Recently I was with a well-known leadership guru who shared his organization’s mantra for creating a culture of excellence.  He distilled everything down to what he described as three basic ideas.

1. Make it better
2. Make it better
3. Make it better

He stressed that it is more than just a pithy way of emphasizing his organization’s desire for improvement.  It was their way of empowering every person in the organization to look for tangible ways to make their part of the process, from idea to execution, better today than it was yesterday.

So, what would this look like in the key areas of programming?

Music
Make it better by only playing songs listeners love.  Weed out the so-so and ones without broad consensus.  Unfamiliar new songs must be exposed carefully and enough that listeners can become familiar with them.

Talent
Make it better by delivering what Mark Ramsey describes as “what they hired you for.”  Meet expectations. Be relevant and interesting (in that order).  Program directors can help by assessing a talent’s “batting average,” and helping them increase it over time.

Promotions
Make it better by focusing promotions on the needs and benefits of the listeners.   Ask ‘Why should they care?’  Make it better by designing in your station’s brand values.  (Of course, your station has to actually have brand values.  See Frost Advisory #238—Celebrate What You Value.)

Service Elements (such as news, weather, and traffic)
Make it better by remembering all non-music elements are an interruption and must add value to the listener’s experience.  Information is either relevant or it’s not.  As my friend Dean O’Neal says “there is nothing more irrelevant than a traffic report for traffic you’re not in.”

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. Don’t look for the quick, big improvement.  Seek the small improvement one day at a time.  That’s the only way it happens – and when it happens, it lasts.”
~Legendary coach John Wooden

*Photo from a get-together of Chick-fil-A‘s best customers at The Hatch in Atlanta to talk about how to make it better.

We don’t strive for exceptional.

Our nature is to be ordinary.

Exceptional is “forming an exception or rare instance; unusual; extraordinary”.
~Dictionary.com

The problem with being exceptional is not that we don’t know what it is.  The problem with being exceptional is that it goes against our nature.

Our default is always playing those extra songs that our listeners don’t know and don’t love, not the discipline of just playing the ones they love and tune to us for.

Our default is always talking too much, not the precision of “just the right amount.”

Our default is always “any time, any city,” not “right here, right now.”

Our default is always fluff, not being meaningful.

Our default is always formal, not being natural and conversational.

Our default is always bland, not surprise and delight.

The trouble is…

…great radio is hard work.

The easiest thing is never the best thing.

“You get what you accept.

If we accept a high standard, we will be rewarded with results consistent with that standard.  If we accept that other people can talk over us, and detract from our message, then we will not be heard.  If we only accept a best effort, then we will receive exactly that – no less.”
~Chris Oliver

“Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.”
~Donald Miller, “Blue Like Jazz”

Think about the things you love.

I love the guitar because my high school buddies Kenny and Wally loved the guitar.

I love Mexican food because I’m a Texan.  It’s the law.

I first loved baseball because my dad loved baseball.  In fact, when you ask someone how they became a baseball fan they usually respond by talking about someone they love.  There is no better example than following last year’s World Series when Cubs’ fans wrote the names of loved ones on the brick wall at Wrigley Field.  Curious, isn’t it?

Everyone listens to your station because they love something else.  So every effort to make them love our features and sweepers misses the point.  It’s like trying to convince a baseball fan to love a team because the pitcher’s mound is 60 feet 6 inches away from home plate.

“Write because you love the reader.  Never write to prove your point.  Write to remind the reader they have infinite value.”
~Donald Miller

People love your radio station because they love something else.  When you figure that out, just stand back and watch people begin to love your station.

Go ahead.  Ask them.

Everyone, of course, will say that ‘yes’ their radio station is interesting.

“Where men are strong, women are good looking, and all children are above average.”
~Garrison Keiller

Then why is it that your own staff, the folks that are supposed to care the most, don’t listen at their desks.  Why is it that you don’t hear the station playing in the hallways?  Why are we “the team” not rooting for our own cause?

The program director of one of the best-known Christian radio stations in America looked out his office window at the parking lot and said to me, “I don’t see one bumper sticker for our station.”

(Go look out at yours. I’ll wait).

If your station is SO interesting why is it that your fanniest of fans listens fewer than 3 days per week?  That’s half as many times as you go to your mailbox.

Your station really isn’t all that interesting, you know.  But maybe it can be.

How?

We have to bridge the gap.  We have to risk taking all that radio stuff we do and connecting it to the listener’s life in ways that are meaningful and relevant.

We have to do stuff and say stuff and be stuff that matters.

It’s really the only choice we have.  Our future success will not come from our mattering less.