Keep Your Team In Check: Tips from Steve Jobs & The Beatles
The May 2012 issue of Fast Company magazine included an article called “The Lost Steve Jobs Tapes”, which featured previously unreleased conversations with Steve Jobs. This conversation with Steve has a lesson for radio in creating balance within your programming team or morning show:
“My model of management is the Beatles.
The Beatles kept each in check. John kept Paul from being a teeny bopper. Paul kept John from drifting out into the cosmos, and it was magic. And George provided a tremendous amount of soul to the group. I don’t know what Ringo did.
It was the chemistry of a small group of people, and that chemistry was greater than the sum of the parts. When they split up they never did anything as good.
At Pixar and Apple my trusted team talk about things a lot. One of us will want to do something really stupid, or maybe not stupid but…maybe not the wisest thing in the long run. Then one of us will say, ‘Hey, I think there’s a better way to do that.’ So we slow down and think it through, and we come up with a much better way.”
- Take away for your programming team: Analytical program/brand directors need creative music directors and promotion/marketing directors to keep each other in check and get the best of both approaches.
- Take away for multiple cast shows: Generators and reactors complement each other. Organized and structured talents balance creative and free-wheeling talents. Techies and non-techies complement one another. Production people complement creative writers, etc.
Use the power of contrast to build your team, maintain balance and score big ratings.
-written by Randy Lane
Photo credit: nemsworld.com
