In this week’s Programming To Win column, Bob Quick looks at the similarities and differences between ‘creative’ and ‘organized’ people and how they fit into the radio landscape. Quick discusses how the two groups are the yin & yang of radio staffers and the ways their symbiotic relationship helps make your station a better overall workplace.
Bob Quick
By Bob Quick, Quick Radio Consulting
From Wikipedia: In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin-yang, which is often called “yin and yang”, is used to describe how seemingly opposite or contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world; and, how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. Many natural dualities (such as light and dark, high and low, hot and cold, fire and water, life and death, and so on) are thought of as physical manifestations of the yin-yang concept.
In other words…opposites attract.
Radio people amaze me. Smart. Creative. Often, off-centered people with a drive to succeed. It seemingly takes opposite types of people to make up a great radio station.
Those people can be sorted in two camps: Creative and Organized.
Creative people are typically drawn to on-air and production functions. Organized folks mostly are drawn to engineering or sales.
Once in awhile you might find a person that fits into both camps, but for the most part, this broad generalization is true. And it takes both types of people to make a successful radio station. You can’t come up with a detailed sales presentation with demographic and socio-economic research without having some creative to sell…and you can’t have a creative and entertaining radio show without a studio that is meticulously engineered to be the most user friendly and intuitive space in which to perform.
We need each other.
The creatives need organization and the organized need creativity.
It’s a symbiotic relationship. And it’s a relationship that Program Directors, Operations Managers, and even General Managers need to understand when managing their staff.
I suppose you could have a creative person that’s organized, but most won’t take the 20 seconds extra to write down a commercial bed in a log so it won’t be used again. I suppose you could have an organized person who is creative, but for most organized people, they find comfort in black and white and coloring inside the lines. So, starring a blank piece of paper trying to write anything other than a “rip and read” commercial is a daunting task.. Creatives think outside the box, are dreamers, and enjoy the gray. Organized people like rules. Creative types like to break them.
That’s one of the difficulties of managing and training both kinds of people. You can set up policies and procedures fairly quickly to help the creatives be organized, but it’s more difficult (but not impossible) for an organized person to learn creativity.
Organization takes a plan and time to build a habit. If a creative person is held accountable for his or her organization, they can build a habit though your procedures to learn organization. For instance, planning one day a week for your creative types to do organizational tasks under your supervision. By holding them accountable for that time, they will then apply those organizational lessons to the rest of the week and other parts of their duties.
Creativity can be learned, but it takes the investment of a lot of time being exposed to the creative process. For example, getting both types of people to hold weekly brainstorming sessions for commercial and promotional ideas. Over time, the creativity of the creatives will “rub off” on the organized and you’ll see commercial scripts become more creative and promotions with more pizzazz.
So, my suggestion to you if you are in the creative, less organized camp…schedule organization time. Nothing is more organized than a schedule. and by holding yourself accountable for that scheduled time, you will build habits and become a more organized person.
If you are in the organized and more difficult to be creative camp? The suggestion is the same. Schedule your time to be creative when you are most open to creativity. Some people wire better in the afternoon. If that’s you, schedule your creativity for afternoons. If morning produces more creative writing, schedule your writing time then.
Once something becomes a habit, it becomes routine, even easy. So, if you have difficulty with organization or creativity, make it routine and it will come easier to you.
Bob Quick of Quick Radio Consulting has over 20-years of experience getting the best out of both creatives and the organized, and he can set up procedures for both to foster success for your station. Call him at 706-358-9103 so he can do the same thing with your station.
