My first job after college was at a small radio station south of Phoenix, AZ. We needed a swing man. Someone to cover weekend shifts. We found a local guy with a great voice who understood the station, knew the market and was willing to work for the ‘beans and rice’ wage we were going to offer.
He made it through every round of interviews. Then, in the final interview with the whole team, he asked the General Manager what his out-of-pocket cost would be for health insurance. He had a young family. The GM didn’t blink.
“We have something better than health insurance here. You get 25% off from our client, ABC Dental.”
The candidate would ultimately decline the job offer.
– I’m guessing ABC Dental was disappointed too.
Weeks later, I was still working an extra weekend night shift when two fire trucks went past the studio window, followed by an ambulance. Out of nowhere, the General Manager came running in, grabbed the remote transmitter pack and headed for the door. He was going to cover the fire.
He called from the scene a few minutes later.
“This is a big fire,” he told us. “Right at Five Points, downtown.”
He wanted to go live immediately. I had about 45 seconds left in the song.
“Cut it. Get me on the air.” he barked.
You’re the boss, I said to myself. I killed the music, introduced the breaking news and put Matt on-air.
“This is Mad Dogg Matt, er, General Manager Matt Morton, live at the scene of a major fire downtown. I’ve got a firefighter here. Let’s see if he’ll say a few words.”
The firefighter came on.
“Hi, Matt. Yeah, this is a controlled burn. We’ve got two rookie teams training tonight. It was in the newspaper all week. You didn’t know?”
Dead Air.
In my feeble attempt to rescue the moment I asked if any roads were closed.
“No” Matt said. “That’s it from Five Points, back to you in the studio.”
“Thank you, Matt Morton.” I summoned my best stoic announcer voice and stole a joke.
“When news breaks, we fix it. B-105 FM.” I let the record spin.
– Robert Palmer, “Addicted to Love”.
For years I thought stories like these were about individual managers with big egos and bad judgment. The cheap boss. The overconfident boss. The boss who mistakes having authority for having good instincts.
I don’t think that anymore.
I think organizations develop quiet agreements about what is allowed to be questioned. At that radio station, the agreement was simple. The boss’s instincts don’t get challenged in the moment. Everyone understood calling out the absurdity was more painful than living with the error.
I think is the number one reason perfectly ordinary, hard working teams, collectively end with remarkably stupid outcomes.
We all silently agreed you could not ask the hard question out loud.
“Is this really a good idea?”
Sometimes organizational culture is nothing more complicated than the answer to that single question. Sometimes, the only acceptable answer is:
“Shhh~ the boss is doing journalism.”