When I speak of “focus keys,” I’m talking about making sure you keep the important things important.
Example:
One day when I was programming in Nashville, I was driving home from the station and thinking, “Man, I had a great day! I had a lot of fun, did an interview with the paper, went to lunch with a couple of record guys, and took some phone calls from people telling me how great I am.”
And then I realized something: I didn’t really do that much.
In fact, I didn’t accomplish a damn thing that day!
There’s only a couple of things about your job that are really important during any given week. Make sure those important things stay important.
Concentrate on the critical inch of your business.
Take all the power you have — your problem-solving abilities, your concentration — and focus on something that will make your station better.
You can do it. But first you need to figure out and isolate what’s important.
One station I consulted drove me crazy because it’s in a market where there’s not a lot of good morning shows. I told the PD, “Your morning show has a lot of potential and talent, but it needs nurturing and guidance. Your mission is to fix and maximize the morning show.”
After a couple of months I noticed the show hadn’t gotten any better, so I called him and said, “Are you spending enough time on that morning show?”
He said, “Yeah, I’ve got a concept sheet.”
I said, “All I want you to do is get your ass out of bed in the morning and go sit with them.”
“Well, that’s not my job.”
“No? What the hell is your job??”
He wasn’t focusing on the important things. I said, “You’ve got to make this morning show better. These guys have potential.”
“But I’ve never worked with a morning guy.”
“Well, now’s a good time to start!”
I’m sad to report he never did figure it out.
I’m not saying everybody’s got to sit with their morning show. Maybe not all morning shows are crucial to the success of the station. For this radio station it was important to maximize the morning show, and it wasn’t happening.
The critical inch on your station may not be the morning show.
It may be the music.
It may be marketing.
It may be something else.
But figure out what’s important, and allocate your time in such a way that the important thing gets a lot of your attention.
You need to spend time figuring out what’s important.
Excerpted from Living Your Dreams/Programming To Win by Scott Shannon.
© by Dan O’Day All Rights Reserved
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Very true. Reminds me of a favorite Peter Drucker quote of mine:
"Effective leaders delegate a good many things; they have to or they drown in trivia. But they do not delegate…the one thing that will make a difference, the one thing that will set standards, the one thing they want to be remembered for. They do it."
As Scott Shannon points to, it all starts with knowing what that "one thing" is.
How very true
Pretty much common sense, that is all too uncommon in radio.
In the example given, the PD should have been up with the morning crew. The sad part is though, if he didn't get that, he'd probably wouldn't be very good nurturing the morning show regardless.
Love it!!!!!
Frankly, every PD or OM should be an extension of the morning show (if he's not on it). There should be a daily meeting, even if it's to touch base. Even a small one- or two-person music-intensive morning show is important to the success of a station. The staff, beginning with the PD, should be trained (for lack of a better word) to become a silent partner on the show. I once had a sales person who was sooo plugged in to the community. He was always feeding me tidbits that I could pass on to the morning show in our daily post-show meeting.
Scott was our consultant back in 1993 I was working Q102, and driving to Lancaster, PA for my first gig.. …No Rap, No Sleepy Elevator Music, Just the Best Songs on the Radio… The New Sound of FM 97 WLAN… Spit that out everytime.
Preparation, Concentration, Moderation..