Ep 318: Lisa Mehling - In 15

Edited highlights of our full conversation.

This week’s guest is Lisa Mehling, the owner of Chelsea Pictures, who last month were named the winner of the Palme D’Or as the Production Company of the Year at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

Lisa doesn’t like to talk about herself. But her journey is an important one to understand as we struggle to build a society that supports all people.

The single biggest decision we make in our lives is this. How will we use the time we get while we are here? How will we spend this moment? And this one? And this?

Are we reacting or acting? Waiting or moving? Hoping or choosing?

Time has moved differently over the last 18 months. We have learned new rhythms - some faster, some slower. But very little about the way we have spent our time has felt familiar.

Until we got used to it, and it did. Sometimes in good ways. Sometimes in bad.

And then the vaccines came. And now we have to figure out how we spend our time all over again.

Which makes this moment a gift.

I’m fortunate to see across and inside a wide range of industries and businesses. And what I’m increasingly certain of is that what came before 2020 will have increasingly little to do with what comes after.

We have been living for a long time with norms and expectations that were designed and implemented during the Industrial Age. The 40 hour work week for instance, despite all the data that shows working fewer hours dramatically increases both performance and personal well-being. The Industrial Age started in about 1760 and ended sometime in the mid 20th century. Conservatively, that means we left the Industrial Age about 70 years ago. And yet we’re still tied to its apron strings.

Human beings are creatures of habit, genetically and biologically built on rhythms. The rising of the sun, the speed of our breathing, the gestation period of creating new life. There are so many fundamental aspects of our existence that we can't control.

But if you’re listening to this podcast, there are many, many things about your life that you can control. You have agency. To decide and to act. To test the boundaries of what is possible and to discover who you are in the process.

The power to unlock creative thinking and innovation depends on challenging assumptions and breaking down norms.

Or, as Lisa said, of not waiting for permission that you don’t need.

These moments are fleeting. New structures and practices and expectations and processes will be here before we know it.

So you can wait until someone tells you what’s allowed.

Or you can save yourself ten years and decide yourself.