“There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.”
~(opening to the movie “The Right Stuff”)

When you approach the sound barrier there is a sudden increase in aerodynamic drag and the plane buffets around.  For Chuck Yeager, and the others, it must have been some experience.  It was a change they wanted, but I’ll bet there were some too frightened to push through.  Change can feel dangerous.  Some of the test pilots of the 50s thought you couldn’t send someone into space and back without being “spam in a can.”

We’re feeling the bumps, jinks, and aerodynamic drag of seismic changes in media, driven by an even bigger change in generations.  It’s uncomfortable, disruptive and even frightening.  The world, as we baby boomers knew it, is evolving but that’s no worse than what the Greatest Generation, who fought in World War II, had to adapt to with us.  Funny, they thought Boomers would be the end of America, but here we are.  Things will change, but at the same time the world will go on.

We all have our areas where change seems impossible, there’s nothing wrong or unusual with that, unless it freezes us into inaction.  Change is happening all around us every day.  The key is the response to change – how we humans handle the change.  There are basically three responses: we fool ourselves and ignore or refuse change, we can adapt to change, or we can be one of those rare people who get ahead of and lead change.

The question we should be answering is not about change, it should be how we’ll adapt to change, or maybe even lead change.

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”
~Robert Louis Stevenson

I’ve been reading Boundaries For Leaders by Henry Cloud, great book about growing a culture of leadership.  In it, he talks about a leader he was talking to who was complaining about the culture around him.  Cloud kept asking questions about why these things were happening, which led the leader to realize the culture was up to him!  Finally, the leader was in charge… ridiculously in charge.

Leaders and managers spend a lot of time complaining about how their workplace operates without ever realizing that they are the ones who can fix it.  I won’t give you all the details of the book, but two of the principles that will allow you to be ridiculously in charge are what you create and what you allow.

What you create is based on what you aspire to see, the culture you create (intentional or not), the goals you set, the strategy you employ and the leadership you demonstrate.  These are usually the things we want.

What you allow are the things you don’t want to happen, but seem to anyway.  It’s the things that happen because you don’t work against them.  If you never say anything to people about coming to work late, they will come to work late.  If you allow people to snipe at each other, sniping will grow as a tactic.

Of the two, what gets the least attention is what you allow.  All those irritating things that happen – that you actually allow to happen – that you can’t understand.  The things you don’t really want to deal with, because it’ll be too tough or complicated.  Also, the things that you do yourself that only become irritating when it happens back to you.

This is one of the easiest to understand books about leadership that I’ve ever seen.  Don’t expect to breeze through it, some parts are more difficult than others.  You’ll also want to go slow enough give yourself time to absorb it.

One reason I love it is because it challenged me, but then gave me simple, doable answers.  We can all improve our leadership skills, even if we’re only leading ourselves.  This could be one of the biggest answers to a challenge you’ll find this year.

“No one is less ready for tomorrow than the person who holds the most rigid beliefs about what tomorrow will contain.”
~Watts Wacker, Jim Taylor and Howard Means, The Visionary’s Handbook: Ten Paradoxes That Will Shape the Future of Your Business

Recently I was at the Crosby Conference, put on by Pip Coburn, in the SoHo area of New York, where the conversations were unlike anything I’ve done before.  We discussed whether Facebook has an ethical responsibility to fairness in the news since so many people are now using Facebook for news, or whether we’re in a post-fact world, where you believe what syncs with your beliefs.  And those were the simple ideas.  It was amazing.

The discussions are all future oriented and held at a very high level.  A lot of what we talked about had to do with the uncertainty in today’s world and the future.

But I can’t help myself.  So when one of the students mentioned that she got her news from iHeart Media, I had to know more.  I asked what iHeart meant to her, she explained it was a music and social media platform.  Then, when I asked if she was aware that iHeart had radio stations in New York, she paused, looked confused, and said, “I don’t really listen to radio.”

It was by no means the biggest implication from the conference, but it was a little reminder of the uncertainty in our future.  It also helped me realize how little time we spend on thinking about the bigger implications in our lives.  We’re locked into a “radio’s dead” versus “radio’s fine” battle that only keeps us focused on the wrong thing.  I guess it’s simpler than addressing the issues and easier to kick the can down the road, but it’s not a solution.

Then again, maybe that student was another outlier, an anomaly in the future of the medium we all love, and when we wake up everything will be fine.

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
~Albert Einstein

We celebrated the start of the Christmas season in my house by watching Miracle on 34th Sreet.  Well, also because we were recently in New York and visited Macy’s.  Still, how can you not love a movie that ends up with Santa being set free?  At a pivotal point in the movie the post office drops off bags and bags of letters to Santa.  Most remember all those letters dropped on the judge’s bench, but just before that there’s a scene at the post office with people sorting the mail by hand.  I love the way they’d flip the letters up to be whisked away by the technology of the day.

Of course, the mail isn’t sorted by hand now, as the post office heads toward something called “Network Rationalization.”  The job shown in the movie doesn’t exist anymore.  Technology changed the way the mail was handled.  That happens, even to the point, we don’t even think about the “old jobs” that were eliminated.

Typically we look at, and complain about, change that happens to us, in our generation, but if we did look at the past we’d see all these instances where change happened, and life moved forward.  The world didn’t explode or freeze in time.  It marched on, continually changing, being embraced by some, and tolerated by most.

“The Relationship Era doesn’t mean using social media and other channels to advertise or publicize or otherwise dictate your message; it means finding areas of common interest and values within to forge conversation and common causes.”
~Bob Garfield

After a recent summit designed to gain the perceptions of very savvy, successful, Millennials, there was, as you’d expect, a lot of talk about social media.  Their comments were interesting, but even more interesting were the questions asked by the audience, primarily radio people.

We think the goal of social media is to promote our stations.  Millennials think social media is for opening a line of communication with each other.  That’s quite a difference in perspective.

So here is my observation: We’re using social media as a way to promote to those boomers and Xers listening to our stations.  That has zero impact on Millennials, and maybe minimal impact on the generations in our audience.  What I see is many stations trying to act or sound Millennial in their social media.

Social media is bound by interests, which in turn is bound by community.  We’re in an amazing world where like-minded people can join around a concept, idea or cause without the help of any “official” organization.  We should want to be involved where the listener is, how the listener is.

Promoting what your morning show said this morning isn’t social, it’s hype.  Thinking non-digital natives can build an effort to unite Millennials is a pipe dream.  And we all know that pipe dreams are fantastic hopes or plans that are generally regarded as being nearly impossible to achieve.

Social media is content, and very rarely is compelling content a promotion to listen to our own product.

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
~Daniel J. Boorstin

Along with the digital age, and the growth of search engines, has come a time when “knowledge” seems to be a click away.  You can learn, you can fact check, you can generate ideas.  There’s been concern that people are not “thinking” as much as they were, or aren’t as discerning.  If I can find it on the Internet, it must be true.

But the reality is that everything on the Internet has some sort of bias.  First of all, the ones at the top of the search are paid advertising, and those right below that are there because they are “popular.”  You can find something to back up your opinion as fact very easily.  But is it the truth?

What stops you from knowing the truth is thinking that you already have the truth.  You stop seeking the truth.  And you create your own reality, which is fine if you share that reality with a lot of people, and you can control that reality to your benefit.

But it still doesn’t make it the truth.

“The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.”
~Paul Cezanne

You’ve probably heard of the HGTV show “Fixer Upper,” where husband and wife Chip and Johanna Gaines rehab houses in the Waco, TX area. There’s a lot of talk about the show, how talented Johanna is… and how crazy Chip is.  That’s true, but what really makes it work is the stark differentiation between the two hosts. Dare I say role definition?

Two people who are exactly alike, or even closely alike, rarely generate the kind of passion seen on “Fixer Upper.” She’s smart, creative and more of a “driver,” he’s a total expressive, and a lovable clown. If it were just Johanna or just Chip it would wear out quickly. But that’ll never happen since both people are uniquely different, yet oddly compatible.

So how about your team shows? Are they similar in personality and approach, or do they create stark differentiation?

By stark I mean… well you’ll just have to see the show and how much they play up on the differentiation. They stand out from each other, and the result is a ton of entertainment.  Even “serial” entertainment, where they’ll want to come back day after day.

It’s the personality of the two of them that creates the “art” that’s made them so successful.

P.S.  Yes, I know part of the show is fake, but the two people in it are very real.

“These terms do not fit together-Servant & Leader … It’s just another way poor leaders attempt to elevate themselves above those they ‘serve’… an entirely unhealthy approach for a leader to take… Our need to be led well is far more important than our need to be served. The more correct notion is that of a ‘Serving Leader’ … (with) many ‘masters’ … when Richard Greenleaf coined this phrase … he was talking entirely about how leaders serve, not about leaders being servants.”
~Mark Stanley, from a Harvard Business School article

Sometimes it seems like we live in a world where so many people want to see themselves as Steve Jobs or Sir Richard Branson, strong individuals who chased their own unique vision.  The challenge is that those individuals are few and far between.  Few understand there is only one Steve Jobs and one Richard Branson.   So we create a class of smart people who could otherwise make great leaders but instead allow them to become self-centered micro-managers.

Servant leadership is providing your people the right tools, giving them collaborative coaching and direction, and inspiring them.  It’s not a leadership style or technique as such, rather it’s a way of behaving that you adopt over the long term.

Servant leadership is also about sharing, allowing them the opportunity to participate and giving credit when it’s due.  Those who turn into Steve Jobs clones never understand the joy of helping others succeed, or understand that when your people succeed under your leadership, it reflects back on you.

Sorry to say that most managers will never understand servant leadership, and instead will live a lonely, tug-of-war life of attempting dominance.  Don’t let it be you.

“I’ve tried to make the men around me feel, as I do, that we are embarked as pioneers upon a new science and industry in which our problems are so new and unusual that it behooves no one to dismiss any novel idea with the statement that ‘it can’t be done!’ … Our job is to keep everlastingly at research and experiment, to let no new improvement in flying and flying equipment pass us by.”
~William Boeing, 1929

When Boeing was still located in Seattle, I used to love driving by on I-5 to see what was new.  The latest, and experimental aircraft were always parked out on the north side of Boeing Field, painted in Boeing Colors.  It was a company that had been in their industry early on, and worked to stay ahead of the curve.  Innovation was a part of their DNA.

I moved from Seattle, and then so did they, but I never forgot the lesson of continual innovation. Labor Day Evening I landed in Orlando, on a Boeing 737, to speak at a radio gathering focused on tomorrow.  Boeing’s innovations are still with me.

I’m particularly struck by the leadership example Boeing showed too, full of inspiration and encouragement.  With that example of leadership and innovation, no wonder they accomplished so much change in the airline industry.  I can’t imagine William Boeing telling his people that the propeller motor was just fine, and trying to add motors, rather than exploring the new jet engine, can you?

Radio’s future is grounded in innovation.  Even though we’ve mostly become an industry that wants everyone else to take the chances that come with innovation, we will adapt, innovate, or fail.

Hello future, let’s be friends.

“Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo.  What is vertigo?  Fear of falling?  No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling.  It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
~Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Today I was helping a friend write a job description, and I encountered the term “measurable.”  It was something her organization was asking for, and while I understood the term and intent, I’m not sure that’s the real answer.

Success isn’t about whether you can have “measurable,” it’s about whether you’re accomplishing anything.  I always substitute the term “goal” for measurable and it changes everything.

A measurable is something you can measure, a goal is something you’ve accomplished.  Too often “measurable” is measuring activity, and not accomplishment.  It doesn’t matter if you can supply a score to a basketball game without a hoop, it matters whether you score enough points to win.

That’s what goals are about, not measuring activity but measuring accomplishment.