One night when I was 9 years old, I had terrible, shooting pains in my stomach. I ran into my parents’ room and loudly declared that my appendix had burst and I needed to go to the hospital immediately. Shocked, but probably skeptical because I was 9, my parents rushed me to the ER. As I writhed in pain the doctor ran several tests that all came back fine. A little perplexed, he finally asked me how long it had been since I’d gone number two. I responded, ‘I don’t know several weeks I think.’ Then he asked about my diet, which consisted of pizza, tacos, nacho cheese Doritos and little else. So, he gave me a laxative and sent me home. My appendix was still intact. I had just recently heard a guy whose appendix had ruptured describe the pain. Which led me to believe the same had happened to me when I began experiencing the worst stomach pains I’d felt in my short life. That’s the challenge with self-diagnosing. We often miss the obvious answer. The same applies to chronically under-performing radio stations. It’s almost impossible to properly diagnose their problems, much less fix them, without seeking outside help. Here’s why.
We’re too close to it. Unless we’re psychopaths, it’s impossible to work for a radio group with multiple employees and not form attachments. Whether that’s bonding with fellow employees, which is of course a good thing. Or falling in love with specific music, programming features, promotions, contests or even workflow processes. Inevitably those attachments will create biases that impact many of our decisions. Plus, every market and group develops into a bubble where they begin to think all of their problems are unique to them, which is almost never true. Especially now as the industry is changing dramatically, we’re all fighting roughly the same issues virtually everywhere. All of these challenges are easier to face with an outside expert weighing in who A) has a thirty-thousand-foot view of the operation and B) has seen and dealt with similar issues at many other stations. We also like to pair our consulting with regular market visits to help identify the legitimate local and regional differences and get to know the staff’s strengths and weaknesses (which we all have) so we can better customize our suggestions.
While it’s true that bringing in one great new employee can make a massive difference for a whole operation. It’s also true that it’s very hard for a single person, regardless of their position, to change the culture of an entire operation on their own. What often happens is that person comes in with a bunch of new ideas and philosophies and meets with massive resistance from the staff, especially the long-term employees who are the first to point out that they tried something similar once and it didn’t work with virtually every suggestion. So, eventually the new ideas start to dry up and the passion that walked in the door with them begins to dry up as well. Groups will get better results by pairing that new employee with an outside expert who helps them sift through those ideas to find the most actionable ones, groups them in with an overall strategy, and reinforces that strategy until they get past the staff pushback.
What do you think? Can you self-diagnose your station’s problems and the solutions necessary to fix them without seeking outside help? Comment below or email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com.
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