Doing More With Less doing better no matter

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Doing More With Less(doing better no matter)

• Jay Small
• Small Initiativesand E.W. Scripps Newspapers
  Interactive Group
• jay.small_at_smallinitiatives.com
• www.smallinitiatives.com

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We are lucky.
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First pro jobmanager?
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How long fromfirst pro jobto first manager job?
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Training, coaching, mentoring beforeyou took
that job?After?(until this week, that is)
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The Peter Principle

• In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to
  his level of incompetence.
• Laurence J. Peter, 1968

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The Dilbert Principle

• Companies systematically promote the least
  competent employees to (middle) management, to
  limit the damage they can do.
• Scott Adams, 1995

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The Small Principle

• Companies promote people who know how to do a
  job. So they manage other people who know how to
  do that same job. But they dont get enough help
  learning the new job managing.
• Jay Small, right now

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Thought

• No matter what skills or talents got you the job,
  manager is now the toughest part of your job
  description
• All of the ideas we discuss in this hour will
  take more of your time, persistence, patience and
  thick skin
• Thats why they make managers exempt

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Which curve looks mostlike your organizations
overall resources,past three years?
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Which is most like your resources?
A
B
C
D
E
F
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If youre not growing, youre shrinking.
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Thought

• If your online team is growing and the offline
  team is not, make sure they feel positive impact
  from you
• How do we do that?

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Thought

• Want clues? Read your own forums, comments and
  customer service e-mails all of them for a
  few days, at least
• Anyone do this?

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No one wants to workon the Edmund Fitzgerald
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Thought

• Ask everyone in your organization if theres
  anything they do in their jobs that theyd rather
  not do, or they feel is a waste of resources
• Avoid punitive context

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Thought

• Ask everyone in the organization Is there
  something else youd rather do?
• Hypothetical, not reapply for your job
• No is an OK answer

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Thought

• Apply automation technology to improve quality or
  free up time, not to reduce costs or replace
  people

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MissionImpenetrable?
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Thought

• Revisit your organizations mission
• Do you know it? Believe in it?
• Does the team believe in it?
• What would it take?

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Strategic planning 101

• Mission Our organization exists to
• Vision In five years, heres how we will have
  changed the world
• Goals This year, we aspire to
• Strategies We will accomplish our goals by
  doing
• Tactics We will use these skills, tools,
  methods and modes of operation to execute our
  strategies

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Mission

• To boldly go where no one has gone before.
• Kick ball, get check.
• To develop people to work together to create
  value for the Companys shareholders by doing it
  right with fun and integrity.
• Canadian Natural Resources

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What about values?

• Dont confuse with value propositions
• Values (inward) Suppress bias, treat people
  well, provide living wage etc.
• Value propositions (outward) Best source of
  local news, Dilbert every day, exclusive live
  chats with sports heroes
• Most of us try to juggle too many value
  propositions, some not core to mission
• Think news alone sells papers? Then why wont
  your editor kill the comics page?

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Focus the mission,focus the effortsto achieve it
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Thought

• Get your team together and write a new, focused
  mission statement for your overall content
  organization
• Talk about it with offline executives
• Encourage a larger mission exercise
• Any success stories?

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Thought

• Set fewer goals
• Make them measurable, and measure them
• Put projects that are tied to your goals at the
  front of the line for resources
• Be relentless
• Reset goals more often

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Skittles chart
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Training is strategic.Your training plan should
map to your strategic goals.
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Thought

• Executives have to believe, but the team has to
  execute
• Stand in front of the room, win them over one by
  one, or both?

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The best example I know

• Joe Howry, editor, Ventura County Star
• I decided to put all my training budget money
  into one program that would move the newsroom
  into the future. It has evolved from a
  semi-experimental dab into multimedia journalism
  into a full-blown, newsroomwide focus on becoming
  a true multimedia organization.
• To date, we have 24 fully trained multimedia
  journalists. We also have six editors who have
  taken part in some or all of the training. We
  also included a member of our advertising and
  marketing departments in the training. The
  percentage of staff who have been exposed to
  multimedia training now runs over 33 percent.

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The best example I know

• Joe Howry, editor, Ventura County Star
• We simply took the people in training 8 at a
  time out of the daily mix. The training lasts
  six weeks. It required sacrifices from
  everybody on staff.
• If an editor or organization is considering the
  kind of fundamental changes multimedia journalism
  requires, they must commit fully and without
  reservation.
• We can push our readers much further than we
  think. Youd be surprised how little pushback you
  get when you do a five inch story on a city
  council meeting as opposed to the typical 15- or
  20-inch takeout.

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Thought

• Early adopters get the cool toys
• But dont make the next wave beg
• Equip well -- capital is easier to get than people

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Theyre not all like Joe.But does it have to
beus vs. them?
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Thought

• Escalate communications
• Face-to-face, then phone, then e-mail/IM
• Stop calling them sides

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How much of your workis aftermarket?
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Thought

• You want the post, you usually get the bat and
  sawdust
• Anyone havingluck reversingthe process?

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Thought

• Show up at systems vendor negotiations
• Complain loudly about assembly-line workflow that
  treats online as aftermarket
• Insist on full, two-way integration
• Insist on reading the contract
• Repeat

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Efficiency appliesto telling stories, too
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Example
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Example
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Open a release valvefor great ideas
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Thought

• Approach innovation systematically
• Stop responding to every PowerPoint demo you see
  at Connections
• Dont limit innovation to spare time

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Scripps Entrepreneur Fund

• 1.5MM in internal venture capital
• Inside and outside board members
• Idea Resume
• First round modest research
• Second round pilot to public beta
• Third round Full operations, self-sufficiency

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Thought

• Make wagers on new products, services as if
  playing roulette, not the lottery
• Presume high failure rate
• Learn from all failures
• Double downon successes
• Develop killer instinct
• Nothing lasts 100 yearsanymore

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Pick two, but you cant have all 3
Fast
Good
Cheap
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Drupal
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Thought

• Build a gold standard pilot platform
• Ours, done in Drupal, has
• News-style articles
• Blogs
• Images and galleries
• Votes
• Events/Venues
• Comments
• Forums
• E-mail
• RSS feeds (out) and RSS aggregator (in)

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But dont forget

• Anything worth putting in the public eye is worth
  supporting properly
• Our EF must overcome shortage of incubator
  resources
• And the matter of ghost ships
• Your biggest impediments to new products?

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More ideasfrom your world?