I’m a big fan of the show “Parks and Recreation.” It’s one of those shows that I loved when it first aired, and have kept watching over the years. It’s fun and silly and always leaves me in a good mood.
I’ve also been listening to the podcast “Parks and Recollection,” where Rob Lowe, an actor from the show, and Alan Yang, a writer from the show, revisit old episodes. On a recent podcast, they brought on Ben Schwartz, a frequent guest star from “Parks,” and got to talking about what it was like to be on set. Every TV show cast talks about how fun it was to work together, but the way Lowe, Schwartz, and Yang described things seemed a little different. What all three kept coming back to was a simple concept: The show worked because the cast and crew got along extraordinarily well. When you make something good with people you like, they said, you get a finished product that’s truly special.
It can be easy to overthink the elements of a great strategy — do you have the right tools, the right amount of funding, the right timing? But sometimes, the best work comes from a simple start: A great team, working together on something they care about. Let the rest come from there.
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That’s a photo of the “Parks and Rec” cast receiving a Peabody Award in 2012. It’s reused here thanks to a Creative Commons license.