June 24, 2018 · 3:00 am

Now That’s Selling

salesHere are three short stories for you to ponder.

Story #1

The other night a radio salesperson was in a restaurant. Business was a little slow, and so he struck up a conversation with the owner, who told him that she had used radio advertising for a restaurant she had owned back in California, and it didn’t work, and she didn’t intend to use radio ever again.

He told the owner that he and his wife had been in another restaurant in town a couple of days ago, and the service and food were both terrible. But, rather than never go to another restaurant again, he and his wife decided to try her place, where they found just the opposite. He suggested to her that just because radio didn’t work for her in one situation, there is no reason why she should conclude all radio advertising doesn’t work.

That radio sales person had a new client by the time they paid for their meal.

Story #2

Another radio salesperson was calling on a jewelry store. She had made several calls on the owner and was in the middle of a presentation when the owner suddenly asked her, “Have you ever bought anything from us?” She replied, “No, because you never asked me to.” She finished her radio advertising presentation. He signed up.

Story #3

Another radio sales person was calling on a car dealer who said, “I don’t like your radio station. I’ve never liked it and I don’t listen to it.” The radio salesperson responded, “I don’t care if you ever listen to us, for you see we have a lot of people who do listen and like my radio station, and right now your advertising isn’t reaching any of them. But we are telling them about your competitors.” The car dealer was a little taken aback, but proceeded to get serious, and is now on-the-air.

Be Confident

Sales is the transference of confidence.

In each of these short stories, each radio salesperson was confident about their radio station to deliver results. They were also prepared for such objections.

Preparation

Prepare, prepare, prepare.

There is no substitution for preparation.

As famed Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz put it,

“Everything is won or lost in the preparation stage.”

 

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June 17, 2018 · 3:00 am

Self-Confidence

self confidencePeople who are the best at what they do, have one thing in common, no lack of self-confidence.

Visualization

Whenever successful people want to accomplish something, they go at it absolutely convinced they will achieve it. Science has shown that when we visualize achieving a goal, making it real in our minds, we enhance our performance and boost our self-confidence.

Improve Your Self-Esteem

Besides visualizing success, there are other things you can do to raise your self-esteem. For example: Reach out to others. Say nice things. Lend a helping hand.

When we help other people, we begin to feel more in control of our own lives.

Avoid Perfectionism

We all would like to be perfect. However, perfectionism often paralyzes us and can actually keep us from accomplishing our goals.

Respect Yourself

List 20 reason why you should. If you can’t think of 20, think of what people who admire you would say. (They’re right, you know.)

Your Values

Act in accordance with your own values. Choose the path that feels right for you.

Treat Yourself

Be good to yourself. Do something, just for you, that makes you feel good every day.

Challenge Yourself

Pick up an encyclopedia, or go online to Wikipedia, and read one new entry at random. Take a course at your local community college. Travel to a new place. Eat a new food.

As you meet new challenges, you gain new confidence.

Practice Being Optimistic

Fight pessimism. Think of setbacks as temporary and one of a kind, not permanent and “complete” failures.

Don’t Take It Personally

Bad encounters often tell you more about how the other person feels at that moment in time, rather than representing a failure on your part.

Don’t Take Things So Seriously

Lighten up. Most of life’s little calamities have two sides. Try to gain a balanced perspective and you’ll bounce back more quickly from disappointments and embarrassing moments. And people will enjoy being around you.

Finally

Practicing these positive measures reinforces your own belief in your self-worth, and increases your self-esteem, which will make you more self-confident.

 

 

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June 9, 2018 · 8:18 pm

Stay Focused on Your Goals

goalsEveryone wants to see their hard work turn into successful outcomes.

So, why do some people achieve success and some do not?

The reason often comes down to one factor, lack of consistency.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight or play an instrument or anything else you want to achieve in life, each of your goals requires a sustained effort. Let me give you some ideas to help you sustain and focus your energies to achieve success.

Make Sure It’s Your Goal

Nothing will derail your success faster, then trying to achieve someone else’s goals for you. So, if you want to stay motivated, make sure you are the one setting the goal. When you’re excited about the goal, working to achieve it doesn’t seem like work.

Write Down Your Goals

Zig Ziglar always used to promote in his motivational and sales seminars, “You’ve got to have goals.” Sadly, about 84% of people surveyed said they didn’t have any goals.

Remember what Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

Writing your goals down turns out to be a critical step. Of the 3% of the people who have written goals, they earn on average about ten times as much as those who don’t.

When you write down your goals, you write them into your consciousness.

Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

To stay focused and achieve your goals, you need to have an action plan. What are each of the steps you will take to move you from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow, next month, next year etc.

Expect that as you proceed, things that you didn’t expect will cause you to make changes in your plan. That’s why you should write your goals in concrete, and your plans in sand.

Keep Track of Your Progress

Write down where you started and then keep a record of your actions and progress. Measuring how your changing provides you with a valuable feedback system to keep you focused.

Have a Support System

Read positive books. Keep a success journal. Invite people you admire to become your mentor and make you responsible to someone other than just yourself.

You want people who will encourage you to reach your goals and challenge you to set them higher than you might otherwise.

Work Toward Your Goals Daily

I’m in my 4th year of writing this blog. I’ve now written over a couple of hundred articles. My goal was to write an article a week, not a couple of hundred.

Make sure you break down your goals into bite sized pieces. Also, don’t set too many goals for yourself. You can achieve almost any goal you set, but not every goal, all at once. So, focus on just a few until they’ve been accomplished and then make some new goals.

Celebrate Every Success

Every time you do something that takes you closer to reaching your goal, celebrate. Celebration is a positive motivational tool to help you stay focused, energized and optimistic.

Tell yourself you deserve to succeed.

Here’s to your success!

 

 

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June 2, 2018 · 10:32 pm

Be Cool

graduation.jpegIt’s graduation time. Invariably, these occasions call for someone to make a speech. Often these speeches are about life and achieving success. Each speech has a way of treading a path of being forward looking and how one can seize the future.

What Would He Say?

Travis Graham was a law student at the University of Tennessee. He had a reputation among his classmates as a hardworking student, but socially quiet. What he would say at the graduation ceremony as class valedictorian was a mystery to all. So, after several typically musty speakers, he rose to deliver his address. Audience attention was then a bit sharper. After the obligatory acknowledgments, he promised to take only two minutes of everyone’s time and got to the heart of his thoughts.

He Had No Idea Either

He started by acknowledging that he had had difficulty deciding what “wisdom” to impart at the ceremony. For inspiration, he consulted quote books and speaker’s guides but came away uninspired. He reviewed the cases and the law he had studied and found nothing he felt appropriate to the moment. In fact, he said, he had no idea of what hard-gained understanding-born-of-study he could share until that very morning when he was sitting at his kitchen table, having a breakfast of made-from-packaged-dough biscuits.

Poppin’ Fresh Wisdom

There, on the newly opened roll of refrigerated biscuit dough, he spotted the lesson he knew he and his fellow graduates had in common, and felt worthy of the occasion.

The package, he said, cautioned “KEEP COOL.”

This advice, he was sure, would stand them in good stead all the rest of their lives. He continued after a dramatic pause, it went this succinct wisdom one better, by also advising, “BUT DO NOT FREEZE.”

And with that he thanked all assembled and returned to his seat.

Congratulations to all the graduates of the Class of 2018

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May 27, 2018 · 3:00 am

Repeat Customers Are Key to Profitability

welcome backThe radio advertising business is all about repeat customers. Radio’s power is its ability to deliver both reach (the number of people who will hear your advertisement) as well as frequency (the number of times a listener will hear the same advertisement). Radio, for all of my life has been the medium for delivering the best frequency for an advertiser, but in today’s world, it now is also the best for delivering reach too.

Relationships

It all starts with building relationships with your advertisers. People do business with people they know and like.

When I started out in radio sales, my first goal was to start making friends with each business person I called on. I used to say to myself, “If you can’t make a sale, make a friend.”

Advertising is an Investment

The problem in today’s fast-paced world is everyone wants things to happen immediately. Patience is at an all-time low.

When you’re dealing with people and human nature, things move at their own pace.

Farmers know when they plant a crop, they won’t be going out the next day to harvest it. Likewise, when you put an advertiser’s message on the radio, it will take time to grow in the mind of the consumer. Done correctly, a business can be harvesting sales 52-weeks a year.

Great Radio Ads

Great radio advertising can benefit the listeners of your radio station in addition to growing the business of your advertisers. Great ads speak about the customer’s wants, needs and desires.

Getting Referrals

Make money for your advertisers and they will be happy to refer you to other local business people who could benefit from your radio station’s audience. And unlike cold-calling (knocking on doors of people you don’t know), a referral is like getting a foot-in-the-door. It’s golden.

Fair Prices & Excellent Service

Studies have shown you don’t have to have the lowest price to attract repeat business, fair prices will do.

Combine fair prices with excellent service and you have a winning combination.

Your goal as a radio sales person should be to become a sustaining resource for your customers. A person who they call first when they need help with their advertising or promotions. A person they trust.

You Can’t Do It Alone

Everyone in your radio station that comes in contact with your listeners and advertisers impacts the future relationship your station will have with each of them. Everyone needs to be engaged in delighting your listeners and your advertisers.

It takes a team effort to be successful.

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May 20, 2018 · 12:35 am

Clean Desk = Empty Mind

Morley Safer OfficeOne of the snappiest dressers on television was Morley Safer. But if you were to peek into Morley’s office when he was off-camera, you would have seen an office that was quite the opposite.

Depending on your point-of-view, a cluttered desk might have been thought of as a cluttered mind or as the title of this article suggests, a clean desk means an empty mind.

Spatially Organized

Let me offer you a third perspective.

My desk is usually cluttered when I’m deep into a project. (But never quite as bad as Morley’s.)

What I learned about myself was that I tend to be spatially organized and when things get neatly put away, out of sight, in a file drawer, they are also out of mind. Mine!

Productive Workspaces

We’re all different.

When people try to design workspaces for others, it will most likely fail.

In his book, “Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives,” Tim Harford explains how engineered spaces can kill productivity and innovation, while having a messy workspace might actually help us to do some of our best work.

Arbitron

I remember entering Arbitron’s new facility when it opened in Columbia, Maryland. Everything was fresh and new and oh, so very sterile.

One of the managers could be seen chasing people around and chastising them for taping things to the walls or for having a cluttered desk.

This type of order is fine for an automobile assembly line, but not your radio station.

WLAN AM/FM

When I moved WLAN AM/FM from its original location in downtown Lancaster, PA to a brand-new facility, I told everyone that their workspace was theirs to decorate as they wished.

I even let everyone pick out their own style and color of desk and chair.

Everyone was excited for moving day to arrive and had been planning for months how they would set-up their new offices.

Studies have shown that when people are allowed to decorate their work place with the stuff and personal knickknacks they love, productivity can increase by as much as 32%. In fact, people are not only more productive, they are also happier and healthier.

Moves can be really disruptive to a business, but when I moved my Lancaster radio stations, we had a record setting year in both ratings and revenues.

Mix It Up

Another way to stimulate innovation and productivity in your station, is to create spaces where everyone bumps into each other on a regular basis.

When Steve Jobs was designing Apple’s new building, he purposely made sure there would be spaces that would cause employees from all sectors to come in contact with one another.

Diversity of thought and ideas come from everywhere and everyone.

So, break down the silos that walls create to have some space that brings your people together like a tossed salad.

The Take Away

The key thing to know about creating a productive work environment is this, you can’t dictate it. You have to empower your people to create it for themselves.

People who have power over their workspace tend to be more engaged, productive and collaborative.

Just remember, it can get a little messy at times, but that’s how greatness is birthed.

 

 

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May 13, 2018 · 3:00 am

What to Do When What You’ve Always Done, Doesn’t Work Anymore

dematurityBefore I begin with this week’s blog article, I wanted to share with you a milestone this blog reached this past Sunday (5/6/2018) at 11pm EDST. Dick Taylor Blog dot com marked 100,000 visitors to this blog site. DTB premiered on January 4th, 2015 with 75 people stopping by to visit.

Thank YOU for making this blog a weekly habit. -DT

There’s no doubt about it. We live in challenging times.

The big word of the day is “disruption.”

We read every day about how some new shiny toy is the latest radio disruptor.

But is that really what’s happening?

Dematurity

The radio broadcasting industry may be dealing with something bigger; dematurity. “Dematurity is what happens to an established industry when multiple companies adopt a host of small innovations in a relatively short period of time,” says John Sviokla. The term was coined back in the 1980s by Harvard Business School professors William Abernathy and Kim Clark.

Radio’s Dematurity

Think about this phenomenon as it applies to radio.

The internet introduced the concept of streaming radio. Two companies introduced nationwide radio coverage from satellites above America. The smartphone provided an opportunity for Pandora to stream to cellphones. Podcasters followed. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat and others would compete for a smartphone owner’s attention on these same devices. Meanwhile, on the home front, Amazon developed its Echo voice activated device, as Google, Microsoft, and Apple followed with their own smart speakers. Facebook, not to be left out, says it will introduce its own smart speaker this coming July.

Each move by these technology companies might have seemed trivial when announced, but when looked at in total, they represent a crescendo of mini-disruptions.

The Currency of People’s Time

While most will focus on the shiny new innovation, what we’re really seeing is how people spend the most valuable currency in their lives, their time.

For broadcasters, the challenge is providing people with a listening experience worth a person giving us their time.

Government Regulations

Another factor that impacts business is government regulations. While radio broadcasting has been heavily regulated since the birth of commercial radio in the 1920s, we compete against online and satellite audio providers that are not.

Government regulations have enormous impact on the type of competition and the intensity it brings in your market.

Death & Taxes

Benjamin Franklin wrote in a 1789 letter that “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be certain, except death and taxes.” In business, you probably can add dematurity. There is not a business that won’t be impacted by it, if it’s not already.

Ask the Right Questions

John Sviokla poses these questions for trying to get a handle on how to build value and sustain value:

  • What makes for efficient scale?
  • Who is the competition?
  • Who are the customers?
  • What do the customers want?
  • Who owns what?
  • Where is the risk?

Sviokla, in his book, The Self-Made Billionaire Effect, says more than 80 percent of the self-made billionaires he’s profiled made their money by reinvigorating a mature industry. “They either introduced a product tuned to new consumer habits, changed the technologies of production, adopted new ideas from another industry, adapted to new regulation, changed the distribution system, or made some combination of those moves,” says Sviokla.

While dematurity is inevitable for all businesses, brainstorming what change is happening, and making changes to take advantage of it, is the difference between crisis and opportunity.

“Change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change.”

-Milton H. Erickson

 

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May 6, 2018 · 3:00 am

Exploring America

USA mapI’m at that point in life when one starts taking a serious look at their “Bucket List” and all of those things they’ve yet to have done. (Bucket Lists are those things you want to do in your life before you die. This idea was memorialized in the 2007 movie “The Bucket List” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.)

Cross-Country Road Trip

A couple of weeks back, I mentioned in a blog article that it had always been my dream to get into my car and drive our country from the East Coast to the West Coast and back.

For too long, I’ve flown across this great land and seen it from 30,000-feet, gazing out of the airline window saying to myself, “One day, I’m going to drive from sea to shining sea.”

When I shared this Bucket List item with my fiancé, Sue, she said it was something she always wanted to do as well.

Let the Planning Begin

Planning a trip that will span about eight weeks and 8,000-miles is quite an ordeal.

Originally, I thought we could just wing-it by getting in the car and driving wherever the winds took us. But that turns out to be a little unrealistic, especially if, like the two of us, you have kids and grandkids along the route you wish to spend time with.

Once you start talking with them – after all they have lives they’re living and plans they’re making – you have to map out a specific route and timetable. Plus, when I started looking at hotels to stay at along the way, I realized that if you want to have a place “leaving the light on for you” when you pull into town, you’d better make reservations. Triple A says that they expect this summer to be a banner year for people going on vacation via their vehicles.

The Map Takes Shape

Once we firmed up our stays with our kids and grandkids, we began to map out our route and timetable for traveling coast-to-coast.

Starting this week, we will leave Virginia and head through Ohio.Cross Country Road Trip Map

I’ve never been to Dayton and I’m excited to meet a radio friend and blog reader, Kevin Cox Media Group DaytonFodor who is a radio programmer and news anchor at Cox Radio. The Cox Media Group in Dayton is print, TV, radio, digital and so much more in one location.

It should be an exciting start to our cross-country adventure.

Some of the High Points

Without getting too deep in the weeds, here are some of the high points of our cross-country trip.

Hitsville USAWe plan to cruise on the mighty Mississippi River, hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir & organ, tour the Hoover Dam, stay in a haunted hotel, ride the Hooterville Cannonball to Petticoat Junction, wine in Napa Valley, walk through a giant redwood forest, see Howard Hughes’ “Spruce Goose,” watch Old Faithful, view Mount Rushmore, visit The House on the Rock, traverse a great lake on a ferry, experience Hitsville U.S.A. where the Motown sound was born, visit Radio’s Best Friend, Art Vuolo, art vuoloand tour the Henry Ford & Greenfield Village before heading back home to the Shenandoah Valley.Petticoat Junction

Oh, Sue just reminded me that we will be shopping the incredible thrift stores in Minneapolis too.

But the part that we are most looking forward to is spending time with our children and grandchildren. We have them in Nevada, Washington State and Montana.

What About the Blog?

Since I anticipate very little online time during this trip, I have been writing blog articles that will automatically post to this blog site while I’m on the road. I know some folks have become “addicted” to this weekly muse and so I don’t want anyone to suffer withdrawal. However, if something catches my ear that I think you should hear about, I will be sure to write about it and post it while we are on the road.

Now would be a good time to go to the blog website: https://DickTaylorBlog.com and sign-up to have each week’s new article delivered to you via email on Sunday mornings.

Thank You for reading and sharing your thoughts in the comments section.

It’s by sharing our wisdom, experiences and perspectives that we all learn and grow together.road trip

 

 

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April 29, 2018 · 3:00 am

Play Records & Meet Girls

50th Anniv WRKO logoLast summer, WRKO held its 50th Anniversary Reunion in Boston. The original five personalities that kicked off “Now Radio in Boston” were all there; Chuck Knapp, J. J. Jeffrey, Al Gates, Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg and Joel Cash.

Radio’s Best Friend, Art Vuolo, recorded the anniversary dinner and Saturday night reunion broadcast over 680AM-WRKO. I bought the two-DVD set, enjoying it all thoroughly.

Growing up in Western Massachusetts prevented me from hearing WRKO’s 50,000-watt Boston signal because of its directionalized North/South pattern and so hearing this incredible radio station was a delight only when I traveled to the eastern end of the Bay State.

Now Radio

For those that aren’t familiar with Boston Radio, WRKO brought the formatics of 93-KHJ Los Angeles to Boston under the leadership of General Manager Perry Ury. Before the station’s switch to Top 40 in March of 1967, the station was known as WNAC.

The Big 68 became WRKO with the launch of the new format and RKO Radio Consultant Bill Drake.

WRKO General Manager Phil Zachary

At the time of the reunion, Phil Zachary was Entercom’s Market Manager for Boston and overseeing WRKO. Phil was promoted to Market Manager of Entercom’s Hartford, Connecticut properties after the Entercom merger with CBS Radio.Phil Zachery

It was what Phil shared at the WRKO 50th Anniversary Dinner that most resonated with me and it’s what I’d like to share with you in this week’s blog.

Phil started off his talk by saying, “I got into radio as a disc jockey to play records and meet girls, like most of you, but I wasn’t as good as most of you, so I ended up as a manager,” adding that he’d been in radio for 41-years, 33-years as a general manager.

What WRKO Meant to Me

Phil grew up in Connecticut listening to parent’s favorite radio station 1080AM-WTIC, so he wasn’t one of the original members of the staff when WRKO was launched as Now Radio back in 1967. But he wanted to share with the audience what WRKO meant to him. Here’s what he shared:

“I was 13-years old and living in Hartford when this station (WRKO) came on the air. If you wanted to be in radio, there was no better place to grow up because there was WPOP, WDRC, 13-WAVES in New Haven and WPRO in Providence and everyone was working to get to New York or Boston, so I heard a lot of you guys as you were working your way up and I got to tell you I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you.”

“To me, you guys (the radio personalities) were superstars. It is what caused me to say, this is what I want to do for a living. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

“I have 300-employees now in this region and the thing I lament so much, and the thing you really need to celebrate here tonight, is that you are artists, you were real craftsmen, you were entertainers, you were right every bit, every bit, the equal of that music you played. And to this day, I can’t hear those records without hearing you between those records. And without those elements in-between, without who you were in-between, those records were meaningless to me. They don’t mean anything to me. And they don’t mean anything to a whole generation of people who grew up believing you were a part of those groups. That that’s who you were.”

“I have to sit here and thank you with all my heart, not only for making my young life so special but for allowing me the spark and the privilege to earn my living for the last 41-years in this business. You did that for me. You put me up here at this table. I am so thrilled and proud to be here with all of you because I listened to every one of you on the radio. Every one of you!”

“And I said, ‘How can I ever be as good as Mike Adams, how could I ever be like Chip Hobart, how could I ever be like J. J. Jordan…how could I ever be THAT FREAKIN’ GOOD…and that’s what’s missing today, is we just don’t have those types of people, and we don’t have those program directors.”

“There isn’t a day that I come off that elevator and the first thing I say to myself is, ‘holy shit, I’m general manager of WRKO,’ but the second thing I say to myself is, ‘holy shit I could have been on WRKO if I had a great program director, that cared about me, that called me on the hot line and said don’t do that again.’ And that’s what’s missing now, is that we don’t have artists anymore. We don’t have kids that come on the air before the Polish show on Sunday morning and play the tapes and play on the cue speaker the show they really want to do. We don’t have that anymore and one of the reasons we have the show on Saturday night (WRKO 60s Saturday Night) is because I can’t let that die. It can’t go away.”

“So please know how much you mean to me, how much you mean to our business and how honored we are as Entercom to be a part of this celebration.”

Thank You Phil

My own personal story is a parallel to what Phil shared. And I am in complete concert with all that he said.

We are real radio guys.

Radio’s legendary personalities have been lovingly captured by Art Vuolo and I encourage you to check out his website HERE and order some DVDs.Art Vuolo DVD recording

For those of us who made radio a career 50 years ago, it will remind you about why you got into this wonderful crazy business.

For those of you who want to know what radio was like before the internet and social media, it will be a wonderful, inspiring learning experience.

-0-

After this article was written, a research report on the power of personalities was released this week. Tom Taylor’s NOW (4-24-2018) writes: “On-air talent is a huge draw” for AM/FM radio listeners, says Lauren Vetrano, Director of Content Marketing at Cumulus/Westwood One. She presents results from a new study with Vision Critical/MARU, and says “We asked 2,617 consumers how they felt about radio personalities. The results show a strong affinity and trust that marketers can use to their advantage in audio creative.” 68% of respondents “were able to name their favorite AM/FM radio DJ, personality or show.” More than half (52%) “say the main reasons they choose to listen to their favorite station” are specific people or shows. Lauren says “having a connection is about more than just preference…listeners develop loyal relationships based on humor and trust.” Read “The relationship between personalities and listeners is personal” by clicking HERE

You might also enjoy an article I wrote on this same subject back in September 2015 titled “We Never Called It Content.” I wrote:

Larry Lujack, The Real Don Steele, Robert W. Morgan, Dale Dorman, Ron Lundy, Salty Brine, Bob Steele, and so many, many more. These names I’ve dropped are all no longer on the radio. Terrestrial radio anyway. We radio geeks like to think they are now Rockin’ N Rollin’ the hinges off the pearly gates.

Everyone can understand the circle of life. People retire, people pass on.

But this past week saw the “forced retirement” of more big names in radio.

To read the entire article, click HERE 

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April 22, 2018 · 3:00 am

Do The Right Thing

Do the Right ThingManaging people is a challenging proposition.

In fact, back in February of 2017, I wrote a whole article about how “Radio would be a great business…if it weren’t for the people.” You can read that article HERE.

The reality is; however, radio IS a people business.

Great radio is created by great people.

Dress Appropriately

I was immediately taken back in time when I read a recent Fred Jacobs blog article recapping a panel he moderated at the NAB2018 convention in Las Vegas. The panel was called “Fast Track to the Future” and you can read Fred’s article about it HERE.

The one big thing the panelists all appeared to agree on, wrote Fred, was that the radio industry needs “to move quickly, strategically, and soundly with as little interference and friction as possible.”

GM’s CEO Mary Bara was tasked with helping to re-write GM’s 10-page company dress code. Bara reduced that document to just two words: “Dress Appropriately.”

As soon as I read that, I thought of the Jacor Employee Handbook that was condensed by Randy Michaels when he led that radio broadcaster. Randy was reported to have turned it into just four words: “Do the Right Thing.”

I’m sure Randy, much as did Mary Bara, got some pushback from the company’s HR department, legal eagles and management. Bara’s reasoning for this two-word policy is golden.

“What I realized is that you really need to make sure your managers are empowered – because if they cannot handle ‘dress appropriately,’ what other decisions can they handle?”

Employee Handbooks

Every company these days has created an employee handbook and crafted a mission statement.

Reading these handbooks are as exciting and memorable as spending an evening with your life insurance salesperson. They’re full of legalese. They tend to drain you of your enthusiasm rather than inspire you.

Billionaire Sam Zell’s handbook when he took over Tribune opened with a simple statement: “Rule No. 1: Use your best judgment. Rule No.2: See rule No. 1.” I’m sure Sam was inspired by Tom Peter’s writing in his book “In Search of Excellence” about his grocery store in Connecticut, Stew Leonard’s, where their rules for customer service are literally written in stone: “Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, reread Rule 1.”Stew Leonard Customer Policy

These are what I like to think of as “horse sense rules.” Just plain common sense.

There’s no ambiguity. They are crystal clear, easily remembered and implemented by everyone in the organization.

Company Mission Statements

Likewise, if your people can’t immediately share your mission statement, then it’s got problems. In fact, your customers should be able to identify with your mission statement by the way your employees perform, even if they don’t know a single word in your company mission statement.

Let me try one out for you and see if you understand what I’m trying to say. Southwest Airlines has the following mission statement: “The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride and Company Spirit.”

I fly only Southwest Airlines and have been for years, I can attest that before I even looked up their official company mission statement, I enjoyed that type of treatment from them when flying.

Empowerment by Doing

A side note on the Southwest mission statement, they also commit to all their employees that the company will provide “the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer.”

I believe that’s what keeps Southwest a consistent leader in their industry. They empower their people by exhibiting the desired behavior throughout the enterprise. From the top of the company to the bottom, everyone exhibits the very qualities to each other they want deliverd to the company’s customers.

Leadership today is all about inspiring people and empowering them to believe in themselves, their company and the path that lies ahead. (For more on this, read “3 Leadership Lessons” HERE.)

Leadership

Barry Drake (“40 Years, 40,000 Sales Calls”) was a guest speaker in my university Capstone Class and shared these thoughts about leadership:

  • A leader is anyone other people will follow.
  • A leader must have integrity.
  • A leader must do what’s right and what’s best for the enterprise, even though they realize not everyone will be happy with some of the decisions that have to be made.
  • A leader must earn their people’s respect every minute of every day.
  • Be aware of everything going on all around, all of the time. Read all the trades, read the latest news about business and anything else that will impact your business and that of your radio station’s advertisers.

Management vs. Leadership

The radio industry needs leaders, not managers, in all levels of the organization. Radio’s CEOs need to empower their people. They need to “reward excellent failures and punish mediocre successes” says Tom Peters.

Radio needs to stop playing defense and start playing offense.

Turn your people loose.

Management is doing things right;

leadership is doing the right things.

-Peter Drucker

 

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