"Every valuable creative idea (concepts and perceptions, not artistic expression) must always be logical in hindsight. If it was not, we would never recognize the value of that idea. It could only seem a 'crazy idea'. We might catch up with it in twenty years time - or never, for it might truly be a crazy idea." Edward de Bono

"Life does not stand still. Where there is no progress there is disintegration. Today a thousand doors of enterprise are open to you, inviting you to useful work. To live at this time is an inestimable privilege, and a sacred obligation devolves upon you to make right use of your opportunities. Today is the day in which to attempt and achieve something worth while." Grenville Kleiser

"Men and women love inertia. And to my way of thinking, inertia is the silent killer of most businesses and, in some cases, entire industries as well. Inertia in business, both up and down the chain of decision making, is no different than inertia in other aspects of one's life; it has to do with protecting one's identity, immediate self interest and inter-personal relationships." Tom Asacker

The efficacy of out-thinking the competition to win is rarely, if ever, considered. First, thinking is hard work. As George Bernard Shaw famously said "Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week." It is tempting to substitute analysis for thinking and it is wrong. Edward de Bono writes...

"We have always depended on analysis not only to solve problems but also for our source of new ideas. Most people in education, science, business and economics still believe that the analysis of data will give us all the new ideas that we need. Unfortunately, this is not so. The mind can see only what it is prepared to see. That is why after a breakthrough in science we look back and find that all the needed evidence was available a long time before but could be seen only through the old idea (Kuhn's paradigm shift). There is a desperate need for the sort of 'idea work' or conceptual effort that Einstein provided in his field and Keynes in his. We know this is important, but we are content to let it happen by chance or genius because our traditions of thinking hold that analysis is enough...The brain has to use existing patterns and catchments. When we believe that we are analysing (sic) data we are really only trying out our stock of existing ideas to see which one might fit. It is true that if our stock of possible ideas is rich then our analysis will be adequate. But the analysis of data will not by itself produce new ideas." (I Am Right, You Are Wrong)

Tom Asacker is correct when he says inertia is a silent killer. My suggestion is inertia and analysis are a very dangerous combination. They lead us to see reality not as it is but as it was or as we wish it to be. Again Edward de Bono...

"Perhaps the greatest dangers are those of arrogance, complacency and the ability to defend that arrogance and complacency. An acknowledgement (sic) of inadequacy is a prelude to change. A defence (sic) of arrogance is a denial of any need to change...The arrogance of logic means that if we have a logically impeccable argument then we must be right" (ibidem)

Congrats & cheers: Michael Walsh new Interep prexy and COO.

Buzz: Facebook to Mr Softy for $6 billion? John Battelle's take on why Mark and his team (after passing on Yahoo's $1 billion) ain't sellers, here. The Scobleizer pov here w/comments. Kudos to John and Robert.

Report card - video: Nielsen-Netratings June, uvs. YouTube 51 mil, Google Video 18 mil, AOL 16 mil, Yahoo 15 mil.



First day at school - CBS-FM: My friend Rick Sklar said it best about new stations "Listen in four weeks." While it is unfair to judge any format initiative on the first day there are almost as many opinions on the CBS-FM debut as there are about which is the best slice in the city, which is the true or best Original Ray's or whether one really need go to Brooklyn for the finest burned meat. Allan Sniffen has devoted a board to the flip here. The Sean Ross First Listen is now on offer here. Dan Kelley gives his pov including some tunes he would have included out on the first day here. The Daily News writer David Hinckley on the change and the first day.

Failing to take Sklar's wise counsel we punched up the stream and played it in the office all afternoon and into the evening. The tech errors were to be expected but early on someone put audition audio of the phone bus on the stream and we were able to listen to callers being coached on their shout outs. The duration of this error was such that one wonders if no one was monitoring the stream or those that were thought someone else was already on it. The stream returned with Jack. A cache clear and relaunching the player brought back the main channel stream.

Between phone calls and meetings I was able to get a good sense of the first hours and they were not bad. The production, advertised as some of "the best work from across the company" was disappointingly average. It was good to hear Ziggie back doing the vo. The drops with city celebs including Senator Clinton are a good idea and deserve better staging (there's a solid branding element in there). The music log was not as strong as it needed to be on the first day. My thought being the station should have played more to the core and featured the best testing tunes not now being heard on other stations. Era, tempo and construction (sound) balance needed work, the log could have been cooked much better. The station's music was different but not different enough as played. The talent sounded up and good. The web page and player were, again, ok. Top of the page banner art icons need work. Aretha and Bruce - ok. Doobies - maybe. Rick James - no. Paul and John without Ringo and George?. Missed opportunity. Kudos for having something up and bonus points for putting up the videos, a nice touch. Not playing Hit the road Jack? A significant missed opportunity, shame. Playing Jack for a chump in his last hours - "who is Bob Shannon?" - priceless.

Overall, I give the first day an A for concept and a C+ for execution. It is certain to get better each day. Congrats and cheers to all involved. I'll wait four weeks before listening again.

Bonus: A collection of quotations on creativity, lateral thinking and problem solving here.

Photo: day dream by rabbilydia. Very cool image. Thanks!

"The successful producer of an article sells it for more than it cost him to make, and that's his profit. But the customer buys it only because it is worth more to him than he pays for it, and that's his profit. No one can long make a profit producing anything unless the customer makes a profit using it." Samuel B. Pettengill

"Great opportunities come to all, but many do not know they have met them. The only preparation to take advantage of them is single fidelity to watch what each day brings." Albert Dunning

"The life each of us lives is the life within the limits of our own thinking. To have life more abundant, we must think in the limitless terms of abundance." Thomas Dreier

Inertia: Tom Asacker makes a cogent argument reduced to one word. During our discussion at the airport the other evening Tom offered this insight - the solutions to the biggest challenges facing broadcasters are being suppressed by the considerable powers of inertia. Bravo Tom! He's right on the mark. It's the conventional wisdom, the accepted best practice, the things we do because we have always done them, these represent too many of our self-imposed limitations. The press of daily affairs too often pushes us into performance by rote. The danger is to continue doing something long after its best used by date. To perpetuate habit for no good reason. We must dare to question this industry genetic blindness. Game-changing innovation requires that we achieve what amounts to an escape velocity, that certain sustained burst of well focused new activity needed to break free of bad habit and begin to set good, effective habit. If you have not spent some time on Tom's blog you should. Check out his writing: a clear eye. Highly recommended.

Congrats & cheers: Gwen Piening, Linda Compton, Christine Merritt, Dennis Lyle, Gary White and colleagues on their achievements in bringing to life the Midstates Broadcast Management Futures Summit. Dan Mason and his WCBS-FM team, Jennifer Donohue, Brian Thomas, and staff on doing the right thing and in the process making history. Welcome back! Check out the special launch day audio and listen live here.

The obvious: Tomorrow is Friday the 13th

"The past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post-mortems. And remember, no one can get the jump on the future." Carl Sandburg

"The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions." Dave E. Smalley

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." Wernher von Braun

Ground stop (GS), a part of life on the road. Two big ones this week. Missed one by hours, the other got me. O'Hare got hit with some summer rain Monday and Tuesday. The Monday event included hail. My flight was gone hours before. When the Tuesday rains rolled in I was on the ground in Louisville heading home. Once ground crews could not do their jobs in Chicago, O'Hare originated a GS. As a practical matter our flight from Louisville and others into O'Hare were "grounded." We waited for our "release" (i.e., "ok, release them, let em take off"). Them are the rules.

My advice is always bring a good book (or three) in the carry-on. My thanks to the United team in Louisville and at O'Hare for keeping us dialed-in. When I finally got to O'Hare, running from Term 1 to Term 2, my flight to Madison was "closed" meaning the last flight to Madtown had been missed. So much for my three hour layover pad. Experience has taught me, last flights out are, more often than not, a bad wager. Again, Mr. Murphy showed up to remind me - the last flight out odds are not so good, especially during the summer storm season. The temptation to keep the next morning auto-re-book and spend the night with friends in Chicago was strong but quashed by the press of affairs - that pesky day job again. Exhibit A - writing this post in the dead of night back home in Wisconsin.

The very cool thing about unexpected layovers is...the unexpected. Turns out Tom Asacker was in the room during my brief talk and he too was grounded, or somehow otherwise delayed, in Louisville. Kind enough to introduce himself, we had a fun chat. Thanks Tom! (p.s. sorry I missed your keynote - pesky day job, again).

Congrats & cheers: The first Broadcast Management Futures Summit was a fine first! French Lick is a very different venue. More in the coming daylight, including propers.

Thank you very much: Lindsay Wood Davis for his leadership of our session. The legendary Marv Dyson for his kindness in inviting me to join him and his family at one of the head tables for lunch - always a privilege Marv, always.

Hundreds of emails behind. Please standby. More later today.

"On the whole, it is patience which makes the final difference between those who succeed or fail in all things. All the greatest people have it in an infinite degree, and among the less, the patient weak ones always conquer the impatient strong." John Ruskin

"Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving." John Dewey

"A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. They surround the world's ignorance and press for admission." Austin Phelps

Back on the road again. Chicago, Louisville, French Lick. Back to the blog Wednesday, sooner if I get a break in my schedule.

"Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare." John Dryden

"I've noticed two things about men who get big salaries. They are almost invariably men who, in conversation or in conference, are adaptable. They quickly get the other fellow's view. They are more eager to do this than to express their own ideas. Also, they state their own point of view convincingly." John Hallock

"The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come." Clive S. Lewis

Ran out of week, fast. A whole bunch of things going on and, of course, all at the same time. My thanks to those involved for inviting me to give a talk earlier this week. Asked to "update" A Great General Manager, we produced a very cool, fresh session with playbook and headed it "A Great General Manager: Agenda 2010." Much fun. It rocked. Thank you!

Excited about next week's talk at the Broadcast Management Futures Summit in French Lick. Moderating the HD Radio session and participating in the Lindsay Wood Davis Best Practices event.

Leadership in the creative organization continues to be a very interesting subject. The one factor offering the best return is strong leadership. In my experience either you benefit from having it or you fail to realize potential when not having it.

Claude Hall in the hospital: Mr Vox Jox is at Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas. George Wilson reports via RDN publisher Larry Shannon that Claude is doing well. Reach out to Claude at 702-733-8800, room 322.

Congrats & cheers: Les Brown, host, and John Hannah, MC, on their Friday salute to programming ace Elroy Smith. Elroy on his fifteen years of making a positive difference in Chicago and in the industry. Radio One on the smart move of engaging Elroy as their Philly OM.

July 7, 1972: Somewhere, today, Dick Bozzi is laughing - in the least - smiling.

Priceless: "Art is a choreography of attention" From the Edward de Bono writing I Am Right, You Are Wrong.

Perhaps the timing is perfect to suggest a "Leadership: Media" gathering. Using the unconference model, lots of interaction from the day of announcement thru the event. Different, really, really different than anything now, or before, on offer. 2008? Just a thought.