Have you ever struggled to make a decision for which there is no â??rightâ?? solution? Have you had to act quickly with little or no data? These scenarios are more and more common in a complex and ambiguous world. Head, Heart & Guts presents a new leadership paradigm focused on developing well-rounded or â??wholeâ?? leaders equipped to address todayâ??s business challenges. The excerpt below explores individual and collective intuition as an element of â??gutsâ?? leadership.
--------
Individual and Collective Intuition
We recognize that some people consider intuition to be largely irrelevant, as more companies increasingly adopt Six Sigma and fact-based decision methodologies, but perhaps we can remove the negative connotations of the word intuition through a few examples. First, we want you to understand that flying without instruments, that is, without any data or understanding of people issues, is guaranteed to result in a crash. In other words, relying only on guts and ignoring head and heart is perilous. President George W. Bush sometimes seems to fit this model. He is a highly intuitive leader who has used that intuition to achieve success. In some situations, however, he is so reliant on his instinct and so oblivious to facts or how issues affect people that he makes significant blunders. His critics suggest that the war in Iraq is one of those blunders. No doubt, President Bush is convinced that he is doing the right thing, and few would doubt that he has the courage of his convictions. At the same time, he might be a more effective president if he were to counterbalance his instinct with some strong analysis and some empathy.
Therefore, weâ??re not recommending that leaders rely more on instinct than on data. Instead, weâ??re suggesting that instinct can be used situationally and with whatever facts exist to arrive at more effective decisions. Consider the way Johnson & Johnson uses what they refer to as collective intuition. Rather than analyze the data and make a unilateral decision, they encourage many voices to participate in the discussion. Because so many voices make themselves heard, the discussion can become a bit chaotic, but as Bill Weldon, chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson, has said, sometimes a leader must be able to endure chaos and appreciate it in order to discover the right thing to do. Collective intuition has helped Johnson & Johnson break away from the conventional wisdom about the pharmaceutical industry. In the past the company was criticized by some analysts for not divesting its lower-margin consumer and device businesses and focusing purely on the higher-margin pharmaceutical business. Rather than follow this conventional view, the leaders of Johnson & Johnson engaged in broad dialogue with a number of leaders across a very decentralized organization, coming to the conclusion that a broad portfolio offered the greatest opportunity for both growth and insurance against market shifts. Today, with the outlook for drug prices uncertain and pharmaceutical company stocks trading significantly lower than five years ago, that view has been vindicated, with Johnson & Johnson having higher value due to a broad portfolio of businesses, especially medical devices.
Collective intuition emerges after sustained debate and discussion. When people feel free to share their points of view, to disagree with conventional wisdom, to listen to other ideas and reconceptualize their own, a shared idea or approach eventually emerges. It isnâ??t as â??cleanâ??? as a decision that flows directly from an analysis of facts, but the latter type of decision is increasingly rare. When facts are flowing at such a rapid rate and in such confusing ways, slow, careful analysis doesnâ??t always work. Collective intuition is a synthesis of evolving opinions over time. It is a process that unfolds in a sometimes haphazard manner, and it is impossible to know when or how the collective intuition will emerge. What Johnson & Johnson and other companies have found, however, is that over time, through dialogue guided by values, a group of people will gain a sense of the right thing to do. As ideas emerge and are debated and discarded, one particular path or position will draw everyone toward it. Based on leadersâ?? values and visions, they will be drawn toward a specific decision that fits with their beliefs.
We should caution you that waiting for collective intuition takes patience. For impatient leaders, this concept is especially challenging. People who have spent years making decisions based on logical analysis and data collection may view collective intuition skeptically. If they sit in on meetings that take place in companies such as Johnson & Johnson, they may hear all the discordant voices initially, wonder if alignment is ever possible, and long for a dictatorial leader. They arenâ??t willing to wait for the voices to blend and speak as one. They donâ??t understand how they can make decisions and take risks without more hard facts.
To these skeptics, we counsel patience. We would also suggest that other methods can be used, along with collective intuition, to make the risks acceptable. For instance, Meg Wheatley wrote a book called Leadership and the New Science in which she talked about chaos theory and fractal patterns. Essentially, her thesis was that you need to move to higher ground so that you can look down and see patterns that you would not ordinarily see when youâ??re in the chaotic middle of things. This concept of changing perspective can help you see a trend or market movement that is not rooted in data. Seeing an old problem from a new angle stimulates fresh thinking. Sometimes, leaders travel to another country and view their industry through the eyes of foreigners. In this way, they gain a fresh perspective on their industryâ??s problems and may see new opportunities or fresh problem-solving approaches that were previously invisible. They donâ??t have the facts to support risk-taking moves in pursuit of these new opportunities, but their altered perspective convinces them to trust their intuition and capitalize on the emerging trend theyâ??ve observed.
Many times, skeptics donâ??t realize that they have relied on intuition to make risky decisions in the past because they havenâ??t labeled it as intuition. For instance, many leaders who have been involved in succession planning refer to the process of reviewing the job specs, the results of candidate interviews, the recommendations of committees, and the ranking of candidates in terms of how well each meets the specs. Ultimately, they choose someone for the job, even though all the procedures and information suggest he is not the best-qualified candidate. They select him, though, because their gut tells them that this person is ready and able to handle it, even though the data may suggest otherwise. More often than not, their gut is right.
Another way of looking at this issue is to see whether leaders are willing to take risks on innovation. When people come up with an original, daring idea in response to a situation, this idea usually is rooted in the imagination rather than in the data. Leaders must decide whether to take a risk on a cutting-edge concept that canâ??t be vetted through data analysis. This can be intimidating, and if a leader doesnâ??t appreciate creativity or people who look at things differently, he wonâ??t take the risk.
More than ever before, however, organizations need leaders with this capacity. Although they donâ??t need leaders who take foolish risks on off-the-wall schemes, they require top management to know when to take risks and have the guts to back risky-but-breakthrough approaches. What companies need are leaders like Chris Albrecht, the CEO of HBO, who, following both his own instinct and the collective intuition of his colleagues, launched breakthrough original programming with shows like â??The Sopranosâ???â??shows that violated many of the rules for television programming and entailed huge risks for the relatively young network. There was absolutely no way that data alone could have told him this risk was justified. Yet there was a collective feeling within the HBO brain trust that this was a risk worth taking.
Sidney Harman, founder and executive chairman of Harman Industries, took a huge risk on innovation. Harman Industries, manufacturers of high-end stereo and audio equipment, made an extremely tough decision in 1996. For years, they had relied on analog systems, but they were aware of the potential for digital systems and wanted to capitalize on that potential. The enormous switching costs, however, seemed prohibitive.
During a meeting with top executives, though, Harman floated the idea of committing all the companyâ??s resources to digital. There ensued a meeting that went on for hours, in which executives expressed anxiety and disappointment but also highly creative and cutting-edge concepts. In a Harvard Business Review article, Harman expresses what took place: â??[there was] concern that we would be betting the company if we went digital. I realized that to provoke the creative thinking we needed, I would have to let my guard down and be willing to embarrass myself by floating unformedâ??and even uninformed ideas.â???
What occurred during this meeting was exactly the type of collective intuition we described earlier. They decided to throw their resources into the digital arena, not because the data definitively pointed them in that direction but because the instinctive consensus of the group was to take this risk. This decision has helped Harmanâ??s company grow by leaps and bounds and reach almost $3 billion in sales last year.
In the marketing arena, weâ??re seeing a shift toward instinctive risk taking. Increasingly, commercials are airing that have little basis in research. Consider Nikeâ??s commercials, which are often aired without extensive focus-group testing or market research. Many of them operate at a level below consciousness. They seem not to be delivering a product message but rather are abstract and mood-focused. Yet they work, branding Nike as hip and in tune with the mind-set of young athletes.
Itâ??s no coincidence that Nike makes a concerted effort to develop head, heart, and guts leaders. They tend to promote individuals who possess a good mix of all these qualities, and they make an effort to â??loosen upâ??? fact-based leaders by having them interact with designers and other creative types. They seek leaders who can grasp the soul of the Nike brand and combine it with the analytical, fact-based decision making of business experts. Of course, there are many ways to develop the instinct and intuition that allows leaders to take necessary risks.
--------
Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. from Head, Heart and Guts. Copyright (c) year by 2006.
May
22
Have you ever struggled to make a decision for which there is no â??rightâ?? solution? Have you had to act quickly with little or no data? These scenarios are more and more common in a complex and ambiguous world. Head, Heart & Guts presents a new leadership paradigm focused on developing well-rounded or â??wholeâ?? leaders equipped to address todayâ??s business challenges. The excerpt below explores individual and collective intuition as an element of â??gutsâ?? leadership.
--------
Individual and Collective Intuition
We recognize that some people consider intuition to be largely irrelevant, as more companies increasingly adopt Six Sigma and fact-based decision methodologies, but perhaps we can remove the negative connotations of the word intuition through a few examples. First, we want you to understand that flying without instruments, that is, without any data or understanding of people issues, is guaranteed to result in a crash. In other words, relying only on guts and ignoring head and heart is perilous. President George W. Bush sometimes seems to fit this model. He is a highly intuitive leader who has used that intuition to achieve success. In some situations, however, he is so reliant on his instinct and so oblivious to facts or how issues affect people that he makes significant blunders. His critics suggest that the war in Iraq is one of those blunders. No doubt, President Bush is convinced that he is doing the right thing, and few would doubt that he has the courage of his convictions. At the same time, he might be a more effective president if he were to counterbalance his instinct with some strong analysis and some empathy.
Therefore, weâ??re not recommending that leaders rely more on instinct than on data. Instead, weâ??re suggesting that instinct can be used situationally and with whatever facts exist to arrive at more effective decisions. Consider the way Johnson & Johnson uses what they refer to as collective intuition. Rather than analyze the data and make a unilateral decision, they encourage many voices to participate in the discussion. Because so many voices make themselves heard, the discussion can become a bit chaotic, but as Bill Weldon, chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson, has said, sometimes a leader must be able to endure chaos and appreciate it in order to discover the right thing to do. Collective intuition has helped Johnson & Johnson break away from the conventional wisdom about the pharmaceutical industry. In the past the company was criticized by some analysts for not divesting its lower-margin consumer and device businesses and focusing purely on the higher-margin pharmaceutical business. Rather than follow this conventional view, the leaders of Johnson & Johnson engaged in broad dialogue with a number of leaders across a very decentralized organization, coming to the conclusion that a broad portfolio offered the greatest opportunity for both growth and insurance against market shifts. Today, with the outlook for drug prices uncertain and pharmaceutical company stocks trading significantly lower than five years ago, that view has been vindicated, with Johnson & Johnson having higher value due to a broad portfolio of businesses, especially medical devices.
Collective intuition emerges after sustained debate and discussion. When people feel free to share their points of view, to disagree with conventional wisdom, to listen to other ideas and reconceptualize their own, a shared idea or approach eventually emerges. It isnâ??t as â??cleanâ??? as a decision that flows directly from an analysis of facts, but the latter type of decision is increasingly rare. When facts are flowing at such a rapid rate and in such confusing ways, slow, careful analysis doesnâ??t always work. Collective intuition is a synthesis of evolving opinions over time. It is a process that unfolds in a sometimes haphazard manner, and it is impossible to know when or how the collective intuition will emerge. What Johnson & Johnson and other companies have found, however, is that over time, through dialogue guided by values, a group of people will gain a sense of the right thing to do. As ideas emerge and are debated and discarded, one particular path or position will draw everyone toward it. Based on leadersâ?? values and visions, they will be drawn toward a specific decision that fits with their beliefs.
We should caution you that waiting for collective intuition takes patience. For impatient leaders, this concept is especially challenging. People who have spent years making decisions based on logical analysis and data collection may view collective intuition skeptically. If they sit in on meetings that take place in companies such as Johnson & Johnson, they may hear all the discordant voices initially, wonder if alignment is ever possible, and long for a dictatorial leader. They arenâ??t willing to wait for the voices to blend and speak as one. They donâ??t understand how they can make decisions and take risks without more hard facts.
To these skeptics, we counsel patience. We would also suggest that other methods can be used, along with collective intuition, to make the risks acceptable. For instance, Meg Wheatley wrote a book called Leadership and the New Science in which she talked about chaos theory and fractal patterns. Essentially, her thesis was that you need to move to higher ground so that you can look down and see patterns that you would not ordinarily see when youâ??re in the chaotic middle of things. This concept of changing perspective can help you see a trend or market movement that is not rooted in data. Seeing an old problem from a new angle stimulates fresh thinking. Sometimes, leaders travel to another country and view their industry through the eyes of foreigners. In this way, they gain a fresh perspective on their industryâ??s problems and may see new opportunities or fresh problem-solving approaches that were previously invisible. They donâ??t have the facts to support risk-taking moves in pursuit of these new opportunities, but their altered perspective convinces them to trust their intuition and capitalize on the emerging trend theyâ??ve observed.
Many times, skeptics donâ??t realize that they have relied on intuition to make risky decisions in the past because they havenâ??t labeled it as intuition. For instance, many leaders who have been involved in succession planning refer to the process of reviewing the job specs, the results of candidate interviews, the recommendations of committees, and the ranking of candidates in terms of how well each meets the specs. Ultimately, they choose someone for the job, even though all the procedures and information suggest he is not the best-qualified candidate. They select him, though, because their gut tells them that this person is ready and able to handle it, even though the data may suggest otherwise. More often than not, their gut is right.
Another way of looking at this issue is to see whether leaders are willing to take risks on innovation. When people come up with an original, daring idea in response to a situation, this idea usually is rooted in the imagination rather than in the data. Leaders must decide whether to take a risk on a cutting-edge concept that canâ??t be vetted through data analysis. This can be intimidating, and if a leader doesnâ??t appreciate creativity or people who look at things differently, he wonâ??t take the risk.
More than ever before, however, organizations need leaders with this capacity. Although they donâ??t need leaders who take foolish risks on off-the-wall schemes, they require top management to know when to take risks and have the guts to back risky-but-breakthrough approaches. What companies need are leaders like Chris Albrecht, the CEO of HBO, who, following both his own instinct and the collective intuition of his colleagues, launched breakthrough original programming with shows like â??The Sopranosâ???â??shows that violated many of the rules for television programming and entailed huge risks for the relatively young network. There was absolutely no way that data alone could have told him this risk was justified. Yet there was a collective feeling within the HBO brain trust that this was a risk worth taking.
Sidney Harman, founder and executive chairman of Harman Industries, took a huge risk on innovation. Harman Industries, manufacturers of high-end stereo and audio equipment, made an extremely tough decision in 1996. For years, they had relied on analog systems, but they were aware of the potential for digital systems and wanted to capitalize on that potential. The enormous switching costs, however, seemed prohibitive.
During a meeting with top executives, though, Harman floated the idea of committing all the companyâ??s resources to digital. There ensued a meeting that went on for hours, in which executives expressed anxiety and disappointment but also highly creative and cutting-edge concepts. In a Harvard Business Review article, Harman expresses what took place: â??[there was] concern that we would be betting the company if we went digital. I realized that to provoke the creative thinking we needed, I would have to let my guard down and be willing to embarrass myself by floating unformedâ??and even uninformed ideas.â???
What occurred during this meeting was exactly the type of collective intuition we described earlier. They decided to throw their resources into the digital arena, not because the data definitively pointed them in that direction but because the instinctive consensus of the group was to take this risk. This decision has helped Harmanâ??s company grow by leaps and bounds and reach almost $3 billion in sales last year.
In the marketing arena, weâ??re seeing a shift toward instinctive risk taking. Increasingly, commercials are airing that have little basis in research. Consider Nikeâ??s commercials, which are often aired without extensive focus-group testing or market research. Many of them operate at a level below consciousness. They seem not to be delivering a product message but rather are abstract and mood-focused. Yet they work, branding Nike as hip and in tune with the mind-set of young athletes.
Itâ??s no coincidence that Nike makes a concerted effort to develop head, heart, and guts leaders. They tend to promote individuals who possess a good mix of all these qualities, and they make an effort to â??loosen upâ??? fact-based leaders by having them interact with designers and other creative types. They seek leaders who can grasp the soul of the Nike brand and combine it with the analytical, fact-based decision making of business experts. Of course, there are many ways to develop the instinct and intuition that allows leaders to take necessary risks.
--------
Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. from Head, Heart and Guts. Copyright (c) year by 2006.
May
16
From the author known for his first book, Your Marketing Sucks, comes his latest rant, Your Management Sucks. His lessons are interesting and told well. Below you'll find the first 500 words for his latest; it's just enough to give you a feel for his writing style.
-----
One morning in the year 2001, I woke up and thought to myself, â??Iâ??ve built a nice company. There are fifty-seven people in my employ . . . Iâ??ve got a full client roster . . . MSCO Inc. is profitable.
â??Very profitable.â???
Then I meandered downstairs to have coffee with my wife and said, â??Honey, Iâ??m going to fire everybody.â???
She said, â??What are you talking about?â???
(I get that a lot.)
So I explained.
â??Weâ??ve got a team of good people. And good people can build a nice company . . . but they canâ??t build a great one. So Iâ??m going to fire everybody and start recruiting only the really top performers in every business discipline. When we built this business, we viewed it as a work in progress, always tinkering with all gears and levers to make it better. And better.
But one day, for who knows what reason, we stopped. Or maybe I should stay I stopped. But no more.â???
Looking back, Iâ??m not sure my wife believed I was serious. More like first-thoughts-in-the-morning wishful thinking. But I knew from the moment that I announced my war plan over a bowl of Shredded Wheat, I was armed and dangerous and ready to go.
Not that it was a whim. For a year or so Iâ??d been thinking about it, ruminating over it, assessing the risks, dreaming of the benefits, and exploring the implications. I founded MSCO on the principle that the marketplace was lacking a new kind of entityâ??a hybrid between a marketing firm and strategic consultancyâ??and I pulled it all together and developed a methodology and created a brand and built a team and secured clients and went through the trial and error, the donnybrook, the roller-coaster wonder of making it all work.
The roots of the business trace back to a warm June day right around my twenty-second birthday. As a hard-core, antiestablishment, Iâ??ll-do-it-my-way 1960s kid, I had taken a zigzag route to career and the workplace. High school held little interest for me. (Living in the New York City borough of Queens, I could alwaysâ??any time of yearâ??pick up a girlfriend and drive out to Jones Beach. So who the hell wanted to sit in a dreary cell of a room in the dreary prison of a building called Bayside High School? Not Mark Stevens.)
Next I meandered through a third-rate collegeâ??took off a semester to care for my family upon the death of my father (who left us $84, no hard assets, and Himalayan bills), and later on I took off another semester student-partying in Paris.
Funny story there. I went to Paris with the $300 I inherited when my grandmother died (I lost my dad and my beloved maternal grandparents all in eighteen months). Naturally, Iâ??m living in pathetic dumps, but the wine is cheap and the girls are amazing and I spend my summer days as the only guy lying in the sun on a French houseboat (the Piscine Deligny) with two hundred women in Band-Aid bikinis. Life
was good, and then it got better.
--------
From Your Management Sucks by Mark Stevens. Copyright © 2006 by Mark Stevens. Published by Crown Business, a division of Random House, Inc.
May
9
Marketing for not-for-profits has never been a simple job; neither was that of Robin Hood's plight to help the residents of Sherwood Forest by plundering the rich folks of Nottingham. To help, Katya Andresen wrote Robin Hood Marketing; while intended for those who run not-for-profits, it has applicable lessons to everyone.
-----
Robin Hood Media Savvy
Approach the Media as a Target Market
WHAT THIS CHAPTER SAYS
- We should treat the media like an audience.
- Most journalists face at least five challenges on a daily basis: they must become instant experts on a mind-boggling array of topics, they have to be fast, they need to be first, they are expected to be accurate, and they are required to tell an interesting story.
- If we understand the challenges and can help reporters cope, we gain a big media-relations advantage.
- To reach members of the media, we need to market to them on two levels. First, we need to establish some sort of psychological common ground with members of the media and offer them incentives for covering our story. Second, we need to sell the story.
- To apply the principles in this chapter: Focus on building solid relationships with a select group of journalists; then pitch them newsworthy stories that advance our cause. Every chapter in this book has begun with a corporate marketing campaign, but this one will not for a good reason. If we want to truly understand the media and master the art of working with journalists, we should not look to the private sector. We should look to the members of the media themselves. When we enter the mind-set of journalistsâ??in the same way that we probe the hearts and minds of our other audiencesâ??we gain the knowledge and insight we need to reach them effectively. We should treat the media like an audience. We need to learn what they are like, know their values, and identify the kinds of rewards they seek. Then we should appeal to them with that perspective in mind. ----- Robin Hood Rule 9 Approach the media as a target market, not as a mouthpiece for the message. The need to market to the media just as we market to any other audience is a powerful yet commonly overlooked concept in media relations. I worked as a journalist for Reuters, Associated Press, and several newspapers, and, in that time, people seldom approached me with a sound understanding of the media or of my needs in covering a story. In fact, most media-relations peopleâ??whether they worked for a company or a nonprofitâ??simply called me up and asked whether I had received their press release or media kit. They viewed the media as a means of getting their message out, not as an audience with a mind of its own. A small group of media-relations people got it. They built relationships with me and gave me newsworthy information. They contacted me when they didnâ??t need anything to pass on interesting rumors and intelligence. I always took their calls, and I usually listened to them. By taking a similarly audience-centered approach, we too can raise our chances of being featured positively in the media and getting our message heard. To approach members of the media as an audience, we apply all the marketing principles weâ??ve covered in this book. We must connect with them, offer them a benefit exchange, and make our message memorable (in other words, CRAM our message to them). We should then deliver that message in the right tone, at the right time, with the right messengers. WHY MEDIA RELATIONS? Although taking a marketing approach to media relations takes time, doing so is worth the investment of effort. The media can play a big role in calling attention to an issue, shaping public opinion, or motivating people to take action. Consider a well-known analogy. A hiker is walking beside a rushing river and sees people drowning. He jumps in and starts pulling people out of the water one by one. After awhile he gets tired, but more drowning people keep tumbling down the river. Then he sees another hiker passing by and cries out for help. The other hiker looks over but keeps walking, and the first hiker desperately demands to know how he can refuse to help. The second hiker replies that heâ??s going upstream to fix the broken dam that is sweeping people into the water in the first place. The moral is that every problem has immediate solutions (â??downstreamâ???) as well as longer-term causes (â??upstreamâ???). For example, pollution may be contributing to childrenâ??s asthma in urban areas. Managing the childrenâ??s asthma attacks by providing them with inhalers is the pressing downstream concern. Upstream, the solution may be to require strict emissions standards for factories in order to clean up the air. The biggest players in influencing or solving upstream problems are the media and elected officials. This chapter focuses on the media, although itâ??s worth noting that marketing principles can be used also when lobbying political figures. (See Interview 1 at the end of this chapter.) Itâ??s worth investing effort in reaching the media with our messages so that we can raise our chances of participating in upstream solutions and gain attention and exposure we could not afford to buy in the form of advertising. We may even succeed in interesting the media in addressing our issue as a part of civic journalism. News outlets have covered race, poverty, and other issues in in-depth series in response to major news events; in the process they engage community members and good causes in the story and the public debates about the issues. Because we are a good cause and not a profit-motivated corporation, we have the potential to win over certain journalists and make them our allies in covering the problems we seek to solve. But to get to that level of exposure, we need to first understand members of the media. UNDERSTANDING THE MEDIA Perhaps because Iâ??ve worked for both the media and nonprofits, I think members of the much-maligned media are not so different from people working on good causes. Members of the media tend to be passionate, relentless people committed to what they perceive as a greater good: reporting information. That descriptionâ??the passionate, relentless pursuit of a perceived greater goodâ??should sound familiar. Many of us share those single-minded tendencies. In addition, most members of the media are underpaid and underappreciated. They are not compensated like Sam Donaldson or Katie Couric. They work hard for little glory. We, too, know something of that level of commitment. Let me humanize the media further. Although reportersâ?? ideas of what is important, true, or untrue may not be the same as ours, members of the media usually perceive themselves as trying to fairly tell the story as they see it. Their corporate employers seek to reinforce that image, which is why most media conglomerates describe themselves as reliable centrists. CNN calls itself â??the most trusted name in news,â??? while Fox News has trademarked the phrase â??fair and balanced.â??? Many people would not agree: in fact, the most common criticisms I hear of journalists are that they are lazy, sensationalistic, or sloppy. Why do we have that impression? Keep in mind the following. Most journalists face at least five often competing challenges on a daily basis: they must become instant experts on a mind-boggling array of topics, they have to be fast, they need to be first, they are expected to be accurate, and, above all, they are required to tell an interesting story. These challenges are closely tied to the reportersâ?? values and drive much of their behavior. If we understand the challenges and can help reporters cope, we gain a big media-relations advantage. Letâ??s take these challenges one at a time. The first is that the members of the media must become instant experts on many issues. When I worked for one wire service, I filed one to three stories a day, seven days a week. I covered everything from a plane crash to a coup dâ??état to the AIDS epidemic. I sometimes had as little as fifteen minutes to understand an airportâ??s visual flight rules or the difference between the sound of mortar and rocket fire or the incidence of rural maternal-child HIV transmission. Beat reporters also face this challenge. For example, if a journalist covers crime regularly, she may know a lot about the topic, but if a shooting takes place at a school, she needs to gain enough of an understanding of school security and teenage social dynamics to tell a coherent story. The second challenge is the enormous pressure to be fast. The twenty-four-hour news cycle has created real time pressures for journalists. They must constantly find and report fresh angles to a story. Related is a third challenge: most news organizations not only want their staff to be fast, they also want them to be first with a story. When I worked for wire services, my editors called the bureau soon after I filed big stories to inform me how many minutes and seconds my reporting was behind or ahead of competing news organizations. The fourth challenge is the need to get the story right, which is often at odds with the pressure to get it fast and first and with the reality that the reporter may not intimately know the subject matter. No matter how thorough the journalist or how talented the editor, this pressure inevitably leads to mistakes. Iâ??m not excusing inaccuracy, but I am pointing out that errors are often less about laziness and more about the challenges of reporting new information in haste. The last and most important aspect we should understand about news reporting is the quality of the story. At the end of the day, to keep their jobs, members of the media need to tell a good story. As a result, they look hard for conflict, drama, and tension. Those are the aspects of a story that make a gripping novel, and they also get a story on the front page or at the top of the hour. Reporters want to find a protagonist, an antagonist, and an important stake so they can grab the attention of their audiences and sell their stories. If that requirement sounds familiar, itâ??s because the media are CRAMing their stories just as we CRAM marketing messages. Remember, CRAMing means establishing a Connection with the audience, promising a Reward, inspiring Action, and sticking in the Memory. Members of the media have to find a way to make audiences feel connected to a story from the first or second sentence so people will take the action of reading, watching, or listening in return for the reward of information or entertainment. If their work is not compelling and memorable, reporters wonâ??t reach their audiences. Their outlets will be out of business. This is yet another natural overlap of journalism and the marketing of good causes: both require an ability to sell a story. When I was a foreign correspondent, I had to CRAM every story well because itâ??s hard to get people far away to care about events unfolding in places like Laos or Madagascar. In marketing work, we also have to convince people to careâ??in our case, we want them to care about our cause. This reality and the five challenges weâ??ve discussed shape reportersâ?? goals: getting information quickly, out-competing rivals, and telling a good story well. When we understand these goalsâ??and help reporters achieve themâ??we can begin building relationships with journalists and mastering the art of media relations. SELLING A STORY To reach members of the media, we need to market to them on two levels. The first level is establishing a relationship with the media: we need to find some sort of psychological common ground with members of the media and offer them incentives for covering our story. The second level is positioning the story we are trying to convince the media to cover. Think of the first as selling to the reporter and the second as selling the story. Letâ??s take an example. I once was asked to pitch a story to CNN International about a project to prevent HIV and AIDS in Thailand. That was a tough sell because the story wasnâ??t new. In fact, it was the main health story coming out of Thailand, and every member of the media in Bangkok or visiting Bangkok had covered it. I needed to offer a compelling reason to the CNN correspondent to take an interest (in other words, I needed to sell the reporter), and I needed to prove I had material that would make the story of interest to international viewers (in other words, I needed to sell the story). I had followed the work of one Bangkok-based CNN correspondent closely for some time. I noticed that he was especially interested in the increasing urbanization and industrialization of Thailand and often produced stories dramatizing the changing face of the country. He also had a sense of humor and often covered quirky angles to stories. Obviously, he also valued good visuals because television was his medium. Because he was a busy man based in traffic-choked Bangkok, I also figured that the closer those visuals were to his home base, the better. These observations told me that if I could frame the organizationâ??s AIDS work within the trend of urbanization, I could connect with his interests. Offering an uplifting or amusing visual element would make the story even more attractive for him to cover. In return for covering an AIDS project, he would get the reward of a unique story angle with minimal effort. Fortunately, I had just the project to profile. My organization was working with garment manufacturers to offer HIV/AIDS education to young women from rural areas who had come to the Bangkok area to work in factories. The women were young, naïve, and away from home for the first time, and they were at high risk of contracting the virus. Through the program, they were asked to attend educational sessions during lunch hours, where they got instruction on preventing the disease and on using condoms. The sessions offered a nice visual for the story. Then I thought about the story I wanted to tell and the message I wanted the viewers of CNN International to receive. The AIDS crisis in Southeast Asia was well known; in fact it was perhaps too well known. The fact that one apocalyptic story after another was emerging created a sense of helplessness and compassion fatigue in many people, including potential donors, around the world. A positive story showing how an aid agency was addressing the problem was a message more likely to motivate people to support the cause than another dire story. The story we choose to sell should advance our mission. We donâ??t simply want our name in the papers; we want the right message in our audiencesâ?? minds. I pitched the story as a rare piece of good news, and, in order to create a sense of urgency, I emphasized to the reporter that the best footage would be at a training the following week. The correspondent liked my pitch, and he did the story, complete with footage of laughing young garment workers blowing up condoms like balloons and swatting them back and forth to each other. Prevention never looked so fun. The story broke through the clutter because it connected with peopleâ??s need for some AIDS news that was uplifting and entertaining. It sent the message that supporting such efforts was a way to create good news, and it showed the impact of the project in a memorable way. It met my needs and the reporterâ??s. This process may sound time consuming, but consider the alternative. In the time it took to learn about the correspondent and shape the pitch, I could have sent out fifty press releases. But it is highly doubtful that any would have resulted in a favorable television story aired in dozens of countries. Itâ??s often wise to focus efforts on one influential outlet in this way because if the outlet covers the story, other outlets are likely to take its lead. Local press picked up on the CNN story. Press conferences and media releases have their place, but they should never come at the expense of building solid relationships with a smaller group of members of the media. These relationships work because journalists need them as much as we do. The relationships that members of the media have with well-placed, well-informed people willing to trade information and able to help them meet the daily challenges of their job enable them to get good, accurate stories first. As a journalist, I spoke with a few diplomatic sources several times a week; our trading gossip and facts served our mutual need to be informed of political developments. One person in particular proved especially valuable in providing information and quotes to be attributed to â??diplomatic sources.â??? On the evening of July 4, 1997, in Phnom Penh, I saw him at the American Embassyâ??s Independence Day party, where the whoâ??s who of Cambodia was gathered. It was a rocky time for the country. Tensions had been escalating between the coâ??prime ministers, and the rumor mill was in overdrive with predictions of an imminent breakdown of the countryâ??s fragile coalition government. For political observers, this development was not altogether surprising. If you can imagine George W. Bush and Al Gore having resolved their election dispute by becoming co-presidents of the United States, then you can fathom the tenuous nature of Cambodiaâ??s government, which was born out of a UN-brokered compromise after disputed election results. In fact, at the party, the royalist side of the government was conspicuously absent. Over the blare of Sousa marches, I quietly told the diplomat why only half the government was represented at the event. Coâ??Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh had abruptly left the country hours before, and rumors were flying that the other prime minister was poised to take sole power. My source provided an interesting nugget in return. â??You see the general over there?â??? he asked me. â??When I spoke with him just now, I said I would see him on the golf course tomorrow, like always. But he said no.â??? The diplomat looked at me over his glasses. â??He said heâ??s busy tomorrow.â??? Sure enough, the tanks rolled at dawn the next morning, and Coâ??Prime Minister Hun Sen seized sole power. This is a dramatic example, but these exchanges typify relationships with the media. We donâ??t have to give journalists the scoop of the year to have those exchanges. We simply need reasonably relevant, interesting information that meets the needs of the reporter and tells our story. HOW TO USE ROBIN HOOD RULE 9
- Decide Which Messages to Place in Which Media Before we even start to court members of the media or to take their calls we want to decide which messages in which media would best advance our agenda. I canâ??t emphasize this recommendation enough. Public-relations professionals, and Iâ??ve been one, typically judge success by the number of times an organization is mentioned in the media. But this statistic is fairly meaningless if we have communication aims beyond name recognition. Getting our name in the media doesnâ??t necessarily advance our agenda; getting our message in the media does. We want to selectively approach certain media and carefully craft the responses we give to media calls according to the message we want readers, viewers, or listeners to hear. We also need to remind ourselves to look for openings, the times when our audience is most likely to receive our message. Finding openings will help us prioritize our media targets. We then want to cultivate relationships with the reporters in those media and devise a strategy for handling incoming requests from key media.
- Cultivate Relationships We build relationships with members of the media by making their job easier. Remember that they need instant expertise and they want to be first with a good, accurate story. We want to help them on all those fronts. Providing such help requires that we become intimately familiar with the stories our priority media outlets cover and the work of key staff at these news organizations. We want to find out which staff members cover the issues important to us. We want to understand a reporterâ??s individual needs, whether he or she is a science writer for Time, an executive editor at the Topeka Capital-Journal, a producer at Fox News, or a correspondent for Living on Earth on National Public Radio. Reporters have drastically different personalities, interests, and needs, and they attract different readers, listeners, or viewers. They arenâ??t equally receptive to a story on global warming and one about a Kansas State football win. Know each reporterâ??s style, interests, and favorite topics and create short profiles of them. When we interact with them, we can refer to their work and interests. Even jaded journalists are usually flattered to know someone has been following their reporting. Then add to these profiles over time. Each time a member of the media calls, make a record of the kinds of questions they ask and the type of information they are seeking and file it away for future reference. Invite them to lunch and ask them about the stories they are following. Send them useful bits of information or propose desk-side briefings on topics they follow. Give them well-written fact sheets and background information on key issues that they can keep in their files and use when they need that kind of information. This interaction keeps us updated on reportersâ?? needs while building relationships. It gives us the ability to strengthen our connection with them over time. If we offer them resources with no strings attached, they will likely feel favorably disposed toward us in the future.
- Pitch Stories
As we build relationships with reporters, CRAMing them as an audience, we also need to be CRAMing specific stories. Public-relations people like to call the process of CRAMing â??story pitching.â??? Reporters ask three questions when they are evaluating a pitch: Why now, why is this news, and who cares? If a story is timely and newsworthy but irrelevant to their readers, they wonâ??t cover it. If itâ??s newsworthy and relevant but lacks a sense of timeliness or is old, itâ??s probably not going to make the cut. And if itâ??s not newsworthy, itâ??s not a story. Defining newsworthy is an incredibly subjective exercise. For US Weekly, the kind of sushi that actor Demi Moore ordered at Nobu is newsworthy. To the New York Times, itâ??s not remotely interesting. We need to draw on our knowledge of the reporter and the outlet to know the stories that are news.
If we donâ??t have a huge breaking news storyâ??and usually we wonâ??tâ??we can devise other ways to make a story timely, newsworthy, and relevant. Here are some ideas:
- Provide an exclusive. If a media outlet gets an important story first, it may consider it big news because a scoop makes the station or publication look good.
- Make it different. A story that is new, novel, or original is news because it has what a journalist friend of mine calls the â??gee whizâ??? factor, which lands stories on the front page or the top of the hour.
- Involve a big name. In our star-obsessed culture, the involvement of celebrities can add a â??gee whizâ??? factor to a less interesting story.
- Be at the extreme. Any kind of superlative that can be claimedâ??first, biggest, smallest, oldestâ??can constitute a â??gee whizâ??? factor.
- Play up the stakes. Most kinds of conflict or controversy are also news. The media love stories with a protagonist and an antagonist and the drama and emotion that they can bring to an issue.
- Be part of the solution. The media are often covering the negative impact of the issues weâ??re seeking to address. We can position our cause as a rare â??good newsâ??? story because itâ??s offering a promising solution to a problem in the news.
- Put a face on the story. A compelling human-interest angle of any kind is news because journalists are always looking to put a human face on their stories.
- Make it local. A local angle on a national story is news to media in our community.
- Provide pictures. A story with great visuals is always news for television and print media.
- Designate and Prepare Spokespeople
If we succeed in pitching a storyâ??or if a reporter calls us about a storyâ??we need to be well-versed in handling interviews. Designate a spokesperson and train everyone to refer all inquiries to him or her. Anyone within our cause who comes into contact with the media should be knowledgeable and trained in key messages and handling interviews.
When it comes to interviews, remember to prepare, stay on message, and stay in control. When we prepare ahead of time, we know our messages, have thought of snappy words to express them, and have made a list of interesting stories, examples, and analogies that are suitable to our audience and that illustrate these points. In the heat of an interview, itâ??s easy to forget this supporting information. We want to compose a mental library that we bring into every interview. Preparing in this way is easy enough if we have an interview scheduled in advance, but if a reporter calls us unexpectedly, under deadline to write a story, we have less time for preparation.
Nonetheless, we want to give ourselves at least five minutes to collect our thoughts. Offer to call the reporter back immediately; then take a few moments to write down the key messages to convey in the context of the story and prepare some examples, statistics, or analogies that bring the messages to life.
The next requirement is to stay on message. We want to convey just one or two key ideas and not stray from them. State the â??headlineâ??? idea simply and plainly from the start and reinforce it throughout the interview. Donâ??t disguise it in jargon or highly complex language. Donâ??t panic if the reporter is asking questions that stray from the message. We need to provide answers to media questions, but the answers donâ??t have to exactly match the reporterâ??s
agenda. Public-relations people refer to â??blocking and bridging,â??? which means using certain phrases to steer the discussion to our message. For example, we can say:
- Whatâ??s important to remember here is that . . .
- What that means in practice is that . . .
- Thatâ??s a good point, and it gets back to the key issue, which is . . .
- Let me put that in perspective . . .
- The bottom line is . . .
- I have a story about that . . .
May
1
Stanley Bing returns with his latest treatise on corporate life with 100 Bullshit Jobs...And How to Get Them. As the book description says:
Stanley Bing enters the field with a comprehensive look at the many attractive jobs now available to those who are serious about their bullshit and prepared to dedicate their working life to it. What, Bing inquires, do a feng shui consultant, new media executive, wine steward, department store greeter, and Vice President of the United States have in common? What, too, are the actual duties performed by a McKinsey consultant? Other than sitting around making people nervous? Could that possibly be his core function? Likewise, what does an aromatherapist actually do, per se? Sniff things and rub them on people, for big fragrant bucks? Is that all? The answer in all cases is "Yes." They all have bullshit jobs.Below you will find two of the 100 jobs from the bookâ??#27 Consultant and #49 Human Billboard (don't miss the link at the bottom):
Additional Links:
- Pop over to inBubbleWrap.com for your chance to win a free copy of 100 Bullshit Jobs--it will be the featured book on May 2nd.
- Buy 100 Bullshit Jobs at 800ceoread.com
- Buy one of Bing's other books - What Would Machiavelli Do?, Throwing the Elephant, and Sun Tzu Was a Sissy.
- The Official Web Page of Stanley Bing
- Stanley Bing's last three columns from Fortune
- April 17, 2006 - Richard Cory (with apologies to Edwin Arlington Robinson)
- April 3, 2006 - The Joy of Severance
- March 20, 2006 - The Upside of Anger