The Single Most Important Thing

It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream.

It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for.

It's not failure, but low aim, which is a sin.

Those are not my words. They were spoken by a man named Benjamin Elijah Mays. I don't think he's related to the Clear Channel Mays. But I hope those Mays, and all others at their level of control and power, will read this. Feel free to share it.

It will reveal the single most important thing you can do today for those inside your company. Thank you for your friendship, your business, and your support. I am grateful to so many. This holiday season, let's help those around us have reason to be grateful too.

The Single Most Important Thing

We are in a business that has lost its way.

There's enough blame to share with just about everyone in radio:

• Consolidation
• Greed
• A short-term horizon fixed on Wall Street payoffs
• Too much reliance on music research -- "safe" playlists
• Too little investment in perceptual research and marketing
• Virtually no investment in training and development of talent
• Constant cost-cutting that has decimated and disheartened our ranks
• A "CYA" mentality where internal company politics is more important than listeners
• Even consultants...

Yes, I blame us, too.

I'm linked by classification to a group who have made most radio bland and boring, who took the easy way out with "talent" that wasn't all that talented, by having everyone read inane liners about unbelievable claims touting quality and quantity, which added verbal clutter and zero relevance to listeners' lives, thereby proving that listeners really didn't want to hear "talent" talk ...

... who taught a generation of programmers that you're not hurt by what you don't play, rather than reminding them of the brilliance and joy of hearing a great new song for the very first time and linking that emotion to a specific radio station...

... who gave the local PD one more reason to worry, to play it safe, to have data to back up every decision so they couldn't be second-guessed and back-stabbed.

Yes, there is plenty of blame to spread around.

But my purpose today is to tell you the single most important thing you can do is to change everything we've lived through over the past 25 years.

In order to succeed in our business, in order to create something that will have lasting value for the next 25 years, we must be both original and unique.

In order to be original and unique, we must take risks, because everything truly original and unique could as easily fail as succeed.

We must risk failure to find genius.

Unfortunately, our business has been especially unforgiving of failure over the past 25 years.

We absolutely must have innovation and originality to succeed going forward, yet we have systematically removed those most willing to try new ideas.

So the single most important thing you can do right now is to make your people feel secure.

Make failure acceptable.

Hire the most creative, unmanageable thinker you can find. Give him or her one of your stations, a real budget, and more importantly, your personal support.

Remove the political minefields and layers of management that sap creatives. Don't let the bureaucracy stifle the innovation. Keep your VP or President of Programming away from this person at all costs.

And see what happens.

If the experiment is a total failure, give this person another station in another market, and try again.

Risk it.

You need some suggestions of "creatives" who could totally shake up one of your markets? OK, here are a few. If you're serious, call me, and I'll put you in touch with any one of these:

• Steve Allan
• Bob Wood
• Cleveland Wheeler
• Scott Shannon
• Jeff Scott
• Bobby Rich
• Thom McGinty
• Bob Harlow
• Ed Scarborough
• John Hendricks
• Lee Rogers
• George Johns
• Brian Wilson
• David Baronfeld
• Allan Hotlen
• ... and I have lots more

The single most important thing you can do to help radio right now is to do everything within your power to make every employee you have feel secure.

The only way you can do that is to stop punishing failure, stop firing people to save money, and reward creativity and innovation wherever you find it.

Make all of your employees thankful they work for your company, because it's a company that actually invests in its people.

You up for that challenge?