"We Don't Have A Strategy Yet"

Creating a solid strategy begins by recognizing when you lack one.

When President Obama was quoted so widely last week, it reminded me of some great advice from John Parikhal, founder of Joint Communications, The Media Fix and Breakthrough Management.

It's also a good time to ask yourself if you have one. 

John calls strategy the outline and says it must be long-term.  “Tactics are the colors that we paint with inside the outline.”

Keys to building an excellent strategy, which I assume the Prez is waiting for from the Pentagon and our potential allies:

1.  ID the win.  Establish a clear long-term goal.
2.  Know the players, both your troops and the enemy.
3.  Sift all available info to focus the plan on reality.
4.  Know the rules of offense, defense, flanking and guerrilla warfare.

Admitting you don’t have a strategy is actually a great place to start building one.  The tools to get it done (for a radio station, since I’ll leave foreign policy to greater minds):

1.  Research
2.  Advertising, promotion and marketing.
3.  Management skills.

The researcher feels every GM should spend 12 hours outside the radio station each month by simply listening to the radio with a different member of his staff and take the morning personality or team for a drive in morning traffic to listen to the radio at least once every 90 days.

Parikhal encourages his clients to learn what motivates your own staff and your listeners psychologically.  Every person is unique.  Figure out what makes each of them tick.

In your workplace, for example:

Drivers        Expressives     Analytics        Amiables
——            ——                 ——               ——
Save time    Save effort       Save face       Save the relationship
Action         Applause          Be right          Trust
Control        Social              Avoid              Support
GM             Talent             Researcher    Sales

He says that “most companies don’t understand Analytics and Amiables, in spite of the fact that they most often are the people who are the “long timers” on every staff.

BCAB Video Rewind

Now, I know what you can spend this beautiful spring weekend doing, watching videos on your computer, replaying last week's British Columbia Association of Broadcasters' convention in Victoria.

Mark Ramsey (click to watch it): "The way we think about our industry needs to change. We need to broaden the focus and broaden the language."

Bob Garfield tells us we are all doomed (but then he offers a plan and some hope): "Listenomics – listen to customers and users, monitizing those conversations. We must be a master of all platforms, text, audio, and video. Whoever does the best job of listening to the audience and provides what they want will be the winner, who may not even exist yet given the fact that the barriers to entry are falling very fast."

Larry Rosin (click to see his presentation): "How can we push advertising messages that are of interest to our website viewers? Radio station web sites are improved but TV and print sites are leading the local battle. Forty-eight percent say that radio station Web sites have gotten more interesting compared to 17 percent believing them to be worse or less interesting. However, monthly visitation to radio station Web sites (16 percent) among persons 12+ lags visitation to local TV and local newspaper Web sites."

John Parikhal: Five trends impacting your success: Demographic shift, The disappearing middle, Always on, The filter factor creating a Power Shift from "us" to "the end user."

The radio "Presidents Panel:" Denise Donlan CBC, “In a world of choice, why us?” Corus' JJ Johnson, "Radio is still all about great content and great people. Stop living in fear – think forward and do something about it." Chris Gordon, CHUM: "We are leaner and meaner. Now that we seem to be coming out of this recession and the revenue is coming back we all need to invest in brand extension and staff training. The battle for radio is clearly to continue to own the mobile platforms." Pattison's Rick Arnish: "I am very bullish about the future. We have valuable brands & great relationships with advertisers and listeners. Culture is important. We use TTI (Total team involvement) and it helps our culture. We allow our market managers to make decisions, because they know their market better than anyone." Vista's Terry Coles: "The more things change the more things stay the same. We still need to create great content so we can do a better job of serving the audience."

Thanks, BCAB for one of the best meetings I've attended this year, making me excited to see what they have in store in Kelowna in 2011.