What if a station really cared about who you were on the staff of the station? What if the leadership really cared about your opinion? What if a station really cared about you as a viewer/listener - what if they cared about YOU?
Might this "Care" change the relationships and the economics of the station?
What do all of us want more than any "thing"? I think the historic answer is "Meaning". How do we find meaning in our lives? I think that the answer is when I am heard and I am accepted for who I really am. How can this happen? When people hear me - really hear me! Hear my opinion and hear my story. Take my opinion and my story so seriously that they act upon it - that is the real HEARING.
Is this how people experience life in your organization? Most organizations seek compliance and actually don't want to know about our full selves or our dreams. Is this how "Clients" experience your organization? Rarely - most organizations have defined products - Masterpiece Theatre - that they sell to us. They do a bit of research but more to refine how to sell a commodity product. We know that they don't really care about us as employees or as customers.
They don't act on our opinions or on our wishes.
"The relationship with our audience has changed. Before we pushed out. Now it's a two way process. This has changed the relationship entirely"
This was Amy Shaw's opening statement to me when I interviewed her last week for this series.
We all blithely talk about a two way relationship as being the heart of a 2.0 experience. But almost no organization can deliver it. Why? It's NOT ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY!!!! It's about the values of the team inside. 2.0 is not tool based - it's culture based. It is all about acting on the the story of others.
If you have an organizational culture that does not encourage dialog inside - you cannot get to 2.0. This is Rob's Law. No 2.0 internal Culture - No chance of a 2.0 presence with those that you serve.
"Serve" is also a word that I want to explore. When you invite a person in to tell you her most important story and then you help her tell this story so that all the people she cares about most can hear her story - then you have been in her service. You have heard her - not by nodding your head as she speaks but by ACTING on her story. By acting, you have given the opinion or the story life. You have given her an act of Grace.
When you support a product, you are merely doing your job. See the difference? It's a gulf. It's an ocean of difference. Grace cannot be faked. When you are in service this is radically different from providing service.
When a station serves its community, it works at a deep and personal level. You don't have to do a lot of market research to know that if I help you tell the story of your life that means the most to you - that you will feel good about me.
Sounds so easy. This is the trick of the real new media age. Most organizations can serve only themselves first - they fake serving others in this way. So they are blocked forever from this new way of being.
It all starts with Trust and with personal example. It starts in the corner office. For a station is like a family. It is the parents who set the tone. Jack is incredibly demanding of himself and then others. All of us who work for him can see that. He starts with the strongest position of all - He told me that he knew nothing about social media but knew that he had to get to know a lot. He starts from a position of humility. By authentically asking for help, he implies that you have value. The authentic seeking of help is not a sign of weakness but the very opposite - it is an act of strength. It says "I am a frail human just like you" . By creating this link form one heart to the other, the energy of the potential that we all have to be special is unleashed.
When a leader states that he is ignorant - he opens a space for all around him to contribute. Now I did not say that Jack said that he knew nothing at all - merely that in this key field he did not. In all the aspects of his professional life - how to run a station etc - he is a master. So in the foundation - he makes us all feel safe. If every part of a person in in motion, we cannot attach.
So in Jack we see the paradox of leadership in the post modern era. He is both safe at the foundation - of who he is as a man and as a professional - and he is open to the new.
Think then of many other leaders. The all knowing ones who are perfect in every way and who expect perfection in you. This freezes an organization. For many of them do not even have a safe foundation. They may have a strong professional core but many can be child like in their inner selves. So in the new, they have to be all knowing which closes down the open trusted space that is essential for exploring the new.
Yes leadership is found at all levels but if a well rounded human being is not at the top - there is little chance of a 2.0 organization emerging.
But single parent families tend to be fragile. There has to be a core of people who are the same. Who are masters at the core but who are open to the new. There are many key people at KETC who are like this. It is especially uplifting to find senior producers who can see that by mastering this new area, they open up their lives again and can go to an entirely new level (You know who I am talking about) I say again that it was a moment of joy for me to see one of the great pros of the station being tutored in blogging by an intern. He was so open. Imagine how she felt. She had come to the station expecting to make coffee for the summer. Instead she had a leadership role. People older than her parents were acting on her advice.
She was being heard and in being heard had grown larger as a person herself. What intern pay check could compensate her like this?
So with this core set of values in place - KETC was ready to hear St Louis and to act upon the heart's desire of her people.
So quiet men would turn up at the station. Men who had not dared tell themselves their own story and began to speak:
"You know I am here but I don't really want to talk - I really have nothing to say"
But as Amy told me. in the end they all talked. They talked for the first time not to their family but often to an intern because they felt safe. Amy told me that "They knew that we would take care of them. That we would honor them."
When is the last time you heard an organization talk about honoring their clients?
Sp here my friends is the bottom line.
When you are in service to your community. When you offer grace to your community. When your community know that you honor them. What do you think comes back? How is the relationship altered?
The normal Public TV relationship with its community is I think deeply flawed. Is it not really a form of blackmail? Please give us money or we will take off your favorite program. Worse - it's not even true anymore. All my favorite programs are available at other places at time that suit me.
I think that KETC have discovered something historic. That no matter what happens with the mainstream PBS programming and how that is distributed - that they have something direcly in their control that will enable the station to grow its support locally.
They have discovered that by being in service, rather than offering service, that they can expect their community to be in service back.
For when I am IN service to you - all the barriers between us fall away and we become one. There are no members there is only us.
Sounds weird? Well in the 4th and final part of this series, I will tell you about what KETC is doing for an encore. I hope that you will see that this simple but very difficult strategy has legs and is expanding the circle of trust, grace and love in the city.
I hope that you may see that there may come a point - come a tipping point - when there is enough grace and trust in St Louis that the city itself becomes ready for greatness again.
But before I go - let's honor the people at the station.
Here are the people pictured on the posed group project photo:
Back Row:
Sydney Meyer
Terri Gates
Dale Berenc
Jim Kirchherr
Sonya Berkbigler
Kate Shaw
Suzie Heimburger
Mike Bauhof
Deb Paulus
Anne-Marie Berger
Kay Porter
Amy Shaw
Front Row:
Margy Enright (intern)
Diane Poelker (intern)
Robin Anderson (intern)
Matt Huelskamp
Not Pictured:
Jack Galmiche
Elizabeth Cordes
Beth Savage
Kent Samul
Chrys Marlow
Kristin Elsner
Patrick Murphy
Patti Kistler
In part 4 we will talk about the future - what is KETC doing in 2008.
