There are many schools of management theory. My very first experience of being managed was when I first started in a buying department and was told by my boss that I needed to be in before she was, and couldn’t leave until she did (even if that was 10pm).
I’ve been managed by managers that see themselves as a father or mother to their team (which has always left me bemused as I have a perfectly good mum and dad in a bungalow near St Albans and one of each is quite enough for me).
When I launched our strategy team at MediaCom back in the day, I was careful to explain to them my own personal management style. I told them that we were not a hierarchical structure, but more of an Anarcho-syndicalist commune where ideas ruled rather than authority. He (or she) who has the best idea leads.
New technology is set to make the management task even harder according to Andrew Hill writing in the Financial Times last week. (www.ft.com/businessblog).
Increasing automation leads to a reduction in unskilled workers. It doesn’t mean there are no people to manage however, just that the workforce that you do need is more sophisticated and is dealing with more complicated stuff than before. So instead of manning a production line, your people are dealing with customer relationships or myriad suppliers.
In media there is a switch to automated trading, exchange systems and competitive analysis . Interpretation of the oceans of data, and understanding the complexities of the customer journey and prioritising the best solutions therefore become more complicated, and of course more interesting tasks. This requires recruiting of the best and most curious people. Who are of course people who are less likely to do as they are told and more likely to carve out new ways of doing things. This is exactly what our business needs.
But as Andrew Hill comments about Foxconn (a leading manufacturer of telecoms devices) “The big question is how easily they will find and develop managers able to oversee the highly skilled workforce that will march with their robot armies”.
We all would have been glued to Local TV last week.
Thursday, August 18th, 2011I was a bit dismissive of Local TV services when I first heard the idea at the Royal Television Society Conference last year. It was difficult to see what the business model was, and there seems to be plenty of television for people to watch already (average viewing in the UK is at a record level for the first half of 2011 http://www.thinkbox.tv/server/show/nav.1263 )
However the Culture Secretary has persisted in his championing of local TV and more than 60 towns and cities throughout the UK are in the running to host the UK’s first service. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14458007 http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/7235.aspx
In my blog last November and fresh from a panel chaired by Steve Hewlett to discuss the issue, I struggled to make sense of the analogy drawn by Jeremy Hunt between Birmingham UK and Birmingham USA. http://sueunerman.mediaweek.co.uk/?s=city+tv
Hunt’s claim that there is a “huge appetite for local news and information in communities the length and breadth of the country” seems at odds with the downturn in strength of existing local media. And whilst one can imagine interest in a local version perhaps of Britain’s Got Talent, how many people are going to tune in to watch their local mps and councillors electioneering.
However last week was a great reminder of the real meaning of community. As riots engulfed our cities we were glued to any kind of news and local media. We were reminded about how much we care about where we live, and indeed of the latent pride that many of us have in our local community.
There is a great opportunity for advertisers who want to promote their community values in Local TV too. Community often is expressed as an association with a community of interest like sport or film, but as my colleague Andy Walsh points out, it can also mean the few miles around where we live too.
I welcome local TV and look forward to its contribution to our media community.
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