This was Carlos’ first Momentum.  Our 30-minute coaching session began with, “I will do anything to learn and get better.”  Carlos is my new friend.

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.”
~Henry Ford

Contrast Carlos’ attitude to the program director that doesn’t show up for the coaching sessions with his air staff and consultant.  Or the morning show deejay that is only willing to repeat bits from his previous station rather than learn what is meaningful in a new format.  Or the boss who keeps stressing he has 20 years of experience, making it all the more obvious to his team that it’s really only one year of experience 20 times.

What did you learn at #cmbmomentum16?

“Give us content, stories, or any reason to tell all of our friends and the entire world about you.”
~Erin Branham

“When you change everything IN you it will change everything AROUND you.  Your attitude makes all the difference.”
~Clay Scroggins

“Come up with more different ways for them to love you.”
~Paul Jacobs

Here’s an idea!  Take three things you learned at Momentum and implement them right away at your radio station.  That, more than any memo you write or speech you give, will demonstrate that you love learning.

“When do you think most people stop learning?

Is it when we already know how to do something?

Is it when we have some success under our belts?

Is it when we imagine there’s nothing left to learn, no one knows something we don’t, or when we come to believe we know it all?

Whenever it is, it’s too soon, and it’s too bad, because we’ve always got a lot to learn… no matter how much we already know.”
~Mark Beeson

A special for Momentum 2016 “Hello Future” #cmbmomentum16

I once accepted an award for being the smartest boy in my high school.  It was one of my finer moments.

Don’t misunderstand.  I didn’t really win the award.  I simply walked up on the stage and accepted it before they had the chance to announce the real winner much to the amusement of my giggle-at-anything classmates.

This week in Orlando our little industry will gather at Disney Really Nifty Resort to learn what we can from really smart guys and gals.  “Learn what we can” is the catch phrase, literally.

What is most familiar is most believable, and the stuff we haven’t yet learned is inevitably unfamiliar.  That tends to make us skeptics.

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
~John Wooden

Confirmation bias is “the tendency to develop a quick belief about a situation and then seek out information that bolsters our beliefs.” Chip and Dan Heath “Decisive. How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work”

In other words, we tend to believe what we already believe.  Today’s political campaigning is dependent on it.

Consequently we’re skeptical of people that aren’t like us and tell that us things we’ve never heard before.

This week at Momentum, Michelle Younkman and her team have assembled several smart people that probably aren’t like us and will share things we’ve never heard before.  There’s a chance that we could learn a lot from them.

But we’ll have to admit we don’t know it all.

“…you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.”
~Barbara Kingsolver

“A wise man will hear and increase in learning, And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel.” Proverb 1:5

Curious that Solomon fellow, the wisest man that ever lived they say, talked more about wise counsel than he did anything else. Reckon if anyone didn’t need counsel it would be the wisest-man-that-ever-lived. What’s up with that?

Wisdom is inexorably linked to learning. And in my travels I’ve observed that learning is inexorably linked to the love of learning.

“We’ve never done it that way before”, is the cry of someone who doesn’t love to learn.

“That doesn’t sound like my radio station”, is the anthem of someone who views things only through the rear view mirror. (A rather dangerous way to drive, I might add).

The Christian music industry will be lugging their flip flops and sun tan lotion to Walt Disney World in Orlando this week for Momentum, a think and love fest thrown by Michelle Younkman, Brittany Whatley, and their talented group of staff and volunteers.

Great thinkers like Mark Ramsey, Christy Amador, Jon Gordon, Erica Farber, David Nasser, and toast-loving Brant Hansen will be sacrificially offering their wisdom to those who, dare I say, LOVE to learn.

Unfortunately for those who don’t and won’t, they’ll leave Orlando unchanged, with perhaps only a slightly better tan, and unconsciously uttering “We’ve never done it that way.”

“When do you think most people stop learning?  Is it when we already know how to do something?

Is it when we have some success under our belts?  Is it when we imagine there’s nothing left to learn, no one knows something we don’t, or when we come to believe we know it all?

Whenever it is, it’s too soon, and it’s too bad, because we’ve always got a lot to learn… no matter how much we already know.” Mark Beeson

California is in a record breaking four year drought, don’tcha know.

Folks say that lightning storms in Orlando cause an average of 6 deaths and 39 injuries a year.  (Anyone for golf during Momentum at Disney?)  As I write this there is a potential hurricane heading toward my back yard petunias.

This cheery attention-getting open is designed to tap into your brain’s cortex (I looked it up!), where long term memory is located. The frequency of emotional events, common life experiences, and the smell of your grandmother’s oatmeal cookies all camp out there.

Things you experience over and over again are stored in your cortex and pop out when activated. (That’s why you can instantly sing along with a song you haven’t heard in twenty years).

Connecting your radio station to what’s rattling around in your listeners’ cortex enhances your ability to communicate to them. That’s a fancy way of saying RELEVANCE MATTERS. (Conversely, irrelevance makes you irrelevant).

A few days ago I received this e-mail:

“As the first storm of the season approaches South Florida, we want to make sure our riders are ready. We’re teaming up with our friends at Capital One to provide a free Storm Readiness Pack on-demand…”

Each pack includes:

2 Gallons of Water
First Aid Kit
Flash Light
Batteries
Glow Sticks
Duct tape
Moist Towelettes
Trash Bags
Deck of Cards

Oh, did I mention I received this e-mail from (drum roll, please)….

Uber

Yes, Uber. The company that helps me get around is helping me even when I can’t.

Hopefully there are values in your station brand that are more important than the fact that you play Hercules and the Chicken Fat People’s latest song.

Good stuff happens when you seize the moment and connect the dots from your station’s brand values to your listeners’ needs. Why? Because it’s already on their minds.

On last week’s show I listed the first of 10 reasons why stations aren’t successful. I just made these up, so perhaps you’d like to make up your own. It’s fascinating how many notes I’ve received from those saying, “Yes, that’s exactly what’s happening at our station.”

In the words of Casey Kasem, and now, back to the countdown…

#7 – Lack of encouragement

Too often people are thrown into jobs, left alone, and spoken to only when they need correction.  How much more rewarding our work would be if we were encouraged in the things that help the station fulfill its purpose and achieve its goals.  We know this as human beings and as parents but we often fail to encourage at work.

“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel.  If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” – Sam Walton

“The more I’m exposed to the inner workings of other high capacity teams, the more I see the consequences of encouragement given… and encouragement withheld.  Support matters.” – Mark Beeson

#6 – Lack of training

For the last several years at CMB’s Momentum I have participated in coaching a handful of talent that desire to grow in their craft.  Without exception each one begins by sharing they get little help at their local station.  They are hungry to learn and grow.  My friend Nelson at The Fish in Portland, a 20-plus-year veteran of Portland morning radio, told me he had learned more in his first years at The Fish than all his many years in mainstream radio.

“In life we must be willing to coach and be coached, either one alone will leave us empty.” – David L. Cook “Golf’s Sacred Journey”

“It is impossible to learn what is outside ourselves from inside ourselves.” – Joseph P. Battaglia

#5 – Silos

The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.  I’ve heard of one station where programming decisions are regularly made without the program director even present.

“Functionally, silos form and operate when the people in one area simply want to do what they do, the way they want to do it without thinking about whether what they’re doing is going to effect anyone else. Or how. They just act, irrespective of what the impact may be outside their own workspace. And it’s happening at every level.” – F. John Rey

I know of one organization that would be transformed if only one simple thing changed – that the people most qualified to make a decision in a certain area actually made that decision.

Stay tuned net week for more fun…