Create the Missing Role
Build the opportunity that existing gatekeepers have not offered
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 91%
Create the Missing Role turns a recurring absence into a production decision. First define the role, story, or standard that existing gatekeepers are not supplying. Then use experience from previous projects to identify what you can run better and what capabilities still need collaborators. Build a documentary, drama, company, or other appropriate vehicle that can carry the missing opportunity, while ensuring the work asks meaningful questions of its audience rather than serving only as self-casting. Harewood explains that seeing projects run below the standard he expected helped convince him he could lead the work himself. His production-company ambition combines making documentaries and dramas, creating good roles, and producing work that has not yet been written. The model replaces passive waiting with accountable ownership, but it does not establish that every self-created project will succeed.
Origin
Extracted from The Diary of a CEO
Core principles
- 01A missing opportunity can become a brief for something new
- 02Experience inside weak projects can reveal how to run better ones
- 03Ownership creates room to choose both the work and the standards
- 04New work should ask something of its audience rather than exist only as a vehicle
How to run it
- 1
Define what is missing
Specify the role, story, or kind of work you repeatedly expect to see but are not being offered.
Pro tip Describe the missing complexity or audience value, not merely the status you want.
Watch out Personal frustration alone does not prove that an audience wants the project.
- 2
Audit your operating evidence
Identify what previous projects taught you about quality, leadership, and execution, including where you can credibly improve on what you observed.
Pro tip Separate firsthand operating lessons from assumptions about jobs you have never done.
Watch out Being excellent in one role does not automatically qualify you for every role above it.
- 3
Set the creative standard
Define the level of craft and the questions the work should bring to its audience.
Pro tip Make the standard concrete enough to guide casting, writing, and production decisions.
- 4
Choose the vehicle
Select a feasible format and operating structure that can deliver the missing work, such as a production company, documentary, or drama.
Pro tip Start with a bounded project that can demonstrate the standard.
Watch out A company is overhead unless it helps completed work reach an audience.
- 5
Assemble the team
Bring in people whose craft fills the gaps between your vision and a finished production.
Pro tip Give collaborators a clear standard and genuine responsibility rather than treating them as extensions of yourself.
Watch out Ownership does not remove the need for other people's expertise.
- 6
Make and test the work
Produce the project, place it before its intended audience, and use the response to decide what deserves another cycle.
Pro tip Judge the idea by the work and audience response, not by the symbolic act of becoming the boss.
Watch out The transcript describes an early-stage company, not a proven production formula.
In the wild
After working on projects he felt were not always run well, Harewood says he had enough experience to believe he could lead at a higher standard. He started a production company intending to make documentaries and dramas, create substantial roles for himself, and develop work that had not yet been written. At the time of the interview, he described this as a new and exciting challenge rather than a completed success story.
→ The missing roles and production standards became an owned venture and a slate of intended work; commercial or audience results were not stated.
Common mistakes
Building only to cast yourself
A self-created role is stronger when the wider project also offers a meaningful story or question to its audience.
Confusing experience with completeness
Relevant experience supports the move into ownership but does not eliminate capability gaps or the need for collaborators.
Starting with permanent overhead
Creating a company before defining a feasible project can add structure without producing the missing work.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for creators who can identify a real gap and have enough craft, relationships, and operating experience to assemble a credible project.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when the gap has no audience evidence, the creator lacks the capacity to produce safely, or ownership is being used to avoid necessary collaboration.
From the transcript
“why wait for somebody else to write it create it yourself”
“I've now got the experience to know I can do that job”
“ask questions of of the audience work in a different way create work that isn't being written yet”
From the episode
David Harewood: The Chilling Story Of How A Hollywood Star Lost His Mind