11-18-13
The New York Times had a sit down with Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman, who is a keynote speaker at Radio Ink's Forecast 2014 this week, to discuss the value of dissent. Pittman told writer Adam Bryant how valuable dissent is to the success of a company. He explained how he hears what dissenters are saying when he meets with his managers. "Often in meetings, I will ask people when we?re discussing an idea, ?What did the dissenter say?? If his team answers "everyone's on board he tells them they are not listening. "There?s always another point of view somewhere and you need to go back and find out what the dissenting point of view is. I don?t want to hear someone say after we do something, Oh, we should have done this.?
Pittman also tells the Time he encourages his people to take chances. "One thing I preach a lot here is, Weed the garden. If I try 10 new things and, just for example, let?s say two are clear winners and two are clear losers. That means I?ve got six in between. What do I do with those? Most organizations ? and when I?m not careful, including me ? let everything live except the clear losers. And what happens over time is that stuff in between doesn?t really help you. It takes up a lot of resources. It?s confusing. It?s muddy. If you let that stuff build up ? and with the next 10 things you do, there are two clear winners and six that are the gunk ? then pretty soon my whole organization is basically mediocrity and gunk. So if you can bring yourself to say, I?m only going to let clear winners live. I?m going to take the resources I put for the other eight things and try again, you can keep a crisp organization. That?s why start-ups are so crisp ? because they don?t have a lot of gunk yet. But over time, they often build up gunk. So we always talk about weeding the garden. Part of it is being honest with yourself. What really is a winner?"
Read the full New York Times interview with Pittman HERE
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