for professionals in business operations.
2. A key challenge is managing and communicating with employees during times of ambiguity and uncertainty, without providing false hope or misleading information.
3. The role requires effective communication and management of people's reactions to large-scale industry changes and uncertainty about the future.
Transcript
What is the biggest challenge you have in your current role in business operations? What's the most challenging part?
The biggest challenge in my role isn't necessarily the role itself, but where we are in entertainment right now. Entertainment has changed a lot in the last few years, and even more so in the last few months.
For years, we talked about cord-cutting, cable disappearing, and movie theaters closing. The pandemic then made streaming huge; everyone was streaming first with services like Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and Hulu.
Now, in the last two months, we've seen Netflix's stock dive, and people are questioning if streaming is a viable business model. Nobody has the answers. This uncertainty understandably makes people scared about the future of entertainment.
There's a lot of anxiety and questions, and no one has definitive answers. As part of the studio's management organization, my role in business operations involves trying to share information with our artists and employees.
It's about managing the ambiguity of these massive industry changes without giving false hope or telling people what they want to hear just to make them feel better. Trying to manage people's reactions to these shifts can be really stressful.
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