Establishing the lean newsroom

Good planning is key in order to accommodate for flexibility and secure quality, also in the news room. As media is evolving, the newsroom is now more and more a place for nurturing ongoing team efforts in multiple channels than a place only for journalist superstars. It is time to set the table all over again – and sometimes throw it out and have standing meeting instead.

News rooms are changing. Integrated desks and converged publishing strategies are both hot topics when talking about media. A lot of people talk about working smarter in the midst and after downsizing, but few really dare to see new work processes straight in the eye.

Straight to the point; what creating a lean news room is all about

• Collecting the strategy and the plan for strategy deployment in a way that is visually available and understood by the team. An imperative part is to agree on when we succeed and how to measure progress on the way.
• Knowing your own product, in figures and facts.
• Gaining a deep understanding of the process from idea to published material in appropriate channel
• Eliminating waste in the process; the news room is full of unnecessary work – by consulting readers/users and having the courage to propose change it could have been stopped years ago.
• Establishing planning processes that deliver quality content meeting our ambitions – every day.
• Implementing evaluations and coaching that support the plan.
• Clarifying roles to level the trust within the team.
• Introducing a performance management system that alerts and trigger action when the plan strays from strategy.

Well, that is the party speech. What does this mean to front line managers and department in general?

The news room is a hectic environment and it can be a challenge to run a project at the same time. This highlights a simple thing that needs to be understood by leaders:

If you feel you need to be hands on as a leader at all times, you are not doing it right.

For a leader it can be scary sometimes to see that even without his or her hands on presence, the paper will actually come out and the website will be updated with content. Does this mean that leaders are disposable? No, it means that the newsroom and its leaders are on its way to succeed in building a team that makes the content the readers like in a healthy process.

So if you are a leader; relax, lean back and listen: Your responsibility is to optimize the process within quality content and product will be created. If you are looking for structure and discipline in your sub-editors and staff, look no further than enabling it through trust and delegation, change by involvement and your own courage to not be hands-on everywhere.

I repeat this, because it is a central learning point: For leaders, the job is to optimize the process, not only to be the editorial superstar. It obviously helps to be an editorial superstar, but as a leader – it’s not the job you have in front of you.

So, what do we usually see in a lean transformation period

After a period of deep analysis, looking from the reader/user perspective, through the product, back through the production line and all the way back to idea making, the CI transformations I have taken part in has established 9 struggles that are quite universal for news rooms:

• We need a stronger connection from strategy and ambitions to the daily deployment, supported by structured evaluation on known criteria and standards
• We need better long term planning to secure that we reach our goals, and we need better week- and daily planning to secure the quality we want
• We need to give and get coaching on the right level and find the balance for leaders between giving quick consultations and finding enough time to read copy thoroughly before coaching
• We need a clear understanding of what productivity is and what level is expected
• We need, in a time where the role of the news desk is changing, to understand what we can expect from it right now and how that reflects on what is delivered to it
• We need to free up time and flexibility in the news desk to secure quality on hard news, and to use automated page flow in a healthy way that gives quality to the reader
• We need a process plan for how we give our readers more and better content online with more stability in order to build loyalty and traffic
• We need to go from a push flow to a pull flow.

What do we do, where do we start?

To get involvement and ownership to the solutions, continuous improvement is all about respect for people’s ability to solve their own problems. What is needed is just a little bit structure in how the solutions come about and are presented.

We normally split into Kaizen groups, using A3 (apart from the strategy group, obviously using hoshin kanri) as a process helper.

It is normal to be skeptical to begin with for those involved. Common questions are:

• Isn’t this just a leadership problem?

ANSWER: No, the process of making your product is a team effort and to organize it is also a team effort. Obviously, the leader’s job is to lead, but organization and process is something we all need to take ownership in.

• What am I supposed to do about something that concerns all of us?

ANSWER: By involving and asking, you will be surprised by how glad people get when they are allowed to give input to a solution on a problem they also feel. Involvement also gives more enthusiasm on all levels when the solutions are to be implemented. Change is possible and can be a relief if it is based on facts and involvement.

• We have tried to do this for 10 years, why should it work out this time?

ANSWER: If you all have something you want to do, but have not succeeded doing in 10 years, that’s sad. Something is wrong. Not with what you want to do, but how you’re doing it. Using A3-method supports getting the story right, base it on facts and involvement. It is a good place to start.

• Are you trying to make some rigid system? We need flexibility, this is news, it happens now, is structure helping or stopping us?

ANSWER: The more you know, the more you can change your plan and know the consequences. Good plans give flexibility through planning for it. A good plan is also visible to everyone, so you don’t have to spend valuable time over-communicating the changes you are making. It is impossible to foresee everything that is happening in news, but if you plan for everything you know right now – the ability to spend all efforts on what gives news value in this very moment is increased by knowing what resources you have available, what work is already done and the readiness of your people for the task.

As progress has been made in the A3-groups, everybody has discovered how it gives energy to start creating solutions to problems that is near and dear. A3 is somehow similar to journalistic method in its way to define a problem, explain who, where and what and at the same time presenting it in a way that is easy and energizing to read.

From push to pull

If newsrooms were restaurants, the restaurant would often send a whole group of hunters out in the morning to shoot as many animals as possible, regardless of how many meals you would normally serve in the evening. The chef would have to freeze or throw away a lot of what the hunters would bring home. The rest would have to be pushed through the kitchen and out for the customer.

If this was a really lean restaurant, you would go in an order your food and shortly thereafter, you would hear a sordined gunshot from the backyard and in a really trimmed process, the meal would be as served as fresh as possible – in shortest possible time.

In a news room, we don’t really know what the customer orders, if they like what we serve and how much we actually throw away. Tremendous amounts of waste is produced, every day. Sometimes, sub-editors order well done 3000 character beefs that is cut down to a medium rare 2000 by somebody else. Cruel process and at not value for the customer. Start ordering well done 2000. How? How to create pull in the newsroom? Well, for starters – start engaging your brain in how much content you actually have to produce per day (print and online). This is easy, just sit down and count in your own newspaper or on your site. Start by finding and defining the levels for different types of storytelling and give them names. S, M, L, XL. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. Whatever. Give the organization a vocabulary for the orders.

Medium, with fries=2500, horizontal photo and a fact box. Coming up. Served.

If you want to secure more pull, use your CMS to turn the tables and send out orders with templates to fill in. Make them slot into a nice pre-designed rig, preview, press publish. No template based publishing will not decrease your creativity, genius or artistic fantasticness. It will give you better deadlines to work towards as you can push them closer to printing when no or very little desking is involved. Boring for the reader, you might say. The readers normally respond otherwise – they like newspapers where they know its progress filled with new content. And normally a rig looks nicer when a lot of thinking and design has gone into it than when freehand edited. Sorry.

So, upstream – a clear order must be sent. Downstream comes a high quality article (“do right first”) and slots into the masterplan. Back upstream comes clear evaluations based on standard criteria, so that all can understand what needs correcting for next time, or immediately online.

Tools and tricks

I’ll try to publish some tools and tricks here following this article, so please come back.

Ytringsfrihet 2.0: Nå også med frihet til å holde kjeft

Det ligger altså ingen plikt til å ytre seg. Denne friheten burde flere, meg selv inkludert, benytte seg av fra tid til annen. *punktum*

Cloud computing-musikk

Nei, dette er ikke et innlegg om obskur selvgenererende emo eller låta Ari Behn har fått på hjernen. Dette er en hyllest til et fenomen som siger innover oss nå og endrer måten vi hører på, snakker om, deler, anmelder og konsumerer musikk for alltid. I dette innlegget gidder jeg ikke kommentere piratkopiering. Utelukkende fordi cloud computing-musikk er løsningen. Det er bare å glede seg.

La meg gå litt tilbake i tid: Jeg har alltid vært svært glad i musikk. Mye av mitt liv har gått med til å digge, tenke på, analysere, danse til, sove til, leve til, spille og fremføre musikk. Å samle musikk er et spill om kvalitet og kvantitet hånd i hånd. Mengde identifiserer, kvalitet identifiserer. Jeg hadde et bruttotonn CD-plater og en koffert MiniDiscer.

Enter iTunes.

Apple har fått mye ros og mye tyn for sin musikkbutikk. Sikkert vel fortjent begge deler. Mye av kritikken har gått på at det er lukket, både med henblikk på format og avspillere. Samtidig så må Apple berømmes for at de tok hull på det digitale musikkmarkedet. Det er lett å glemme at før iTunes Music Store sto det digitale musikklivet for alvor i stampe. Det skjedde lite og ingenting (med unntak og heder til norske Phonofile, som var fremsynte både i sin rolle som tilbyder av smal norsk musikk og som aggregator til de nye, store digitale musikkbutikkene).

Apple gjorde i hovedsak to ting: de åpnet ballet og de sørget samtidig for at Apple tjente penger på det. Prisverdige bullets i powerpointen der altså.

Resultatet var at jeg brukte ca en måned på å digitalisere hele platesamlingen min med to maskiner gående nesten døgnet rundt med parallelripping. Omlag 150 GB senere var alt på plass og det var bare å begynne å synkronisere. Mye tid ble brukt på å rense opp i artisnavn (å, skulle man gå for “featuring” i samme artistnavn, mon tro?) og i duplikater mellom original- og samlealbum.

Så ble man samboer og ønsket å ha felles bibliotek med egne spillelister. Ting surret seg litt til. Akk, vi begynner på nytt å rippe igjen i høyere kvalitet og samtidig rydde unna det meste av platesamlingen etter kritieriet;trenger jeg å se coveret igjen?

Enter Spotify.

Og enter søken etter en invite. Cloud computing er et begrep der enkelt sagt det du trenger av programvare og/eller ressurser ikke ligger på maskinen din men du henter det over Internett når du trenger det. Så også med musikk. Spotify og Wimp er eksempler på cloud computing musikktilbydere. Det er progamvare laget i Adobe Air som gir en tilgang til nesten all tenkelig musikk (ok, noen klare hull er det jo) over nettet. Har du lyst til å høre Cock Robin med “Just around the corner” fordi solen tittet frem og du ikke har hørt den på 19 år? Søk den opp og kos deg her og nå.

Norske Wimp fra Aspiro er foreløpig i beta-testing og snarlik Spotify, men med friskere og lysere design. Samtidig vet jeg det kommer iPhone-versjoner, nedlastbar butikk og masse annet snacks i Wimp som gjør at jeg står klar til å betale en hundrelapp eller to i måneden for fritt bohemia av musikkonsumering når beta-perioden er over. For jeg er hekta.

Hekta

Hekta på å sjekke ut ny musikk. Hekta på å sjekke ut gammel musikk. Hekta på å lese anmeldelser i avisen og gå rett inn og høre hele skiva og sjekke om jeg er enig. Hekta på å lage lister over mine favoritt-fredag-på-jobb-sanger og dele de med andre. Hekta på å sjekke ut andres lister over favoritt-cover-låter. Hekta på tanken over at det er lovlig. Hekta på tanken av at snart så tar jeg med meg samme opplevelsen ut på tur med telefonen min.

Wimp og Spotify åpner rett og slett for en ganske ny og radikal måte å snakke om, sjekke ut, lytte til og ikke minst – dele –  musikk. Jeg hører en fin sang og tenker på søsteren min. Vips, så kan jeg tipse henne om sangen og hun kan høre den umiddelbart.

Cloud computing kommer til å endre radikalt på hvordan vi konsumerer musikk. Og det bare å glede seg.

Fat and happy!

I en kultur der soft values, empatibygging og team-verdier er ord som får folk til å få hvitt skum i munnvikene er det på tide med litt motkultur. På tide å sette foten ned. High performance teams ble ikke laget med våtservietter, gule lapper og idemyldring. High performance teams kan også bestå av folk som er både fat og happy.

(photo by Photo Mojo)

Derfor, velkommen til kursopplegget – Fat and happy!

Kursmodulene blir som følger (på engelsk, internasjonale kursdeltakere er velkomne):

1. Destructive feedback

What’s with being constructive all the time. Sometimes a good telling off can do us all good. In the starter module we are going for weaknesses, physical challenges and stupid things you have said. The advanced classes involves total breakdown of self, 24hour non-stop-your-mum jokes and general harassment. All documented on YouTube.

2. Getting things undone

A nice progression from the Destructive feedback session. There is a saying “You can only regret the things you didn’t do”. That’s totally bull. We are all imperfect at varying degrees. One imperfection we all share is that we totally fail on getting things done. So here is the class for all you pretending that you are busy.

3. The female Machiavelli

Fire against fire? Blue on blue? Learn all the tricks on how to get your will. Even if it is outrageous.

4. No message per slide

Powerpoint fun. One guy got away with the YouTube-hit “Chicken”. He was a beginner. This is the course where impressive graphs but little data, no points but three standard bullets and funny clipart is the deal signed-sealed-delivered.

5. Twin towers were team buildings. Oh, well – look at them now.

The best teams are made up of strong individuals knowing their stuff. Do you really have to walk on charcoal and play a lot of party games to get it?

6. Feed by backside.

The weird sibling to the destructive feedback course. Here you get learn the best kiss-ass tricks from the cream of the crop. For those of you who are more into hierarchy than hard work.

7. Same shit, new asshole

If you become a leader, or better – if you are a leader already: How to recycle old problems within your organization, all those “we have tried this for 10 years”, bring them up to the surface so that you again can disappoint people by not sorting things out.

8. Nurturing the monkey tree

Learn how to draw impressive org. charts in Microsoft Vista. Make complex matrixes to remove any chance for leaving responsibility with line managers.

Pris er ikke fastsatt, men påregn at dette blir dyrt.

#ironi.

Nøytralt er den nye spissingen

For ti år siden snakket media utrolig mye om politikerforakt. Politikerforakt var et substantiv som kom snikende og beskrev noe vi alle kjente på. Jeg er utrolig usikker på om det er tabloidforakt eller generell journalistikkforakt som rører seg i meg, men jeg føler at media har for alvor gått i fellen med henblikk på det CLC (Corporate Leadership Council) kaller for customer alignment. På norsk: forstå kunden og levere det produktet kunden vil ha.

(Homo, banjo eller vold med døden til følge – Hva er viktigst for deg?)

Ikke det vi tror de vil ha men det de sier de vil ha. Media har alt for lenge sagt: “Men skulle vi hørt på leserne hadde de ikke vært fornøyde uansett. Folk vet ikke hva de vil ha. Vi vet hva de vil ha.”

Når et parforhold slår sprekker er en naturlig psykologisk funksjon at hver part tenker: Jeg må endre meg slik at den andre liker meg igjen. Er jeg for tykk? Holder jeg det jeg lover? Har jeg blitt kjedelig? Har hun funnet en annen? Har ting blitt bare koselig og ikke spennende? Svaret blir: Jeg må endre meg! Fort!

Men det er for sent. Hun har allerede gått. Mentalt. Samme hvor mye man bender og bøyer så vil man til slutt brekke. At man kommer i møte har faktisk motsatt effekt enn ønsket – den andre part rygger for å komme unna.

Slik er det litt også med media. Hun har gått, hun vil ikke lese, vil ikke ha nye bilag (bortsett fra Sporten, slik at den er lett å kaste). Hun er ikke der du er lenger. Du er kjedelig, du holder ikke det du lover. Det hjelper ikke å si at jeg skal bli bedre. For mange av avisene har svaret vært: Jeg skal bli tykkere! Du skal få mer av det du ikke liker!

Hovmod står for fall når det gjelder den tradisjonelle nyhetspakka og tabloidspråket kjennes gammeldags. Tabloid spissing er litt juging hver dag. Kjenner du noen som juger til deg litt hver dag som du skal stole på når det smeller som verst?

Medieprodukter er sin egen omdømmefiende all den tid vi hele tiden må lese med konvekse briller der deskingen er konkav. Er det ikke merkelig at mediene scorer lavt på troverdighet? Var det ikke troverdighet som skulle være selve produktet? Er det på grunn av troverdigheten vi slutter å betale?

I en diskusjon der bredbånd, laptopen i fanget, iPhonen i sofakroken, sosiale medier på do, lesebrettet på hyttesenga og en mengde andre forklaringer får skylda for papiravisens dødsdans, TV-tittingens bungee og nyhetspakkas strekkmaskin kan det være et tenkelig innspill at vi er møkk lei sensasjonsjournalistikk, bent reality-desking, minuttoppdatering på glamourmodeller og gravende journalistikk om meniskskader hos elendige, norske eliteseriespillere (i seg selv et ord for god komedie).

Nøytralt er den nye spissingen.