It's not, as I've learned from my own experience, that the deferred life is just a bad bet. Its very structure—first, step one, do what you must; then, step two, do what you want—implies that what we must do is necessarily different from what we want to do. Why is that the case? In the Deferred Life Plan, the second step, the life we defer, cannot exist, does not deserve to exist, without first doing something unsatisfying. We'll get to the good stuff later. In the first step we earn, financially and psychologically, the second step. Don't misunderstand my skepticism. Sacrifice and compromise are integral parts of any life, even a life well lived. But why not do hard work because it is meaningful, not simply to get it over with in order to move on to the next thing?
The Deferred Life Plan also dictates that we divorce who we are and what we care about from what we do in that first step. By distancing the real person from her actions, all manner of bad behavior is justified in the name of business. “Sure she's an SOB at work, but that's not who she really is. It's only business, nothing personal.” Fueled by ambition, we hope that in the end we will be judged by our accomplishments, not by who we are. Silicon Valley is a place where many people excuse their own behavior as “just business.” I wasn't holding my breath to see the “real” them.
The distinction between drive and passion is crucial. I had asked Lenny about his passion. He thought I was questioning his drive and commitment. Passion and drive are not the same at all.
Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist. Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do. If you know nothing about yourself, you can't tell the difference. Once you gain a modicum of self-knowledge, you can express your passion. But it isn't just the desire to achieve some goal or payoff, and it's not about quotas or bonuses or cashing out. It's not about jumping through someone else's hoops. That's drive.
In the Deferred Life Plan, drive pushes us through the first step. The second step, the deferred life itself, is the home of passion. We hope and suppose that when we get there, we will be able to resurrect our passions on our own terms. If we get there.
I had passion in Providence but didn't appreciate it. I drove myself through law school and the practice of law, seeking and hoping and groping for passion but never finding it. Then in Silicon Valley—at Apple, Claris, GO, LucasArts—I discovered passion in my work. But I didn't understand the crucial difference between drive and passion until I found them at war inside me.
SOME FOUR YEARS AGO, I was CEO of Crystal Dynamics, then a three-year-old video game company. I had been recruited from LucasArts Entertainment, the province of George Lucas's empire that produced games and edutainment for the PC. Our flagship products were based on the Star Wars films. LucasArts was my first CEO position. It was an extremely exciting place to work, rich with talent and creativity. What prompted me to talk, however, when the head-hunter called about Crystal Dynamics, was the prospect of autonomy—the ability to lead an independent company based on my vision for games and storytelling. Autonomy was supposed to have been part of the package at LucasArts, but it looked increasingly unlikely.
By mid-1995 I had become captivated by a vision of storytelling transformed by technology. For the first time, I believed, computers and their ilk would allow the audience to directly engage and interact with the story. Games represented a primitive stage in the evolution of this medium, like movies in the time of the nickelodeon. I wanted the chance to shape this new medium and contribute to its evolving grammar and vocabulary.
Crystal Dynamics had been founded to ride the wave of the much-heralded “Next Generation” video games. Crystal's titles were played on game consoles, electronic boxes that hooked up directly to TV sets. “Next Gen” game consoles ran on the then-new, more powerful 32- and 64-bit processors, which provided faster play and sharper images. They were manufactured by companies like 3DO, Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, each of which had its own unique and incompatible platform. Because most console games relied on quick reaction times, they were also known as “twitch” games, appealing mainly to adolescent boys with their muscle-bound heroes, busty women, and plenty of bloody fighting.
At first, I was troubled that Crystal's video games were toy-like in comparison with LucasArt's more cinematic PC games. But if the “Next Gen” market took off and if Crystal could achieve some early success, I believed we might be able to shift the company's focus toward interactive storytelling.
Just as I joined Crystal in May, the existing management team finished preparations for a nationwide road show to solicit a round of private investment. My first task as CEO, then, was to lead the road show, which proved a great success. Setting out to raise some $15 million, we received more than $25 million in commitments, and we accepted only $20 million at a very aggressive price. A lot for the time. Investors had liked our story.
The story we told was based on a plan prepared before I arrived. It rested on a set of assumptions about the number of products we would launch, the estimated market penetration for each, and a development timetable — all dependent on a deeper set of assumptions about the growth of the “Next Generation” console market. I hadn't had a chance to do much personal due diligence—after all, I had just arrived — but the plan seemed to hang together. In any case, we would give it our best shot, I thought, and if it didn't work, we could fix it later.
Back in the office after the road show, I began meeting with key people from the creative and sales sides of the company. We needed a detailed implementation plan to achieve the projections we had sold to investors. For weeks through late summer we gathered in marathon planning sessions, fueled by pizza and caffeine. Soon enough, alarm bells began clanging in my head. Crystal couldn't deliver on the plan. There wasn't enough pizza in the world to make it work.
This was troublesome for me in more ways than one. Investors had bought the plan, I realized, at least in part because of my track record at Lucas. It was my plan, and my fix-it-later attitude had been naïve. I felt responsible, and I couldn't let them down. Furthermore, I wanted very much to achieve the plan and move on to interactive storytelling, a prospect that was suddenly in great jeopardy.
The first problem was the “Next Generation” game market: How quickly would it grow and who would be the winners? The console makers manufactured the razors, and we sold blades. But for which razor? 3DO, the original “Next Generation” console platform, was floundering, and that's where Crystal had placed its first bet. Our second bet, Sega, was already off to a bad start.
The second problem was that my discussions with the creative producers raised grave doubts about their ability to develop quality titles as quickly as the plan prescribed. And if we couldn't generate enough titles, Crystal would be in trouble, even if the platforms grew as we had hoped.
Unfortunately, the weaknesses in the operating plan were only the most obvious of our problems. My probing revealed something far more serious.
Crystal was not one organization, but two. The people who made the games and the people who sold them were at war with each other. Both sides were led by equally talented management partners and staffed with strong people. Before I arrived the trenches had been dug deep. Frustrated by the vagaries of the creative process, the sales side blamed the creative side for failing to deliver on time and for not producing the games the market desired. The creative people blamed the sales people for wanting only “me-too” titles, for not being able to effectively sell potential hits, and for goading them into foolishly aggressive development schedules.