How Sesame Street Survived the Decline of Broadcast Television
An outsider CEO brought some much-needed fresh thinking to the beloved but troubled franchise
Big institutional challenges come in many shapes and sizes. But they all have this in common: conventional approaches through established organizations can’t do enough to address them, and those establishments might themselves be part of the problem. The world is not getting better by itself. Making the world a better place demands more and better leaders.
When leaders see the wider scope of problems, are aware of the multiple dimensions and complexity, and challenge existing structures and constraints, they can propel existing organizations to reach greater heights. Institutional change that reinvents organizations takes advanced leadership skills to wrestle with ambiguous problems, deal with contending stakeholders, and take positive actions across sectors.
To see what this looks like in action, let’s look at one of the happiest places on the planet: Sesame Street. Sesame Street began outside the education establishment, using the power of a recently ubiquitous medium, television, to beam directly into homes to provide early learning as an alternative to formal preschools, which weren’t available to everyone anyway. Sesame Street…
