As the Curmudgeons push back, as NPR cancels BPP as MPR lays people off, as station leaders look at the numbers with fear, the need to nail the new business model becomes extreme.
So let's remind ourselves - we know that the model is. The model has been proved. The model is not up for debate anymore.
So the real barrier is organizational. The real barrier is cultural. We don't know how to get there and the power of the old, our inertia holds us back.
In this post - I will spell out again the model, a model that has been proved. I will then spell out a second model of adoption that is also well established. It is the model of the founding of America itself and it is a model that I have lived through as I was part of the shift in banking to investment banking.
Diane Mermigas reminds us that we know the model for the new - we see it delivered very successfully in gaming:
The video game industry’s new initiatives work because they understand and embrace many of the growth catalysts of the new digital marketplace: User-generated content, social networking, viral marketing, globalization and value-added engagement. It owes its creative vibrancy to its constituent gaming communities that increasingly utilize development kits that inspire pro-am gaming and publisher upgrades. Video game software publishers don’t just monetize their target consumers–they learn from them, and make then an integral part of the creation process.
Industry analysts and zealots were understandably dismayed when the recent annual E3 video game conference rendered no “game changing” software. While diversity of titles and playing experiences is key, the video game software publishers enjoy an easy, cost-effective, enterprising production formula that other media and entertainment players may not be able to immediately emulate.
The co-op and online game play that is increasingly incorporated into all genres to extend the life of new releases and generate new revenue streams are endemic to the video game model and its unique consumer relationship.
Not a surprise is it? New Realities informed us back in 2006 that this was the way - we know the model. How far are you in going here? Not far. What is the chance that you might be there in 2-3 years? I see no sign of more than a handful of stations getting there. What is the price of not getting there? Oblivion I fear. Do you see this too? I think you do.
So you know where to go. You know how important it is. You know the price is death if you don't. You know that time is short.
SO WHY AREN'T WE GOING THERE.
The issue is I think POWER.
The Curmudgeons want nothing to do with any of this. They rule. They control the conversation and the decisions in the stations and in the producer - funder community. The job I think now is to shift the organizational power to people who really live the new.
First of all a reality check - how many people do you have in your organization are 2.0 natives? One? Two. Even in NPR there cannot be more than maybe 10. How many in PBS or CPB? One - Two?
How can you take an organization to the 2.0 world which is an entirely new way of seeing the world if you have no natives? It's like the early colonists - without the natives helping you, you are going to starve. A way of seeing what to do is to recall how America was settled - this is the time honored process for adoption.
So Job One - get more natives. If you can't hire them - then do what WOSU have done, as did the early colonists - reach out to the bloggers in your city and ask for their help. WOSU now have a large group of committed bloggers working with them - they are now part of a large and vibrant community in Columbus that can and will help them make the move to a 2.0 world. They are finding out that these people are not "wild" but valuable.
Job Two - get natives on the payroll - How can you take the organization to the new if you have no one who lives in that world on the payroll? You have to have people in the organization with formal roles that can propose and defend the new. Andy Carvin's hiring was a catalytic event for NPR. But NPR needs lots of Andy's as do all stations. Where are the Andy's in CPB and PBS. When I say Andy I mean a person who not only knows what is going on but is seen in the wider community as a player. Not enough to have a person who can put up a wordpress site - you have to have someone who when they speak, the community listens.
Job Three - get help - Get a Terry Heaton, a Jeff Jarvis - even someone like me - to come in now and then and support the new. Have your Mountain Men or Guides. Have people from the outside who have lived this life speak from Truth and Power at your table - use them to support you in your internal struggle to shift power. Use projects to make all of this real - so that many can experience the new. I see this like a wagon train - most of the organization start in St Louis as Europeans or Eastern Farmers. They have to cross the continent with guides. In so doing, they become pioneers.
Job Four - Give a Key Person the Power Seat at the Table - Who was there to defend BPP? No one. The CEO does not count. The Organization has to have a top person whose job it is to get the job done. The Mission to get to the new has to be the Primary Mission. It has to get the resources to get there.
Getting to the new is not a sideshow. It is the show.Now you are building the transcontinental railway that will take millions with you to the new frontier.
What kind of person do you need for this kind of job? I think here of General Groves (Wikipedia) who built the Pentagon and then ran the Manhattan Project. Groves was not a scientist but by God could he get things done and few would have the courage to face him. His job was not an academic experiment - his job was to build a bomb that could be used in no time at all.
Though his conservative, rigid temperament and cold, blunt manner alienated some of the scientists he worked with, he also (against the advice of everyone he consulted) took the risky step of putting J. Robert Oppenheimer (a leftist intellectual and Groves' opposite in almost everything) in charge of Los Alamos, where the bomb was designed and assembled, trusting in the physicist's abilities. Groves' choice proved inspired, for Oppenheimer's brilliant, charismatic leadership was decisive in creating workable designs and getting them transformed into usable bombs.
Groves' greatest contribution to the Manhattan Project was in imparting his own driving energy and determination to get the bomb built as quickly as possible. He was the key leader in transforming what had been a slow paced, poorly coordinated, theoretical and laboratory research effort of a few universities into a fast moving, highly articulated, truly massive juggernaut involving thousands of scientists, engineers, technicians, workmen, and soldiers, as well as hundreds of companies and governmental organizations, spread all over the United States and the world.
Your person at the table does not have to be a Native - his/her job is political. They have to command respect and get the job done. When CIBC, had to make the cultural shift to Investment banking, this step was the breakthrough. We had to have this capability from a zero base in less than 5 years. At CIBC, this person was Paul Cantor. Paul was a lawyer. But no one was going to fool with Paul and Paul understood his brief. Like Groves and Oppenheimer, Paul surrounded himself with Natives of the Investment Banking world.
Paul and General Groves natural power was enhanced by having THE MISSION. In CIBC's case, the board had made it clear that CIBC had to go there. Groves had the unlimited support of his president. All doubters and curmudgeons knew that.
Like Groves, this person has the Mission - to make your organization viable in the 2.0 world in 3 years time. If you are not there in 2011, I think you are going to die for sure. This is the main mission. This is Mission #1
If you have not made this mission your #1 mission - then why not? If not what is? If not what are you doing with your board?
What are you doing with your board. Many have told me that their boards don't get it. Whose job is it then to help them get it? Are they going to get it on their own? Of course not - this is your work.
Job Five - All else is subordinate!!!! What about the old where you now make all your money? Isn't this important? Many tell me that they have to starve the new because if they took their focus off the old for a moment they would die. This then gets translated into - we have to starve the new to keep the old going. Now you read these words - don't they sound odd?
How much time do you have? Does not the story of newspapers tell us that fudging is not a good plan? They tried to keep the old and fiddle with the new - look at them. Tell me why this should be different with you?
For let's be honest - if Mission #1 is not achieved there is no traditional business in 2011.
So you have to choose between life and death. To choose life, you have to choose to make a viable 2.0 world your priority. Business as usual = death.
So the news division at NPR has to fit the new. Not the new fit the news division. In your station the traditional has to fit the new. At CPB and PBS, the old has to fit the new.
Yes the old is important but it is subordinate to the new.
So where does the new report in your organizations? If it reports to the old - trouble! Who is responsible for the new? If if have no one or a middle manager, then you are in trouble.
The unofficial motto of the French Foreign Legion - is March or Die.
