Are Newspapers Becoming VCRs?

My dog and I have become paper trained. Call me old fashioned, but I still get the print version of the daily newspaper. Each day I engage in a trivial, but memorable tribal dance with the delivery person. Timing is everything in this archaic ritual, and simple nuances in the unseen interchange between us nag at me all morning like a food particle stuck between my molars. His/her job is to precisely toss the daily rag into a ten foot diameter invisible circle on my driveway at approximately the same time each morning. My job is to retrieve it in a sweeping motion that consumes exactly the amount of time it takes a Golden Retriever to relieve herself on the front lawn. If he fails to hit the mark I notice. If I fail to awaken at the appointed hour my dog notices and becomes an insistent telepathic alarm clock at my bedside.

Since I’m really not that fond of newspapers or reporters (along with lawyers, legislators, and radio talk show hosts) it has struck me as quite odd that when there is a disturbance in the force and my newspaper is not where it’s supposed to be I get inordinately upset. I stand there bewildered and unsettled in my gym shorts and T-shirt wondering why this 50¢ entitlement is not where it’s supposed to be! I call to complain and demand that the circulation staff makes it right.

Hailey

When that happens, my dog also notices that the time-space continuum is out of balance and she decides to sniff around for a few extra minutes in a vain attempt to find my newspaper. All the while I am awkwardly hoping that my super-commuting neighbors don’t come out to witness what I might look like as a bedmate. I feel their eyes on me as the seconds tick by. How bad is my bed head hairdo? At least the newspaper provides me some cover and a credible excuse for standing half naked in my driveway at dawn. Sans newspaper, they probably can’t figure out if I’m coming or going.

This morning, I dutifully traipsed out to the driveway at sunrise, inwardly smiling with smug satisfaction that my trusty newspaper was “in the zone.” Game on.

So, with my morning coffee I'm reading in The Sacramento Bee about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos buying the venerable Washington Post for $240 million. The Graham Family finally gave up the ownership ghost after 80 years in the business making Bezos a sole owner with no Board of Directors or stockholders. This follows by a week an announcement that the owner of the Boston Red Sox had purchased The Boston Globe for pennies on the dollar of what it was worth a decade ago.

Question: Are newspapers now becoming the retro playthings for the super-rich just like professional sports teams?

Answer: Probably not. Pro Sports is a multi-billion enterprise on the rise and newspapers can’t turn a profit in a collapsing industry. But maybe they make a kitschy hobby for the hipster one percent.

As I read on, it dawned on me that I already heard about everything related to the Bezos/Post affair from watching the nightly news and catching news items on Internet sources. This news story was so yesterday. Isn't it ironic that one of the people contributing to the 44% decline in Post revenue over the last five years now owns the paper he was putting out of business? That feels like a very hostile takeover to me. Amazon (Bezos) very effectively kindled the fire in people to get their news online (pun intended).

Question: How can the print media stay alive in an Era of Instantaneous Reporting by citizen journalists?

Answer: Maybe by being the master of the content and not a slave to the delivery system the press can keep its edge and relevance.

Seniors are about the only ones actually reading print newspapers anymore (remember now, 60 is the new 50).  They read the obituaries to see if they're in them.  The Pew Center reported two years ago that on any given day in America only about 34% of the adults actually read the daily newspaper. That means if you get hammered by the press, there’s a three-in-one chance nobody knows about it.

For older folks, cars on freeways seem to careen past them at break-neck speeds, so they often self-regulate traffic by locking into 65 MPH in the fast lane to gain a sense of control. It’s the geezer factor in commuting that drives us nuts. With respect to news consumption the same holds true. Seniors are trying to drive in a media market fast lane using a slow-paced device that cannot hit light speed. Newspapers don’t have the horse power to keep up with the Internet traffic. Newspapers are not even 1G in a 5G-Force world.

However, for communicators we are still in that transitional gray area where we cannot decide to drop print materials altogether in favor of e-communications. Old folks (and traditionalists like me) like to get our fingers smudged from the ink on what we read. We also turn out to vote at five times the rate of our offspring.

So if content is key, maybe Mr. Bezos can make good on his initial statement that The Washington Post will not change. It will still be a diligent sentinel for truth and accuracy in a sea of shameless hit-piece sensationalist “news reporting.” I hope that standard can stay intact when the pressure of the marketplace shakes confidence in his $240 million gamble.

Newspapers need to take a lesson from the VCR. We all had them 15 years ago. Now they are relics of a bygone era. They are unplugged gathering dust in the garage. Many of us still cling to libraries of the clunky oversized VHS tapes (mostly Disney classics for our grandkids). Soon those physical relics will become little used collectibles too. But Hollywood is still making movies and TV shows. They control the content and adapted nicely to each new generation of media that came along to show their stories (DVD, BluRay, streaming, Netflix, etc). Maybe newspapers should learn a lesson here. Be the reliable story teller. Be the trusted "wire service" for their community.

Newspapers can decide to stay as VCRs or they can become the reference point for the Internet conversations of the future by presenting an accurate, timely, credible, and objective accounting of the news. Don’t become perspective-driven tabloids to keep up with the Internet Joneses; they can’t win on speed and quantity, so win on quality. The newspaper business should be an honorable profession where getting it right matters more than getting it fast.

Maybe Jeff Bezos has the wherewithal and long range vision to transform the daily newspaper into something that people read with a sense of enthusiasm and dedication. My Golden Retriever sure hopes so because our daily ritual is important to both of us in so many ways.

 
© 2013 by Thomas K. DeLapp

Finding a "cure " in the public school House

Finding a “cure” in the public school House!

I am a big fan of the recently-ended TV series House. With a masterful touch, actor Hugh Laurie played the brilliant, irascible, arrogant, prank-playing doctor who is known for sweeping in at the last minute with his diagnostic team to save a dying patient with a miracle cure to a complex condition. There is one thing for certain though ― the last thing you wanted to be on that show was the patient.

Why? Because it usually meant that at some point during your 60-minute hospital stay you had to convincingly and realistically pass prodigious quantities of blood through various orifices of your body. Hundreds of emerging young actors can now proudly add to their professional resumes “expert at hemorrhagic vomiting.”

The mystery ailment often was so arcane, elusive, or disguised that they had to treat symptoms without directly attacking the cause. Patients went through every type of test or procedure imaginable; sometimes with life threatening consequences. More than once ― after infusing an exotic pharmaceutical cocktail, conducting intricate open heart/brain surgery, or inducing a claustrophobic incident in the CT scanner ― the medical team found they had misdiagnosed the problem and had to bring out the paddles to revive the patient. Treating a moving target of symptoms had led them down a series of recurring blind alleys. It was a guessing game and the clock was ticking as the patient’s life hung in the balance. They threw solutions at problems hoping one would stick and voila a patient would be cured for another week.

The scripts from House transport readily to the modern era of school reform in the Public School House. Our patient (the public schools) shows dramatic and alarming signs of illness. Our financial temperature has dropped sharply, we’re amputating appendages to save essential core services, and using a plethora of triage techniques to keep public education from flat lining. The prognosis is dire and the condition is deteriorating rapidly. Is there a doctor in the house?

The harsh critics in our House say it’s too late; we’re riding a dead horse on life support. Privateers, born-again educationists, voucheristas, home schoolers, charter advocates, and politicians have started making our funeral arrangements while educational theorists, academics, think tanks, sage retired superintendents, private industry turn-around specialists, and canned reform-in-a-box software/ hardware/ human-ware marketers have gone Code Red in treating our symptoms.

These Public School EMTs (education management theorists) use tell-tale signs like dropout rates, Achievement Gaps, multilingualism, no common core, not enough electives, outdated teaching styles, lack of parental engagement in the learning process, too much or not enough technology, and a litany of other problems to pitch their solution for creating and maintaining a 21^st Century learning environment for a demanding and complex student population. They diagnose a symptom with an absolute conviction that by treating it we can create overall health in the patient.

These reforms may work for a while. Personally, I think we can’t really produce a healthy, life sustaining public education system unless we cure the real cause for our malaise . . . Malnutrition. Each year Americans seem more willing to spend money on Starbuck’s than schoolhouses. The percent of personal income devoted to education has steadily decreased each year over the past few decades. As a society we’re starving our students to death. In some societies that would be considered child abuse. On a national scale it’s educational genocide.

In California, we have been systematically de-funding public education by billions of dollars. I’m all for ending obesity and maintaining a reasonably healthy diet, but in this case we’re forcing our schools into anorexia. California is trying to run 2013 schools with 2000 income levels. If the lifespan of a PreK-12 student is only 14 years, in effect, we have abandoned an entire generation on operating table. Schools can now only offer life support and keep the little patients as comfortable as possible.

Watch any TV ad for new miracle drugs designed to cure a host of Baby Boomer maladies and they all end the same way: a thirty second speed-talked disclaimer that warns if you take this drug it might cure the one symptom you have, but could cause dangerous side-effects (anything from fainting, convulsions and dry mouth to four-hour erections, heart attacks and strokes). Maybe we need to mandate that we cannot impose an educational reform or funding bill on our public schools without a similar disclaimer about their unintended consequences, dangers from overdose, and adverse side effects. On the label of the regulatory prescription bottle we should also caution that resisting tax increases for education can become an addiction that is hard shake.

As communicators we need to be truth tellers. Today, the Health of Public Education sucks. We need people to see that there will be deep and fatal consequences if we keep treating symptoms instead of getting to the root cause that will cure this patient. We have to stop expecting miracle cures and start investing our resources in systemic educational wellness. It will take a long-term commitment and a lot of patience if our patient is going to pull through. But time is of the essence or the patient may die. We need a Dr. House and his team in the Public School House STAT to accurately diagnose our condition and prescribed a cure that doesn’t kill us!

© Copyright 2012 by Thomas K. DeLapp, Communication Resources for Schools

Stop Giving Public Education the “Business”

Should we run our schools like a business? Many business leaders and free market privateers are “all up in our business” asking schools to be more business-like to achieve results. But I wonder if a company CEO actually could lead the average public school district any better? I doubt it. There are some powerful differences that might make the average titan of industry fail as an educational CEO. Here are twenty ways that running a school district is a lot harder than running a business:

1.     No Investment Capital

Capitalism depends on capital. Return on Investment (ROI) means you spend enough money first and then see if it pays off. Investment yields return. In education, our incentive programs are the complete opposite ― Investment on Return. We mandate that schools achieve certain rates of improvement and then we promise to give them more money. As a superintendent, the corporate CEO would have to use promised incentives instead of concrete investments to get results. But chronic underfunding of education (NCLB for example) has shifted ROI to IOR which actually means IOU to an educator. “Show me the money!” isn’t the quid pro quo in public education that it is in the private sector. In fact, our only incentive is to avoid the sanctions. Corporate leaders throw money at their problems. Educators don’t have that option and, in fact, society has been systematically de-investing in its public schools as a percent of personal income or GDP.

2.     Educators Can’t Niche Market

Businesses succeed when they find their market niche and focus all of their energies on perfecting their products or services in that market. The education marketplace is demanding, comprehensive, and diverse. The push-me-pull-you between state and federal standard-setters, parental demand, and what districts can actually provide as a well-rounded education causes tremendous tension. Science, the Arts, Social Studies, History, PE, Health Education, and Career Tech take a back seat as we are judged primarily on English and Math proficiency. Yet the consumer base still demands services in all subjects. Taco Bell doesn’t serve pizza, and Pizza Hut doesn’t serve filet mignon. However, our menu needs to be all encompassing or our customers get upset. They want mass personalized public education ― a private tutorial on a public school dollar.

3.     The Customer Isn’t Always Right

There’s a false axiom in business that “the customer is always right.” That simply isn’t true. Sure a business wants customer satisfaction, but if a business can’t satisfy the customer or its customer is too obnoxious or demanding the business cuts them loose. They give them a refund check and show them the door. Companies can pick and choose their customers and abandon the difficult “unprofitable” ones. Public education has to serve everyone. We don’t have a refund check to give them and if we tell them to leave they come back with a lawyer. Business leaders can be a little disingenuous when they advocate that parental choice is the answer to education’s ills. For a corporate CEO, that model would only work if they could also choose their parents and students. Educators can’t and won’t do that. We take them all whether they are tough to serve or not.

4.     Simultaneous Over-Regulation and De-Regulation

Many business leaders complain they are forced to move out of state or off shore to survive because of government over regulation. At least they have the option to leave. Public schools labor under a comprehensive, contradictory and complex set of regulations. The California Education Code contains over 20 million words. For example, myriad regulations and exacting standards mean the only facilities more difficult to build than schools are hospitals or power plants.  Of course, you’re a lot safer in a public school classroom during an earthquake than you are under a freeway overpass, in a corporate office building, or in a Wal-Mart. Some construction firms won’t work on schools because of all the delays and hoops they have to jump through.

The Chamber of Commerce annually issues a list of “job killer” bills pending before the Legislature. Maybe educators should do the same.  The Ed Code and the state budget come to mind since they certainly have been a “job killer” for educational personnel. Business CEOs aren’t used to having government regulators second-guess their business decisions; school superintendents are.

At the same time, quick-fix politicians and born-again educationists think if we infuse competition into the public schools it will force improvements. Over-regulating and under-funding the public schools as you force them to compete with charters, private schools, vouchers, parental choice, and online classrooms is a formula for failure and creates the unlevel playing field that private sector CEOs abhor. Corporations complain loudly to Congress when we don’t subsidize American companies and farmers struggling to fend off foreign competition. How is education any different?

5.     Revolving Door Leadership

One of the biggest differences between private and public sector leadership is that, in business, management stays the same while the workforce is constantly rotating out. In public schools our workforce stays entrenched (tenure and ineffective evaluation systems) while our management structure is constantly churning. The average shelf-life of a California school superintendent is less than three years. Many don’t even finish the term of their first contract or strategic plan. Transitory leadership can kill a business because it lacks consistency, confidence, and coordination. Apple Computer had revolving door leadership that almost drove it under until they re-hired Steve Jobs and regained stability. The same holds true for public education. We need leadership stability and continuity for a change. At this writing, nearly two-thirds of the students in California are being educated in systems led by superintendents who have been on that job less than three years. Now, this is a lot better than the private sector where 90% of the businesses that incorporate go bankrupt within the first two years. Private sector CEOs can walk away from failure; educators cannot not ― the state won’t let them.

6.     Lack of Control over the Bottom Line

The bottom line is crucial for a business CEO as they balance income and expenses to yield a profit. To do that the corporate leader must be able to control costs and prices. By contrast, the education leader only controls half the equation. In California, school districts receive most of their funding from the state so superintendents have very little influence on the revenue side of the ledger. They spend their time poring over expenses to glean every ounce of productivity so they can stay in balance. And, state law requires them to demonstrate solvency for at least three years even when their funding level is highly unpredictable. We are balancing 2012 budgets on 2000 levels of income. Ninety percent of our budget is spent on people so we have very little wiggle room to avoid layoffs and service reductions to stay in balance. For the past five years we have been doing Donner Party Budgeting in California as we cannibalize our workforce to stay afloat. Imposing a price hike to maintain quality services, staffing and “products” is not an option for a superintendent, but it is for a corporate CEO.

7.     Support for Employee Training and Renewal

In its prime, one-third of the IBM workforce was in some form of management, sales, or technical training. And it was done on the company’s dime. Contrast that approach to public schools where we are lucky to have one day at the start of school to get classrooms and work areas ready for the next term.  Professional development is a dying commitment in most school districts because of budget cuts. If our employees are to remain current in their fields, we ask them to pay for it themselves on their own time after the school year is done. Great businesses invest in their own employees, public schools can’t afford to any more.

8.     Marketing, Communications and PR on the Cheap

Most businesses spend a lot of money on Marketing, Communications, and Corporate Relations. Not including the cost of sales, it can range up to 30% of a firm’s operating expenses, with an average of about 7-10%.  In public education we grudgingly spend about 1% of district resources on school communication, community outreach, civic engagement, and public/media relations. Getting your message out to consumers is stock and trade for a corporate CEO. It’s a luxury for a school superintendent. Yet the number one reason a superintendent is hired, fired or gets a better job is their ability to communicate with consumers, school boards, employees, and stakeholders. Corporate CEOs, like educational leaders, would find it hard to survive with the paltry amount we spend to get our message out.

9.     Our Customers are Co-Producers

In business, the customer is the recipient of a product or service. In education, our customers (students and parents) are actually co-producers of our product called “learning.” Imagine if Ford Motor Company’s success depended on a car buyer helping on the assembly line and then on how well they drove and maintained their car over time? Each driver would define Ford’s product based on their own interaction with it. In public education, our Product is Learning and our Profit is Performance. Our customer’s involvement in making our product is integral to our profit margin in a way that would confound most corporate CEOs.

10.  Everyone’s an Expert on What We Do

Most people think they know how schools should operate because they went to one. In most industries the consumer accepts a company’s perceived expertise. We don’t tell our dentist how to fill a cavity, the CPA how to prepare our taxes, or the surgeon how to remove the tumor. If we are unhappy with the quality or value of that transaction we vote with our feet and choose someone else. In education, our customers feel entitled and knowledgeable enough to tell us how to run our business. Just because you were a student doesn’t mean you can be a teacher or administrator.

11.  Schools are Change Resistant

Businesses can change and transform themselves at will. “My way or the highway” is the ultimate hammer CEOs can use to impose change and compel adherence to new directions. Because of tenure and civil service, superintendents need to “sell” their staff into accepting change as a good thing. In a corporate environment, you will never hear, “That won’t work; I’m not going to change.” An ingrained workforce would drive the private sector CEO nuts! They would have to be much more adept at building coalitions, alliances and teams because they could not compel allegiance. It’s pretty easy to be a company team builder when you have the power to trade players at will.

12.  Unions Hold a Trump Card

Only about 10% of the American workforce is unionized anymore. Most unions are in the public sector; primarily education. Companies bargain with unions over pay and benefits and the occasional agreement around hours of employment and vacation/leave policies. Their working conditions are just that, working conditions. They don’t negotiate over what their product or service should be. In public education our working conditions are actually our teaching and learning conditions and over time union contracts have begun to define our educational product. Contracts constrain management rights to call meetings, enforce collaboration among teachers, curriculum and textbook adoption processes, school governance and advisory systems, hiring processes, etc. Learning is a process and when the union contract limits the engagement of adults in that process it has a huge impact on our product.

13.  Shared Decision-Making Isn’t Just Lip Service

Most good businesses encourage employee involvement in setting policies and practices that will improve company profitability and performance. It didn’t always operate that way, and in many cases is still doesn't. In business, shared decision making was, “I make the decisions and share them with you.” By contrast, public education has a rich tradition of collaboration and collegiality. We have scores of advisory mechanisms for people to provide input, criticism, and feedback to leaders. Some of those are mandated and some are voluntary. In one communication audit for a moderate sized school district I discovered that the superintendent had 17 advisory bodies reporting to her. Even she didn’t realize that. Processing decisions is anathema to most private sector leaders who want the flexibility to take advantage of targets of opportunity, changing market conditions, and innovations. Shared decision making in public education almost assures that we will not be nimble enough for most corporate CEOs.

14.  Schools are Under-Led

Public schools keep getting accused of having a “Bureaucratic Blob.” Myths, stereotypes and lies about how much money is “wasted” on overhead and administration abound, usually spread by private sector leaders. Yet if you examine the facts, public education has a leaner management structure than almost any other business.  I’ve reviewed Bureau of Labor Statistics figures comparing the number of managers/supervisors to rank and file employees by industry and the data are conclusive. Business has almost twice as much overhead management as public schools. We average about one administrator (including principals) for every 30 employees. Other industries like communications, retailing, media, manufacturing, transportation, construction, etc. have ratios of 1:12 or less. I would suggest that we need more, not less administrators and specialists to lead us forward as an industry. The corporate CEO is used to delegating to a multi-tiered staff structure. The superintendent doesn’t have that support system.

15.  Public Schools Must Be Transparent

We must do the public’s business in public and offer accessibility and transparency in the process. Each financial transaction, agenda item, policy change, and email is potentially subject to a Public Records Act request. This alone would cause most corporate CEOs to cringe. Imagine if stockholders, competitors, and customers could access every email, document and record kept by your company? The cloak of corporate secrecy just doesn’t wear well in the public schools.

16.  Society Drops It’s Problems on Our Doorstep Every Day

I can’t think of any other industry that has to contend with so many challenges from its customers. Kids come to school hungry; we feed them breakfast and lunch. Kids can’t get to our place of business; we give them a bus ride. Kids are abused, neglected, and homeless; we take them in and nurture them. We inoculate them from disease, and provide health care when they’re sick and hurt. In a society filled with incivility, double-standards, and double-talk, we have to teach them tolerance, manners, work ethics, and countless other basic life skills. If they are obese we make them exercise. If they have learning disabilities, psychological problems, or substance abusing parents we have to provide them a haven and hope.  Could the CEO of a retail department store chain even comprehend addressing the magnitude to those challenges for every customer who came in just to buy a pair of jeans?

17.  Our Product is on the Production Line for 13 years

The quarterly balance sheet is the yardstick for a business leader. For an educator, our success is measured in decades. Our first goal is to get all students to graduate and our ultimate end product is a well-educated young adult with the skills and temperament to succeed in college, a career, and citizenship. Educational leaders need to be patient while maintaining a healthy impatience with status quo performance. As we invest so much time in each child’s future, it might be hard for a private sector CEO to stay the course for over a decade when they have come from a “fiscal year” frame of mind.

18.  Education is Dominated by Isolated Generalists

Businesses tend to run on specialists working in their own silos ― production lines, departments, product teams, etc. Schools have a lot of generalists, but they also work in silos. We still operate in a “sage on the stage” environment where the teacher’s classroom is his or her domain. Collaboration is not a condition of their work product or craft; it is something we have to induce them to participate in. Sadly, we also expect a teacher to come into the profession with all of the classroom management, content expertise, interpersonal techniques, and workplace savvy to handle any classroom situation or subject. That’s just unrealistic and unfair. Schools can’t afford meaningful in-depth orientation, induction, and mentoring programs to bring these generalists up to speed quickly. We push them into the pool and make them learn to swim in their own lane while the crowd at the swim meet is yelling for them to go faster.

19.  Pay for Performance vs. Pay for Presence

Two frustrating concepts for business leaders is that in public education we can’t pay good teachers more money than bad teachers and that we have such trouble identifying and removing poorly performing teachers once they reach tenure. Private sector CEOs achieve results by offering incentives when a person’s performance contributes more to the bottom line. It’s a form of profit sharing, and it works. In a variety of forms, reformers have been trying to ingrain the concept of pay for performance into public education. Good concept, but difficult to realize since the devil is in the details. Do we pay more for test scores, subjective evaluations, graduation rates, etc?  Most corporate CEOs would find our ambiguity about what makes for exceptional performance difficult to administer. Superintendents certainly do.

20.  Schools Are An Old-Fashion Institution

Public schools are a tremendous societal tradition that has endured over the ages. We drive by the old school with fond memories. Our grandchildren are taught in the same classroom we were in as a kid. And that is the problem. Sadly, unlike most businesses we’re still working in the same facilities as we did 50 years ago. We have patched them up and tried to renovate their infrastructure, but our education facilities are definitely old school. Corporations pride themselves on state-of-the-art technology and modern manufacturing plants. Trying to deliver a world class education in a second rate learning environment would certainly pose a huge impediment to a corporate innovator who wanted to change the public schools.

Some final thoughts . . .

Public schools can certainly be more business-like, but to say that a business model is the solution doesn’t wash. I say we ask businesses to run like schools for a year and see how they like it!

The security of our nation depends heavily on developing a highly-educated population that is smart enough to see past prejudice and complacency to create a better future. Public education is still the cornerstone of our democracy, our national security, and our economic future. In 2009, we were all scared into supporting a massive government bailout of the insurance, investment banking and home mortgage industries. They were too big to fail we were told; the negative consequences would be too devastating and immediate.

I suggest that our public school system is hovering at the same precipice and we are also too big to let fail. Instead of condemning public education, corporate leaders should become true partners to help restore the education industry to its former place of world prominence. Instead of mindlessly signing an anti-tax pledge, they should be signing on to help public schools with a massive investment of badly needed venture capital. The American auto industry is surging back because we had the public and corporate will to make it so. We put our money where our mouth was as a nation. Will we be able to say the same for public schools so that an education “Made in America” is once again the standard for the world?

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"In fact, to every young person listening tonight who's contemplating their career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child - become a teacher. Your country needs you." ― From President Obama’s State of the Union Speech

© Copyright 2012 by Thomas K. DeLapp, President, Communication Resources for Schools

 

Plan in Professional Pit Stops

Call me dense, but I could never quite understand the allure of NASCAR. To me it seemed a lot like driving down Interstate 5 from Sacramento to Los Angeles: simply put your foot to the floor and get there as fast as you can. Sure, just like Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart you sometimes need mad driving skills to weave in and out of traffic on I-5 to avoid those “pack drivers” huddled together bumper to bumper at 80 mph or to sidestep a car crash in the making. But other than that, to me stock car racing always seemed more about the noise, speed, a blatant display of machismo, and beer. I thought the NASCAR formula for victory was pretty simple: fast car + great driver = winning.

Then I came across an article describing something I hadn’t realized: pit stop strategy.

That recalibrated my thinking. As a kid, my carefully crafted definition of a pit stop came from long road trips in the family station wagon. It was synonymous with taking a pee. It was a sprint race to the bathroom by five squirrely brothers. The toilet seat was our winners circle and the mad dash as we bolted from the car had all the simplicity and noise of drag racing. It was all or nothing. Flat out - get to the restroom first (or maybe second) or end up doing that wiggly little kid dance holding your private parts in line desperately waiting for the flushing sound as you moved up in the queue. There was no strategy involved. Put the pedal to the metal or you’ll wet your pants!

On the race track, however, strategy may be everything. Often the difference between the checkered flag and eating someone’s exhaust is how efficiently and strategically you execute a pit strategy.

Wikipedia provided more insight in the value of pit stops:

“By making pit stops cars can carry less fuel, and therefore be lighter and faster, and use softer tires that wear faster but provide more grip. Teams usually plan for each of their cars to pit following a planned schedule, the number of stops determined by the fuel capacity of the car, tire lifespan, and tradeoff of time lost in the pits versus how much time may be gained on the race track through the benefits of pit stops. Choosing the optimum pit strategy of how many stops to make and when to make them is crucial in having a successful race. It is also important for teams to take competitors' strategies into account when planning pit stops, to avoid being "held up" behind other cars. An unscheduled or extended stop, such as for a repair, can be very costly for a driver's chance of success, because while the car is stopped for service, cars remaining on the track can rapidly gain distance on the stopped car.”

Then I went to NASCAR.com and read some comments from driver Carl Edwards in an online article on by Mark Aumann. What's happened, according to Edwards, is that pit strategy can negate any advantage a faster car may have on the track. "You will not win these races repeatedly if you don't have the right calls on the pit box," Edwards said. Aumann concluded: “Winning the championship requires a certain level of consistency. . . and the key, in his (Edwards) opinion, is walking that delicate balance of knowing when to be aggressive and when to be cautious.”

So, to win the race you don’t just drive until you run out of gas, burn up your pistons, and blow out your tires? I guess not. As school communicators, I think we can learn a lot from race car drivers as we Race to the Top. Obviously, we need to build in a Professional Pit Stop Strategy into our careers so we don’t sputter along running on fumes or actually burn out.

Here are a few of my perceptions about effective Professional Pit Stop Strategies:

Be your own pace car
Schools have only been in session for a few weeks and if you’re already tired and your gas is running low you are in trouble. You won’t be able to finish the race to June. And, when it really counts in a crisis or high profile, intricate situation you may not have the fuel in your tank to stay on track. Maintain a consistent pace in your job that enables you to gain ground steadily.

Take a personal retreat so you can advance
We create communication plans and district plans, but we rarely have a personal professional plan to guide our work. Twice a year, take yourself on a one-day personal/professional retreat (maybe with your favorite beverage, a friend/mentor, and a notepad). Create a plan for you. Know where you want to go, why you want to get there, the road map for reaching the destination, how long it’s going to take, and how you’ll know when you’ve arrived. It isn’t about doing things right, if you’re not doing the right things!

Know when to say “enough”
Adding a lot of “other duties as assigned” like cord wood in the work pile on your desk doesn’t make you indispensable, it makes you overworked. Be thoughtful about fitting requests into your schedule. Are they true priorities that should trump what you already have to do? Watch for the “dump trucks” on your professional speedway that drop off their problems at your desk instead of solving them on their own. Making marginal progress across a broad front of tasks and assignments won’t be satisfying or memorable. Get things done, but remember you are never going to be caught up.

Top off your own gas tank periodically
It’s important to keep your professional tires balanced, front end aligned, and engine tuned up. Maintaining the right balance between a healthy lifestyle, family, spiritual needs, intellectual pursuits, and professional networking will keep you psychologically sane and physically sound. Find those turnoffs in the rat race that can be “filling stations” to keep you moving forward.

Look out the windshield, not the rear view mirror
Learn to put the past behind you. Learn from mistakes, but don’t dwell on them. Build a proven track record and a solid body of accomplishment, but don’t sit on your laurels. There will always be another race and people are counting on you to be up for it.

Assemble a good pit crew
At a NASCAR race, the average pit stop takes just 15 seconds to change four tires, fill the tank, and check the engine. In that time your competition can be a quarter mile down the road. If you’ve ever watched a pit crew in slow motion it’s like sophisticated choreography as a team of specialists works together in a synchronized dance. You cannot do your job without help, so surround yourself with a great pit crew of associates, advisors, resources and networks that enable you to be the best driver you can be. Teamwork is a winning combination.

In life, and in your career, more pit stops along the way can make the journey much more enjoyable. In hindsight, I often wish my Dad had executed a better pit strategy during those long road trips. We could have traveled with a lot less fuel in our tanks.

I’m still wondering why the NASCAR drivers don’t have to take a pit stop to pee during a 400-mile race? Maybe they just do the wiggly dance and ask their crew chief . . . Are we there yet?

The Power of Stories

“So this duck walks into a bar . . .”

When you hear a phrase like this, you know instinctively that a joke or story is heading your way. It could be a hysterical one that makes your drink come out of your nose from laughing so hard or it could rely on a corny pun that makes you groan and shake your head.

Why do so many stories or jokes begin with someone walking into a bar? It’s probably because the pub, saloon, or tavern in a community has always been a focal point for interpersonal communication. The bar was the original chat room where stories were the stock in trade and they were “shared” and “liked” before there was an Internet. Good story-telling doesn’t always fit into the cadence of 21st Century social media communication. Now, thin-sliced communication comes at you at the speed of light while a compelling story takes time to unravel, usually over a cold beer.

I have known some great story tellers in my life. Most came from a generation before there was Twitter or Facebook or YouTube. They came of age in a simpler time before we tried to convey our stories in 140 characters or less. These 20th Century raconteurs relied on the power of verbal stories, told and re-told to share their experiences and reflections on the ups and downs of life.

My family tree is rife with a long line of fascinating story tellers (BS artists if you will). Three come to mind immediately: my late father-in-law Donald Parker and my two uncles – Bill and Don. It may come as no surprise that they all were sailors who served on ships in wars dating back to WWII, Korea or Vietnam. As an impressionable young man, I can remember shooting the breeze with each of them for hours on end as they regaled me with stories that to this day still make me laugh. Their stories are a reflection of them, their times, and their lives.

We don’t remember facts and figures, but we do remember the stories that have touched our lives. We remember stories because they can be riveting, funny, poignant, and chock full of common sense and homespun wisdom. Information by itself is not compelling, but add to the facts the visual image of the case study or anecdote and data can come to life. A picture is definitely worth a thousand words, but a story is worth a 1,000 pictures because it embeds the message with mental images as we personally relate to the story and to the story teller.

As public relations professionals our job is to translate numbers into words. We decipher financial or assessment hieroglyphics into understandable and meaningful prose. But the story teller takes that to a higher level. He or she paints a vivid picture of what the prose means and how it makes us feel. They put us into the picture emotionally and intellectually.

My late friend Charlie Binderup was a masterful story teller. Charlie was superintendent in a very small school district in Northern California. He often joked with pride that the Tulelake Basin schools had the first wood burning fax machine. He also had the same delivery as the veterans mentioned above. He would reel you into the tale with an “aw shucks” style so you couldn’t be quite sure if he was telling the truth or making the whole thing up. But it didn’t matter because the story was so endearing or funny. Great story tellers also have a shared affinity for laughing along with their own jokes and reminiscences. They often crack themselves up as the words come out. I’m convinced that the best part of story-telling is when you get caught up in the telling and it reminds you all over again of how you felt the first time you heard it or experienced it.

[By the way; the punch line to the duck walking into the bar joke is: So the duck says, “I can’t take a job like that . . . I’m an engineer!”]

One of the best things about attending the annual seminar of the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) each summer is that I get to swap stories with some of the best BS artists in the country. Guys like Steve Knagg and Jim Cummings are keeping the fine art of story-telling alive and well.

Their tall tales use the same formula for success: their reflections are based in reality, the events are plausible but maybe not believable, just a hint of mischief is added like seasoning, and they linger with a slight pause before delivering the punch line with a wry smile and a laugh as they crack themselves up telling it. They enjoy the story as much as you do. Stories are infectious.

We have some very powerful stories in public education. Everyday miracles, snapshots of success, touching tributes to the human spirit, and the indisputable evidence that education is the cornerstone of our society and the rock upon which our freedom and democracy are built. Now, that is a story worth telling!

The public desperately wants to still believe in public education. So my advice is to be more than a public information officer; be a public story teller. Be the chronicler and conveyor of the story of your schools. Story telling is one of the oldest and most effective teaching tools. Use your arsenal of social media and digital tools to point people to the stories of success and triumph in your classrooms, playgrounds, and school buses. Make the complexity of teaching and learning come to life by adding a few choice stories to your communication repertoire. Great stories make for memorable messages.

“So this little boy walks into school one day . . .”

Got a bad soloist? Get a bigger choir!

This may surprise a few of you, but in my early years I actually was a choirboy. At the awkward age of 12 I was the sole member of the Baritone Section in the youth choir at Westchester Presbyterian Church. What can I say, my voice dropped early and kept going south all through my teens. I realized very quickly that if I was flat or sharp everyone in the congregation would know it. God, how I resented all those wimpy tenors who could mask their vocal miscues within a larger group! That lesson stuck with me like scripture: If you don’t want to hear a solo off-key voice you need to surround it with plenty of better singers.

The reverse is also true, if all you hear is the bad soloist, you begin to think the entire choir stinks! My problem is that sometimes our most important debates are shaped by only a few loud angry voices with their own insistent agendas. Being the loudest voice in the room — this seems to be the hallmark of societal discourse these days.

Whether it’s picketing teachers, angry parents resisting school closures, catcalls in Congress, venomous talk show terrorists, edgy newspaper reporters, or biased bloggers they all seem to believe that acrimonious volume will carry the day. They create a cacophony of negativity and a growing sense that to disagree in the 21st Century we have to be disagreeable. The louder, the better.

There has never been a time that I can recall when we had so many controversial, highly-charged emotional issues on our plate in the public schools. The state is systematically de-investing in public education. We are being asked to balance a 2010 budget on a 2005 income. That formula just doesn’t add up and relationships in the educational community are showing the stress and strain. Frustration, scapegoating, blame-shifting, and turf wars abound as we deal with fewer resources to handle mounting problems.

Remember this:

“When the pie gets smaller, the first things to go are the table manners! In this rollercoaster economy, people are wrestling over the table scraps in a public food fight.”

I enjoy a robust public policy debate as much as the next guy, but geez, where has common decency, civility and reasoned debate gone? Out the window I’m afraid. In recent months, I’ve brushed up against some pretty dogmatic, unethical, self-righteous soap-boxers with this unflinching attitude -

“If the facts of a situation don’t fit my preconceptions, I’ll reject them out of hand and condemn the person who points them out to me!”

This same group of hostile aggressive types is willing to jump to conclusions based on only a shred of evidence, feel some perceived slight or hidden agenda at the drop of a hat, and amplify the noise to drown out those who disagree. Nobody wants to accept the reality check that we can no longer conduct business as usual. Nobody wants to give in. Nobody wants to play well with others.

To be fair, many entities of government (including public schools) have spawned and inflamed this attitude because we have not been transparent, responsive or engaging enough in the past. Is it any surprise when people don’t feel heard that they yell a little louder?

Here are some ways to “put a sock in it” with a bad soloist:

1. Make sure you’re singing on key yourself

When you say something publicly have your facts straight, give people straight talk, and deliver your message clearly and pervasively. Model the vocal chops you expect in others.

2. Sing in your own choir loft, not theirs

Never react in a war of words on a critical blog or in the letters-to-the-editor columns because all you do is drive attention to those forums. Never pick a fight with a man who buys his ink by the barrel or his Internet presence in gigabytes because they will always have the last word. Make them irrelevant by shifting the debate onto venues that you can control like your own web site, Op Ed pieces, or district publications.

3. Set the standard for what sounds right

Play to your home field advantage by framing the conversation about key issues. Define the themes, key messages, and factual foundation that everyone works from. Be seen as the definitive resource on the key issues that affect your organization. Don’t just react to what others say first; be the lead singer in the debate.

4. Create an ensemble of positive voices singing your praises

You’re known by the company you keep. Enlist community opinion leaders or people with unique and relevant views to promote a more balanced discussion. Give people talking points so they practice message discipline on your behalf. We should all be singing off the same song sheet. Think of yourself as the conductor or choir director orchestrating a community of voices on a topic.

5. Give them voice lessons, if they’ll listen

Sometimes bad singer just doesn’t have the right sheet music and that’s why they’re making it up as they go along. This could be a teachable moment to transform a critic into a supporter. Don’t presume they can’t change their tune because if you do they probably won’t.

We spend 90% of our time in school administration dealing with the 10% of our stakeholders who disagree with us or have problems with the way we do things. In these troubled times we need everyone to lend their voice to our cause. If they do, maybe we can drown out the negativists and naysayers that seem to relish the spotlight and attack the integrity of public education. Public education has a song worth singing.

All together now . . . Halleluiah!

Total Quality Communication to Unlock the Communicator(s) Inside

We can learn a lot in school communications from the concept of Total Quality Management. Sweating the small stuff was all the rage as part of the TQM movement a few decades ago. The basic theory was that if you did minute details well, the total experience or product would be excellent. Now sweating the small stuff is somewhat passé as we want to make everyone a “big picture” person. However, too often our failure to communicate at the individual employee level is the small stuff that trips us up.

When all is said and done, most of the thorniest problems I’ve encountered in my 35-year career in public school PR occurred because of poor communication. That isn’t to diminish the tragic impact of the school shootings, earthquakes, bus accidents, and other biblical acts of God and Mother Nature that I’ve had to deal with. They take their toll and leave deep scars for sure. But many of the high profile conflicts and controversies that have become the all-too-prevalent hallmark of public education policy setting and operations usually stem from a breakdown in communication.

Drilling down to the lowest levels in an organization, poor communication is often the root of our problems and the reason for our undoing. Our education “system” somehow develops a reputation for bad communication, but most of the people in the system are left blameless. How can that be? Systems don’t communicate, people do!

Rigid insistence on ideology, pedagogy, pathology, terminology and all the other “ologies” gets in the way of honest respectful two-way communication. It can strip employees, parents, community activists, and interest groups of their ability to listen strategically and openly to other viewpoints. Just reference the sour grapes, venomous backlash to the federal health care legislation, or the labor union taking a vote of no confidence in a superintendent just because they can’t get their way at the bargaining table, or the office staff sandbagging and demonizing a manager who’s trying to change procedures and assignments?

Why is it that we tolerate and revert to being so disagreeable just because we disagree? Because people are not held accountable for their lousy communication practices! And, people think they know how to communicate well and they often don’t!

Two observations that illustrate this point:

Everyone is an expert on what we do
For some reason, conventional wisdom maintains that everyone springs from the womb fully capable and equipped to communicate verbally, non-verbally, and in writing. That simply is not the case. Some of the worst communicators I’ve brushed up against truly believe they communicate quite well. For example, ever had someone look at you and say, “What’s wrong?” You think you’re fine, but your body language is screaming that you’re not! Quality communication is part science, a dash of art, with whole lot of experience and technique thrown in. Quality communication is a learned skill, not an innate attribute in every individual.

The impact on school communication professionals of this misplaced belief is that everyone thinks they can do our job (maybe even better than us). For example, ever send out a newsletter to a committee for review and comment? You’ll quickly find that while most actors really want to be directors, most educators desperately want to be editors. They “grade” our work as if they are the premier experts and sometimes their edits are wrong!

Communication always seems to be somebody else’s responsibility or only one person’s responsibility
Typically in the communication audits I conduct for school districts people complain that the system doesn’t communicate to them. They never admit that they, in fact, are the system and they have some culpability if the “system” fails to communicate. About 85 cents out of every educational dollar these days is spent on a human being. Employees complain that problems stem from “You didn’t communicate well with me!” Rarely do they admit, “I didn’t take the time to read the materials you sent, listen to your voice mail, read my emails thoroughly, or pay attention in the meeting!”

If a school district is wise enough to employ a professional chief communicator then all too often “communication” becomes their job alone and others feel entitled to abrogate and delegate any personal accountability or responsibility for communicating about what they are doing. “Oh, that’s not my job, that’s hers.” It is an easy out to simply sweep all of the organization’s communication chores into a stinking pile and leave it at the office door of the school PR person.

Here are some suggestions to develop a communicating culture in your schools:

(1) Build communication into decision-making
Do you have meetings? Sure you do; maybe even too many meetings. How about this: require that before you move on to the next agenda item in each meeting you have the people in the room spend five minutes answering this question:

“How are we going to communicate about what we just decided or discussed?”

It’s not enough to make decisions if people don’t know about them. Who better to talk about how best to reach stakeholders with the subject matter than the people in the room discussing that subject matter? That’s a communication tool that doesn’t cost a dime to implement, but it can yield powerful results.

(2) Evaluate and reward communication performance
Acceptable communication skills should be a line item in every employee’s written job description. We should evaluate employees not just on their ability to do their job, but on how well they communicate while they’re doing their job.

(3) Model the behaviors and values we expect in others
Media guru Roger Ailes once advised Ronald Reagan, “Remember Mr. President, you are the message.” Employees inside our public schools can be our best and worst messengers because they transmit messages about our competency as an organization to serve people, solve problems, and deliver a quality educational product. Leaders can unlock the communication potential within their organizations if they have a tireless insistence on quality communication, interaction and relationships at every level by every individual — especially in themselves!

(4) When you have a terrible soloist, get a bigger choir!
Frequently, we are ruled by the loudest voice in the room, the overbearing bully who makes us uncomfortable, or the last person we talk to. When these negative voices dominate the debate it’s time to engage more rational voices to drown them out. The bigger the choir the less one bad singer makes our group sound off key. By emphasizing quality communication in every other employee, the miscommunicating employee can learn by example. Making quality communication matter protects your organization from a negativity virus that can be spread by a single individual to ruin your organization’s communication health.

Whether you sweep the place out at night or you’re the CEO you need to see yourself as a total quality communicator. Sweat the small stuff in communication and the big stuff might just take care of itself!

Tiger & Toyota: At-Risk Reputation Management

Tiger Woods is the number one golfer in the world. Toyota is the biggest car company. They each set the standard for excellence in their respective fields. They each enjoyed enviable blue chip reputations. They each dominated their industries and in both cases millions, if not billions of dollars were on the line as they performed.

Yet, within a few months of each other both are now facing unprecedented crises in public confidence. Will it be a permanent fall from grace or just a temporary setback?

As I watch these parallel situations unfold, I can’t help but reflect on what we as school communicators can learn from the Tiger & Toyota scandals. Here are some observations:

Denial is not an option; where there’s smoke there’s surely going to be a firestorm
There were plenty of warning signs that Tiger and Toyota had problems and that it was only a matter of time before the lid would blow. There were mutterings about on-tour trysts by the legendary golfer and internal memos now reveal that Toyota was in denial for months about the real cause of its sticking gas pedals. Instead of decisively confronting those warning signs, both chose to hope they would stay confidential. The lesson here: in today’s microscopic society public figures must presume that their inner most actions will eventually become public. The real question is how that will occur, not whether it will. The number one rule of PR: Do A Good Job! They should have done a good job to clean up their acts and not blindly hope they could keep their poor performance under wraps.

Break your own bad news instead of letting others break it over your head
A delayed response enables and empowers others to frame your message and the resulting commentary. Many will question whether Tiger should have made a huge public apology. Where was the CEO of Toyota during the first few days after the gas pedal recall? Neither came forward to set the record straight. The public needed and wanted a public face to reassure us. In the absence of one, every tabloid, shock jock and self-appointed expert filled the gap.

I recall several years ago when a Southwest Airlines jet overshot the end of the Burbank Airport runway and parked itself a few yards into Hollywood Way. Within 30 minutes, SWA CEO Herb Kelleher was on TV assuming responsibility, telling us they would thoroughly investigate what happened so it wouldn’t happen again, and reassuring us that it was still safe to fly Southwest. Today, Southwest Airlines is the only profitable airline in the country and has retained its rock solid reputation. I fly a lot and my airline of choice is still Southwest.

When you think it’s bottomed out, be prepared to dig a little deeper
You always want yours to be a one-day story. These both seem to be unraveling as soap opera sagas. The traditional and non-traditional news outlets love unfolding human drama. They’re in a feeding frenzy on a steady diet of controversy that extends the coverage and keeps the spotlight glaring with every new angle. The reputations of both Tiger and Toyota have been bleeding out over days and weeks instead of hours. The reason: daily announcements with more and juicier details coming to light . . . so stayed tuned. The lesson here is to get the worst behind you quickly so you can concentrate on damage control and reputation repair. Your goal is to not be the butt of the opening monologue jokes on Jay Leno or David Letterman for more than a day.

In today’s mixed media environment the story takes on a life of its own
In both cases, the public personas thought they could control the message by limiting the message. In the era of citizen-journalists and personality-driven news, every pundit, blogger, commentator, and columnist adds fuel to the firestorm. If you don’t fill the informational vacuum, others will. The story goes viral quickly and you cannot even know far it reaches and gets distorted.

Swift decisive action may be the only way to staunch the bleeding
Tiger benched himself from the PGA tour ostensibly to deal with his sex addiction and salvage his marriage. Toyota shut down the production line ostensibly to focus on repairing the cars it had already sold. In both cases, they did not want to further risk losing consumer confidence by operating their “business as usual.” If Tiger had continued to play golf, but do it poorly because he had lost his concentration then he would have lost the very foundation of his reputation. I have been a loyal 25-year Toyota customer with three of their vehicles parked in my garage. Their top brass need to make sure I can trust what comes off the production line or their reputation for excellence will give way to lingering doubts. I applaud both decisions to shut down. Sometimes when your computer is acting up the best solution is just to re-boot. That’s exactly what Tiger and Toyota decided to do . . . Re-boot their Reputations.

Do something really great to improve the after-taste
Tiger’s first tournament victory will go a long way toward restoring his place in history. The number of Tour wins instead of the number of girlfriends is how he needs to be measured in the history books. Show us you are great for the right reasons Tiger. I'm rooting for you. Toyota missed the chance to use the second highest rated media event, The Super Bowl, to tell its true story. It is only now airing nostalgic reputation-building commercials on TV. The car maker needs to use TV coverage on the highest-rated world stage . . . The Olympic Games . . . as the venue to re-shape and reinforce its reputation. Getting the facts out is one thing, but we all remember stories. Toyota needs satisfied customers to tell its story once again to the world. You can’t tell us you’re safe or great Toyota; you need other believable people to tell us you still are.

There is a big difference between being famous and having a solid reputation. Anyone can be famous, but probably for the wrong reasons. Octo-Mom, the gate-crashing Salahis, and other one-hit wonders come and go with their 15 minutes of fame. Our public schools need to cultivate a deep and pervasive reputation for excellence and they need to nurture, protect and manage that reputation well. School districts are counting on their chief communicators to grow the organization’s reputation especially at the moments of truth when they appear in the white hot glare of the public spotlight.