Takin A Walk/Episode Eight on The Freedom Trail with Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Takin a Walk, an excursion to converse, connect and catch up at a cool location with some of the most interesting people you can find. Here’s Buzz Knight.

Buzz Knight:

Well, it’s so good to see the dynamic duo here on the Freedom Trail, Geoff Tuff and Stephen Goldbach. Thanks for taking a walk.

Stephen Goldbach:

Thanks for having us, Buzz. This is fun.

Buzz Knight:

So how do you guys, in your creative process, use walks to kind of release you if you’re jammed on something. How does that work for you guys?

Geoff Tuff:

Well, I will say, this is Geoff here, I’ve spent quite a bit of my life walking, usually in the woods and it’s something that I really enjoy doing with my family, but everything that Steve and I end up writing about comes from personal experiences with our clients and working in the domain that we do, which is strategy consulting. That takes some degree of reflection and thinking about some of the people that we work with day in, day out, and there’s no better way to do that getting out for a walk.

Stephen Goldbach:

Yeah. And for what it’s worth, during the pandemic this has become a really great and safe way to connect with people. And what I’ve found as I’ve been getting more back into the world and the world of work is that I’ve been using walks as a way to focus conversation, people aren’t distracted by technology. And it’s a great way to just connect and share ideas. So walking and talking is a great new but old meeting pedagogy.

Buzz Knight:

So what are some of the favorite places for you guys to take a walk?

Stephen Goldbach:

Well, one of the things that I’ve been really blessed with is spending a bunch of time on the Cape. And I can’t describe how beautiful it is in the fall to just take a walk and either put on a podcast or talk to my wife. And just literally around the block where we live is just looking at the trees and getting away from it all, so that’s one of my favorite places. And then, Central Park in New York, which is where I spent some time too.

Geoff Tuff:

Not a bad spot.

Stephen Goldbach:

Yeah.

Geoff Tuff:

So I would have a hard time nailing it down. My wife and I, as we actually write about it in Provoke, we took a wander around the earth at one point. It took about a year and almost everywhere we went, we ended up going on substantial walks. And without going through the litany of those, I will say that probably if I had to claim one, it would be Mount Moosilauke up near Hanover, New Hampshire, which is where I spent some time at school. And it’s just a beautiful, beautiful trail that takes you up to the top of the mountain with an amazing view.

Buzz Knight:

So the first book called Detonate, second book called Provoke, got a couple titles for the third book to run by you. What do you think? How about Prod, Instigate?

Stephen Goldbach:

We actually considered Instigate for this one.

Buzz Knight:

Or if you go into thinking two words might be okay, I’m thinking maybe Eye Poke might be appropriate. What do you think?

Geoff Tuff:

Well, it’s interesting that we have had lots of questions and commentary about the titles of our books, because one of the reactions people have is they sound inherently negative, which I think is surprising to both of us because they were actually intended to be inherently positive. And I think it’s all in the way that you frame what it means to detonate things or to provoke things. And hopefully, as your listeners will discover, if they do decide to pick up our books, they’ll find that we actually have a very positive outlook behind the actions you can take on both of those verbs.

Stephen Goldbach:

Yeah. And it’s actually important to note, when it comes to Provoke, we don’t mean be a you-know-what hole. That’s not the idea of Provoke. I think people think that’s what we mean, we think that’s what leaders need to do, they need to pound tables and yell at people to do different things. But actually, what we’re finding increasingly is that when you do those things, you actually don’t get the behavior change that you are looking to achieve. You actually get the opposite, you get people to be intransigent in their positions. And increasingly, we think nudging and using other techniques is a better way to provoke. Provoke is about the outcome, not about the technique.

Buzz Knight:

So what’s going on in the boardrooms today, across America? I mean, do you perceive there’s a lot of confusion? There’s people just trying to get through a day, a quarter? I mean, what’s really going on from a global perspective, from your guys’ perspective?

Geoff Tuff:

Well, so first of all, I’d say it’s probably hard to generalize on everything that’s going on in all boardrooms, but I wouldn’t characterize it necessarily as confusion. There’s obviously a lot in flux. There’s a lot to be concerned about and a lot to manage, but I would say probably no more so than at other phases in business history. I would say though, the thing that we are most concerned about is there’s too much conviction as opposed to confusion. And what I mean by that is, there’s too much conviction that we can continue to use data as the primary means to make decisions. And data is inherently retrospective. Sometimes it’s okay to use data and analysis to make decisions, but increasingly we’re finding that the only way to deal with an increasing level of uncertainty in the world, which is the condition that we’re living in, is not to rely on traditional data and analytical methods, but instead to rely on real time feedback from your markets and from your customers, which is what we’re trying to encourage people to go and provoke when they take action in the market.

Stephen Goldbach:

Yeah. And Buzz, the thing I’d add to that is that the challenge, I think that executive teams and boards of directors have is that, as they can compare the concept of doing something different than what they’ve done in the past, to what they’ve always done, doing something different feels risky. It feels like, “Oh, I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do. We’re not sure exactly how everything’s going to hold together and work.” But if you kind of ask yourself, “Well, what’s riskier, doing the same thing we’ve always done in the face of unprecedented change, or trying something new?” In reality, trying something new is less risky, but the problem is it feels riskier. And the status quo has the comfort of feeling like, “Well, at least we know what we’re doing,” even though it’s incredibly risky. And so, what we think leaders need to do is flip that orthodoxy, where they need to make it clear that doing nothing is really risky and trying something new, well, we might get it not perfect the first time, but it’s a lot less risky than doing nothing.

Buzz Knight:

So when you think of the media business and the media sector, and the challenges that each segment of the media sector is facing, what elements of Provoke should leaders of those businesses consider in their actions?

Stephen Goldbach:

Yeah. I’ll start with the radio business, because it’s something that I’ve thought a little bit about. Over the history, I had the pleasure of working, a long time ago, with one of the radio pioneers, Jeff Smulyan. And so, he taught me a lot about just the history of radio, so I’m grateful for that relationship. One of the things that I think about the radio business, if you just kind of start with the orthodoxies that it has, radio was by definition a technology. It was a means to distribute content to listeners. And we funded that business through advertising, historically. And the whole definition of the radio business was around, to some extent, the mechanism through which we deliver the content. Now that there are many mechanisms to deliver content, the radio, the businesses that have been historically radio businesses, need to rethink what’s their role in that ecosystem. It’s not the only way to deliver content. There are other more engaging media because there’s simply audio and visual, and experiential. And so, radio needs to think about what its differentiation is relative to just experiencing a regular podcast through another mechanism. So radio needs to reinvent itself in a much more customer-centric way than a product-centric way, which is I think where its history comes from. And it’s very hard to reinvent your history.

Geoff Tuff:

And I would add to that, and actually link it back to the point I was making before about analytical methods and using data to make decisions, and I don’t claim to know nearly as much about the media space as Steve does, but my interpretation of what has historically gone on in media generally, regardless of the media we’re talking about, is that there’s been a lot of careful effort put into essentially testing with customers, what they would like to hear or see. And there’s a lot of forethought that goes into considering some content before you deliver it up. A lot of work around segmentation and understanding which parts of the market you’re serving. And increasingly, we’re finding that, in all businesses, customers actually can’t tell you what they’re looking for. And the old methods of testing anything that you’re serving up to the market, whether you’re selling a pencil or something in the media channels, is that you can’t go and ask people, do they want something? You have to show them something. You have to actually give them some sort of stimulus and see how they react. So increasingly, I would say, just like any company in any business, going and developing small experiments and small tests of new content as a way to provoke reaction from the market and try to get ahead of what competitive media might be, is the only way to actually stay relevant.

Buzz Knight:

I have to tell you, when you guys first talked to me about the book forthcoming, and specifically you brought up the term about the wind down business, I had many sleepless nights thinking about that term, and I’m not exaggerating, because it is such a stark term and an honest term about where businesses stand. So when you think of that part of the book that you talk about wind down businesses, describe really what the options are for businesses that are in that mode.

Stephen Goldbach:

So a wind down business, let’s just define it. It’s a business that has a finite life to it in its current form. And so, if you think about… Let’s take another media. If you think about just the print component of the newspaper business, there is clear evidence that younger readers are preferring to consume more and more, and nearly all of their content, in a digital form. And so, by definition, the number of customers that would prefer to… And Geoff is one of them, that would prefer to consume their media in a print form is dwindling down. Now, it’s a slow business. And many of those print companies have been reinventing themselves as hybrid businesses. They’re publishing their content in all kinds of different places, and many have found success by evolving it. But if you chose to say, “I’m just going to stay a print business,” you would be effectively a wind down business, because there are going to be less and less customers for that particular business.

Stephen Goldbach:

You could think about lots of other businesses that are clearly in that mode. Maybe the tobacco business would be a good example of one. And there are probably other businesses that are… I think if you listen to Indra Nooyi at Pepsi, she would say, “Look, there’s a finite life to sugared beverages,” and that. And so, those are all examples of how there’s a less and less robust customer segment for their offer. And that means, as a business you’re faced with a choice, you can either run that business for cash, which is a perfectly acceptable choice. That is a good strategy. Or you can say, “I can invest in building new capabilities to reinvent what I’ve got, leveraging perhaps some things that I’ve created.” So that’s what we mean by a wind down business.

Geoff Tuff:

And it’s probably important to understand the context in which we talk about wind down businesses, because as I think you know, Buzz, our core premise in Provoke is that, while we live in an uncertain world and we find uncertainties all around us all the time, uncertainties do resolve, they don’t stay uncertain forever. And some uncertainties just go away, so we’ve talked recently about the Y2K scare back when we flipped from 1999 to 2000, and everyone was concerned that our computers couldn’t possibly handle it, and society would completely implode. And turns out that didn’t happen, and we apparently lived through Y2K and that uncertainty just kind of went away. But other uncertainties do become reality. They do actually turn into something real. And when they turn into something real, they go from being a question of if, to being a question of when they’re going to happen. We may not know everything about them. We may not know the landing place or the rate of change, but they go from being an if to a when.

Geoff Tuff:

And so, what Steve and I talk about in Provoke is that when those uncertainties resolve from being a question of if, to a question of when, they go through something called a phase change. Our core premise in Provoke is that the best leaders today position themselves to be able to see that phase change earlier than others, and then act with purpose in the right way as the phase change unfolds. Here, we’ve got someone joining us in the Freedom Trail, singing about freedom. Sometimes, if you wait too long in the phase change to act, then you have no choice but to wind down and to essentially return your money to your shareholders. But there are more positive ways winding down, like Steve just talked about. And where we are in the phase change…

Stephen Goldbach:

Although it’s not wind down, it’s a reinvention.

Geoff Tuff:

Yeah, exactly. Winding down the old business model, as opposed to winding down the entire…

Stephen Goldbach:

Company.

Geoff Tuff:

… company and returning money to shareholders. Now, where we are in the radio business and in various aspects of media, I think is a great question. And that may be something, Buzz, that you and your colleagues can comment on.

Buzz Knight:

Well, I think I would leave us on this note and ask you this question. So what one piece of advice would you each give to leaders to try to get their internal teams to know how to provoke?

Stephen Goldbach:

Well, I would say start with a recognition of the if to when and make that explicit. So if I were doing this for radio, I would say, it’s not a matter… It’s well beyond a matter of if, to now a matter of when, where there are going to be lots of other forms of distributing content to consumers that are more compelling and more convenient than traditional radio. So let’s put the choice on the table. Either, what are the different ways we can leverage the assets that we have, the spectrum that we have, the talent that we have within our organizations in order to create value for our listeners, and ultimately perhaps monetize that through advertising or other means, or are we content that maybe a good strategy choice for us is just, “Look, there’s going to be still places for our business model, whether it’s drive time or other places where we’re still relevant. And we’re going to just focus on those and understand that our market is going to shrink, but we’re okay with that. We’re just going to make sure that we are as cost efficient as we can be.”

Stephen Goldbach:

I’ve always been curious, why there appears to be this orthodoxy in the radio business that we are audio-only companies? I know some companies do video, but what they do video of is some dude in a studio with headphones on. And that’s like we get to watch the audio and it’s not exactly compelling. And so, as other technologies have become easy to incorporate more compelling experiences for your listeners, I’m just curious, why have radio organizations, I won’t say radio, but why have radio organizations been slow to adopt and constrain themselves to just the media that you grew up with? There’s no reason that… There’s no logic that says, I have to be audio only. It’s just you’re effectively choosing to do that because your implicit biases are putting you in this box. So I would just say like, “Hey, we’ve got great content. We’ve got great things to do. What can we do that’s more compelling than listening, than just listening?” So it would be an interesting challenge to say like, “What would be a minimal viable test in order to do that?” So…

Buzz Knight:

And I think it comes down to where resource allocation comes, where that’s the debate that goes on. Certainly in the business, we don’t have enough, let’s devote it to our core. I think you’ve said this probably before, as well. It’s people who are romanced by what the past all means. And they’re kind of stuck in terms of what that means about how they communicate and engage with an audience. But that’s a great point.

Stephen Goldbach:

Well, this goes back to your thing, but you’re not making it explicit. If we devote the resources to the core, we are effectively choosing to be a wind down company, because we know that the customer preferences on that are going to be less and less over time compared to the customer preferences for something more compelling, because now you’re competing for people’s time and attention. And that is just going to be inherently, there are going to be fewer, fewer pockets of people’s time where that’s going to be the preferred mode. And so, by making that explicit, maybe you get to different choices about the urgency of taking some of those core resources and deploying them into a test in something else.

Geoff Tuff:

And I would say, it’s also just listening to the two of you talk about this, it’s important to perhaps reconsider what it means to have a resource base and to have scarce resources, because yes, there are captive resources that any one of the organizations that operate in radio today have and they need to think about their budgets carefully. But if you open up the proverbial walls of the organization to others and actually collaborate with others, you can access a lot of other resources and reframe the way you think about resource allocation. So if, for example, radio thinks of itself as the core audio content for any sort of media that exists in the world, and that may be the way you conceive it now. Today, it may not be quite that wide open, but you have an opportunity then to inject audio, to inject the audio content into any sort of format that we’re going to be able to live with in the future, not just video, but all the other technologies that are coming online, whether we’re talking about artificial reality, virtual reality, what have you. There’s going to lot of need for content and who better to supply the audio than the business that invented audio?

Stephen Goldbach:

So the advice is just be explicit about the bet you’re making. I think don’t lull yourself to sleep by thinking that, “Wow, we’re still as relevant as we were in the 1970s or the 1980s.” And I think people want to convince themselves of that because they say, “Well, we haven’t changed, but the world around us has.” So make that explicit would be my advice.

Geoff Tuff:

And mine would be, and I’m assuming that there’s a lot of worry in the radio business these days, a lot of concern. My advice, easy to say, hard to do, is stop worrying and start doing. So there’s a very important premise in both the books that Steve and I write about, called a minimally viable move. And it’s based on the idea that every management decision, everything you do, whether it’s a talent choice or a market choice, or what have you, can be boiled down to a really small testable hypothesis and something that can go and be acted on. The more we can start taking action in those small increments and just trying a bunch of stuff, not being random about it, but really taking everything that we intend to do and boiling it down to a really small step forward and trying things, not only will we increase the cycle time of understanding the way the future is unfolding, but we will actually discover interesting new paths along the way. So our core called action in Provoke and in a lot of the discussions we’ve been having with people is, stop worrying and just get out and do something.

Buzz Knight:

That’s awesome. I got to tell you, one of the great things about Takin a Walk is being able to be inspired, being able to be jarred. You do all of that in a great way, and I appreciate it, and I appreciate Detonate and I appreciate Provoke. Thanks guys for taking a walk.

Geoff Tuff:

Thanks for having us.

Stephen Goldbach:

Thanks Buzz.

Speaker 1:

Takin a Walk with Buzz Knight, available on Spotify, iTunes and wherever podcasts are available.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.