Illustration © 2009 by Bobby Ocean
May, 1995 (continued):
As you might recall from last week’s installment, Caracol Radio had brought me to Colombia to talk to its salespeople about commercial copywriting.
Finally it was time for my speech/seminar (a combination of both). Now, I speak a little bit of “street Spanish,” but certainly not enough to deliver an entire presentation in that language. One or two sentences at a time is the most I can handle.
I can, however, read Spanish quite convincingly. My accent and pronunciation are pretty good, and if you heard me reading Spanish and you didn’t know better, you’d think I understood what I was saying.
In other words, this is the first time I’d spoken in a country whose native language I could at least fake. (On the other hand, I cannot even attempt to read aloud a sentence in Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian, German, etc., so in those countries I simply struggle to learn to say “thank you” convincingly.)
So I worked with a Spanish-fluent friend of mine to prepare two paragraphs with which to open my presentation. I deliberately did not tell my hosts that I had done this preparation; I wanted to surprise and delight them with my fluency.
I went over every phrase, every word. I rehearsed it again and again, paying special attention to certain words which I found difficult to pronounce. I practiced my gestures, my pauses, my facial expressions.
By the time I mounted the stage to speak, I was ready.
In the very first sentence, I told the audience how excited I was to be enjoying my very first trip to Colombia.
The Spanish word for “trip” is viaje (vee-ah-hay). This was not one of the words I had had trouble pronouncing.
But in my nervousness, I said vieja (vee-ay-hah).
As you can see, these two words are identical.
Almost.
I mean, it’s the same five letters, with the “e” and the “a” transposed. All in all, a pretty tiny mistake.
Viaje means “visit.”
Vieja means “old woman.”
When I proudly and enthusiastically announced how excited I was to be enjoying my very first old woman in Colombia, 300 radio advertising people fell on the floor laughing.
Perhaps because of this humiliating blunder, my presentation seemed to take much, much longer than usual. Usually I am pretty good at estimating how much material I need to prepare for a given length of time, and I always prepare more material than I’ll have time for.
In this case, I knew my seven pages of notes would carry me through considerably more than the two hours I was scheduled to speak.
When I got to the end of Page 5, I figured I had 15-20 minutes left. I glanced at the little alarm clock I had placed unobtrusively on the lectern, and I was shocked: Only one hour had elapsed. An hour still to go and I had exhausted 70% of my prepared material.
How could this happen?
I slowed down. Way down. To a crawl.
After turning over Page 6, leaving me with just one more page of notes, I looked at the clock again. There still was one hour left.
I was very hot. (I told you it’s hot & humid there.) I was tired. I was embarrassed by my viaje/vieja debacle. And all I could do was stare at the clock and wonder, “How can this be? How can I have gone through an entire page of notes and still have an hour left?”
Then I realized: The clock had stopped.
I glanced at my watch. I had just five minutes left.
You know how relieved you are when you awaken from a nightmare and realize it was just a bad dream? That’s exactly how I felt.
Next Month: Getting frisked at Bogotá Airport…plus my train ride with skinheads in Germany.
A program director writes:
Being a former PD and jock, my GM/Owner insists on being involved in every aspect of what I do. He has criticized my choice of music in a promo. He’s insisted I word a promo in a certain way. He hovers over my shoulder when I’m working on ProTools, whether it be a station promo or a commercial.
I dread Monday mornings because I fear his detailed checklist of what went wrong over the weekend. I dread his rundown of the mistakes my afternoon jock makes. He assures me that she is leagues better than the former afternoon announcer and that she does a good job…but, “Why does she have to use those phrases? And she repeats herself….And….” Then he goes to her and questions her about the same things.
I know that I should be happy that I have a GM who is interested in the way the radio station sounds, but MY GOD…I have a job to do. I am the Program Director. He’s the General Manager. He has my department to oversee, the office manager to oversee, the sales staff to oversee. OVERSEE…not DO. I feel like I am a glorified DJ. One who signs affidavits but certainly can’t make any decisions.
His presence in the production studio stifles creativity because he wants you to explain what you’re doing as you do it. He wants to hear success as soon as you load the workparts in. How often have you had a brainstorm on a promo and walked into the studio…hoping it would turn out…and when it didn’t you’d try it again when you’d have a fresh perspective? Well, there was a time I did that, too.
His inability to give up control of promotions and small details of radio station operations makes me feel very underappreciated. He calls his constant criticism “brainstorming.” He refers to his complaints as “managers’ meetings”…when in fact they take place in the studio while I’m trying to do my airshift.
His interference with the talent questions my authority. It totally undermines my aircheck sessions and makes the talent feel like they can’t try anything creative…for fear that he will come running in and question them. Whatever the talent and I are trying to overcome via aircheck sessions and random taping is undermined by the fact that he will bring it up to me every morning that “she’s getting too wordy again.”
It makes me look like I don’t make any decisions regarding talent and that they really don’t need to talk to me about anything; they should go to him. His response is, “The day I, as GM, can’t talk to one of my workers is the day I lock the doors.”
Keep in mind, I am not some part-time DJ that he brought up from weekends to be PD. I have been in the business for 11 years. I know what I’m doing…and I probably will continue to learn and make mistakes.
I don’t necessarily want to change radio stations. I have ties to this community and I do like the station. My only worry is the stress factor that he gives me. What I would like is suggestions on how to improve my working relationship with him. Perhaps ways to gain his trust without simply bowing to his wishes and doing things his way. I am trying to do good radio, not just his radio. I would like to be the Program Director I know I can be and not his personal assistant.
Your GM may or may not have been a good jock and a good PD. But if your description of him is accurate, then as a General Manager he is incompetent.
He has two fatal weaknesses.
1. He doesn’t understand what a manager’s job is.
A good manager is a facilitator; it’s his job to do whatever it takes to enable his staff to perform to the peak of their abilities.
“Enable” does not mean “dictate.” It means providing the tools, training, motivation and resources necessary for them to do the best job possible.
If all of his employees truly need to have him micromanage every aspect of their work performance, then he should resign immediately…Because obviously he is completely incompetent at hiring effective people.
2. He has not learned how to delegate.
“Delegating” does not mean requiring you, as PD, to do everything exactly the way he would do it. It means appointing a responsible person to take charge of a task or of a job…Making sure that person has the tools necessary to do the job…Monitoring that performance on an overall basis (not minutely)…And then getting out of that person’s way and letting him do his job.
An excellent resource from time management expert Harold Taylor: How To Delegate Effectively.
What can you do about this situation?
1) Hope that a miracle occurs and he takes steps to become a more competent, professional manager.
2) Stop trying to be a real PD and settle for being his lackey.
3) Consider other career options.
LEAP OF FAITH RADIO PRODUCTION with Bobby Ocean
The idea of a way better type of production sounds great. We all look for an edge. Having found one, and then putting it into practice, however, is something else.
Something one has to do alone.
Learning to expand one’s abilities, broaden diversity and “let go, and allow more of the story (promo/commercial/format theme) to tell itself” requires you to slightly elevate your awareness. Teaching it to take seriously those intuitive impulses, those leaps of faith, can only be done by one. The practitioner. That’s you.
Yet, you will not be affected. You will be only be educating your previous education. Think of it as a simple professional faith update.
To make things more compelling, however, let’s put a ticking time bomb under the dinette table: miss your specific time to act, leap the Leap, and your chance explodes.
Yes. A specific date, year, lunar cycle, and all the other movie suspense elements. Miss it by one split-second, and the chance is gone. Forever.
Only with your alertness, practice and quick response can you make the choices in production, occurring within a fraction-of-a-second Leap Of Faith, flashing past before you can form a thought.
The notion of taking a Leap of Faith can seem difficult. But, with a little insight, not at all. It’s simply not apparent. Not at first.
Let me tell you the story of one person who decided to go as deeply as one can, in Letting Go. Quick, simple tale. At the end of the story perhaps you will see the practice differently.
This person I speak of took the ultimate Leap of Faith. He gave up everything. His identity, his connections to the business, his status. He let go of his most beloved, his wife, his children, siblings and kin. His ego became disconnected and he was without motivation or personal gain of any kind.
What he did was he went to sleep.
There was no promise that he would awaken. Nowhere among his possessions was a guarantee he would return from his slumber. But he did it anyway. Falling into nightly sleep was a leap of Faith on his part.
Oh! Next day, he woke up. And everything started up with his awakened awareness. Up popped the ego, the sense of entitlement, the ambition. There were the people among which to choose to pay more or less attention. He continued as if nothing were different.
So – it’s not only as easy as that, taking a Leap of Faith is also something from which we will survive! Well now, that’s important to know.
And, as for that one chance you have to take a Leap Of Faith. That’s all any of us ever have. But when? An easy way to remember is to once again bring to mind there is no REAL Past, no Future, only that to which we can refer. So –
These are your coordinates, you may want to write them down if unable to commit them to memory:
Here is the precise time for action.
Now is where everything is and will take place.
You are the only one to choose… a Leap Of Faith.
[Disclaimer: Your estimates, perceptions and outcomes may vary; better results with selfless action.]
When I read this in Monday’s L.A. Times, at first I thought I’d turn it into a nice little sarcastic Tweet.
But then I realized how monumentally arrogant, destructive, and irresponsible this defense of management blunders is…
…and for some reason it reminded me of certain radio executives I’ve encountered over the years.
In an article about Universal Pictures’ year of flops, studio President Ron Meyer is quoted as saying, “90% of our decisions were the right ones with the wrong results.”
Either the reporter didn’t think to question the validity of that assertion or an editor deleted the follow up question. (Because the Times appears to have, at most, one fulltime copy editor, I’m guessing it’s just bad reporting.)
Think about that: “We made the right decisions. It was the results that were wrong. Don’t blame us; blame the results.”
Huh! And all along I’ve been thinking it’s the results that tell you if the decision was right or wrong.
Have you ever experienced someone like that in your radio career?
“The last five jocks I hired turned out to be such losers. I can’t believe how incompetent people can be.”
“It was a great promotion. Too bad the stupid audience didn’t respond the way they were supposed to.”
“Deregulating and consolidating absolutely were the smartest things to do. The only reason they appear not to have helped radio is we need more deregulation and consolidation.”
