"One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done." Marie Curie

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." Francis Bacon

"One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests." John Stuart Mill

Today's image: Tall grass setting sun by Kevin. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing.

Rabbit rabbit.

Happy RSS Awareness Day!! Kudos to Dave Winer.

Dr Dave on fame at ROFLcon via Rocketboom here. Thanks Andrew!

Developing: Heard from a senior producer at one of the major TV news shops. The story concept is to chase down and out a couple of those people who spew hate behind anonymous screen names. The idea inspired by the Bissinger v Leitch much buzzed about kerfuffle on Costas Now. I like it.

The obvious, always the hardest to see: Dan Kelley offers up a wonderful and very green station promotion idea here. My sense is this would also be an excellent sales opportunity. Kudos, Dan! Also agree with Dan the go to guy on getting this item (or anything else your promotions dept needs) would no doubt be marketing ace Lee Arnold.

Have you ever wondered what was in the library of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Mozart or Hemingway? Check it out - I See Dead People['s Books] here.

Bonus: The Study Stack Flashcards: matching, hangman, crossword, word search, word scramble and flash cards. Hint: take a quiz.

Congrats & cheers: Google bows Google TV Ads.

Italian red: La Famiglia Pirovano, Barbera. A wonderful NV, dry. Outstanding value at $10.

"Magic doesn't come to those who don't expect it." Diana Vreeland

"The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the thoughtful and valiant, it is ideal." Victor Hugo

"Storytelling reveals meaning, without committing the error of defining it." Hannah Arendt

Today's image: lined and ready by Darwin Bell. Great shot. Thank you for sharing.

Everything is impossible until it's done

Excellent post by Web 2.0 ace Steve Safran, Forbidden or compulsory: newsroom culture and the hive mentality...

"It's all impossible until it's not. Then it's required. And here lies a serious flaw in newsroom judgment...How many times have you heard of the news manager who saw blogs or some other feature on another site and insisted the next day the station's site have that feature? We follow, and we do it with ease. We are told something is 'Not Done,' so we don't do it. Then, once it's 'Done,' we do it.

What's the problem with this? It doesn't take experimentation into account. In this binary language, we don't have the luxury of 'Not Done, But Try It Out.' We don't get the message that something is 'Done, But May Not Be Right For Us.'

The media revinvention (sic) requires the reinvention of this code. We have to experiment and be there first."

Bravos, Steve! Spot-on. Read Steve's entire post here.

Charming and delightful: Little Tommy's video intro used at the NAB Radio Hall of Fame induction of Superjock, Ol Uncle Lar here. My thanks to radio programming ace John Rook for the tip. Kudos to all involved.

Off the charts, still in our hearts: Legendary radio star Big Ron O'Brien passes. Dan Kelley remembers and links here.

Mileage may vary: The first tribe of wireless has had a problem with successfully telling its own story since those FM with pictures guys crashed the party. The latest initiative to tackle this creative self-promotion challenge is Radio 2020 a collaboration involving NAB, RAB and the HD Radio Alliance. Predictably, the early reviews are mixed. My friend Kurt Hanson thinks the campaign is misguided. Kurt's post w/comments here. Rather than opine on the creative I'll stand on the critical need for transparency (related post here). Until we get serious and start keeping score this new initiative will remain another brawl without rules. It's fighting about whether a tune is a hit or not after an out of the box first listen, making a final call without benefit of time, research or charts. About as much sense as arguing about how successful a station is without Arbitron and Miller-Kaplan. Keeping this thing at a purely subjective level is just not lucky, playing smash or trash here is less than smart. My thought is that's the last thing we need. Could we please get some adult supervision into the mix. Disclosure, transparency, and serious industry conversation/collaboration are the right things to do. I remain optimistic; you gotta start somewhere and they do deserve kudos (they are not yet getting) for blogging here (George Williams) and here (Doug Zanger). Blog on guys! Related: Branding ace Kelly O'Keefe blogs here. Closed circuit to Debbie Durben - would you please link to the campaign from your domain. A confused buyer, planner, CMO, writer (insert decision maker/thought leader/key influencer here) we don't need. Fix this on the landing page? Help, SEO issues here.

Bonus: Who's Your City. Good stuff. Kudos and thanks to Richard Florida and team. Make sure you check out maps and best cities.

Tonight's hot ticket in Chicago is free: The Second City hosts a chat about bigger than life icon, the great Del Close. In celebration of the new Kim "Howard" Johnson book about Del. Event info. Book info via Amazon.

Congrats & cheers: Carrier, Icon, WETA & PBS. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of all who threaten it." An American Family revisited. This round starring a serious boat, water, warbirds and the US Navy Family. Radio star Alan Kabel in the air with the new syndi offering, 2nd Shift via Entercom. Winter winners, WBLS, #1 25-54 in the city, Z100 leads 18-34, 1010 WINS w/ Lee Harris takes morning drive 12+. OMD on getting Intel inside. John Gallagher, prexy and general manager of WLS radio steps down after leading the charge for three years, stay tuned.

Who do you trust? Data and chart courtesy of Forrester. Click on chart to enlarge. My thanks to Josh Bernoff for sharing.

"Zeal conquers all." Kozma Prutkov

"When one has knocked in vain at the door of certain truths, one must try to get in through the window." Joseph Joubert

"One never finishes a work of art; one abandons it." Paul Valery

Today's image: flowers forgotten by bebedas. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

The Coming Ad Revolution by Esther Dyson...

"This market will get more competitive, and users will be barraged by ads to which they will pay less and less attention. Call that public space, a world of billboards and cacophony. Even though the ads will be more "relevant" than ever, users will increasingly tune them out.

Now consider the new world of social networks. Facebook, unwittingly or on purpose, has been teaching people to manage their own data about themselves. Facebook's launch of the Beacon service -- which informs Facebook of members' activities (i.e., purchases) on other sites -- was a PR fiasco. But it still familiarized millions of users with the notion that they can control information about themselves online -- and determine to whom it is visible."

Read Esther's entire WSJ article here. Bravos, Esther! Outstanding.

My sense is we are witness to a sea change in privacy. Cohort replacement is changing everything, as it always does, and advertising will be dramatically different as a result. We live in the most exciting and interesting of times. The more we get into what's possible online the more I feel Doc is so totally right about VRM.

Thank you very much: A whole bunch of positive emails about yesterday's post on radio including some from my friends who own or run broadcast and cable companies. The vibe of the traffic is - yes, it is a difficult Q1 but radio (and cable) is doing just fine, thank you. Dead? Fagitabouit, not a chance. Along those lines I noticed this from Dan Kelley's blog. Dan had dinner with a couple of small market radio owners, he tells us..."One of them remarked that the problems of the big companies are simply Wall Street problems and have little direct impact on their operations. They continue to see growth in cash flow and remain highly optimistic about the medium's future." Hey Dan, thanks for sharing (and for the kind words).

The wayback machine: Last consumer-led US recession - 1991; 6 out of 10 radio stations in the US were losing money, cash users. An unintended consequence of those 80/90 additions, this was the real scene setter, the basis in fact (along with HLTs, remember those) for radio's play in the '96 telecom act. Ask any owner who was there. I'll never forget it.

Top secret: Apple is working to put DAB (digital radio) on the iPhone.

Congrats & cheers: James Hong and Jim Young, those HotOrNot guys, cashing out for about $20 mil.

"Let him that would move the world first move himself." Socrates

"To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand." Jose Ortega Y Gasset

"Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error." Goethe

Today's image: The Last Time by FotoRita. Great shot. Thanks for sharing.

"Branding is not complicated"

Late last year we lost one of the giants of advertising. The gentleman who first gave us the notion of a single football game, the Super Bowl, as the premiere ad vehicle of the year. At heart a writer, he took pen in hand to create memorable classic tag lines including "We bring good things to life," "It's not TV, it's HBO," and "Visa: It's everywhere you want to be."

Phil Dusenberry was a lion in advertising's forest. A former radio guy who done good. (NYT obit)

Let me take a moment, amid all the noise and, too often, pure nonsense being written about branding, and share the unvarnished Dusenberry take. From his wonderful book Then We Set His Hair on Fire...

"Branding is not complicated. A brand is nothing but an expression of the consumer's loyalty and trust. It's a bond, a covenant with the consumer. When you see the brand's name attached to a product, do you trust that the product will deliver a predictable level of satisfaction? If so, you will be loyal to that brand - so loyal that you will stick with it even when a better product comes along. (That loyalty explains why it takes so much time and so much money to steal customers away from a leader. Leaders generate trust and loyalty - in that order. And loyalty makes them hard to unseat at the top.) So loyal that you will not only stick with that product, but when the brand name is attached to a new product, you will buy that product too.

The amazing thing to me is that loyalty - even when it is attached to the vagaries of emotion - is not a vague, amorphous concept. It's hard, it's real, it can be quantified.

One of the main goals of advertising - and by extension, any branding strategy - is to create lifetime customers, not just a short-term spike in sales. And that cohort of loyal lifetime customers lets you protect your sales and revenues far into the future. The sales are ongoing and repeatable. They're the best thing in marketing - the guaranteed transaction. And you can attach a number to those transactions that defines the value of your company's name, what it stands for, what it means to the consumer."

Brilliant! Phil later goes on to say...

"Elevate the product by elevating the emotions attached to the product. You don't need to know much more than that."

One more insight from Phil...

"My earliest mentor, John Bergin, taught me that your reputation rests more on the work you reject than the work you approve. If you don't have a kill rate of 10 to 1, he said, you're standards are too low."

Which begs the question - what's your kill rate?

The following is one of Phil's eighteen guidelines (not rules) for creative directors. Pure gold...

"Be really tough on the work. With the accent on 'really'...the power to stop bad work was the only true power a creative director possessed. You can't predict when the great work appears or if the client will appreciate its greatness or, for that matter, how the public will respond, but you damn well can stop bad advertising from getting out the door...your 'no's' are far more decisive in setting your standards than your 'yes's'...Never let a due date or client meeting the next day convince you that something's ready when you know it isn't. Send it back. Make everybody stay at their desks all night if you have to. Cancel the meeting (as a last resort). And don't feel too bad about it. You'll feel a lot worse if you compromise and let something less than great get through."

Midtown buzz: Sumner Redstone will be honored tomorrow night at a Paley Center black-tie gala held in the city at the Waldorf. Jon Stewart booked as the evening's host has backed out due to a "busy schedule" - ouch! Hearing it will be Charlie Rose to the rescue. Congrats and cheers to Sumner!

Billionaire blogger: Carl Icahn starts blogging (soon) on corporate governance. No kidding, here.

They're back: The Industry Standard once the most important of all pubs to the dot com tribe is returning. This time around no glossy dead tree stuff, nothing but net. Derek Butcher signs on as general manager. Good luck guys.

Bonus: Kevin Kelly, Better Than Free. [via]

Congrats & cheers: Dan Kelley celebrated a year of blogging yesterday. Dan, a rock radio programmer, lost his job in 2007. He got right back to work launching his Classic Rock blog for radio programmers. During the last twelve months Dan posted almost 400 entries. More often than not his posts were a celebration of radio folks doing things right. Moreover, he caught station people (and others) doing the right things and shared his pov on issues of the day. Dan, not yet back in the radio programming ranks, continues doing his homework, a serious student of rock radio. Bravos and thank you for sharing, Dan. Rock on! Read his blog birthday post here.

"The spectacle has changed, but our eyes are the same." Joseph Joubert

"The surest - also the quickest - way to awake the sense of wonder in ourselves is to look intently, undeterred, at a single object. Suddenly, miraculously, it will reveal itself as something we have never seen before." Cesare Pavese

"Don't let your people fall into a rut. Keep leading them along new paths, blazing new trails. Give them a sense of adventurous pioneering." David Ogilvy

Today's image: in vino veritas by Fred Winston. Outstanding! Thanks for sharing.

Here's a look at the Chicago 07 radio revenues in relation to audience. The revenue per listener (rpl) calc is simple arithmetic, weekly 12+ cume divided into revenue.

2007 RPL Rank, (06 rpl rank), Station, Rev per listener 07 (rpl 06), 07 cume rank, [07 rev rank] - top twenty stations. Stations in bold improved rank and rpl year over year.

1. (2) WSCR - $52.03 ($47.30) #22 [#8]

2. (1) WGN - $45.66 ($55.31) #5, [#2]
3. (5) WXRT - $42.46 ($45.19) #20 [#11]
4. (7) WLEY - $40.89 ($41.92) #21 [#15]
5. (4) WTMX - $40.88 ($45.53) #6, [#3]
6. (3) WOJO - $40.68 ($47.14) #16 [#7]
7. (8) WUSN - $40.18 ($40.16) #10, [#5]

8. (9) WBBM-AM - $37.83 ($37.53) #1, [#1]
9. (11) WLS - $36.61 ($35.13) #19 [#12]
10. (10) WVAZ - $32.96 ($36.64) #11 [#9]
11. (13) WMVP - $32.60 ($29.24) #23 [#18]
12. (14) WGCI - $30.71 ($29.23) #4 [#4]
13. (12) WLIT - $30.45 ($29.96) #8 [#6]

14. (15) WDRV - $26.30 ($28.23) #9 [#14]
15. (17) WLUP - $23.99 ($23.18) #13 [#16]
16. (19) WKQX - $23.20 ($22.33) #18 [#19]
17. (6) WCFS - $22.33 ($44.85)

18. (22) WBBM-FM - $19.08 ($17.23) #3 [#10]
19. (21) WNUA - $18.40 ($19.86) #7 [#17]
20. (18) WJMK - $18.39 ($22.97) #14 [#20]
21. (20) WILV - $17.88 ($20.48)
22. (23) WKSC - $15.67 ($13.26) #2 [#13]
23. (24) WZZN - $9.56 ($10.17)

What's on your dashboard?

To manage it you have to measure it. What are you measuring?

Revenue per associate, revenue per seller, revenue per sq foot, revenue per, well, everything. What is critical here is that you are tracking stuff. Metrics, measures, gotta have them...

Daily

The most effective measurement approach is to adopt a retail mindset, think daily metrics.

What did we do today?

Start a track of daily sales, daily collections, daily DSO, daily pending, daily interviews of applicants for jobs posted, daily inventory loads, daily visitors and page views at your sites, daily thank you notes mailed, daily everything.

The world and your business works minute-by-minute. Daily measures will keep you in touch with what's happening and what's not happening in your enterprise. Daily provides you the information needed to take action while you can still influence what's happening. Over time you will develop a sense for how things are going, you will be able to see through the numbers and benefit from a richer understanding.

Closed circuit to Radio CEOs - Part two of a series

Thank You

How many dead tree, hand-written, to be delivered by uniformed federal employees (USPS) thank you notes did you send yesterday? To corp staff? To the field (the new hire, the seller that closed that big order, the talent that did that killer remote, the traffic director that came in on a holiday weekend)? To customers (the first timer, the loyal no matter the ranker buyer)? To business partners (the national rep that got you on that buy, the web hosting service that kept you live 99.9% of last month)? To the press? To your state association CEOs? How many did your market managers send? Your department heads? Your sellers?

Dan Kelley, the guy who covers Classic Rock radio programming and promotion the way Willie Mays used to cover centerfield, adds Your airstaff? - Wonderful, YES! Notes to listeners (and notes to clients which are always a big surprise). Thanks Dan.

My thought is you and your team are only as good as the number of thank you notes you're sending daily.

If you are not sending thank you notes you are not doing the things that are important, the work that matters.

Thank you notes. Dead tree, hand-written. Emails don't count, phone calls don't count. Hand-written thank you notes count.

Daily.

Yeah, I know, nobody does this.

That is why it is dramatically different, it helps to set you and your team apart, that's why it works 100% of the time.

Put it on your dashboard and watch it, daily.

Congrats & cheers: Randy Michaels reinvents the employee handbook. Rule #1: Use your best judgment. Rule #2: See Rule #1. Common sense - what a concept. Just what Tribune needed. Dial up the fun. Bravos, Randy! Molly Selvin writes up Randy and Sam via LAT here.

Let the games begin: Gawker to Cruise and the Church of Scientology - Drop dead.

Marshall Kirkpatrick offers up Perspective: Myspace Still Kicking Facebook's Ass in Traffic via ReadWriteWeb here. Data chart by Hitwise.

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." Daniel Boorstin

"Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out." John Wooden

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Leonardo da Vinci

Today's image: Untitled by Ron Fell. Outstanding shot. Thanks for sharing!

Erick Schonfeld is sharing some interesting comScore MM data on social networks. Click on data table for larger view.



Read Erick's take via TechCrunch here.

Congrats & cheers: Rob Barnett and his My Damn Channel crew on their 12/4 debate - Gov Huckabee v Sen Edwards, moderated by Tim Russert and simulcast via MDC and YouTube. Details here. Dan Kelley joins the staff of Michigan Association of Broadcasters.

"The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention." Kevin Kelly

"If you're not quite there, getting there takes some nerve." Tom Peters

"Execution is the job of the business leader." Larry Bossidy

Today's image: Portrait of a Superman by Thomas Hawk. Wonderful. Thank you!

Wanted:
Superwomen
(Supermen need your help)

Broadcast sales is broken. We need a new format. A reboot ain't enough. What's called for is a new OS.

Reading Tom Peters and it hit me, like the kiss on the end of a wet fist (my thanks to troupe Firesign).

Tom referenced Jeffery Tobias Halter. Selling to men - the transaction model; selling to women - the relational model. The example used is "Mission: Go to Gap, buy a pair of pants. Male, Time - 6 minutes, Cost - $33. Female, Time - 3 hours 26 minutes, Cost - $876."

The comparison we most often used in the last century was shoes. Men go out to "kill" a pair of shoes and return in minutes. Women go "shoe shopping" returning in hours and sometimes without shoes but seldom empty handed. Another typical stereotype involves how men get lunch when women discuss the options and go to lunch.

The bulk of broadcast sales remains transactional.

It's fair to ask - is transactional male in its very nature?

Does this manifest itself in attitude? Get out there and "kill" some business today. Is this exhibited in too many brute force tactics, male approaches including phone blitz fire selling and the relentless competitive offensives. The continued sanction of internecine warfare. The silo restricted battles of TV vs TV and Radio vs Radio. The accepted ritual of broadcasters getting up everyday and going to work with one game plan - to kill other broadcasters. The avail become blood sport.

The entire world of measured media and media behavior is changing around us while our sales departments (absent the obvious revolution in communication tools) continue, as a practical matter, to operate using a template, a format, first developed in the last century.

What part of the sales crisis continues, in some measure, because of male hard-wiring issues? How much of our inability to make effective corrective progress can be traced to male DNA stuff (and associated derivatives including ego)? Have the Supermen of the business already given the mission of fixing sales their best shot? Are we failing to take advantage of new opportunities because of genetic blindness? Held back by a belief system based upon the tweaking, fine-tuning and perpetuation of inherited best practice? A faith in operating traditions so strong, prejudice so deeply ingrained that it precludes any possibility of practice abandonment? Why do we continue to be obsessed with getting better at these same old approaches? In sum, we are doing basically the same things better and expecting a significantly different result.

Clearly, it's not working.

There has never been more cash pumped into the ad spend and up for grabs yet broadcast is failing to grow. Hint: the buyers are not at fault. Their failure to understand the power and value of broadcast, their lack of investment serves as perhaps the most valid of report cards, it's hard empirical evidence on the effectiveness of our selling efforts.

What should be done next?

It's time to stop playing around with the numerator and get to work on the more important strategic mission - changing the denominator.

My suggestion is we need to get different.

It's time to put more women in charge.

TOP LINE
IS EVERYTHING

"You need revenues to grow earnings over time"
Dick Kovacevich

"Our whole story is growing revenue"
Vernon Hill

"Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource"
Richard Florida

My thanks, again, to the great Tom Peters for inspiration. My thanks too to Dan Kelley for his kind words earlier this week. Rock on, Dan!

Catch someone doing something right today! Have a great weekend. Viva Le Beaujolais Nouveau!

"What counts can't always be counted; what can be counted doesn't always count." Albert Einstein

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot

"Life is good only when it is magical and musical, a perfect timing and consent, and when we do not anatomize it. You must treat the days respectfully...You must hear the bird's song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs." Emerson


Photo: Wisconsin Road by chefranden. Great shot. Thank you! It is beautiful here, especially this time of year.

We all owe Lawrence Lessig. Just got an email from him about the upcoming five year anniversary of Creative Commons. WOW, five years! Seems like only yesterday that Lessig and others set into motion the copyright system we enjoy, and depend upon today. Now, Larry is announcing a new capital campaign - $500K to keep the effort moving forward for the next five years. Please do join me and give what you can. All the details are here. Thank you very much. And thanks, cheers to Larry for all of his great work!

Let's mark 30 and put another one to bed: In my salad days at WBZ the legendary Jim Yergin taught me..."Your audience is the inverse of your mail." All of us discovered, of course, that he was right. My sense always was those letters to the editor were doped. Today, your audience does not have to take writing instrument in hand and involve the federal government in delivery of a message - your audience is one click away. In the last several years another old school convention has become real again. At times in the last century we knew something was happening when the phones were hot even when nothing was coming in via uniformed federal employees. This, again, served to prove Yergin's thesis correct. Hot phones typically predicted a good book or in the least a hot show. One trip to the producer's station before a show began told you everything. During the newscast before a hot show all the lines lighted up.

Today, pvs, uniques and emails do much the same thing. It's wonderful. Listener/Viewer snail mail, as we once knew it, is dead and so too is Jim's once brilliant observation. We are getting closer to the ideal that the great genius Rosser Reeves first suggested - the fully connected always on feedback loop. What a great time it is to be working in measured media!

If, I owned, managed or programmed a rock station: No matter how certain I happened to be about how good my fall strategy was, I would invite Lee Arnold to give my team an opinion on what, exactly, we could be doing better. Excellent ROI. Highly recommended. He's one click away here. Ring this man up and win!

Contrarian, as ever: My wife and I have agreed. We are sending out dead tree holiday greetings this year. If for no other reason, no one else seems intent to play.

Post #501: What, hey, just a minute, really! Time does fly. Dear reader, my sincere thanks to you for your support of this humble blog. A great many have posted way into the four digits and I truly respect and appreciate them for showing the way.

Is your station guilty of spam?: Dan Kelley offers up an object lesson. Important stuff. Ensure your team is not a party to such bad behavior. Read all about it here. Kudos and thanks to Dan!

Bonus (2 poets, no waiting): Rives Derrick C. Brown

Congrats & cheers: Radiohead on their brilliant marketing move - putting price in the hands of fans. LA Times Op/Ed here.

"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence." Napoleon

"You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable." Peter Drucker

"It's a funny thing about life: If you refuse to accept anything but the very best, you will very often get it." W. Somerset Maugham

There is never an excuse for bad manners: So it now seems that FCC chair Martin will get his way. The solicitor general will ask the Supreme Court to review the appeals court decision that threw out the FCC policy on broadcasting profanity. Related AP story here. My sense is Chairman Martin is exactly wrong on this one. You may recall the FCC argument is concerned with the so-called fleeting expletives which were broadcast during the Billboard Music Awards and later The Golden Globes. At the end of the day we have Cher, Bono, Nicole Richie and Janet Jackson to thank for this mess. Fortune writer Roger Parloff offers us a good back story here. When did it become acceptable for performers to cross the line? When we allowed it. We teach people how to treat us. No matter that Bono used the F word during an international broadcast, he is still welcomed, you could even go so far as to say he is still celebrated by television producers, hey, he's Bono. The dude with the foul mouth remains a solid get, he's cool.

What chairman Martin seeks to do is create consequences for bad behavior, he does this in the name of children. Broadcasters should hold those responsible to account. It is not as if Bono does not understand where he went wrong, the same holds true for Cher, Nicole Richie and Janet Jackson. Would Bono use the F word in an appearance before the Queen of England and her court? During an appearance at the White House? No, it's a safe wager the boy would be on his best behavior before the British royals and the American power elite. But an awards show broadcast on the tele? What's the big f'ing deal. Allow me to suggest it's manners that matter here, it's taking responsibility for one's actions. It would seem that Cher, Bono, et al simply have no sense of shame.

One of the old school rules applies here. You are an invited guest in a stranger's home, act accordingly.

Manners, related: In recent years I continue to hear from folks who are out of work and not able to get employers to return a phone call nor respond to an email. Folks are doing as they are told, following instructions and making application for employment - never to hear anything in response. So it would seem the days of a proper rejection letter are over. The majority of the time it seems employers today are not offering any response whatsoever. Folks apply for a job and nothing happens. The once popular EEO tracking form is no longer sent to most applicants. Which does make you wonder what kind of EEO model some employers now consider adequate. However, back to my point, it would seem that most employers today have no shame and that is clearly wrong. It's bad manners and there is simply no excuse. Understanding there will always be a few bad actors out there, in the ranks of the employed and unemployed, it seems today there are just too many rude folks at work on the employer side.

"Keep your eye clear and hit 'em where they ain't"
Wee Willie Keeler

Check with HR, talk with your hiring managers during the next department head meeting. Establish firm contact protocols, set yourself apart from others. Hiring remains an activity of critical importance to every enterprise. It would seem most are doing a bad job of managing contact and hiring, properly the act, make that the art of recruiting, is a contact sport.

The bad manners of others have created a golden opportunity for you.

With a little hard work it's now possible to become an employer of choice. Show some manners, do the right thing, start responding to applicants. Understand that this process is always personal. When someone is attempting to put food on the table, to pay their bills, to care for their family, it's very personal. When folks solicit you for a job show them some respect, show them some empathy, show them the courtesy of a timely and professional response. The return on this investment is priceless.

Apply the golden rule in these cases. In doing so you can't lose. Further, you place yourself light years ahead of all the other employers - it's another example of differentiate or die - to be the most admired employer you need to truly believe that manners matter!

LATER: Dan Kelley makes an important observation in chasing the topic of manners, he writes "Think of the impression of you and your company in the eyes of the applicant." More from Dan here. Thanks for the mention Dan!

Doh! Thanks for the many emails about the image used on yesterday's post. Forgive my mistake in not telling you anything about the picture. The image is that of a personal hero - the legendary genius Joan Miro. This photograph hangs in my office and was a gift from my creative godfather, the great Bob Henabery.

Bill Gross is one smart guy. Erick Schonfeld gets an interview with Bill for Business 2.0 here.

Congrats & cheers: The Live Search Team at Microsoft on the debut of their new Live Search. The Halo 3 team setting the new record for most money earned in a single day by an entertainment product (previous record holder was Spiderman 3 opening day bo) Microsoft rang up $170 million in first day sales. This is another tipping point: games eclipsing film. Jeff Jarvis on his upcoming Networked Journalism Summit now officially sold out! My thanks to David Cohn for the update and good news.

"I didn't get where I am by thinking about it or dreaming it. I got there by doing it." Estee Lauder

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." Sun Tzu

"When someone says they don't mind, they mind." Johnny Martin


The 10th and most important step. The one I took off the list, making the list nine in number.

That was totally wrong.

Here's the deal. If you had asked me to give you only one suggestion, a single suggestion that would make a difference in the performance of your talent, my one BIG idea, it would have been the 10th step, the one I took off the list.

Day job anecdotal evidence: This single suggestion is the secret of how we were able to take a #6 morning radio show to #2 without changing any of the players, without a penny of promotion or advertising. This simple suggestion is how we were able to take a #4 11pm news show to #2 without changing any of the players, without a dime of additional promotion. In both cases our 2008 goal is to be #1 and we will be (our clients are in total agreement and are now budgeting as the market leader). This approach helped us to take the #4 billing cluster to the #2 biller position (same sales team, same ratings). On the day job we have a deep understanding, appreciation and respect for this approach because we know it produces results.

I share this here today in the hope you will take advantage of the concept and, understanding this to be nothing less than really, really hard work, know that it is work that you can master. So here it is...

Performance is process. You must honor the moment. You need to fully understand and appreciate the incredible power of your influence. The #1 hobby of every talent is watching, listening to and talking about you and others on the crack management team. Talent are sensitive creative animals, they are dialed-in to nuance. They are children walking around in adult bodies. One of the very best returns on investment is getting serious about adult learning.

Let me introduce some literature from learning theory...

"The most important question which remains is that which asks how a teacher's expectation becomes translated into behavior in such a way as to elicit the expected pupil behavior." (Reference - PDF)

Pygmalion

Here is the theory in brief. When managers expect the best from performers they get the best. When managers expect the worst they get it. J. Sterling Livingston is author of the now famous 1969 Harvard Business Review writing - Pygmalion in Management. Good old J. said...

"What managers expect of subordinates and the way they treat them largely determine their performance and career progress."

Please read that last sentence again. Write it down. Think about this everyday. Two words...

Expect

Treat

Those are the two keys that will unleash incredible success with talent.

What you expect of them.

The way you treat them.

Expect great things and treat them like stars and you will get success beyond your dreams.

Stanislavski taught...

"Stimulate in an actor an appetite for his part. This preserves the freedom of the creative artist."

It was the legendary Paul Drew who taught me the lesson; being #1 starts with thinking about, planning on and being #1. "Dave, every NFL team begins the season with a playbook, a detailed plan to take them to the Super Bowl. Dave, what is your plan?" As ever, PD was spot-on! Thank you very much Paul!

Go for greatness! Nothing less.

All things Classic Rock: Dan Kelley offers up a blog for radio programmers here. My thanks to Dan for his kind words and for links to this humble blog.

Congrats & cheers: Matt Creamer now blogging here. Thanks to Max Kalehoff for the tip.

Bonus: The brilliant Bob Henabery on Bill Drake and Rick Sklar - a killer writing here.

Have an amazing weekend. See you next week in a brand new show!

"You can't escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." Abraham Lincoln

"The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may safely be left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it." Bovee

"A really great man is known by three signs - generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success." Bismarck

Today's image: Recycle, Renew, Teach, Love, Repeat by Thomas Hawk. Very cool. Thank you!

At this time every year we begin to get questions about planning, about budget process. Every year we provide a half dozen points by Dr Gary Hamel, to wit:

1. "The gap between what can be imagined and what can be accomplished has never been smaller."
2. "Today we are limited only by our imagination. Yet those who can imagine a new reality have always been outnumbered by those who cannot."
3. "By the time an organization has wrung the last 5 percent of efficiency out of the how, someone else will have invented a new what. Inventing new whats - that's the key to thriving"
4. "The world is increasingly divided into two kinds of organizations: those that can get no further than continuous improvement, and those who've made the jump to radical innovation."
5. "Dream, create, explore, invent, pioneer, imagine: do these words describe what you do? If not, you are already irrelevant, and your organization is probably becoming so."
6. "All too often a successful new business model becomes the business model for companies not creative enough to invent their own."

First questions of importance.

Why are we here?
What is our business?
Who is our customer?
What is value to our customer?

The most important four questions for any enterprise. You must reach crystal clear clarity on these four points before you can move planning, the budget process, forward.

How, exactly, are we different?
What game-changing innovation do we offer?

Getting better is not enough, it will not get the job done in 2008; you must get different. Your team must be obsessed with creating contrast. You must learn how to fail faster to succeed sooner.

What will our business be?

Our most consistently successful clients (and those others we admire) are intent on making a small number of things happen each year. They are totally preoccupied with delivering, without fail, a handful of meaningful achievements. They look forward and imagine what their business will be.

What three things must we achieve next year?

Chose three. Fewer and you are not pushing the team. More and you are probably over-reaching. Three is more than enough for one year.

This is the most common of reasons for failure. In our experience teams too often show up at the budget dance with a plan driven by six agendas (five local and the one baked in by corporate) and twelve big things to do next year. They don't have a chance. Only the arithmetic works, certainly not the logic.

The objective-solution set alignment is not sufficiently optimized due to unexpected limits in resource elasticity, second order effects may now require some additional investment.

That's a twenty-five dollar way of saying the objectives were way too big for the dedicated resources and we will have to put more money in, or redirect funds, for a shot at (maybe) making the plan work. Resources are always dear, finite. Make every dollar count. No, make every nickel count.

Fully fund the three objectives with almost every resource you have. Cut resources to all activity that does not directly benefit or support achievement of your three objectives.

Abandon. Cut every penny that is not mission essential.

The very few exceptions, of course, being those expenses to support vital activities required by law, regulatory or common sense (revisit these as often as possible).

What three things must your team achieve next year?

Congrats & cheers: Barry Mayo, long-time pal and former colleague, on being named radio prexy at Radio One. Dan Kelley on reaching posting number 200 on his blog this morning. He's a programmer seriously dialed into classic rock, hardwired is perhaps more accurate, check out Dan's Classic Rock FM here. Blog on, Dan! Steve Wexler, Journal Broadcast Group EVP, named WTMJ TV GM. Celeste Perry new KFRC breakfast co-host, with the Duke; Sue Hall joins KFRC to do middays. Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton new breakfast hosts at WFAN.

Next: You are heading an audio entertainment startup, a music channel. You are given a first year budget of $1 million in cash to cover two line items. You may spend it as you wish given the following conditions:

You are required to decide what, if any, percentage of the $1 million to invest in talent, jocks, performers and how much to invest, if any, in marketing, advertising and promotion.

Bonus round: pick one. If you had to pick only one of those two, would it be staffing up with talent, setting yourself apart with jocks, entertainers or would you elect to go talent-free, jockless, flooding the zone with a clever, well timed ad and marketing blitz.

Next time, right here, in a brand new show.

"Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study. Be a student so long as you will have something to learn, and this will mean all your life." Henry L. Doherty

"People count up the faults of those who keep them waiting." French proverb

"Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well." Jean-Jacques Rousscau

Little Steven speaks up writing his Garage Rock column in the July 21st issue of Billboard.

"The record industry, the publishers and our government should be doing everything possible to help radio, old and new, and start treating it like the national treasure it is instead of trying to kill the golden goose that's carried everyone for 60 years."

Bravos Little Steven! Thanks to Dan Kelley for the inside tip.

Today's image: Tree framed in Tree by Daniel James. Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

Priceless: Clay Shirky "They didn't care that they'd seen it work in practice because they already knew it couldn't work in theory."

The obvious remains the most difficult to see: Arthur Greenwald gets right to the point writing in TVNewsDay (Forget Cool: Make Broadcasting Red Hot free reg)...

"The way for broadcasting to recapture market share from cable and satellite is not by promoting the facts that it is free and a better HD medium, but by developing compelling local programming." Amen. Local, local, local! No matter your 2008 LO budget, increase it.

Congrats & cheers: Kevin Matthews guest hosting late mornings today and tomorrow on Kipper McGee's WLS. Middleton, Wisconsin named #1 on Money's annual Best Places to Live list. We love Middleton, home to our retail store since 2004. Google, Dave Girouard and his Enterprise team on launching Custom Search Business Edition. Colleen Brown and the Fisher Communications gang on their acquisition of Pegasus News (Kudos to Mike Orren and crew for leading the hyper-local charge). Smart, very smart.

Image: Business is change by Hugh MacLeod. Bravo Hugh & thanks!

"One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it...A change leader sees change as an opportunity. A change leader looks for change, knows how to find the right changes, and knows how to make them effective both outside the organization and inside it. To make the future is highly risky. It is less risky, however, than not to try to make it. A goodly proportion of those attempting to will not succeed. But predictably, no one else will." Peter Drucker

"There are always two parties - the party of the past and the party of the future, the establishment and the movement." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Agility is great, but if a company is no more than agile, it will be a perpetual follower - and in the age of revolution even fast followers find few spoils. Companies fail to create the future not because they fail to predict it but because they fail to imagine it. It is curiosity and creativity they lack, not perspicuity. So it is vitally important that you understand the distinction between 'the future' and the 'unimagined,' between knowing what's next and imagining what's next." Gary Hamel

In my salad days as a music director and talent at RKO's WFYR in Chicago I learned an important lesson. Having worked hard to earn the respect of my superiors I wanted a promotion to program director. Going on the record with my station and corporate bosses seemed the right approach. When word reached RKO president Dwight Case he called and said "Once you train or recommend a qualified replacement we'll consider promoting you."

Succession planning is difficult but important work. It remains the single most vexing task at every level of the organization. The identification, recruitment and retention of creative people should always be on the manager's agenda. The time to look for people is before you need them. Until you have found replacements for every member of your team identification should remain a daily priority. Begin the recruitment process after identification and before the job offer. Cultivate the relationship while getting the book on your candidate and selling the person on your organization. Having identified, vetted and cultivated the best candidates you will be in a position to act as soon as circumstances dictate or needs require.

In the near term this is months of thankless hard work. In the long term you and your organization will be ready for the inevitable change you can not now imagine. One evening our very talented and effective sales manager gave me his notice. No one saw it coming. His father-in-law had developed serious health issues and his wife had convinced him that their immediate relo to be with her father was the only acceptable course. We were riding high in April and seriously shot down in May.

Hiring is a process not an event.

When you begin looking for the best person the day your top performer gives notice the odds are against you. The pressure is on to hire. You have lost any opportunity to cultivate a relationship. The majority of the time you will be speed hiring. Chatting up strangers from scratch, hoping for the best. Often you will "settle" for the person available rather than the ideal person you have not had the time to find.

Write a detailed description of the ideal candidate.

More than simply skill sets. Who is the ideal person? Attitudes, character, values, beliefs, dreams. It is sometimes easy to overlook the obvious. Once, under the gun to hire in a couple of weeks, we went after a great talent that was in the southwest. We brought him and his wife up to Chicago during a beautiful September weekend. We had picture perfect Chamber of Commerce weather. Everyone got along and had a terrific time. The offer was made and accepted before the couple left for the airport. Things went very well until winter arrived. At the company Christmas party his wife joked that they had finally gone to Marshall Fields and bought their first ever "heavy winter coats." Six weeks later our great talent was asking me to release him from his contract. I had failed to do my homework. The performer's wife hated the cold Chicago winter weather. It turned out he was not the ideal candidate and it was my mistake. The big market, big call letters and big contract were less important than the weather. Performers tend to do their best work when they are happy. Each performer has their own unique and very personal set of "be happy" requirements.

Look for people that want to come home.

One of the lessons learned in retaining the best people is to hire people who have some reason to be in love with your market or, in the least, your neighborhood (e.g., upper midwest, southeast, et al). Over the years there were some gifted performers that we knew could not be hired away to any other town, we worried only about losing them to the guys across the street. They had their own reasons but they had no interests whatsoever in living any place else. This also applies to folks who believe your market is somehow very special to them but they are working elsewhere. Perhaps the most effective job ads we ever ran always used the name of our town in the headline (a trade secret we still use, it works!)

COME HOME TO CHICAGO
We have an excellent opportunity for the right person.

Sometimes we find people who vacation every year in our town. They may be coming home to family for the holidays and sometimes we discover they just have dreams of living in the market. No matter, these are the people you want on your team. You don't have to sell the market, later others will have a harder time selling them on leaving their market and you. Start by looking for people who believe you are living in the neighborhood if not the city of their dreams.

NEXT: Part Two - Birthday cards, timing and term sheets

Doing the right thing: Creative Commons is conducting a special two-week iSummit 2007 Scholarship Funding Campaign. The goal is $50,000. Please join me in giving what you can to this important cause. More info here. My thanks to Lawrence Lessig for the heads up.

Congrats & cheers: AllThingsD debuts. Kudos to Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg.

Bonus: We spend too much time hiding illness - "I ain't a pretty boy no more." Roger Ebert writes from the heart here. Thanks to Dan Kelley for the tip.

Bonus 2: Christopher Lydon talks with Dr Dave Weinberger about Dr Dave's very cool new book Everything is Miscellaneous. Highly recommended. Check out the podcast here. Bravo Christopher! Kudos to Dr Dave!

"Any dream you have in life you have to fight for it and go for it, this is how you achieve your destiny and deliver yourself from your fate, that initial life that was given to you but you did not choose it. To do that right you need to do it with heart, not greed."
Guillermo Del Toro


Saw Pan's Labyrinth (Laberinto del Fauno, El) yesterday. Amazing! Del Toro has created an epic motion picture, a rich combination of story, visuals and sound. The film's tag line is tight: "Innocence has a power evil cannot imagine." This is one film you must see in a proper theater, especially one with state-of-the-art sound. Made on a modest production budget of $19 mil, the project's ytd gross is $27.6 mil domestic and $25.9 mil foreign. Nominated for six Oscars. Highly recommended. Please, just go and see it.

"The best combination is a front runner who is certain, deep down, that he's losing, and acts accordingly. The second-best combination is to be ignored by those in search of a front runner as you quietly and aggressively take the risks a front runner would never take."
Seth Godin

Congrats & cheers: Beth Comstock, Jeff Gaspin and Marc Graboff - all have grown up to be presidents (at NBC Universal). Keith Olbermann signing on for four more years with MSNBC (and to think, it started as a three-day temp job). Patricia Smullin, Dean Sorenson, Bob Fox, Eric Rhoads, James Babb, and Gary Chapman all to be honored with the Pioneer Award from the Broadcasters Foundation of America. Michael Gartenberg joins Microsoft - smart, very smart.

The obvious is always the hardest to see: My pal Lee Arnold goes dial-up and it ain't pretty. "I recently spent five days without broadband service...this gave me an opportunity to see how media websites performed for those without access to high speed internet connections. The answer is: not very well." Read Lee's entire post here. Kudos Lee, thanks for the reality check. Get the download times, by connection speed, of your main page, at no charge, here.

Dan Kelley, the rock radio programmer, is now blogging here. Kudos Dan!