The Need To Re-Invent Yourself & Your Company - Steve Blacker - MediaBizBlogger

Imagine a media, ad agency or marketing executive trying to function today as they did just 2-3 years ago. Smaller staffs, budgets and fewer people buying your product or service is just part of the challenge. If you have not re-invented yourself in the past 6-12 months your career and company could be in jeopardy. If you are a magazine or newspaper editor you now need to be a multi-platform content producer with the ability to turn out more content with fewer people. You must realize you are competing with every new Web site that emerges on a daily basis. If you are not endlessly testing getting paid for your content you are putting your business in harm's way. Why not test 3 or 4 new approaches to get paid for content online on a daily basis until you find a few that work?

The biggest re-invention challenge is accepting the fact you will not have enough time to get to all the things on your "To Do" list. The ability to triage and use your time effectively becomes one of your most important challenges. Rupert Murdoch would often have people stand at meetings, in order to keep them short. More than 50% of the executive meetings I attended at Time Inc., Hearst, Conde Nast and Playboy were on non-critical issues and a waste of time. If you are continuing to schedule your day as you did a year ago you have not re-invented yourself.

Albert Einstein said, "You cannot expect the people who caused the problems to solve them." Are you facing new problems with old solutions? The newspaper and automotive industry waited too long to attempt to re-invent themselves. Worse yet, when they finally started, they moved at a snail's pace. Are you devoting a part of your day to developing out-of-the-box new approaches to solving your business challenges? Too many executives issue weather reports versus innovative action plans. Why aren't newspapers and magazines launching multi-test programs to charge for content? Why the delay? The problem is not going away, it's only increasing.

A "Re-Invention" executive should have only three priorities: fix what's not working, create new profit centers and reduce operating costs. Everything else becomes a waste of time. Companies need to encourage new ideas and get rid of people who oppose change. Today too many people are clinging to what they are comfortable with until a company, division or product goes out of business. Acknowledging problems is not solving them. How well do you and your company understand the consumer and all your competition? Do you invest in conducting consumer insight research? MTV in its heyday never did anything without a permission slip from the consumer.

Most media companies tend to look at their traditional competitors instead of looking at their new media competitors. Newspapers, magazines and television are all competing with digital media. Too many companies think they are doing OK because they are increasing their market share, but their marketplace is dramatically shrinking and moving on to new media. Magazine companies have known for a long time that they compete with TV. Since the 1960s major publishers have just watched ad budgets gravitate more and more to television. Why didn't Sports Illustratedlaunch ESPN, or Bride'smagazine the KNOT? Why? Because nobody was thinking about re-invention. Just as the railroads failed to realize they were in the transportation business when air travel became prevalent, magazines and newspapers failed to realize until it was too late that they were content providers.

To survive and profit you cannot surround yourself with traditional business as usual executives and workers. You must hire people who challenge status quo and have new thinking. And you need to encourage everyone in your organization to focus on re-invention. Anyone can re-invent themselves at any time in their careers. Age is not a factor. Nor do you need to take special courses or hire consultants. You just need to encourage and mentor it. When I was at Time Inc. back in the '70s we were encouraged to present ideas regardless of what a new innovation might cost. The thinking by Time Inc. management back then was that often a great new idea could be executed without having to spend the amount of money someone thought it might cost. This type of thinking led to the launch of People magazine.

I have re-invented myself over 25 times and I am still doing that today. I broke every rule when I worked at Macy's by taking toy battery-operated tug boats out of their packaging, putting them in huge bins and making up signs saying "Special Price $2.99," which was the exact same price they were before. We sold out in a few days. I have marketed my new book in a totally unorthodox way. Rather than going through book stores I have sent copies to friends and business associates and asked them to recommend it on their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., and send people to my Web site. In 7 weeks I have sold over 1,600 books and each day new orders come in. My current re-invention is a partnership with Steve Frankfurt (Advertising Hall of Fame, etc.) to help form new partnerships among media, entertainment and technology companies. You can check out some of my re-invention tips by going to my Web site, www.blacker-reinvention.com. My new book is "You Can't Fall Off The Floor - The Insiders' Guide to Re-inventing Yourself and Your Career." It contains 189 lessons learned.

Steve's new book You Can't Fall Off The Floor - The Insiders' Guide to Re-Inventing Yourself and Your Career chronicles his 50 year career working for over 25 different companies with 189 lessons learned and insider tips from Gayle King, Cathie Black, Chuck Townsend and 28 others; Blacker is still going strong today as a partner in Frankfurt & Blacker Solutions, LLC. His web site is blacker-reinventions.com and e-mail address is blackersolutions@aol.com

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