The Silent Risk in Entertainment: How Informal Cultures Lead to Costly Misfires

The entertainment and media industry thrives on creativity, relationships, and the magic of collaboration. But underneath the glamor and fast-paced execution, there’s a structural challenge that causes avoidable misfires—unclear agreements, misaligned expectations, and communication breakdowns that derail projects before they even reach an audience.

A System Built for Breakdowns

Unlike traditional corporate environments, entertainment is deeply rooted in an apprentice-style model. Many professionals learn by doing, picking up knowledge from those who came before them rather than through structured leadership development or formalized training. This works—until it doesn’t.

Because so much of the industry operates on trust, relationships, and loosely defined roles, it’s easy for clarity to get  lost in the shuffle. Many projects move forward with implicit understandings rather than explicit agreements. When expectations aren’t clearly defined, or evolve organically without resetting, accountability becomes murky, and when accountability is murky, relationships suffer.

In high-profile cases, we see this dynamic play out publicly. Often the underlying issue wasn’t a lack of talent or intention—it was a failure in managing expectations and agreements in real time – as parties started to adapt and assume. This is the kind of situation that could have been entirely avoided with better upfront alignment, clearer role parameters, and an intentional process to navigate the shifting dynamics that come with creative partnerships.

The Cost of an Industry That “Wings It”

The entertainment industry attracts people who thrive in informal, non-corporate environments. Creatives, executives, and production teams alike resist bureaucracy, which is understandable. That informality, while freeing, comes at a cost without the right scaffolding.

• Decisions get made without alignment – A greenlit project can quickly run into friction when contributors have different assumptions about their level of influence or creative control.

• Conflict escalates unnecessarily – Many breakdowns aren’t about malice but about mismatched expectations that could have been addressed far earlier. Instead parties begin an unspoken adaptation dance that typically ends with disappointment.

• Reputation risk and financial losses – When things go south, they don’t just harm the project—they damage careers and cost companies millions in legal battles, reshoots, or PR nightmares.

What Would This Look Like Instead?

Entertainment companies don’t need to become traditional corporate environments, but they do need a new kind of infrastructure—one that respects the industry’s creative DNA while adding the necessary guardrails to keep projects from imploding.

1. A process for “clear agreements” that evolves with the project – When working with clients in this space, one of the biggest challenges we address is that initial agreements often don’t reflect the reality of how projects evolve. Instead of assuming everyone is still aligned as things shift, we build in a structured way to re-negotiate in real time. 

This includes:

• Defining the non-negotiables upfront – What absolutely must stay the same, and where is there room to adjust?

• Creating a check-in cadence – At key decision points, we facilitate structured conversations that assess whether agreements still hold and ensure that shifts in vision, power, or execution get explicitly discussed—not just assumed.

• Making implicit expectations explicit – When we work with clients, we surface the assumptions driving behavior and make them visible. This reduces misfires by ensuring unspoken expectations don’t create unintended friction.

2. Clarity beyond the credits – One of the biggest sources of tension in entertainment is that a title doesn’t always match actual influence. We’ve seen conflicts arise because someone assumed they had final say when they didn’t, or because creative control was loosely defined. With our clients, we establish clear maps of decision-making power and influence before conflicts arise, ensuring alignment on who has authority over what aspects of a project.

3. A proactive approach to relationship management – Most entertainment companies rely on informal “vibes” to keep the peace, but that’s not enough. When we work with clients, we embed an active relationship management process into their projects, ensuring that:

• • Key stakeholders stay aligned even as dynamics shift.
  • Friction points get addressed before they escalate into PR disasters.
  • People feel seen and heard, reducing resentment and miscommunication.

If these elements had been in place for several high-profile breakdowns, we likely wouldn’t be reading about it in headlines. The truth is, the entertainment industry isn’t broken—it’s just operating with an outdated system that hasn’t caught up with the complexity of modern creative collaborations.

With the right approach, entertainment can preserve its creative spirit and avoid these costly misfires. The real question is—who’s willing to invest in that shift?