"What the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility - that is, what a product does for him." Peter Drucker

"Life is pretty simple. You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is in doing something else." - Tom Peters

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." - Andrew Lewis

Today's image: Hey! by Fred Winston. Great shot. Thanks for sharing.

Welcome to September.

As we begin both the last frenetic drive to make our numbers before the 2011 clock runs out and the ritual dance that is the annual budget process, some loose ends for your consideration. As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Start playing the game thinking ahead
two moves or more

Critical thinking and serious listening continue to provide exceptional yields. Paul Drew often said planning afforded the best possible ROI. He was spot-on. Putting scenario planning and game theory to work are but two solid options. Let's begin by asking the important question...

What if?

What if transactional business died?

Spots and dots represent the single most important revenue engine of the broadcast trade but what if, without notice, transactional revenues precipitously declined?

We must ask such prescient questions.

I'm reminded of that famous speech at the 1975 NARM, The Day Radio Died delivered by the gifted Stan Cornyn, then a senior Warner Brothers executive. As it happened, Stan had asked exactly the right question at precisely the wrong time (the record industry, being in high cotton, dismissed his provocative thought experiment).

It's critical that we play ahead.

Here's a practical example deserving discussion: How are we going to optimize political in 2012 and what's our strategy for beating those numbers in 2013 without that cyclical gift? Importantly, what if political allocated to broadcast is reduced or doesn't come back at all in the 2014 midterm or the 2016 federal? Isn't this a perfect time to entertain the notion that an RAB/TvB led task force be established to work these cycles? From K Street to every campaign headquarters, PAC and all of the political consulting firms there are stories to be told, value propositions to evangelize and champion.

On the day job we were criticized some years ago for daring to ask "What if?" Specifically, when the automotive category went south we initiated conversations grounded in the brutal candor of fresh circumstance. We began asking "What if it doesn't come back? What if it does come back and the dollars are shifted, less broadcast and more other including interactive? How then do we compete?" The situation was indeed tragic. Some long established car stores, the majority perennial broadcast clients, closed forever. Time spent in scenario planning paid off. Our clients paced ahead the next two years having developed strategies to replace 60% or more of their local, zone and national auto spend (i.e., dealer, association, factory dollars). Moreover, we developed new strategies and tactics for auto to more effectively employ broadcast and in that process totally reimagined and rebooted the category.

What if your transactional business died? What exactly is your strategy for staying in business? The exercise is important. Rather than wasting time in a hypothetical "losing it all next year" discussion let's first imagine 2012 as the year transactional is off by 12%, your attrition rate doubles, your DSO adds 10 more days and you lose both your top seller and your DOS. What's your plan to deliver your numbers? Ask "What would have to happen?" for us to make our numbers given a set of specific conditions (ninjas of finance call such probabilistic conditions "assumptions"). Using worst-case scenarios can be productive if they are not simply possible but also credible.

We must embrace the simple reality that transactional is, in essence, a commodity business. As such, this segment of media spend is more likely than not to move away from personal selling and into the more efficient realm of machine trading. The strategic issue here is how do we optimize participation in this commodity trading process and at the same time develop a separate sales organization focused on selling solutions rather than numbers? How do we move from responding to an avail to working with clients in a creative collaboration to produce results? We have an urgent need to do both.

Sidebar: During my time with CBS Mel Karmazin asked me to consider putting Howard Stern on one of our Dallas stations. Howard was not cleared in the market at the time. One of my first thoughts was "What happens if the airplane goes down?" Experience had taught me that the best time to look for talent was before you needed them. Fast forward. Howard announces he's leaving and suddenly at risk are ratings at a bunch of stations and what has been estimated to be about 100 million in CBS billing. It became clear there had been no serious succession planning prior to Howard's announcement. History records this as a fire drill where people were sent into the burning buildings.

As the proverb says: The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today. Mind the wise counsel of Tom Peters "The trick is in doing something else." Let's get to work.

The major advances in civilization are processes
that all but wreck the societies in which they occur
Alfred North Whitehead

Bonus: Erik Sass provides an interesting overview of what's happening and not happening in American advertising. Winners and Losers: The Changing Media Ad Landscape, 1980 -2011, here.

Flashback: The challenges faced by music radio today simply demand the aggressive employment of innovation and creativity. N=1, August, 2004.

"High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace." Tennessee Williams

"There is an audience for every play; it's just that sometimes it can't wait long enough to find it." Shirley Booth

"No pleasure lasts long unless there is variety in it." Publilius Syrus

Today's image: Test pic #9 by Dave Winer. Very cool shot. Thanks for sharing.

The show must go on

Succession planning is difficult. It's one of the only mission critical tasks that consistently gets a pass until it becomes a high priority, one of obvious and serious urgency. We should get around to that someday becoming What are we going to do now?

The sudden and unexpected loss of the very gifted, hard working and successful Tim Russert serves as a perfect illustration.

As a practical matter, Tim was an incredible talent and a strong leader who held four key posts at NBC News.

Wendy Wilkinson, already on staff, would appear the person most deserving to be named NBC's D.C. bureau chief, one of Tim's responsibilities.

But who is best qualified to serve as the next managing editor and moderator of Meet The Press? Who is the person that can also contribute to the other news division shows as chief political correspondent (and advise parent GE on relevant political matters)? Finally, who is the executive that can serve as effective advocate for political news when dealing with New York.

No doubt, Tim Russert was that most rare of once in a generation broadcasters but the show must go on. Steve Capus and Jeff Zucker have a big, complicated hiring and potential major reorganization on their hands. They'll need to do a job equal to that once done by Michael Gartner in hiring Tim (likely a mission impossible).

Waiting until you need to find someone is never the best strategy. The odds are against you especially when timing is no longer on your side. Succession planning deserves to be a priority on the agenda of every manager before need presents. It's consistently the one must-do that managers just don't do. The unexpected happens and it happens to the best of managers. The failure to develop a solid succession plan twice worked against CBS in recent years. Howard Stern and Dan Rather.

Five suggestions.

1. Champion human resources development. Every person on your team deserves the opportunity to realize their full potential. Develop the people who develop your profits. Exhibit A: Meet The Press EP Betsy Fischer started as an intern on the show seventeen years ago.

2. Make it a requirement. To be eligible for promotion people must have trained and/or identified (and be in contact with) one or more qualified replacements.

3. Formalize succession planning. Make it part of the annual business planning process. Establish timed objectives with delayed incentives for effective implementation (i.e., Identify candidates by dates certain, pay bonuses when actually faced with a need that the plan resolves).

4. Adopt the practice of continuous recruitment. No matter how strong the short list developed continue to network and search for qualified candidates, especially high potential candidates.

5. Keep score. At the end of every week ask yourself "If the airplane went down and [Dave Martin] didn't come back from vacation do we have at least two good candidates ready, willing and legally available to talk with us about [Dave's] job? Whom is [Dave] now training to take his place?" Keep a scorecard listing all your players, grade yourself. How ready are you this week? No, really, this week, right now, how ready are you?

Plan now for the show to go on later. Finding people is made easy when you're looking for them before you need them. Pay no attention to those who would have you (and their bosses) believe "There's no one out there," they're out there and you're paid to find, develop, retain and someday replace them. As the great Paul Drew taught "Planning affords the best ROI."

[Related: Timesmen Bill Carter and Jacques Steinberg write With Tim Russert's Death, NBC Must Replace a Man of Many Roles here and David Carr writes The Media Equation - In Mourning for a Man and his Era, here. WaPo's Eugene Robinson writes The Outsider's Insider here. The story all insiders are talking about - news of Tim's death broke not on NBC but on Wikipedia - BW's Jon Fine w/more here.]

Word to the wise: Don't write another liner, produce another promo or create another ad until you read this PDF. Thank me later.

The responsive chord: Tony Schwartz passes. [Obit, NYT]

Local, local, local: outside.in bows Radar (in preview here)

Grapes: Favorable exchange rates (1 USD = 3.04 ARS) continue to make the wines of Argentina exceptionally good values. Budini, Malbec 2006 (Mendoza). A good red under $10, drinks like a $25 wine.

"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!

"In your journey toward the realization of personal goals, don't make choices based only on your security and your safety. Nothing is safe. It is not safe to challenge the status quo. But challenge it you must." Toni Morrison

"Like every generation, we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality." John F. Kennedy

"Be bold, be bold, be bold." Susan Sontag

One of the cool things about living in Wisconsin is the rich experience of seasonal change. Each year as fall approaches change is set into motion and the big show begins. Last evening we heard the honking and watched the V-formations of Canada geese arriving from Hudson Bay. Soon the migratory flyway overhead will be stocked with waterfowl. The photo above is of Horicon Marsh a wetland habitat. Marlin Perkins comes to mind as I write this post opening. As we provide a safe habitat for wild birds so must managers provide protection for their teams.

Scott Berkun makes this point in his new book The Myths of Innovation (Amazon info)...

"One thing a genius can't do that his manager can is provide cover fire. Whether through power, inspiration, or charisma, managers have the singular burden of protecting their teams. Innovations always threaten someone in power, and executives in search of budget cuts frequently target them first. The manager's unique role is to use whatever means necessary to shield innovation while it's too young to defend itself in the open. Steve Jobs took the Macintosh project into a separate building at Apple headquarters, sequestering it from the rest of the company. The first laptop at Toshiba was rejected by corporate leaders, and Tetsuya Mizoguchi, the team leader, fought to keep the project alive until he won executive support; three years later, the project had 38% of the market. Any story of breakthrough work has someone acting as a shield, defending innovation while it's happening...Managers can take larger bullets for the team than anyone else."

The effective manager provides protection

There has never been a more exciting time to be working in ad supported measured media. The sea change taking place is not the stuff of evolution but rather disruptive game-changing revolution. This time of incredible opportunity demands effective leadership and the effective manager must provide protection. As the Toni Morrison quote above says "It is not safe to challenge the status quo. But challenge it you must."

The dead tree guys are holding a clinic on this sea change. Here is part of a writing by Jeff Jarvis on Newspapers in 2020...

"So by 2020, I predict, the surviving news organizations will be built on large and efficient advertising networks. They will place advertising not only on the content they create but, in far greater volume, on the content others create. This means they need to encourage others to create more quality content. That, I argue, is the key strategic challenge for newspapers: how to gather more and produce less, how to enable others to produce more content so we can build a larger network around them. This reduces our cost while increasing content for our communities. It also reduces our cost while increasing our potential for revenue.

So we become networks of content and content creators. By 2020, most news coverage will not be created by people employed by our organizations. Much of it will still be created by professionals, by people making a living off journalism. But many of those will be independent. All over the world, I see journalists laid off from their jobs who start their own independent news ventures, and many are starting to make an economic go of it. I also see newcomers creating their own enterprises."

Jeff also says...

"So how do we make sufficient revenue in the future? I argue that we need to operate advertising networks, finding and selling the best of what exists both within and without of our walls and sites. And if we do that quickly, we have a few timely advantages: First, we have the relationships with and the trust of advertisers; if we assemble the best networks, we are well-positioned to sell them. Second, advertisers have been even more timid about this new age than we have, and so we can be their guides. If we do not do this, be assured that Google will."

Read Jeff's entire essay here. Bravos Jeff! If not Google, then certainly Microsoft or a player to be named later. Agree with Jeff on one other very important issue, the importance of incumbency...

"Who is best to get us there? No rule says that it will be the incumbents: today’s newspapers. If these products, brands, and companies are to survive and prosper in 13 years, they must aggressively innovate today, leading – not following – their readers and advertisers into the new universe, reimagining and revinventing their service – and journalism itself – to exploit this new architecture of media and news. Their advantage born of their control over content and distribution will become increasingly meaningless. Their businesses are losing value as circulation and advertising decline. Their brands are losing equity as trust declines (a recent Pew survey said 53 percent of Americans think news stories are often inaccurate). New competitors have the advantage of operating more nimbly, without the burden of infrastructure and with a keener understanding of – and no fear of – the new opportunities technology affords."

Jeff is spot-on here. My sense is incumbency, as a practical matter, is meaningless in everything except political campaigns. Being an incumbent no more secures success than does being the first mover. Both are canards. Both dangerous notions past their best-used by dates.

Back to the manager as protector. At one time the sales department provided cover for product innovation. All of my greatest successes in delivering numbers to the sales department were made possible only by the creative collaboration with and full support of sales. A great sales manager buys time for product and audience development. It was Lee Simonson, Drew Horowitz, Bill Hartman, Chuck Tweedle and other exceptional leaders that played critically important roles in my ratings successes - they bought priceless time for me and my team.

It was a crisis of confidence in the sales department and a massive failure of imagination that brought down WCBS-FM in 2005, that killed the 19 year-old Oasis franchise in Dallas, and it's that deadly combo which continues to kill off good stations. Nothing can do more harm to innovation than a sales department that's not producing. Nothing builds the brand like time; the support of a productive sales team is key to the ongoing success of every great station.

Perhaps the most improper deployment of a productive sales team is keeping a bad station alive. We all know of stations that are not able to break a two share yet are allowed to continue posting mediocre ratings because a good sales department has the station on life support; the numbers are modest but additive to the cluster, it's the station that brings in the buy. We see this too often. It is the responsibility of leadership to produce results. It is the responsibility of leadership to bring out the best in others and to achieve the full potential of the assets under their management. A perfectly good full-powered station should never be allowed to deliver mediocre ratings (or sales) performance without getting the serious attention needed to correct the situation. Hard working sellers deserve a credible product in advance of competitive numbers. Give them a story. Make something happen that they can hear (or see) and believe in.

If there is one thing too often missing in today's broadcast enterprise it is the productive creative tension between programming and sales. To take advantage of today's many opportunities, to make the best of the revolution at hand, to navigate one of the greatest sea changes in ad supported measured media we need great sales managers. Nothing less will get the job done. Nothing.

Programming ace Tom Teuber reminded me of something I had said in one of our earlier conversations. The role of program director as sometime defense attorney. Here again, we are talking about the effective manager as protector. It's one of those additional duties as assigned and it's very important. Talent need protection. Providing the right environment for creative people to do their best work is certainly critical, however, standing up and being their advocate is equally important. Over our recent lunch in Chicago Tom quoted Gordon McLendon "Get people to talk about your radio station." Very wise counsel. Long, long before it became vogue to hold forth on the power of word of mouth, viral marketing, et al, Gordon was making it by the truck load and to incredible affect. To get folks talking you need to do something. One needs to go off the rez and take a calculated creative gamble. This involves a measure of risk as does any successful creative endeavor. Talent will perform at their potential only when they feel they have an advocate to champion their work. Great performances come from talent being focused on performing rather than being preoccupied with consequences. Talent need to know they can run the yellow lights.

Bonus: Build A Sales Machine

Bonus 2: The legendary Paul Drew, Jaywalking with Leno. Outstanding PD! Congrats & cheers!

"In all theatres where the playwright, scene designer or director is paramount, the actor is auxilliary. He is limited to counterfeit characterisation in accordance with the creativeness of others. This leads to cliche acting. With such violent pressure on an actor there can be no question of his truly living his part." (sic)

Those are the words of the brilliant Constantin Stanislavski. His impact on the process of acting was nothing less than profound. Legendary actor, director and coach, his collaborators included Tolstoy and Chekov. The gentleman changed the entire world of performance art by his invention, so-called method acting.

While a young assistant program director, one of my mentors, the great Paul Drew, taught me..."the program director must pay serious attention to the second word in his job title."

Decades ago, it was the gifted radio star Fred Winston who first turned me on to Stanislavski's writing.

Recently I am again reading Stanislavski as part of our research in creating a coaching program commissioned by a leading media company. The goal of this program is to provide practical productivity tools, teaching managers how to better coach creative people. We are creating learning materials for program directors, sales managers and general managers. It's a fun project.

Please allow me to share more Stanislavski found on the way to finding other things. On critics:

"When I asked a journalist...how they produced such remarkable [drama] critics I was told about a very clever and purposeful method used in Germany. They let a young critic write an article full of praise...Anyone could blame...but it took a specialist to praise.

The art [of a critic] requires him to have exceptional talent, emotion memory, knowledge and personal qualities...These are rarely united in one person, that is why good critics are so few.

In the first place a critic must be a poet and an artist in order to judge...the literary accomplishment of the playwright, and the imaginative creative form given to it by the actor...A critic must be absolutely impartial...so that he may inspire confidence in his opinion."

Do you inspire confidence in your opinion?

Actors, performers, talent need directors.

It is popular for managers to say "there is no talent out there." Nonsense. There are too few directors out there. Too few creative collaborators.

One issue I have with the majority of consultants, researchers, program directors, corporate staff and others with the power to say no - they lack any real empathy with talent, lack a true working understanding and in some cases any appreciation of the creative process. What they lack most is the much needed respect of creative people. Equally, they lack a genuine respect for the gifted creative class. The freaks just ain't feeling the love and it's the freaks that always make the difference in the ball game. This is especially true in the case of rising stars, the freaks in training wheels. To steal from Scott Shannon, those baby djs with the greatest promise. Those folks require, need and deserve special handling.

Any person of average intelligence can master selector. This we know to be a proven fact. What we need here are not more secret F key shortcuts to cooking a perfect log, what we need here is a far larger, and growing, class of those serious about effective creative leadership.

We have a leadership problem. As has been written here earlier...

"Let's agree to stop describing our programming as compelling unless something actually happens on the radio station after the morning show that is not a liner, a sweeper, a promo, that day's music log, or one exceptionally good phone bit with a contest winner." More here.

It is well known that my air work, on radio and television was nothing deserving of praise but it did give me valuable perspective. Having Fred Winston cross-plug me, derisively, as "The Perry Como of Chicago radio" certainly kept what, if any, ego I had in check and served to promote my desire to get off the air and into management. Winston was and is a star, I was a journeyman (using the most generous of definition). Nonetheless, cracking the mic, being on camera, filing a story on deadline, being held accountable for my ratings, being one of the troupe, each and all taught important lessons. Each and all made me a better news director, a better program director, a better general manager and a far better group guy.

It is the responsibility of management to find, recruit, develop and retain talent. It is the responsibility of management to bring out the best in others. It is the responsibility of leadership to enable, encourage, incite, abet, foment, instigate, recognize and reward great performances. It's about the discipline of going to work each and every day to commit great radio, to commit great television or to commit great journalism.

"Readers are leaders" so said Johnny Martin. Read more, learn more. Come on, do it, make something happen, get the Amazon info here.

Bonus: VRM