Bottoms Up!

How does management style affect creativity?

It's worth looking into how the Japanese treat their auto factory workers, and how their actions from decades past are still shaking the U.S. auto industry today.

They paid their workers ten cents a day and forced them into submission, right?

No.

The Japanese empowered their workers and created a business culture that was (and all too often still is) the opposite of ours.

It's a long story, but the short version is this - and it directly applies to radio:

The Japanese wanted a piece of the worldwide auto market, and their initial attempt was typical. They tried to win on cost. They implemented a system of "lean production" where they stripped the cost of production to the bone. Gee, doesn't that sound familiar?

What they got for their effort was a very affordable car that wasn't worth the metal it was made of. Garbage. But, let's be honest... cheap sells. And their cars did sell. And they broke down. As George Bush once said, "Fool me once, shame.... shame on you. Fool me twice, I won't get fooled again." (...Grin)

The Japanese realized the strategy of cheap would lose in the end as competitors built more reliable cars.

This is one area where I believe radio is dead wrong today. Cutting costs to the bone is a short term strategy that will lead to long term failure as competing forms of media become either more entertaining, or equally entertaining with fewer commercials.

Radio can't win by cost cutting. But radio can win by outperforming... and that's exactly what the Japanese auto industry realized they needed to do to compete with the U.S.

Their next attempt at taking on the U.S. auto industry was through a system of what they called "optimum-lean" production.

Optimum-lean didn't mean even more cost cutting. Instead, it meant running appropriately lean and investing in their workers. It meant doing a better job of hiring the best people to work in all areas of a factory from management all the way down to the worker on the line. It also meant teaching their workers and above all - this is the most important part - it meant empowering them.

In a Japanese factory, a lot more is expected of a worker than to just make the product. The worker is expected to become an expert at their job to the point where he or she can find and implement better ways of making the product, be it through eliminating waste or through innovation. I'm talking about individual creativity, and, even more importantly, empowerment.

To this very day, a Japanese auto worker is expected to literally stop production of the line if quality is threatened.

The Japanese approach was the exact opposite of ours, and by the 1990s as their cars overtook ours in terms of quality, style and reliability, it was pretty clear whose approach was superior. Even today, for American workers right here in the U.S. of A., there's a difference between how it's done at the auto factory making American cars in Detroit and the auto factory making Japanese cars in Kentucky.

Obviously, the auto industry is far more complicated than that, and there were plenty of other advantages and disadvantages on each side. My post is only intending to address how workers are treated, what is expected of them, and how the differing approaches had a direct effect on the level of creativity and quality.

I'm not saying the Japanese are better. I'm saying a system of top-down management is worse. And that is exactly what deregulation brought to radio.

Deregulation brought us huge radio corporate structures that govern their properties like a factory, and the approach isn't working.

Deregulation brought us a system where a jock in Baltimore can come up with ideas for a better show that won't air because they don't fit the Clear Channel operating procedure. Deregulation brought us a system where a program director in San Francisco can't change the course of his or her station to fit the market because it's not what CBS deems appropriate.

Deregulation is turning a creative medium into a factory with an outdated business model. Might as well be building Pintos, eh? Or maybe you're at more of a Chevy Nova kind of station.

Detroit isn't the only place where we're learning the hard way that a top-down management strategy doesn't work.