Butterworth–Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier 30 Corporate Drive, Suite 400, Burlington, MA 01803, USA Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK Copyright © 2007 by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, E-mail:
[email protected]. You may also complete your request online via the Elsevier homepage (http://elsevier.com), by selecting “Support & Contact” then “Copyright and Permission” and then “Obtaining Permissions.” Recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, Elsevier prints its books on acid-free paper whenever possible. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Favorito, Joseph. Sports publicity : a practical approach / by Joseph Favorito. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7506-8302-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Sports—Public relations. I. Title. GV714.F38 2007 659.2'9796—dc22 2007013846 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-0-7506-8302-3 For information on all Butterworth–Heinemann publications visit our Web site at www.books.elsevier.com Printed in the United States of America 07 08 09 10 11 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Acknowledgments There were many people who helped assemble the facts and case studies in this book. In particular we would like to thank: Susie Arons, Barry Baum, Mark Beal, Bill Bennett, Art Berke, Chris Brienza, Kevin Byrne, Jaye Cavallo, Mary Pat Clarke, Vernon Cheek, John Cirillo, Ron Colangelo, Tim Curry, Dennis D’Agostino, Bob DiBiaso, Chris DiMaria, Greg Elkin, Sal Fererra, Eric Gelfand, Meredith Geisler, John Genzale, Keith Green, Jim Hague, Eric Handler, Pat Hanlon, Peter Hurley, Vince Jackson, Pete Kowalski, Chris LaPlaca, Peter Land, Brooke Lawer, Ed Markey, John Maroon, Beth Marshall, Jerry Milani, Craig Miller, David Newman, Jon Pessah, Dan Schoenberg, Ira Silverman, Dave Siroty, Sammy Steinlight, Bart Swain, Seth Sylvan, Cara Taback, Brian Walker, Randy Walker, Barry Watkins, Jay Williams, and Vince Wladlika for the professional help, stories, and support. Lastly, I would like to thank my own support system for creating the time and showing me the patience that allowed me to have the confidence to get this done. My parents, my in-laws, my brothers, brother-in-law and sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, as well as all the friends from OLHC, Xaverian, and Fordham . . . and of course Laura, Christine, and Andrew. You all make me what I am.
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Introduction We Are the Appetizer, Not the Entrée The business of sports has exploded in the past 20 years. What was once viewed as an industry that folks got involved with because of their love of a game—or a team or an athlete or university—has now become a multibillion-dollar international phenomenon that is as well recognized and has gained as much respect as being a doctor, lawyer, or teacher in many cases. Years ago, parents would send their kids to university and worry for their future when they heard their child was talking about sports as a career. What did that mean? He or she wanted to be a gym teacher or a coach? A professional athlete? Was there any money in that? Was there a future? Were there jobs? Many colleagues’ parents asked them to make sure they had some sort of business background as a fallback in case this “sports” thing didn’t work. I myself took a good number of economics classes as a fallback. My classmate and friend Bob Papa—now the voice of the New York Giants—was an accounting major in case his career choice as a broadcaster didn’t work out. That was in 1985 and 1986, not that long ago. Much has changed. Universities are now offering a steady diet of sports administration programs both on the undergraduate and graduate levels. There are summer “camps” where young people can go to learn how to be an announcer, or improve their writing and reporting skills. High schools have begun to increase their focus to include more opportunities for young people to get involved in the sports industry. We are all touched by aspects of the sports marketing and publicity field every day in areas like consumer marketing and brand awareness. The opportunities seem endless. That growth has spawned a whole list of opportunities of smaller, more concentrated but still very valuable and lucrative fields. Areas like athletic training and sports medicine, marketing, law, and publicity have all emerged as specialties where they were considered ix
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more general years ago. The explosion of the Internet and growth of areas like fantasy leagues, Web site creation, and online media have also added opportunities. Moreover, the opportunities outside the borders of North America have come crashing down, as the business of sports becomes more of a reality in countries around the world with the growth of television, the Web, and all the digital platforms into which sports fits so naturally. There are some great stories to be told on every level, and ways to get consumers and enthusiasts interested in these growth areas. So with that, there is a need for professionals to figure out how to effectively: • • • •
Identify and tell those stories to a broad audience. Maximize the spending that is taking place in the industry. Handle crises and effectively manage media opportunities. Come up with creative and unique ways to cut through the clutter.
That is where the sports publicity field comes in, and that is what we talk about in this book. We look at the field of sports publicity from many angles, including: • How to get started in the industry and where to look for positions, no matter where you live or what your interests are. • Developing strong writing and speaking techniques to strengthen your position in the industry. • Going over effective ways to get media coverage—called “the pitch.” • The difference and the nuances of working in the collegiate setting versus the professional team setting. • The differences between working with individual athletes. • What it’s like to work in a league office or for a sport governing body. • How women’s athletics has changed the publicity field. • How to properly run event publicity. • The difference in global sports publicity. • The value of crisis management and media training. • The difference between working at an agency or on the television side of the business. • What the future holds for the business.
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This book provides a series of case studies for the industry, and some valuable tips for what you will need to be successful in this field. It also gives many examples of effective campaigns and ideas, and some checklists and forms that can provide the basis for effective publicity campaigns. We give you a basic guide, with examples from some of the best in the business, as to what you can expect and how you can effectively negotiate this very exciting and fast-growing business. There are also a few other thoughts to consider and understand before we move forward. Certain themes are interwoven into many of the chapters, and we show you how these thoughts apply to most areas of the sports publicity industry. This is not rocket science, nor are there life savings skills involved. The business of sports publicity is designed to help tell stories or to grow interest in products. It will also help document history. Like most areas of publicity, it is not about saving lives or curing the common cold. What sports publicity does is take stories and put them in a light that makes the subject larger than life. We help create heroes and celebrities, build brand and product loyalty, enhance charity relationships, solve problems, sell advertising, grow interest in healthy lifestyles, increase television viewership and Internet traffic, grow awareness of universities, and help sell magazines, photography, memorabilia, and newspapers. Good publicity efforts can help children get better, make people smile, and increase the value of products and services. Are we making world peace? No. However, we are helping people feel better about their daily lives, increasing the value of their lifestyle and workplace and assisting in telling some good stories that need to be told. The whole world is only two blocks long. My friend and former boss, Scott Layden, used this expression all the time. The business of sports is growing as we have said. However, it is also an insular business, and especially on the publicity side you do not have to look far to know someone who knows someone. Therefore, your reputation is key with both the media and those on the business side. It is a business of networking and referrals, and those contacts you make from day one will help you grow as you move up the ladder. Be able to sing and dance. Versatility is key. The more assets you have, the better off you will be, and the more appealing you will be to a client. Basic business skills—knowledge of financial matters, the ability to speak a second language, strong writing and speaking skills, the ability to implement new technology—will help you grow as a publicist.
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It is the games, but it’s about business, too. Like anything you choose as a career, passion is essential. I would bet that the reason you are interested in sports, or sports business, as a career is because you have followed or played sports in your life. That is different from, say, accounting or many sales positions or perhaps even the financial sector. Many people grow up with a love of sports, entertainment, or the arts. Being able to translate that love into a career is special. However, always remember that this is a multibilliondollar industry, and the return on the investment those are making in you and your skills is key. Loving your job is very important. However, translating that love into success on the business end is even more important. Sports publicity skills translate. The great thing about the sports publicity industry is that the skills you acquire can translate into all other areas of your professional career. Learning good writing and notetaking, learning how to deal with people and products, selling ideas, are all essential skills you can use in another area. The difference many times is that this industry may be hard to adapt to coming the other way. Sports is a passion; many other areas of business are not. You have a very good opportunity to use your passion in business, whereas others who enter this industry to make it a business and don’t understand the passion may not succeed. You may say it’s not about the money, but it is OK to think about it. The entry level jobs in this industry are all about acquiring skills and making contacts—not about making money. However, what this industry has now done is show a return on investment through publicity that makes the publicity vehicle very lucrative as you grow. Now, some areas of the business are about lifestyle, and a comfortable life style at that. The college world is one in which you may never get rich. However, certain areas of sports publicity have become much more lucrative as the years grow and the skills mentioned previously increase. Finding that niche and marketing yourself as a professional is the key. Incorporate the marketing side and the buzz words that go with it. Sports publicity at the end of the day is all about networking, selling and merchandising your subject. It does not matter whether that subject is a shot putter at Bowling Green University or the Nextel Cup or the NBA on ABC. You are not just a publicist. You provide an integral marketing element with some very strong brands that help grow a business. If you look at yourself in that light, and explain that to those who you are talking to in business, your role as a publicist will grow in value.
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Always look to learn. A great amount of experience in this field comes from being involved. Therefore, the more areas you work in, the more events you attend, the more people you meet, the more you learn. Hands-on experience is best. The sports publicity industry is evolving very quickly, and many times it is the entry-level people who can teach “the pros” a thing or two about new areas of technology and media. So, no matter how long you are in this industry, it is important to ask questions and find the new areas that will give you and your clients an edge. Have fun. You are going to be, or already are, in an industry you are passionate about. The people you meet, the places you will go, and the opportunities you will create put you worlds ahead of many people. Will you need to commit long hours, deal with a skeptical and cynical media corps, find unruly fans, unrealistic business partners, and unappreciative subjects? Yes. However, at the end of the day, the sports publicity field gives you an opportunity to work as a professional in an area many people would love to be in. Always take time to reflect, consider the options, and enjoy the moments that make this field special. You are a professional, so act like one. Sports publicity is a highly competitive and professional field, with millions of dollars changing hands every day. It is one you are passionate about. Always remember that you represent a subject and an industry that is always in the public eye. Therefore, you are usually the first face, the first voice, the first contact many people have. That is a great deal of responsibility. Therefore, always treat it as a profession. Dress, speak, and act appropriately. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Lastly, there is one major principle to always remember as a publicist. We will expound upon it later, but it is very important to keep it in mind at all times. Unfortunately, as the industry has grown, some people have gotten in it to make the story about them. Now, it is important to be well respected and well networked in the business. It is a profession, and like every other profession, the goal is to acquire skills and grow. It should not be about just survival or repetition. It should be about growth and success, and you should be appreciated and valued in this unique skill you bring to your organization. That being said, the media, fans, sponsors, and athletes are all interested in what we can do for them, but not necessarily about what our story is. You must never confuse whom the focus should be on or what it takes to get that story out there.
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At the end of the day, we are not the entrée, we are the appetizer. This is what the trailblazers of this industry had in mind when it really began early in the twentieth century. We will talk about those people in just a bit. However, the first press agents, many of whom came to sports from the entertainment industry, were all about getting ink for their clients. Their reputations sold the stories to the media, and the larger-than-life images were created. That is one of the reasons why the founders of this field are pretty much unknown. They worked the backrooms, made the phone calls, wrote and delivered the press releases, covered up and created profound images for their clients through the media. They rarely sought to get attention for themselves. They helped open the doors to the media their clients did not have the time to do or did not know how. They provided the taste for what was the main meal to come. So, remember: We whet the whistle of the media and the consumer with tales of unbelievable human kindness, terrific (or in some cases horrific) athletic events, or just plain sponsor recognition that makes the mundane somehow special. We do not play the games, we help report them. We make sure every athlete, sponsor, event, nonprofit foundation, National Governing Body, entourage member, announcer, official, CEO, and human interest story gets their due. It ain’t about us. It is about the story. We open the doors, inflame the egos, get those to do a trouble take, get the insignificant mentioned in the agate, find the hometown paper, take care of the little guy and the national columnist. That’s what we do. Will it get us rich? Maybe. Will it be fulfilling? Sometimes. Is it going to cure cancer or solve the Iraq War? Well . . . maybe not. But sports publicity, and the publicity industry in general, provides an entry point into an escape of the greater good of the soul, and not just the soul of the sports fan.
Examples In spring 2006, the New York Knicks visited Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, DC on an off day on a trip to play the Washington Wizards. The team saw firsthand, a soldier in a coma raise his eyebrows when his wife mentioned “The
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Knicks are here.” Another time it was a Make a Wish child too sick to travel to Disney World take his second option (to attend an NBA game) and have what his parents said were the best “three days of his life” (and unfortunately the last three days of his life) as part of being at that game and then telling people about it afterwards (thank you Jermaine O’Neal, Spike Lee, Penny Marshall, and Kurt Thomas among others). Publicists have seen inflamed public opinion over the controversial PR events created by some teams, and the great moments. So is the story about all the great PR efforts that went into making these events? Will anyone remember the names of David Benner, Larry Wahl, Tim Rooney, or Dan Schoenberg? No. But they will remember the moment. And that is what PR is all about. Finding the way to capitalize on what Whitney Houston created in song as “The One Moment in Time.” The moment that as a publicist has a hand in and planned out for months or for just a second, that sports fans and people in general harken back to when they are older and wiser, or what they share with their friends and spouses forever. When sports touched their lives, and we helped to make it special and memorable, that is the payoff.
Lastly, one thing to think about as you read this textbook. What are your reasons for wanting to be involved in sports publicity? To paraphrase the great sportswriting character Oscar Madison, “Is it to be Joe Namath or own Joe Namath?” Is it because you are a fan and want to get closer to those who have been your heroes? Is it because you have always played a sport and now wanted to make it a career? Is it for the money? Well there is no right or wrong answer to the question. As the actor Jack Pallance said to Billy Crystal in the movie City Slickers it is all about one thing . . . and that one thing is different for everyone. It is up to you to figure it out. And by the way, you don’t have to know it right now, and may not know it five years from now. But somehow, sometime, you will figure it out. Hopefully it will make the business as self-fulfilling as it has been for so many.
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Chapter-by-Chapter Synopsis Introduction to the Book Chapter 1: How It All Got Started Chapter 1 looks at the history of sports PR—where it started from the glory days of people like Irving Rudd and Joey Goldstein, how it has evolved over the years—from writing press releases to becoming an industry that supports tangible dollars and a great amount of growth in enhancing return on investment. The chapter looks at how the business has changed and what we have learned from those before us.
Chapter 2: Getting Started and Building Contacts/ Volunteerism Chapter 2 looks at what the options are for those who want to get started; examples from seasoned pros from around the country and the world of how they got started; advice tips for picking up experience; what type of experience you need; where to live and the difference in each geographic area; the importance of volunteering, what to volunteer for, the importance of acting professional; how to grow; the value of diverse internships; and the value of networking and joining groups.
Chapter 3: Reading, Writing, and Speaking—and Not Just in English Chapter 3 discusses the importance of good writing—what the media look for; the importance of following up; the process of writing a press release; the business of game notes; media guides; game programs; the stats business; the importance of knowing a little about a lot of areas; good note taking; use of transcriptions; and the value of speaking a second language.
Chapter 4: How and What to Pitch Chapter 4 looks at the importance of knowing your subject and your audience—doing your homework; knowing the media; making relevant pitches; doing the little things to take care of the media; being innovative and creative; merchandising the success of those around you; business pitches vs. sports pitches; the importance of local media pitches; using TV and radio as tools; the difference, or lack thereof, of “on and off the record;” being aware of media
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deadlines; using the media as a resource; building contacts and following up; taking care of the little guys who someday become the big guys; irreverence vs. political correctness; and pitching the trades.
Chapter 5: Working in the Colleges Chapter 5 is all about using the college publicity effort as a launching pad to further your career, or creating a lifetime experience— working games and taking ownership of sports; promoting the nonrevenue sports; knowing what the media needs; pitching stories to the locals; the value of sports PR to the university; using technology to promote on campus; merchandising success with alums, the CoSIDA Code of Ethics, and the faculty; maximizing meager budgets and getting credit where credit is due; learning publishing; creating unique promotions; gaining college credit while growing your career; developing and mentoring students; enhancing the journalism school; finding the human interest stories through the clutter; identifying the appropriate pitch places; and learning to talk to athletes.
Chapter 6: Working with a Professional Team Chapter 6 explores the dynamics of team public relations—the team spokesperson role; protecting the organization; the value of media training; dealing with the superstar; handling the player support staff; balancing the team and the front office needs; maximizing the talents of all involved in the organization; communicating and overcommunicating up and down the chain of command; realizing the value of the brand and maximizing that value; working with other teams and the league office; game operations; working with national media; maximizing the growing international market; using the media to get the off-sports page stories out; and success despite the record.
Chapter 7: Working with an Individual Sport and Athlete Chapter 7 unveils the nuances of handling a team vs. the individual athlete—how to deal with one-on-one athletes; working in NASCAR, tennis, bowling, and golf; maximizing the moment and preparing for the one big opportunity; working with sponsorship teams; dealing with the “traveling circus” of individual sports; and working with agents.
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Chapter 8: The League Publicity Office Chapter 8 explores the role of league and NGB PR professionals and their value—how to take the divergent pieces of a sport and create one voice; being the “commissioner” of PR for a sport; gathering and providing information; the challenges of being “big brother”; working with the top voice; and the commissioner or president.
Chapter 9: Women’s Sports and Athletics Chapter 9 deals with understanding, handling, and exploding stereotypes—dealing with the athlete vs. sex symbol issue; maintaining decorum and professionalism in a male-dominated society; learning gender-specific pitches and media; and working with other women’s organizations and charities to garner publicity.
Chapter 10: The Press Conference In Chapter 10, we show you how to set up an event—making each event memorable; taking care of all the details; the value of extensive prep for participants; dealing with surprises; delegation of duties; postevent followup; scheduled vs. impromptu press conferences; which days, which events; controlling the message; maximizing photo and video coverage; the value of transcribing; the details of assembling an impactful press kit; game day press; establishing timelines; and feeding the masses.
Chapter 11: Crisis Management Chapter 11 discusses the importance of establishing procedure— maintaining chain of command and speaking with one voice; types of crises; security issues; the on-field crisis; consensus building; the spokesperson role; damage control; dealing with gossip; public company issues; and branding issues.
Chapter 12: Promoting Sports in a Global Environment Chapter 12 is all about dealing with international media—the expectations of the non-American press with American athletes; how non-American athletes deal with the American media; paying for coverage and nontraditional media ideals; understanding the value of national press outside the United States; respecting traditions and avoiding stereotypes when pitching; working with time differences; the growth of sports PR around the world; and the value of new media.
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Chapter 13: Agencies, Magazines, and Broadcast Publicity In Chapter 13, we look at developing the network—pitching for business, and then pitching the client; dealing with conflicting clients; maintaining long-term relationships; the value of clips; creating meaningful programs; losing a client; finding new business; public agencies vs. boutique shops; and looking for the right fit in sports.
Chapter 14: What’s Next? The New Age of Sports PR Finally, in Chapter 14, we cover cultivating celebrity relationships locally and nationally—using sports as the vehicle to gain exposure for not-for-profits; sports business publicity and the opportunities it presents; the growth of blogs and other new media publicity opportunities; high-school sports opportunities; the slide of traditional media; emerging sports; and capturing growing ethnic communities in the United States.
CHAPTER 1
How It All Got Started
This chapter looks at the background and the history of the sports publicity industry. Given the amount of time and effort that goes into the field in this era, it is hard to imagine that the business is less than 70 years old. We will look at some of the pioneers of the business in some of the key areas where we spend a great deal of time today—collegiate sports, television, and general sport publicity—and pull some lessons they have passed to us to apply today. There are many valuable areas the sports publicity field continues to apply today to make the business viable. The lessons we will talk about going forward remain the base for the sports publicity field, and include • • • •
pitching relationship building note taking and writing historical accuracy
So, that’s where this chapter will go. Taking a look back at what has become a multibillion-dollar industry in a very short time. It was a passion for them and remains a passion for all of us. Who knew that learning how to keep score with your mom or dad, or watching hoops on TV could turn into a lucrative career? Well, some folks did, and that’s who we will look at now. The Hall of Fame Sports writer, Leonard Kopett, in his must-read The Rise and Fall of The Press Box gives a clue as to where all this started: Keep in mind, this is when the press was much more genteel, traveled with the team on trains and planes, and was very guarded about the way sports superstars were portrayed to the 1
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general public. Sports heroes had no feet of clay at that time. They were the Greek statues we all knew and loved. Therefore, the first jobs of publicists were to cater to the media. Most in fact were not full-time positions. They were side jobs handled also by the traveling secretary. The difference was: For the writer or broadcaster, good relations with the field manager or head coach remain a must. He must rely on your honest reporting, and you have to rely on him steering you straight, In old days, the publicity man was the beat writer’s colleague and facilitator, but not the “gatekeeper” of access to the manager; the press credential assured that. (Originally, publicity was a side duty of the road secretary; after World War II, PR became professionalized but was vested in one man, an assistant, and a secretary.) Today’s PR departments have many functions; servicing the press box is only one and is not always the most important. Whomever heads it doesn’t have the time or opportunity to be a buddy of the writers the way it was in the 1940s or ’50s or ’60s, but the ability to build those relationships and call on them remains as important. The first publicists in sports were the press agents. Many of them came from the entertainment side, where they worked with actors and actresses trying to place notes and stories that would grow interest and keep them top of mind with a media-hungry fan base. This was in an era in which the newspaper and the gossip column were key. The city of New York had as many as 12 dailies at one time, each with its own form of celebrity coverage. The same held true for many large cities, and the syndicated columnists like Walter Winchell and others had their stories sent to hundreds of other papers throughout the country. It was a time when the stars of stage and screen were not accessible to everyday folks. The only thing people learned was what was in the papers or heard on the radio. Sports soon became no different. First baseball, then college football and boxing were the first sports to use full-time press agents. These agents worked with the print media to help fill the stories— and sometimes create the stories—of these heroic athletes and what went on both on and off the playing field. The two worked in tandem to grow the athlete image. They also worked together to shield the athlete from negativity. The public was thirsty for heroes, and was not interested in the “feet of clay” of the everyday man. The press agent worked to fill that need.
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The other reason we need to look back is to understand that we are not talking about very ancient history for the most part. The business really did not start to change drastically until the mid-1980s. This was a very short time ago when elements like the Web, cell phones, ESPN, rotisserie leagues, the WNBA, and even laptop computers were not part of the sports publicity lexicon. It was the telecopier—a huge, loud, smelly fax machine (for those of you who may even know what a fax machine is)— that literally burned text over a regular phone line onto pages of coated paper at about three pages per minute. It was also the phone on your desk and a typewriter that was used to get the information out. Very few universities at the time saw sports management as a career choice at that point. It was mostly volunteering, internships, and journalism that got the publicist started, many areas of which we will cover going forward. Those who got into the business may have been touched by those we will mention shortly, or if they were not, chances are there were others like them who affected them. The news cycle, the press, and the image of athletes have changed over the years, but the basic premise of the publicist has hopefully remained the same. The ability to garner positive press is one of the key messages. Here is the story of how some of the “legends” were able to do it. “Unswerving Irving” Rudd, as he has been known, was one of the greatest sports publicists of all time. His ability to garner publicity for the most mundane harness race to the World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers made him the heavyweight in the sports publicity industry before anyone knew what the industry was. His tales (also contained in his book), from purposely misspelling the name of “Yonkers Raceway” to “Yonkers Racewya,” was the stuff of creative genius. As was done before the days of billable hours, economies of scale, “column inches,” and all the other terms that became publicity buzzwords and areas of measured growth as the public relations business expanded into the multibillion-dollar industry it is today. OK, now that we have had a chance to give you some nice trivia for the next “future sports publicist of America” meeting you attend, let’s get onto the book itself. As we do that, I implore you to always think of folks like Joey Goldstein and “Unswerving” Irving Rudd in your reading and then your jobs. Always think, “What would they have done?” “How will our event be impactful?” “Did I connect with all constituencies appropriately?”
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The Sports Publicity “Haul” of Fame Joyce Aschenbrenner One of the trailblazers for women in the industry, Joyce Aschenbrenner made her first mark in the collegiate ranks at the University of Pittsburgh, having a hand in the publicity and promotion of future NFL stars Dan Marino and Tony Dorsett at a time when very few women were full-time in the industry, especially on a major college level. A graduate of the University of West Virginia and a Pittsburgh native, Joyce moved on to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, from 1982 through 1990. It was while she was with the Runnin Rebels that college basketball became an even bigger showpiece than in the past, and her work fine-tuning the pregame excitement at Rebels basketball for Jerry Tarkanian’s squad—including light shows, red-carpet entrances, and indoor fireworks—became an industry trend. She took college basketball and helped make it into showtime in the showiest city in the world. Aschenbrenner then moved on to the University of Colorado, where she was the associate athletics director for external affairs and senior women’s administrator. During that time, she also worked as a liaison to the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament. Following her time in Boulder, she served a three-year term on the Defense Advisory Commission for Women in the Services for the Department of Defense. She then left collegiate athletics and moved on to The V Foundation for Cancer Research in November 2001 as the director of marketing and communications and is currently Foundation vice president. She is also a cancer survivor, and role model to the many women now entering the industry at record rates. What we can learn from Joyce Aschenbrenner: The skills that are learned as publicists can translate to many different fields, including the not-for-profit area. There are many ways to help grow the area in which charities and sports intermix these days, and make it into a worthwhile part of sports publicity as well.
Marty Appel Yet another veteran of the baseball wars in the Bronx, Marty Appel has spent his entire career in communications, public relations, and writing. Marty has won an Emmy Award, a Gold Record, has written award-winning books, and has seen it all, working on events
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ranging from the New York Yankees to Olympic Games. He was the youngest public relations director ever selected to lead a major league baseball team and was George Steinbrenner’s first hire in that position with the New York Yankees. After nine years with the Yankees, under both CBS and Steinbrenner ownership, Appel went on to direct public relations for Tribune Broadcasting’s WPIX in New York and to serve as the Yankees Executive Producer concurrently. He later directed public relations for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and the Topps Company before opening his own agency. He has also done public relations for World Team Tennis’ New York Apples and for the Office of the Baseball Commissioner. His 16 books include collaborations with Larry King, Bowie Kuhn, Tom Seaver, Lee MacPhail, umpire Eric Gregg, Thurman Munson, the definitive collection of Hall of Fame biographies in Baseball’s Best, and the award-winning biography Slide, Kelly, Slide about a nineteenth-century baseball star. His autobiography, Now Pitching for the Yankees, named best New York baseball book of 2001 by ESPN, was published in June 2001. What we can learn from Marty Appel: Sometimes, the sports publicity field is all about building relationships. The publicist needs to be able to build them, tell the story of the client to be effective, and then grow a career. The people you meet when you just start out may also be the same people you will work with later.
Tim Cohane Tim Cohane was the sports editor of Look magazine from 1944 until it ceased publication in 1965. As publicity director for Fordham University for five years after his graduation, he wrote about Fordham’s excellent football teams and coined the phrase, “The Seven Blocks of Granite,” describing the Rams’ famous line of the 1930s, which included Vince Lombardi. Tim then joined The New York World Telegram in 1940 and wrote a nationally syndicated column, “Frothy Facts,” until 1944 when he moved to Look. There he wrote more than 500 articles, many dealing with college football. Mr. Cohane taught writing at Boston University’s School of Public Communications from 1968 until his retirement in 1978. What we can learn from Tim Cohane: Good writing skills and the ability to use publicity as a tool will open many doors for you. Whether you choose to stay in the industry as a publicist or not, the skills you refine and acquire will translate to other areas.
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Sports Publicity: A Practical Approach
Mike Cohen His nickname was “Inky,” and throughout his career that is what Mike Cohen got for his clients. Whether he was a Jewish publicist for a Catholic university (Manhattan College), or pioneering the part of the publicity industry that dealt with announcers, directors, and TV shows (when he was head of publicity for NBC Sports), there was no one better than Mike Cohen. Cohen’s life was based on the relationships he had in the media, and how he was able to take those relationships and make “name clients” bigger or rising clients important. He always found publicity angles for the athletes at Manhattan to put the university on a national stage in sports ranging from baseball and basketball to track and field, even when the teams did not warrant national coverage for their on-field exploits. His time at NBC saw the birth of what is today the area of TV sports publicity, with most major markets devoting time and coverage just to that industry. Cohen had the ability to talk to those in front and behind the camera (from people like Bob Costas, Marty Glickman, and Marv Albert to directors like Michael Weisman) and come up with unique human elements about their style that he could take and work his relationships with the media to make them into stories themselves. He also had a flair for the underdog, working with jockeys and trainers at places like Yonkers Raceway and baseball scouts, finding media opportunities for them as well. Mike was the quintessential relationship builder, and his legacy lives on today in the form of some of the great sports publicists in this country who worked for and under him. His company, Mike Cohen Communications, became part of industry leader Alan Taylor Communications following his untimely passing in 1988. What we can learn from Mike Cohen: One of the greatest assets in sports publicity is the ability to see a story and then formulate a plan and match it with the right media outlet. By doing this, the publicist is able to tell his subject’s story in an impactful way and thus be able to grow the image of the subject beyond what one thought was its normal boundaries.
John Condon He is probably best known as the legendary “voice” of Madison Square Garden, but John Condon’s work as a boxing publicist throughout a lifelong career was really his hallmark. He arranged
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some of the classic fights not only in Madison Square Garden, but around the world, and was arguably the best fight promoter and publicist during the sports’ glory days of the 1950s and 1960s. John also had a great love for children, and New York’s Kid Gloves program, founded by him when he was president of Madison Square Garden Boxing, was a trailblazing way to reach inner-city kids and get them off the streets for nine weeks each summer. Boxers such as Mike Tyson, Mark Breland, and Hector “Macho” Camacho all went through the Kid Gloves Program in their youth. As a symbol of his outstanding achievement in publicity and promotion, the current Madison Square Garden press room is named in his honor, as is the John F.X. Condon Award, given out annually by the Professional Boxing Writers Association to its top writer. What we can learn from John Condon: Publicists have the ability to wield a great deal of influence with both the media and the client. That does not differ with market size or the interest in the sport or the product. Remembering that publicity has the ability to help tell stories and influence public opinion is always important.
Bob Cornell One of the profession’s biggest advocates and strongest mentors has been plying his trade in upstate New York for more than 30 years. Bob has been at Colgate University since May 1976, and his dedication to writing and teaching excellence, and molding the lives of young professionals entering the business, is unparalleled. In July 2001, Cornell was inducted into the College Sports Information Directors Association Hall of Fame. On September 19, 2003 he was inducted into the SUNY-Cobleskill Athletic Hall of Fame, and on December 4, 2003 he received the Scoop Hudgins Outstanding Sports Information Director Award from the All-American Football Foundation. During his career in the sports information field, he has served as a press liaison for numerous NCAA and ECAC championships and regional events, including Media Coordinator of the NCAA Division I Golf Championships in 1977. He served on the press liaison staff for the U.S. Olympic Committee at the 1984 Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles and the 1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary. In addition, he was on the press liaison staff at four Olympic Festivals (1981, ’82, ’83, ’87). He has served on the Site Selection, Post-Graduate Scholarship, and Ethics Committees of the College Sports Information Directors of America. Cornell is a past president of the Eastern College Athletic Conference Sports
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Sports Publicity: A Practical Approach
Information Directors Association, and the 1992 recipient of the Irving T. Marsh Service Bureau Award, presented annually to the sports information director who has contributed the most to the work of the Bureau during the year and throughout his or her career. What we can learn from Bob Cornell: If we choose the sports publicity field as both a career and a lifestyle, we can do great things. Mentoring and helping mold young men and women, both as student athletes and as rising journalists and publicists, are very important in making the industry grow.
Bob Fishel Bob Fishel was legendary baseball owner Bill Veeck’s publicist for both the Cleveland Indians and the St. Louis Browns (later the Baltimore Orioles), and was the man who signed Eddie Gaedel to a Browns contract. Bob got to participate in a great baseball publicity stunt. Veeck recalls Fishel’s involvement in the classic book, Veeck as in Wreck: “Instead of bringing the contract up to his room, Bob Fishel set up a meeting on a street corner a block or two away from his hotel. Bob drove up in his Packard, Eddie slid into the front seat and scribbled his name on two contracts and jumped out. One of the contracts was mailed to league headquarters on Saturday night, which meant it would not arrive until Monday morning. The other was given to (manager) Zack Taylor, in case our prized rookie was challenged by the umpires. The morning of the game I wired headquarters that Eddie Gaedel was put on our active list.” Fishel arranged all the pregame publicity, made sure the photograph made the wires, and came up with the number (1/8) Gaedel wore on his back. He spent many years with Veeck, the man who is arguably the greatest promoter in the history of baseball. After leaving, he moved on to the Yankees, spending 20 years in the Bronx in an era that saw some of the greatest and toughest years for the Bronx Bombers. At the time of his death, he was American League (AL) vice president for public relations. As a symbol of his outstanding work, an award named in his honor is given to the outstanding baseball publicist each year. He also devoted a great amount of time to his alma mater, Hiram College, which has its baseball complex named in his honor. What we can learn from Bob Fishel: The “stunt” still remains a key part of sports publicity. No matter how outrageous an idea is, it is the job of the publicist to weigh the options, determine the course
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of action, and figure out the best plan to get coverage. We can also learn that the “stunt” is also one part of our job. Dealing with the media before and after that event in a professional manner is also very important.
Joey Goldstein For almost 45 years, New York-based publicist Joey Goldstein has trafficked his wares in the national sports scene. His clients over the years have included Bob Hope; corporations such as Mobil Oil, the New York Road Runners Club, the New York City Marathon, and the Millrose Games; manufacturers Hanover Trust Company and RJR Nabisco; and for years, the entire sport of harness racing. He wrote for newspapers, handled publicity for Madison Square Garden college basketball, and worked more fights for people like Joe Frazier than most people can remember. He worked every sport, including the Saudi Arabian Olympic soccer team, which is the ultimate irony for a Jewish boy from Conway, South Carolina. His closest friends were three gentlemen who hated each other— New York Post columnist Dick Young, the New York Times columnist Red Smith, and the legendary Howard Cosell—but they all worked with Joey. Although he may have lost a step, he remains one of the true Runyonesque characters in the sports PR business, always wearing raincoats, carrying little note cards and a very clean linen handkerchief. Harness racing was Joey’s biggest success. Goldstein started working full-time for Roosevelt Raceway on Long Island in 1954, and later took over PR for the entire sport. Until he gave it up in 1980, he generated attention far beyond the public’s interest. His best story involved a French trotter named Jamin that came to the United States for the International at Roosevelt Raceway. Goldstein created the myth that Jamin had to have artichokes to survive. Since there were no artichokes on Long Island at that time of year, they had to be flown in from California and then helicoptered to the track so the race could take place. Jamin won the race amidst publicity befitting the Kentucky Derby. The real story was that the artichokes were used by the horse as a laxative. Unlike other mainstream publicists, Goldstein worked every holiday and eve, believing that it was easier to get stories in on slow news days—and he is probably right, albeit with less circulation. His Rolodex or connections in New York for restaurants and theater tickets were unparalleled for the longest time.
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Sports Publicity: A Practical Approach
Although he has gotten on in age and many have said the business has passed him by, the legend of Joey Goldstein and the work he did for clients is an example of how sports publicity can be done with hard work. What we can learn from Joey Goldstein: Even in a large market with a great amount of competition, publicists can find ways to make stories compelling and unusual, and find ways to get their subject coverage. It may not always be the perfect kind of coverage, but the potential for solid exposure is always there, especially when the publicist has strong media connections.
Mary Jo Haverbeck Another female trailblazer is former Penn State Associate Sports Information Director Mary Jo Haverbeck. The Wilmington, Delaware native began her sports information career at the University of Delaware on a volunteer basis in the late 1960s introducing the then three-sport Blue Hen women’s program to the media while working full-time in the university’s Public Information Office. Haverbeck’s interest in sports journalism led her to graduate school at Penn State, where she wrote her master’s degree thesis on media coverage of women’s sports. Women’s athletic director Della Durant had been lobbying for coverage of Penn State’s then nine-sport women’s program, and sports information director John Morris hired Haverbeck on a part-time basis to write releases. Haverbeck began a relentless campaign to place stories about Lady Lion coaches and athletes. Her persistence paid off as Penn State’s women’s program was featured on ABC’s Wide World of Sports and in an extensive profile in Sports Illustrated. A photo of a Penn State Lady Lion lacrosse player also appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Her efforts have not gone unnoticed, as she was the first woman to receive the Arch Ward Award for outstanding work in the college sports information field. What we can learn from Mary Jo Haverbeck: The opportunity for women in sports publicity is growing very quickly. The advent of Title IX, and the added interest in women’s professional sports, have opened career opportunities like never before. The need for quality publicists of any gender is greater today than ever before.
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Irv Kaze Irv Kaze was the only man who can claim to have won a World Series ring working for Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner, and a Super Bowl ring working for Raiders’ managing partner Al Davis. He also was the Hollywood Stars publicist when they played the final Pacific Coast League game in Los Angeles on September 15, 1957. While attending New York University, he worked for the New York Post. Upon graduation, he began his baseball career with the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League, moving up to the parent Pittsburgh Pirates when the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn. Irv was the first public relations director of the Los Angeles (now Anaheim) Angels. When Al Davis became commissioner of the American Football League (AFL), Irv joined his staff and later became business manager and assistant to the president of the San Diego Chargers for seven years. Irv has been recognized on six occasions as the Best Radio Talk Show host by Southern California Sports Broadcasters. What we can learn from Irv Kaze: Sometimes, we will work for very difficult subjects who may be neither media favorites nor have a full understanding of how sports publicity is done correctly. Being able to balance and educate while maintaining your credibility is difficult but doable, and is essential in today’s world where sports and entertainment are mixed and the coverage of sports is so extensive.
Ramiro Martinez One of the great Hispanic sports publicists, Cuban Ramiro Martinez oversaw the publicity for much of Cuban baseball and the AAA Havana Sugar Kings in the late 1950s. Martinez’s gregarious personality and flamboyant publicity stunts made the Sugar Kings one of baseball’s most storied franchises, as the International League grew in stature as the premier minor league before major league baseball expansion. Martinez used his talents to help owner Bobby Maduro lure some of the top Hispanic players of the era to the team on their way to the major leagues, including Luis Arroyo, Tony Gonzalez, Cookie Rojas, Leo Cardenas, and Mike Cuellar. He also developed a strong friendship with rising Puerto Rican star Roberto Clemente, and stayed friends with him throughout his life. Martinez also worked on a promotion to have new Cuban leader Fidel Castro pitch for the team shortly after he assumed power in 1959. The Sugar Kings went
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Sports Publicity: A Practical Approach
on to capture their first and only title. Martinez worked hard to keep the Sugar Kings in the sports eye as Castro’s power grew, but unfortunately the team was forced to leave the island in 1960 after the United States implemented sanctions against Cuba. Martinez went with the team to Jersey City, New Jersey, where, despite his publicity efforts, it folded after one season. What we can learn from Ramiro Martinez: Sometimes, despite all the best intentions, great publicity stories, and hard work, forces outside can take control and make the job less than successful. Publicists always need to stay focused and do their job despite those forces they cannot control. The publicist must expect the unexpected.
Harvey Pollock The “Super Stat,” as he was dubbed by Philadelphia Bulletin writer Bert Kiseda, has been involved with the National Basketball Association (NBA), and sports in Philadelphia . . . well . . . since there has been an NBA in Philadelphia. One of only three employees to have worked for the league every day since it began operations, Pollock continues to go strong. The author of an annual NBA statistical guide, and now a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame, as well as eleven other “Halls,” is in a league by himself. He started as the assistant publicity director of the old Philadelphia Warriors (now Golden State) in 1946–1947 and midway through the 1952–1953 season, he became head of media relations for the Warriors. He maintained that post until spring 1962, when the franchise was sold to San Francisco. During the 1962–1963 season, when there was no team in Philadelphia, neutral court games were played and he did the publicity to maintain his NBA connection. Then in 1963–1964, the Syracuse franchise was shifted to Philadelphia and the franchise was renamed the “76ers.” He served as the media relations director for the 76ers until the 1987–1988 season, when he assumed the duties of Director of Statistical Information for the team, a position he still holds. Long before the league adopted the following categories, he kept them for Philadelphia home games: minutes played blocked shots, offensive and defensive rebounds, steals, and turnovers. At the same time, he began tabulating categories the league didn’t, and the esoteric items and tables eventually became part of his widely read stat guide. In addition to his NBA duties, he heads basketball stat crews at six major colleges in the Philadelphia area, the crew at the Major Indoor Lacrosse League
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games of the Wings, and the Soul in the Arena Football League. His past includes 15 years as the head of the Baltimore Colts NFL stat crew, and in Philadelphia led the crew for the Philadelphia Stars, Bell, and Bulldogs. He has been Temple University’s football statistician since 1945. He’s en route to The Guinness Book of Records by wearing a different t-shirt every day since June 29, 2003. He was at 856 on opening day, 2006 and was targeting 1000 as his goal on March 24, 2006. What we can learn from Harvey Pollock: Sports publicity remains a statistics driven business for the most part. By being able to create compelling stories via all the stats and figures that go into the games, and then pitch those stats effectively, we can find new angles that have not been explored, even for the simplest of efforts.
Chuck Prophet The number of outstanding athletes that have come from the Southwestern Athletic Conference over the years is amazing. Football stars like Walter Payton, Doug Williams, and Jerry Rice, and basketball Hall of Famers like Willis Reed all track their roots to the schools that for many years had to toil in obscurity in the publicity world because of their largely African-American student body in the racially charged south. The push to bring these schools mainstream publicity and help get their stories told was led by longtime Mississippi Valley State University sports information director Chuck Prophet. Prophet worked with the Delta Devils for more than 30 years before his retirement in 2001, and helped shape the publicity efforts of star athletes such as Rice, Willie Totten, Ashley Ambrose, Patricia Hoskins, Eugene Sanders, and Herman Sanders. He also publicized the exploits of such storied coaches as Archie Cooley and Lafayette Stribling. As sports information director, Prophet received several honors, including selection as SWAC sports information director of the year and black college sports information director of the year. He served on the College Sports Information Directors of America Board of Directors. What we can learn from Chuck Prophet: There are always great stories to be told, even in the most rural of communities and in the smallest of sports efforts. Being able to uncover, nurture, and then promote them is a great challenge, but can be a very rewarding one.
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Sports Publicity: A Practical Approach
Pete Rozelle Perhaps the greatest leader in the history of modern sports, Alvin “Pete” Rozelle began his career at the University of San Francisco, working as a student publicist for the school’s football team. He had already worked in public relations for the Los Angeles Rams front office, and while in the athletic office at USF he marketed the Don’s national championship basketball season of 1949 into a national media event. He graduated from USF that year. He held a series of public relations jobs in Southern California, marketing the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia for a Los Angeles-based company. He joined the Los Angeles Rams as its public relations specialist. By 1957, Rozelle was offered the General Manager job with the Rams. He turned a disorganized, unprofitable team, lost in the growing LA market, into a business success and then went on to replace Bert Bell as NFL Commissioner. What we can learn from Pete Rozelle: If we want to grow in the sports industry on the team or league side, the opportunity exists. The publicist is an essential part of the business of sports and many times is the link between the on- and off-field efforts of a team, a league, a sport, or an athlete. If we learn about all aspects of our business, it is possible to ascend to great heights.
Irving Rudd “Unswerving Irving” was one of the greatest sports publicists of all time. His ability to garner publicity for the most mundane harness race to the World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers made him the heavyweight in the sports publicity industry before anyone knew what the industry was. His tales (also contained in his book)—from purposely misspelling the name of “Yonkers Raceway” to “Yonkers Racewya”— were the stuff of creative genius. As was done before the days of billable hours, economies of scale, “column inches,” and all the other terms that became publicity buzzwords and areas of measured growth as the public relations business expanded into the multibillion-dollar industry it is today. Irving Rudd’s career spanned the heyday of so many sports of a bygone era in New York. He began in the 1930s and 1940s in the world of boxing, working with some of the greats of the fight game—from Beau Jack through Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Graziano, Muhammad Ali, Ken Norton, and Sugar Ray Leonard. Along the way, “Unswerving” Irving served as the chief publicist for
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the legendary Boys of Summer (the Brooklyn Dodgers, through their greatest days, including their only championship in 1955). He also was a key player in the sport of Kings, handling some of the biggest races, and publicity stunts, in the golden era of horse racing. One of the most beloved figures in professional sports, his legacy will never be forgotten. What we can learn from Irving Rudd: No matter how big the event, how well recognizable the team is, we can always dig to find a story yet to be told. Creativity is key, and presenting those opportunities in a unique light to the media will help us shape our story.
Don Smith Another of the great publicists during the rise of the NFL, New York Giants impresario Don Smith oversaw the golden boy era of Frank Gifford and Kyle Rote in the 1950s and stayed with the Giants through Fran Tarkenton and the darker days of the early 1970s, all the while working for the Mara family, protecting and promoting the image of the players and an organization always known for class. That resonated well with its top publicist. Smith was always known for his ability to turn a story, massage a player image, and when needed, fire off “deep truthed” sarcasm that made him a favorite among New York scribes. One of his best lines came at the end of his run with the Giants, when the team struggled in the early 1970s: “You’ve heard about the Rubber Band Defense that bends but never breaks? Ours doesn’t break either, but it stretches 101 yards.” Through it all, he remained fiercely loyal to the organization and to the Mara family. He is one of only a handful of top publicists ever to work for the Giants. The list includes only Ed Croke and current Giants PR maven Pat Hanlon, all known for their ability to deal with the media, pitch stories, and preserve the tradition of the storied football franchise. What we can learn from Don Smith: Being able to work in a professional atmosphere and represent the interests of your organization or subject as they would want you to are key. Having some balance as the organization spokesperson will give you credibility with the media in good times and bad.
Roger Valdiserri Notre Dame’s former sports information director is universally regarded as the best ever at his profession. A 1954 graduate of Notre
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Sports Publicity: A Practical Approach
Dame, Valdiserri spent nearly 30 years overseeing sports publicity at his alma mater. He pioneered some of the publicity concepts everyone uses today, such as having football coach Ara Parseghian record answers to questions for the media. The system dramatically reduced the time Parseghian had to spend meeting enormous media demands. He was the king of balancing precious access time between the legendary football and basketball programs and the press. He maximized the effort both sides put in, and gave everyone the opportunity to do their jobs. Valdiserri may be best known for the changing of Joe Theismann’s name from THEES-man to THEISman—which happened to rhyme with Heisman. Great is an appropriate word to describe Valdiserri’s contributions to Notre Dame. He’s a member of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Hall of Fame, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in college football. What we can learn from Roger Valdeserri: As sports publicists, sometimes we have to be the calming voice in the center of the storm. Many people will look to the publicist as the voice of reason when the media are swarming, and we have to be professional and calm enough to make judgments at a time when emotions may be running rampant. Finding the best way to deal with the media and creating a “win-win” situation for all involved is a big element of success in the field.
Christy Walsh Walsh was a pioneer of sports licensing. His most frequent device was getting sports stars to put their names on ghostwritten articles in newspapers and magazines. Many a World Series (WS) game was “analyzed” by a star who was nowhere near the action. A 1911 graduate of St. Vincent’s College in Los Angeles, Walsh first worked for the Los Angeles Express. In 1921, he started his own syndicate, creating a major industry for stars like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Knute Rockne, and others. Walsh was sports director for the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair. His biggest success may have come from working with Babe Ruth, as his full-time publicist during the Babe’s heyday. The Babe took part in numerous philanthropic events and assisted from afar, all with Walsh as the master planner. He was one of the first to look to sports publicity as a solid industry, and he did very well with it. What we can learn from Christy Walsh: Working with the individual athlete can have its merits. Helping grow the “image” as a
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publicist, no matter how well the athlete’s career goes, can be very rewarding.
Reference Koppett, Leonard. The Rise and Fall of the Press Box. Sport Classic Books, 2003.
The provision and supply of conference venues The aims of this chapter are: 1 T o examine the range of conference venues and to highlight the different characteristics of each. 2 T o explore and quantify the geographic spread of conference venues within Britain and Ireland in terms of a regional analysis and regional variations. 3 T o examine the nature of the ownership and management of conference venues in the light of hnding and organizational issues in general.
3.1
Introduction
In the first chapter we referred to the history and development of conference venues and the attempts by interested bodies, such as consultants and academics, to classify them. Some of these classifications do not adequately explain the characteristics of the various venue types. However, an exploration of characteristics is a necessary step in the exploration of the structure and components of the supply side of the conference business. For the benefit of students, current examples are given which may serve to assist understanding of the classification. There are elements of overlap between the classifications and it should be noted that the classification is intended as a ‘modus vivendi’ (or put more simply, the classification will develop as time goes on), not as the last word. In addition to the classification, an analysis has been carried out of published information, notably the ‘Conference Blue Book’ to
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attempt to quantify the geographic spread of venues. Each (UK) region is identified with a percentage of venues as a proportion of the whole and, where possible, the number of large-scale venues are noted (large scale being defined as a centre capable of accommodating 1000 or more people) together with an identification of purposebuilt conference centres in each region, where these are known. Clearly there are limitations to this type of analysis as the published or advertised information about venues represents only a fiaction of the actual total. Related to this constraint is the issue of ‘when is a conference centre not a conference centre’, given that, arguably, any room capable of taking two people round a table for a small fee could be classed as a conference venue. Conference centres are not evenly spread throughout the country; this is partly a function of demand, partly a function of existing infrastructure and competition, and partly a function of the need or ability of a town, city or resort to develop conferencing as part of the economic provision of that place. Large conference centres provide employment and other economic benefits, but they are not the only means of doing this; in consequence, given limited funds, a council or other public or private body may decide that a conference centre may not be the only economic option possible in their location. Conference centres, which, in general terms, can be seen as a homogeneous business activity, vary considerably in their development and original funding. The largest centres are often a product of combined public and private sector funding and play a role in the economic well-being of a city, town or resort area. Funding and origins do vary from sector to sector and as a consequence, each sector is taken individually. Essentially, funds for the development of a conference venue may be obtained on the open market, that is to say via banks and shareholder investment; or via public sources such as city councils, government (or the European Union), or national funds, including the lottery, sports and arts councils, depending on the type of development. In a very limited number of cases, a conference centre may be privately owned by a single individual or small group of individuals. Regardless of who owns the venue, we can see the proportion of the total market that different venues hold in Figure 3.1. Whatever the ownership, management structure or proportion of the total business a conference venue has, the primary objective of its development is likely to be the generation of wealth. This depends on there being an adequate market for the centre’s services (poor market feasibility analysis may result in a centre being opened where there is inadequate demand, resulting in bankruptcy and closure) and/or the
34
The Business of Conferences Management training centres 1Yo Educational
\
Municipal multi-purpose
/ venues and others 2%
conference centres 6%
Large luxury hotels 49%
Country house hotels 9%
Source: Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte, 1990 Figure 3.1
Percentage share of delegate days by type of venue
effectiveness of the management of that centre. As with hotels, the management of a centre may make all the difference to its profitability (Lundberg, 1994) but as centres have high capital costs, so the market demand and general state of the economy are also important.
3.2
The range of conference venues and their ownership and management
Fundamental to any examination of the issues of ownership and management of conference venues is an understanding of the differences between ownership, on the one hand, and management on the other. While the difference is generally clear to the experienced observer, it is often less so to the student. In former days, and for small organizations, the ‘ownership’ and ‘management’ were often the same. The person who ran a small inn with a meeting room, in a country town, both owned the property and managed the business, many still do. The larger the business, and many conference venues are very large businesses indeed, the more likely and necessary the separation of ownership and management becomes. It should also be considered that a particular venue may not fall conveniently into a particular class. The major classes are, for our analysis, as follows.
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Purpose-built conference centres These centres are the ones that probably spring to mind when the words ‘conference centre’ or ‘convention centre’ are used. In general, these venues are large, modern, high profile and constructed by a municipality or dedicated company with a view to profit or the economic benefit to the community (Fenich, 1995). Of these, there are a number which are particularly well known: the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Birmingham, the Harrogate International Centre and the Conference Forum in London are examples. The ICC includes Birmingham Symphony Hall, home of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The Harrogate International Centre is one of a number of purpose-built centres constructed to rejuvenate resort or spa towns. The Conference Forum contains the Chaucer Theatre and was intended to contribute to the community life of the Aldgate area of the city of London. Such purpose-built centres are often, therefore, extremely significant to their areas, both in economic and social terms. They are thought of as the flagships of the conference business and there are fewer than 30 in the whole of the UK, and none in Ireland, whose principal business is conferencing. Owing to their purposebuilt nature, they are generally technically advanced, have large auditoria and good support infrastructure such as parking and loading facilities. Historically, purpose-built conference centres were often developed out of some civic initiative (i.e. by a local or regional council). They were often intended to play a role in maintaining a town’s economic future, so some of the older purpose-built conference centres were developed and owned by the councils themselves, particularly in resort towns. As demand for larger-scale venues increased, however, civic funds were limited and town councils were no longer in a position to develop centres from their own funds. Various partnership arrangements were created in order to build and operate conference centres, where centres were needed for a public purpose, such as economic development or regeneration, but money came from other sources, mainly the commercial sector, with possible input from the European Union or the National Lottery. The International Convention Centre and National Indoor Arena (NIA) in Birmingham can be used to illustrate this type of ownership. Both land and buildings are owned by Birmingham City Council, but are operated by a management company, NEC Ltd, the share capital of which is owned equally by the City Council and the Birmingham
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The Business of Conferences
Chamber of Commerce. The capital funding of the ICC was composed of a loan stock issue of E l 3 0 million via NEC Ltd and a further A50 million grant from the European Regional Development Fund (EU). In contrast, the NIA capital funding was comprised of E22 million from the city council, E3 million from the UK Sports Council and a private development company (Shearwater) providing E25 million (Law, 1993; NEC, 1996).
Municipal multi-purpose centres The construction or development of a purpose-built conference centre is hugely expensive. As a consequence, the cost, even taking into account large private sector funding, is beyond the ability of most municipalities (towns) to promote, or indeed to justify in terms of demand. It is therefore often the case that a town or city will construct a multi-purpose facility or reuse a former civic building as a conference venue. There are a number of excellent examples of such multi-use: the Dome in Doncaster provides conferencing, leisure facilities, sports facilities and a wide range of subsidiary activities. It is a new purpose-designed venue, of a type (or approach) found in other locations such as the Plymouth Pavilions or the Aviemore Mountain Resort. A less costly approach to the type of venue is that adopted by locations such as Eastbourne, whose Devonshire Park Centre comprises a historic Winter Garden and the Congress Theatre; or the Albert Halls in Bolton, developed from a former hall of the formidable Victorian stature and civic pride so often found in the towns and cities of Northern England and Northern Ireland. Venues of this type are often of a high standard, but occasionally limitations in the public purse (council funds) result in a lack of investment, implying that some multi-purpose centres may not exploit their full potential. The ownership and management of this class of venues are similar, in some respects, to those of the purpose-built conference centres. They are largely funded by councils, but increasingly with some of the money provided by private sources, including developers, and, in a few cases, by the National Lottery or European Union. Management, as a generality, is of two kinds: in-house (i.e. managed as a department of the council) or via a management company set up by the council and its partners. In a few cases, these centres may be run by an operating company on a contractual basis, e.g. a facilities management company with interests in the leisurehospitality or arts
The provision and supply of conference venues
37
field. The Dome at Doncaster is probably the largest example in the UK. It was opened in 1989 at a cost of E25 million, and funded by Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council. It provides not only conference facilities but also extensive leisure pools, split-level ice rink, a beauty therapy suite, fitness facilities, a bowls hall, a 2000-seater events hall and a forum area for exhibitions and special events. It is estimated that the Dome has also attracted some E20 million of additional inward investment to the immediate area. The Dome is run by a private limited company together with a group of trustees from the council and community who oversee general policy (Dome, 1994).
Residential conference centres and in-company facilities A number of this type of centre exist; they are, if not purpose-built, at least purposely converted, often from buildings of some architectural distinction. Most are operated by private companies, whose raison d’@treis management development or conference centre provision as a commercial activity. The standard of the upper echelon of such centres is extremely high; there are, however, a number of centres whose raison d’@treis more management development in an activity sense, i.e. not entirely classroom based but involving outdoor activities of various kinds. Examples of the former are the Sundridge Park Management Centre in Bromley and the Ashridge Management College in Berkhamsted. Examples of the latter are often found in National Parks, sometimes run by the Park Authority and having a purpose of, primarily, outdoor education; in these cases the facilities may be extremely basic and deliberately so due to the nature of their main function of outdoor education, or team building. Similar in concept to many residential conference centres (though not always with residential accommodation), a large number of companies have their own in-company conference centres. These may range from relatively small on-premises facilities to large out of town venues, particularly for large national organizations such as banks, building societies and insurance companies (e.g. the BBC’s Wood Norton Conference Centre in Evesham and the Siemens Company Conference Centre in Manchester). These companies have a constant need for staff training and conferencing for whom full-scale incompany facilities prove more cost-effective than external venues. Both these types of centres tend to be wholly owned and managed by the companies themselves, with a few being managed by operat-
38
The Business of Conferences
ing companies. Residential conference centres may be very similar in ownership and management to the hotel sector. Hayley Conference Centres, for example, owning several residential conference centres in the South Midlands, bear a number of similarities to hotel-owning companies. In-company facilities, such as those used by the major banks or insurance companies for staff training purposes, are, in a few cases, operated by the companies themselves, but increasingly the operations and management are contracted out to an operator, typically one of the major contract catering companies such as Sutcliff, Aramark or Town and County.
Academic’ venues A large number of universities and colleges provide conference facilities; this is particularly the case where such institutions seek to generate income during vacation periods, when their extensive provision of lecture theatres, technical facilities and residential accommodation is available for external use. In practice, summer conferencing is particularly important for many academic institutions and indeed a number of them provide not only summer use facilities but also dedicated conferencing facilities all year round. Examples include the Penthouse Conference Centre of the University of Durham, UMIST’s Manchester Conference Centre at Weston Hall and the Danbury Park Management Centre of Anglia University at Chelmsford. The list of universities and colleges offering conferencing is very long indeed. Academic venues are also, significantly, of considerable importance to the association market, due to cost competitiveness. While some academic venues offer extremely high quality conferencing and many, such as the University of Surrey and UMIST, are able to provide bedroom accommodation to an en-suite standard, many only provide student ‘study bedroom’ accommodation sharing communal facilities between conference delegates, one reason for the relatively modest cost. Almost all academic venues are owned and managed in-house; this is chiefly due to them being used principally for educational purposes during the academic year, rather than as conference venues, year round. Most universities and colleges seriously involved in the business have a separate (though still in-house) conference office to deal with the business, though many rely on the provision of the services within the conference areas being dealt with by outsourced companies (e.g. contract caterers or facility management organiza-
The provision and supply of conference venues
39
tions). Conferences are, however, a major source of income to most universities and colleges; as a consequence, some of these have developed their conference business significantly and have sought external funding for the building of residential facilities and to improve the quality of their conference areas. Historically, academic venues sought to use their lecture rooms and halls of residence during vacation periods for the conference business, and this continues. On the other hand, an increasing number have sought some private sector funding to construct either complete year-round residential conference venues (such as UMIST’s Manchester Conference Centre) or to construct higher quality residential facilities with en-suite rooms for conference delegates (such as at the University of Surrey, University of Essex and elsewhere).
Hotels The importance of hotels to the conference business must not be underestimated. Hotels are the largest single component classification of venue providers, with in excess of 70 per cent of the provision (Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte, 1990). Owing to this strength of provision, and the varying nature of hotels themselves, this class is sub-categorized into three: de luxe city centre hotels; country house hotels; other hotels.
De luxe city centre hotels T o say ‘city centre’ is rather a misnomer, as we are really talking of any urban conurbation, some towns, some cities. The de luxe element is crucial and is chiefly in those establishments that the public would think of as four or five star rated. The range and diversity, even within the sub-classification, are considerable and the extent of the provision renders examples unnecessary - just pick up any hotel guide. Country house hotels As with the above, country house hotels are extremely diverse but, as a generality, are of a very high standard and are often located in their own grounds. The major development of country house hotels in recent years has been by conversion of former stately homes, some of which are both extremely historical and stupendously grand, some of which are more modest, but delighting in their rural setting. As with city centre hotels, the list is extremely long.
40 The Business of Conferences Other hotels It is rather unfair to class all other hotels this way, but the sub-classifications could run into a very extensive list indeed, ranging from ancient inns, Georgian town house hotels and Victorian railway hotels to modem airport hotels - from the chain lodge to the familyrun establishment. A very large number of hotels provide conference facilities, ranging from a single room to whole conference wings attached to large hotels. In particular, a number of the major hotel companies, such as Stakis and Mount Charlotte Thistle in Britain, and Jury’s in Ireland, concentrate on providing conference and leisure facilities in their business hotels. It has been noted that the largest provider of conference venues is the hotel sector. Ownership of hotels runs from private individuals to major international public companies, whose shareholders own the business. In between these extremes are partnerships and private companies (large and small). Private companies have a limited number of owners, say a group of six people, for example, who have put money into the business. Public companies are those quoted on the stock market, whose ownership may be composed of a very large number of small shareholders or some large shareholders and shareholding institutions, such as pension funds. The activities of these various types of owning groups (companies) vary, even in the hotel sector. Some are purely hotel owning or operating companies such as Jarvis and Inter-Continental; some have hospitality businesses in related sectors, including restaurants and other service activities, such as Granada and Whitbread; some have major interests in nonhospitality businesses, such as Virgin, First Leisure and Ladbrokes. Clearly, ownership and management also vary, even within this apparently unified sector. Companies with hotels (and therefore conference interests) may both own the property and manage it; alternatively, they may not own the property, but own the brand name and act as operators by contract to the property owners; or finally, they may own the property but have another organization manage it by operating contract, franchise, leaseback or other specialist contractual arrangement.
Unusual venues The final class is in fact ‘everything else’. This is not as simple as it seems. It includes any place with a room able to accommodate two or more people around a table for a meeting which either cannot be cat-
The provision and supply of conference venues
41
egorized anywhere else and/or has some unique feature as shown in Figure 3.2. The extent of the ‘unusual venue’ category is enormous. The demand by conference organizers and particularly from incentive travel organizers for a venue which is unique, whether that uniqueness is in a castle or a cave is extremely significant. Many venues of this kind also tend to be at the upper end of the price range. 0 0
Ships - Car ferries to battleships
Castles and country houses/stately homes - Warwick Castle to Castle Howard
0
Sports venues - Race courses to dog tracks
0
Gardens - Botanical gardens to Winter gardens
0
Museums - Motorcycle museums to Madame Tussauds
0
Entertainment- Coronation Street to Whipsnade Wild Animal Park
0
Listed buildings - The Royal Pavilion, Brighton to the Old Palace, Hatfield
0
Institutes - Chartered Accountants to the Royal Society of Art
0
Theatres - Royal National Theatre, London to the Crucible, Sheffield
Figure 3.2
Examples of unique venues
The ownership and management of unusual venues are as varied as the class itself. However, it does contain a proportion of organizations not found in the other categories - charities. Whereas the majority of conference venues are owned and managed by commercial or quasi-commercial organizations, many unusual venues, particularly in the castlesflisted buildings and museums categories, are owned and operated by charities and similar organizations such as, in the UK, the National Trust, National Parks authorities, heritage organizations and voluntary bodies, and comparable Irish organizations, including private individuals. Clearly, a number of charities do have specific commercial aims and departments responsible for revenue generation through retailing, catering or conferencing. Funding of refurbishment or new construction in this field is therefore from charitable income, investments or possibly in the UK, through bids to the National Lottery, Millennium Fund, A r t s or Sports Councils and in Ireland, the Lotto or heritage agencies and similar bodies, with advice from regional tourism organizations.
42 The Business of Conferences
3.3
Geographic spread of venues
It is probably impossible ever to count the total number of conference venues in Britain and Ireland. The reasons are similar in some respects to those true of the hotel industry - picking up any hotel guide may give the reader a view of the comparative order of magnitude of provision in one area versus another, but a simple comparison of the listing of a particular town in, say, the AA Guide and the YeZZow Pages telephone directory of that town would prove the difference: a typical hotel guide will list only a small proportion of the total because many guides are a form of paid advertising, whereas the telephone directory should list every hotel, inn and guest house in a town. This comparison cannot easily be made for conference venues - the telephone directory does not list them in the comprehensive way that hotels are listed. The estimation of size and extent of conference venues as an industry can only be guessed at, but a comparison of the order of magnitude of provision in different areas can be achieved. The analysis here is based on data provided in the Conference Blue Book 1996 and from data supplied by the Convention Bureau of Ireland. The Blue Book guide lists approximately 4450 conference venues in the UK and a comparison, region by region, is possible.
3.4
Regional variations in provision
The South West of England (Figure 3.4) Including Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, City and County of Bristol, North Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands; 14 per cent of total venues, with 31 venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people (theatre style). Purpose-built venues include the Bournemouth International Centre and the Torquay Riviera Centre. The South East of England (Figure 3.5) Including Surrey, Kent, East and West Sussex (Brighton and Hove); 8 per cent of total venues, with 13 venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Purpose-built venues include the Brighton Centre. Greater London (Figure 3.6) Including the cities of London and Westminster and the London boroughs; 8.5 per cent of total venues, with 27 venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. However, a number of these large venues
The provision and supply of conference venues
43
Figure 3.3 Orientation of Britain and Ireland. Figures 3.3-13 identify county boundaries, county towns (if known) and locations identified in the text
44 The Business of Conferences
London Figure 3.5 The South East of England
Figure 3.6 Greater London and the Home Counties
are London theatres and thus the availability of space at appropriate times could be subject to restrictions due to performances. Purposebuilt venues include the Queen Elizabeth I1 Conference Centre, the Conference Forum, Wembley Conference and Exhibition Centre, the London Arena and the Barbican Centre.
The provision and supply of conference venues
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The Home Counties of England (Figure 3.6) Including Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire; 7 per cent of total venues, with five venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. There are no major purpose-built centres in this region, and for convenience the Home Counties were included as part of the ‘Midlands’ in the earlier section on regional demand.
Figure 3.7
East Anglia
<.
H c l a c t o n on Sea Chelmsford
The East Anglia region of England (Figure 3.7) Including Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk; 5.5 per cent of total venues, with nine venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people (of which four, by some curious circumstance, are in Great Yarmouth). There are no purpose-built venues here. The English Midlands (Figure 3.8) Including Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, County of Rutland, Staffordshire, West Midlands Conurbation (Birmingham, Wolverhampton etc.), Shropshire, Warwickshire, County of Hereford and Worcester, Gloucestershire; 15 per cent of total venues, with 34 venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Purpose-built venues: the International Convention Centre, National Exhibition Centre, National Indoor Arena.
46
The Business of Conferences
Figure3.8 The English Midlands
T h e North West of England (Figure 3.9) Including Cumbria, County Palatine of Lancashire, Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire; 11 per cent of total venues, with 30 venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Purpose-built venues include the GMEX Seminar Centre and the Bridgewater Hall, ManChester. Large-scale centres also include Blackpool Winter Gardens.
fl Carlisle
Lancaster
Blackpool 0 Liverpool B a
Figure 3.9 The North West of England
n
C
h
e
s
t
e
r
The provision and supply of conference venues
47
The North East of England and Yorkshire (Figure 3.10) Including Northumberland, Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton-onTees, Middlesbrough, Darlington, Hartlepool, Tyne and Wear, County of Durham, City of Kingston-upon-Hull, City of York, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire; 13 per cent of total venues, with 30 venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Purpose-built venues include the Harrogate International Centre and Conference 2 1 Sheffield.
Figure 3.10
The North East of England
Q u 2 n
Llandudno
0 Caernarfon
0
Figure 3.11
Wales
0 Aberystwyth
Swansea
Newport Cardiff
48
The Business of Conferences
Figure 3.12
Scotland
Wales (Figure 3.11) Wales has 4.5 per cent of total venues, with nine venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Purpose-built venues include the Cardiff International Arena and the North Wales Conference Centre, Llandudno. Scotland (Figure 3.12) Scotland has 11 per cent of total venues, with 24 venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Purpose-built venues include the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre, the Edinburgh Conference Centre, the Edinburgh International Conference Centre and the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow. Northern Ireland (Figure 3.13) Northern Ireland has 2 per cent of total venues, with six venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Purpose-built venues include the Belfast Waterfront Hall. The King’s Hall is one of the major large-scale centres.
The provision and supply of conference venues
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Ireland (Figure 3.13) The proportion of venues in the foregoing analysis has excluded Ireland, but Figure 3.13 illustrates the major locations in the republic. Ireland has a number of venues capable of accommodating over 1000 people. In Dublin this includes the National Concert Hall, the Point Theatre, the Burlington Hotel, the Royal Dublin Society (‘RDS’) and University College, Dublin. Other large-scale venues can be found in Athlone, Bundoran, Cork, Ennis, Galway, Killarney, Letterkenny, Limerick, Tivoli, Tralee and Waterford.
Figure 3.13
Northern Ireland and Ireland
Summary This chapter has considered the various types of conference venue to be found within the United Kingdom and Ireland. While we may typically think of conference centres as being large purpose-built operations, most are not; the largest single component sector is, in
50
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fact, hotels. Venues are available in a large geographic spread, but certain areas lend themselves to the provision of conference venues, typically due to their location and accessibility to the market; hence concentrations around London and Birmingham in the UK and Dublin in Ireland.
References Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte (1990) UK Conference Market Survey 1990, London, Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte Tourism & Leisure Consultancy Service, pp. 1-22. Dome (1994) An adventure into the world of leisure, Doncaster, Doncaster Leisure Management Ltd (unpublished). Expotel (1993 The Expotel and Conference Centre Insiders Guide to Conference Planning, London, Expotel. Fenich, G.G. (1995) Convention Centre Operations: Some questions answered. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 14(3/4), pp. 31 1-324. Keynote (1994) Key Note Report, a Market Sector Overview. Exhibitions and Conferences, London, Keynote, pp. 5-9. Law, C.M. (1993) Urban Tourism, London, Mansell, pp. 55-61. Lundberg, D.E. (1994) The Hotel and Restaurant Business, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, pp. 72-89. Miller Freeman (1996) The Conference Blue Book 1996 (General Venues). Tonbridge, Miller Freeman Technical Ltd. Miller Freeman (1996) The Conference Green Book 1996 (Special Interest Venues). Tonbridge, Miller Freeman Technical Ltd. Montgomery, R.S. and Strick, S.K. (1995) Meetings, Conventions and Expositions, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, pp. 9-15. National Exhibition Centre, (1996) Information Pack for the International Conference Centre. Birmingham, Birmingham, NEC Ltd (Unpublished), pp. 1-8. Savills Commercial (1994) Property - Finance and Investment 5/95, London, Savills Commercial Research, pp. 2-4.
1
A WORLD OF DISTINCTIONS AND
DISTORTIONS Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is one of the world’s most exciting places. To visitors, the region is the Europe seen in school books and travel brochures-obblestones and old women wearing black; farmers on bicycles carrying pails of milk; walled cities and small cafes; open-air markets teeming with home-produced foods and flowers; berets and bonnets; pastoral scenes right out of Impressionist paintings; and thousands of festivals celebrating saints and seasons when “native costumes” come out of trunks and wardrobes, and street vendors hawk amazing arrays of handicrafts and woven goods. This is a land of opportunity and a land in transition, with technology and energy overcoming many of the barriers that the recent past imposed. The region is going through a renaissance, a literal period of
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re-birth after 50 to 90 years of containment within the USSR. The relief of release is perhaps expressed best in small, off-hand comments. “1 wondered so often what was over there,” a Slovak history professor once remarked, gesturing to the Western (Austrian) side of the Danube River, “and now, without the fences and the guards, and after all the places I have visited in Western Europe and America, I realize how contained we were and how much was withheld from us.” That estrangement from the West is mirrored in the estrangement of peoples of the region from one another, as reflected in another off-hand remark when the refrigerator quit in an American’s rented apartment. Pulling thawing meats and berries from the freezer, he said, “This would be a good time to have a neighbor who would keep this stuff until we can get the ’fridge repaired.” His companion replied, “You won’t find that over here. People don’t help each other in that way.” If for 50 years or so your neighbors might be the ones who will turn your name into the secret police for some alleged violation, it is no surprise that neighbors barely acknowledge each other. Only the State (from which all benefits were derived) was to be trusted, and old habits of thinking and being are hard to break. Likewise, governments seem unresponsive, which is one of the reasons why bribes often are required to “make things happen.” Of course, when civil servants are paid $250 or less per month, it is not surprising that they have little incentive to expedite action on requests from citizens. This happens in the private sector, too. If you want a telephone this week, it could cost approximately $200 to have a line connected. Otherwise, it might be 3 to 6 months before a line is “available.” Here, technology provides an option. For $25, you can rent a mobile phone for a year or, for about $100, you can buy a brand name phone to drop into your pocket or purse. In fact, one of the major growth areas in the region is telecommunications, with enormous investments being made by Western partners to move from 1950s technology into state-of-the-art services.
A Difference in Structures Still, much of the structure North Americans have come to expect is lacking in CEE. Watch your step, especially after dark-who knows what potholes and trenches have been left open? It is not that safety and environmental rules do not exist-because they do. The issue is
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3
one of compliance versus discretionary enforcement. And, it should be noted, there is an absence of money for infrastructure maintenance of such relative unimportance. Governments across the region are having trouble generating revenues sufficient to cover all needs. Western companies thought to have ample funds are special targets for enforcement visits. In one case, company premises were plagued with fire inspectors-until someone tipped off management that the fire department’s basketball team needed uniforms and funds to support travel to other cities. Sponsorship turned out to be a cost-effective alternative to inspections and fines, in addition to the good will that supporting local teams provides. Most companies resort to paying consultants to interpret rules that must be observed, and to recognize the “special needs” of those who might choose to enforce the more arcane rules and regulations. Where do the rules come from? They come from books of rules written in Russian sometime in the past 30 or 40 years.
Having to Start from Ground Zero Do not be misled, however, by this bit of chicanery on the part of underpaid civil servants and minodmajor criminals and extortionists. The real story lies in the fact that former Soviet satellites had to create governments and governance from the ground up and to play “catch up” with the rest of Europe. The management principles and concepts supporting Total Quality Management (TQM) and leading to the creation of I S 0 9000 standards, have been evolving in the West for three decades, at least. Here, governments and bureaucrats still are in the discovery phase. Recently, an American consultant to several governments in the region said that there is no state in North America that faces the enormity of the challenges that must be faced here. It is hard to imagine the difficulties associated just with getting people in the same ministry to talk with one another, much less to talk, plan, and cooperate on an interagency basis. Despite their relative disadvantages, some companies attained IS 0 certification as quickly as their Western counterparts. The surprise is to find management practices within them basically unchanged since Soviet times. For countries across the region, the concepts and practices of democratic governance had to be codified and mandated in only a few years.
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Not only are effective institutions required for local government, they are necessary for membership in the European Union (EU) as well. None of the former satellites have yet earned entry, but within the next three to five years, a number of them will have made themselves eligible by their efforts to overcome all the challenges involved with moving from puppet governments to independent performers in the international arena. What is needed in government parallels I S 0 and T Q M requirements, but the standards are more than technical obstacles. Georgio Antoniou, Task Manager for Quality Assurance with the European Commission, told participants at the 1998 Human Resource Management Conference in Riga, Latvia, that “There are no secrets in developing TQM. The tools and techniques are available to everyone . . . principles of employee empowerment, a customer focus at all stages of the development of a product or service, and continuous improvement-reaching higher standards in every aspect of a business. Only skilled, highly motivated and committed people can bring about the cultural changes required by Total Quality Management.” For anyone at all familiar with the output-only focus of command economy manufacturing, this is a major change in organizational culture.
The Over-40 Stigma One thing that is common to all Europeans-East and West-is overt age discrimination in hiring practices. Expect to see recruiting ads that specify age limits (30 to 40 is usual). Why? Because, at least in CEE, the prevailing attitudes are that anyone over 40 has spent too long working in Soviet days and ways, and will not be able to perform against more stringent standards. Even if age is omitted from recruiting ads, it is likely that anyone outside the age range will be screened out.
A DAYIN
THE
LIFEOF IGOR
Igor woke, smelling the meat his wife was frying in the kitchen. He looked at the clock on the bedside table and saw that it was 05:OO. Inga had let him sleep an extra half-hour. That was good of her, because he could feel the pain in his back as he rolled out of bed. They had worked in the garden
A WORLD OF DISTINCTIONS A N D DISTORTIONS
until 21:00, and it had been five hours of heavy digging, spading mulch into the long rows they would plant today. His hands were stiff as he shook a cigarette out of the pack and struck a match. He walked across the hall into the kitchen and patted Inga on the shoulder. “Thanks for the extra sleep.” She smiled and turned back to the stove where slivers of beef were simmering in the usual broth of water, fat, onions, and pepper, and potatoes were boiling. By the time they came home for their main meal at 10:30, the meat would be tender. Ten minutes later, shaved and dressed, he sat down at the kitchen table for coffee, black bread, pickles, and potatoes. Inga had stirred hot water into the coffee and sugar minutes before, and the grounds had settled to the bottom of the cup. “DOyou miss the children?” Inga asked. “Not really,” Igor replied. “The Pioneer camping trip keeps them out of the way so we can get the garden ready.” “That’s a bad attitude, Igor.” “My attitude will improve when they get old enough to work.” He lit his second cigarette of the day, coughing as the harsh smoke hit his lungs. “You ought to quit,” Inga said. “Listen to that cough.” “Take your nursing to the school. Lecture to the teachers.” Igor grabbed his jacket from its hook in the hall and left for the plant, down four flights of stairs and then down the street. Inga would leave minutes later to walk to the elementary school where she was the nurse. But first, she took the pot of simmering meat from the stove and wrapped it in a coarse blanket on the table, and covered the bundle with several pillows to hold the heat so the meat would continue to cook. Igor was joined on the 10-minute walk to work by other men. They talked about their gardens and laughed at the slight staggering of two men walking ahead of them. “Too much vodka,” said one of the men. “The two of them haven’t had a sober breath since their wives kicked them out,” said another. A third said, “And not many before, which is why they got the boot.” “SOwho’s plowing their gardens?” another asked with a laugh. “I’d like to,” said another, “but my wife won’t let me.” They all were laughing when they turned the corner, but all were without humor when they entered the plant gate,
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and filed past the political officer standing by the check-in guard. They took their places in a loose formation with other workers, waiting for the daily announcements and the compulsory exercises, mostly stooping and bending and armswinging. The plant manager’s nasal voice squeaked from the loud speakers. “Comrades, today we must work even harder than yesterday. Our quotas must be met so we can contribute our part to the Soviet mission and deliver our planned part to that glorious task.’’ No one spoke as they filed into the plant and took up their work stations. Igor’s was at a metal-turning lathe. He was said to be a highly skilled worker because he was paid a 10 percent bonus. Igor was pleased with the money, but it really was a mind-numbing task that involved putting a twometer length of metal stock into the receivers, clamping them in place, then manipulating two controls to create bearing surfaces at several places along the shaft. Except for lifting the stock-about 30 kilos-it was something a bright eightyear-old could do. However, when the plant manager came through with VIP guests (the only time he ever appeared on the plant floor), Igor would bend over the dials, giving the appearance of great concentration and digital dexterity. When he first got the assignment three years before, Igor had completed four shafts a day, then advanced to five and, after exhortations for more output, he increased his production to six shafts a day. He easily could have done 10 or more, but no one knew that. It was something never discussed. What was he making? He didn’t know, except that it was part of the carriage for some sort of weapon system assembled outside Moscow. His contribution was anonymous, from a remote part of the USSR (as probably were other components), and he did not care. He did his job, never was criticized nor was his performance considered exceptional. That way, he was not looked at for promotion, which meant he was never interviewed to join the Party, and that was the way he wanted it. He switched on the motor and set the dials. Once the soft screeching of the cutting tool against the shaft began, Igor turned his thoughts to the garden, and to the small summer house he and Inga would build. Already they had accumulated enough bricks to begin, and as soon as the garden was
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7
planted, he would start digging the foundation. It would take three years, if they were lucky, but he could see himself standing by the fireplace, and Inga knitting in a chair nearby. He already had laid every brick in his mind a hundred times, and today he would do it all again. But first, he had to think of the new system of trellises he wanted to erect. He thought it could nearly double the yield of peas and beans without taking any ground away from the potatoes, onions, and cabbages. The extra yield would mean more to trade for bricks and mortar, and . . . His reverie was interrupted by the lunch alarm. He was on his third shaft, and he had just about figured out how to support the trellises. When he got home, he would sketch it out and show it to Inga. She would be pleased. He spun the dials to back the cutting tool away from the metal shaft, and turned off the machine. He was thinking about three-meter poles and wire as he began the 10-minute walk to the flat. Further, and more generally speaking, it is alleged across the region that most of the people over 40 would prefer a return to Soviet-style job security and pensions. Many of those are the people who have lost the most in the transition to market-economy management and from state-sponsored socialism with its 100-percent employment, promised pensions, and certainty about earnings, rules, roles, and responsibilities. Given that, think about meeting production schedules with employees who receive 30 days of vacation annually, plus miscellaneous holidays, and whose greatest creative energies go to their gardens. At work, people literally will wait to be told what to do rather than initiating work-however obvious and routine the tasks might be. Why? “It is the manager’s job to tell us what to do.” Once given their orders, workers will perform to the letter (if not the spirit) of their instructions, working at a pace that is calculated to remain above the threshold for criticism by management, and below upper limits of local work rules. This is the case in companies that have received I S 0 9000 and 9002 certification, as well as those that have not tried or succeeded in obtaining certification. Much that is observed about work place behavior in the region can be interpreted as being done to avoid criticism. Criticism cannot be heard or received as ccconstructive”and, for that reason, performance appraisals are extremely difficult. In addition to extreme sensitivity
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about criticism, the shortage of jobs has elevated the level of fear among many workers. Everyone has two or three friends who have remained unemployed after their privatized companies were downsized and their positions eliminated. The region went from virtual full employment to high levels of unemployment-approximating 20 percent across the region. Jobs once were an entitlement, but that no longer is the case. Nowhere in the CEE are social supports lucrative enough to make people reckless about their job security, and that makes it all but impossible to encourage employees to speak up and offer their opinions. Authoritarian management is the rule.
The Tall Blade of Grass Gets Cut The Russians have been gone less than a decade, so it should not be a surprise that the residue of their suppression of the region lingers in the daily activities and attitudes of the people. They remember what was required to survive during Soviet days. ”In those times,” one observer commented, “no one wanted to stand out. The blade of grass that is too tall gets cut.” Those attitudes persist, and make participative management-or any kind of forthright behavior on the part of employees-an elusive goal. The guarded responses even of the brightest employees tend to surprise Westerners. In a similar vein, the command economy and all its failures are fresh in the minds of local nationals. In particular, planning is viewed with a great deal of suspicion, if not contempt, because of all the “five-year plans” that never worked or were so undemanding that no one could fail. To Westerners, for whom planning is managing, it is a surprise to discover that otherwise “professional” managers and engineers do little or no planning-and admit it without embarrassment. In one very successful postsoviet company formed by a group of engineers, “planning” consists of meeting on the 15th of each month to project what will be sold in the next 30 days, and those projections drive production and procurement orders. Obviously, this is neither efficient nor cost-effective, but at least it blocks the imperative to produce without regard for sales or costs.
What Happened to “Intermediate Technology”? One peculiar carry-over of the Soviet management system still is found in many companies-a Commercial Department that contains
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marketing, sales, accounts receivable and accounts payable. This was a Soviet contrivance to protect workers from the soil of commerce, from the evil of profit, and to ensure that only a few trusted persons had access to cash. Obviously, such a system blunts development of marketing and sales functions. Simple and basic selling skills still are lacking in many organizations-such as using the telephone for follow-up calls, direct marketing, and for cold-call selling. It is not that people cannot use telephones. Cellular phones are so widely used across the region and in Western Europe that Newsweek (December 27, 1999-January 3, 2000, page 22; “Bigger, Better, Brighter,” by Karen Lowry Miller) named the cellular phone its “European of the Year” for 1999. Europe has the world’s most advanced telecommunications industry with the largest service provider (Vodaphone Air Touch) and two of the top three equipment manufacturers (Ericsson and Nokia). Perhaps this is the reason that no one has suggested a variation of E. F. Schumacher’s early 1980s idea of “intermediate technology” for CEE. What would represent intermediate technology when IT now stands for information technology, cellular phones are everywhere, and Internet access allows individuals across CEE to order products from Amazon.com and L.L. Bean? Telephones, as a primary sales tool, are one of a number of unexpected blind spots in the region. Using phones for direct selling appears to be outside the experience and knowledge of even the most effective executives (though call centers are proliferating in Western Europe). Concerning people issues and the “human potential” for contribution to productivity and profitability, much needs to be done to provide “whole” jobs for people who have become used to “fattening” collections of menial tasks into roles full of significance. One American observed in a profitable company that, “This look likes the ‘Old Plantation,’ where every manager has slaves to step and fetch, each for a different item.”
The Competition for Managers Competition for managers is one part of the management picture in the region. The other is that competent, can-do managers are in short supply. “There is a war for talent going on over here,” according to Budapest-based Ellen Hayes, a regional executive for the search firm, tmp.worldwide. “Demand still is outstripping supply, and that is expected to be the case for the next several years.” Hayes knows the manager-competence issue uniquely well. She came to Prague from Atlanta, Georgia, where she had been working
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for IBM as a System Application Specialist. She joined a law firm to assist with their technology needs, and soon clients of the firm were asking for help in sourcing staff. Her key client was Sara Lee, for whom she provided recruitment services as well as consulting support on training and developmental issues. In 1992, with $6,000 in savings, she left the law firm and opened Personnel Select, a company that she grew from solo practitioner to eight offices across the region with more than 50 employees. Then, in 1999, her company was acquired by tmp.worldwide. “I have seen some amazing changes over the past decade,” Hayes said. “First, the demand was for anyone with competence in English to support expatriate managers brought in to get privatized companies and other partnerships moving. Then, it became obvious that being able to conduct a conversation in English did not translate into getting results from workers, regardless of academic credentials. ‘Experience’ was a misleading concept, since so many people with big titles had no real experience in making decisions while working in the Soviet system. “Now, those who understand what Western management is aboutprofit and productivity through intelligent use of human and other resources-are being paid very well,” she added. “And, there aren’t many such people, which is why a service such as ours is so necessary for new partners in local enterprises. We have learned how to match corporate requirements with people who can perform for them with a minimum of guidance, but the job has not become easier with experience. The pool of candidates is very shallow.”
Overcoming Regressive Practices A major opportunity exists, especially among small to medium-sized enterprises, to bring “people management” techniques into the region, and to release the productive potential of the work force. It is not hyperbole to characterize the workplaces of the entire region as overstaffed and under-productive. That translates into bored workers going through the motions of working, not unlike in Soviet times when people pretended to work and managers pretended to pay them. One of the more regressive realities of that system is that supervisors could choose to punish workers for breakage or waste of materials by withholding from their pay the replacement costs. Naturally, this further biased workers against productivity in favor of slow, error-free execution of tasks.
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This practice was observed in 1999 in a supermarket in which there was an attempt to control shrinkage by docking employees’ pay for their pro rata share of the week’s shortages. The assumption was that all of them were stealing a little or a lot-even when the shortage was 40 cases of beer! Needless to say, this was a major demotivating factor for employees-and a devastating revelation for their managers when they learned that they lost more productivity and profit from withholding pay than the cost of goods gone missing. Michael Dell, whose computer manufacturing and sales acumen is legendary, is quoted as having said, “Your people pose a greater threat to the health of your business than your competitors.” This means that undeveloped human resource systems really put companies in jeopardy. While some executives may be focused on being effective in the international markets, the probability is that their CEE employees still are caught in the game that says “Pay me more money and I’ll do more work.” This attitude makes it hard for Western managers and the techniques they bring to achieve North American levels of productivity. Even with relatively low labor rates, most companies in the region are struggling to compete in world markets. Some of this inability is managerial, and some is based on obsolete equipment and transportation systems.
Culture vs. Productivity The larger issue about productivity, however, is one of culture. Culture-ways of thinking, reacting, relating-intrudes at unexpected times in the business process. It begins with, and is fed by, a profound mistrust of organizations, managers, and almost everyone who is not a member of an immediate or familial reference group. In Soviet days, managers did not have to keep promises. More recently, the promises of capitalism and the free market economy have not been kept, at least for the majority of the people. For most North Americans, this is an unsettling reality that is masked by good manners and appropriate degrees of deference. It is unpleasant to be mistrusted a priori. The common perception, though, is that Westerners come to the region to take advantage of the low wages (and everyone is aware of the disparity between local and expatriate wages) and to leave little of value behind. Likewise, it is difficult for Westerners to be accepted as other than the outsiders they remain in the minds of most of the people. Even the
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“hyphenated-Americans’’ (Lithuanian- , Latvian- , Polish- , Slovak- , and so on) are not trusted, because their reference groups (clans)are in cities like Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. The facts are that, except for Poland, most of the CEE countries have populations smaller than many North American cities. It is a statistical probability that in every group, some members will have familial or clan connections only one or two persons removed. This means that there are no secrets, and it is impossible for managerial malfeasance to go unnoted and unreported on this very effective “grapevine.” These are societies in which “everyone knows . . . ” As one long-time and effective expatriate manager observed, “The truth about anyone, especially company executives and managers, is only a phone call or two away.” That observer is unusual in that he is effective in managing a complex and successful non-governmental organization (NGO)that funds development of local enterprises. He has been working in the region for six years. Among the failed assumptions that must be noted in this kind of document is that expatriate managers, regardless of their competence and diligence, cannot effect a cloning of their skills, experiences, and values in a single two- or three-year tour.
Passing the Mantle Repeatedly, efforts to “pass the mantle” to local managers have failed because, without the network, clans, and familial reference groups, (1)mentoring managers are not trusted by workers; (2) the Western concepts they followed are outside cultural norms and therefore uncomfortable for local nationals; ( 3 )the original expatriate managers were under so much pressure to generate profits that they did not have time for the coaching and tutoring local nationals needed; and (4) it takes longer to “develop” managers-to reorient their cultural bearings and attitudes-than anyone in the West imagined. “That is part of the cultural sensitivity associated with effective placements,” Ellen Hayes agreed. “A lot of the transfer of skills has a large cultural component, and that translates as a personal ability to make connections at other than a boss level with your workers. Some expatriates and local managers do this extremely well, and others fail. Still, you are right in saying that three years is a short time for a complete reorientation in thinking and working. But that is part of the challenge over here.”
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Rejecting the Gospel Another failed assumption was that a succession of Western consultants, brought over by American “Beltway Bandit” consulting firms (and their equivalents in Britain, France, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Germany) could make a lasting impression on the corporate cultures they visited. Sometimes, infrequently, really specific skill transfers were effected. The major transfers, however, were of donor funds to consulting companies. One Canadian, married to a local national, himself a successful program manager, felt that there was no way that executives and managers, schooled in Russian ways, were going to accept as gospel theoretical constructs that have no foundations in local culture. They would appear foolish in attempting to use them. In that regard, there was a cultural common denominator: No one wanted to look foolish. The material provided by consultants was probably useful, but there was no way local managers could use it. They already had systems in place that might not have been so effective, but their managers understood them. Why, then, do managers attend foreign-sponsored courses? Because that kind of demonstrated interest is a means of keeping the doors open for additional funding. In one management training center, however, a check of attendees over a two-year period indicated that of the nearly 400 seminar registrants, about 45 of them represented approximately one-half of the participants in all programs. Yet, even with that repeated participation, application on the job was minimal. Now that many U.S. and other governments’ programs to support privatization and entrepreneurship in the region are winding down, what was the return on investment of the millions of dollars of taxpayer funds? “Familiarization” with Western management concepts might be the strongest and most accurate statement of results. It was not that the program officials were incompetent, but they were misled by the “experts” whose expertise was more in writing proposals than in understanding the cultural imperatives and critical differences their program designs would have to overcome. Further, most of the consultants hired to implement programs could not produce credible results within mandated time frames. In most cases, consultants were handicapped further just by the fact that they were outsiders. Without extraordinary levels of cultural sensitivity
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(which would be rare in any population of North Americans or others who did not spend 50 years living and learning in a Soviet Satellite country), knowledge transfer was limited.
Misunderstanding the Role of “The Individual” As a simple example, consider the significance of individual effort in all Western management models (even team-driven models), and then look at the way letters were addressed during Soviet Days:
SSR
Lithuania SSR City Street address Your name At this point, as the 21st Century is beginning, CEE has nearly a full decade of experience with capitalism. The distortions that resulted from too much unregulated commerce and too many less-than-legal enterprises have resulted in too many people being disadvantaged by too much change too quickly. The hardest part of the transition is over, however. A new generation of managers and professionals is coming into the system to replace the transitional managers. Most still need coaching from expatriate managers. Most, following the role models available to them, still believe in authority and managerial prerogatives rather than involvement and participation of employees. And employees, as always, are sensitive to what their bosses want and will go along to get along. Sometimes it is difficult for Westerners to keep their thinking congruent with the context of the region, the relative time period, and the culture of conformity that oppression fostered. To say that people in the region no longer are oppressed is to overlook the sociological, psychological, and personal-experiential fact that culture endures-and that habits persist. People who have been programmed to respond in fearful or guarded ways will not readily unlearn those responses, certainly not in less than a decade. It will be another decade, at least, before those memories no longer will be a governing force in the majority of workers and managers. Increasingly, people in CEE look like Westerners but, upon closer inspection, they turn out to be different and distanced in subtle or substantial ways.
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Why Change Efforts Fail Vermont-based consultant Curt Russell, speaking at the 1999 Latvian Business School Human Resource Management Conference in Riga, said there are six reasons why change efforts fail:
1. Poor analysis, which leads to efforts being invalidated by forces that will not yield to change initiatives. 2. Uninspiring vision for the change being sought-unrealistic, unfocused, and unconnected to anything those involved have experienced or are invested in. 3. Failure to think strategically, and to devise tactical interventions that are appropriate. “Borrowed” interventions fail. 4. Failure to think systematically, and to organize a flow of events that will fit the situation and the circumstances. 5. Failure to manage resistance-by identifying it, understanding it in the terms of those involved, and integrating those issues into the process. 6. Misalignment of energies that allows key resources to be dissipated and key persons to be overlooked. Clearly, this model requires local insight and is not something that outsiders can do independently. But, in t h ~region, s where so many consultants have come “bearing glad tidings” of capitalism and overwhelming local nationals with their eloquence and expertise, it is easy to find examples of efforts that failed because Russell’s six observations were not observed. This is where Western consultants so often fail to differentiate between polite listening and genuine interest. What results is a distortion of processes and a failure to dignify individuals and situations as being distinctly, specifically unique (as opposed to the “blue suit, blue light” approach taken when locals are thought incapable of distinguishing between that which is targeted and intelligent and that which is going through empty motions toward no good end). This is not written with malice, but to be descriptive of what has transpired in too many instances, when consultants have not done their homework nor really listened to those whom they were paid to assist. These episodes have biased local nationals against consultants and reinforced a kind of “clan against the outsiders” resistance to change. This, in turn, feeds the certainty among local nationals that they have seen it all and heard it all and that nothing, really, will change. And, worse, that they need do nothing differently.
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The Challenge: Waking the Sleepwalkers Meanwhile, the opportunities to become effective competitors are eroding. It is as though some people are sleepwalking through days because there is no vision of possible futures beyond holding on to meager salaries and jobs that become increasingly insecure. Clearly, the region is dividing into the competitors and the defeated-but the defeated cannot be permitted to fall further behind. The stakes are too high and most of the economies are too fragile to stumble in their growth. The “sleepwalking” culture is in process-the dream-memories of better times under the Soviets. Memories reflected in work habits that are based on taking as long as possible to do as little as possible (because that was what worked under the Soviets). The remembered attitude: Why try? The probability is that small entrepreneurs will be put out of business as international retail chains come into the region. The Associate Press, Reuters, and other media dribble out stories about the region. The November 19, 1999, edition of The Sun Diego Union-Tribune carried a story about a father-daughter team that has been successful in creating a chain of book stores in Poland-but they feared that if Poland gained entry to the EU in 2003, as expected, large chains would dominate the market and put them out of business, according to Bryan Brumley (“Eastern Europe Finds Road to Capitalism Is Not Without Potholes”). But here is the compelling part of the story: Poland is the only country in CEE that has built its economy back to 1989 levels, though Hungary and Estonia are close behind. Poland had its own limited form of capitalism and competition back in the 1970s, and that gave them some substantial advantages over others countries in the region. Andrzej Lepper, of the Polish farmers movement (Samoobrona), says that “In economic and social terms, we are much worse off than before . . .We have a group of rich people, about five percent. Another 15 percent, including state officials, live a good life, and 80 percent of Poles live in poverty.” What is better for the older people is that there are no lines, as there were in Soviet times. But in all other respects, according to a local poll, things are pretty grim. In that poll, 46 percent said they liked best the ’ ~ O Swhen , the Soviets began to ease restraints. Only two percent liked the ’90s.
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Perhaps the worst is over. Perhaps the New Millennium will bring prosperity and stability to the region. If prosperity continues to elude most of the people, however, the outcome could be a democratic catastrophe.
Looking for Leaders Leaders and managers are needed. Visions are also needed, as are people who can turn those visions into achievable plans. The region is ripe with opportunities. However, there are some myths to see through and beyond. One of the most persistent and misleading concerns the “highly qualified workers.” Often, despite academic credentials, employees’ training is so specific that they cannot function outside their narrow areas of specialization. In tests of business reasoning, people with advanced degrees tend to score less well than Americans with comparable levels of educationbut where should they have learned about business? Most employees do not have a comprehensive view of the “big picture” of the work they do (other than what common sense would lead them to conclude). However, they may not feel that it is useful or prudent to make assumptions if no one has explained that “big picture” to them. There is no criticism for doing only what one has been told to do, or for waiting to be told. The objective sought by one Western executive in 1999 was “to get these people to think outside the box-to take some initiative, to follow up and follow through where the steps are obvious.” What this executive wanted is unlikely to happen during his tour over here. Having been here already one-third of his allocated time, two more years will not be enough to get the responses he wants. Neither will be any kind of training that is not supported in an obvious and explicit way by managers and production routines-and with rewards for moving in the “right” direction. What is more telling and worrisome is that people with university and advanced degrees score less well in “real work” dimensions such as trouble-shooting and problem solving than do Americans with high school diplomas or less. There appears to be an apparent inability to think along certain lines, and that has to have been programmed or cultural because the results are too consistent to be attributed to intelligence deficits. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that productivity here
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and east into Russia is said to be only a fraction-about that obtained in the West.
one-fifth-of
Wanted: Individual Effort and Initiative What the Soviets offered for most students was a fragmentation of technical education that was as intentional as the scattering of component production facilities across the region to make the point that everyone was necessary, but that none could survive on their own. In short, there is little in the region that is antecedent to the concept fundamental to all Western management models-that individual effort
and initiative, exercised in self-interest for success and job security, is the basic building block of organizational effectiveness. Doing business in CEE can be profitable and satisfying. There still are misconceptions to be thought through, however, and problems to be considered-but there now are some reliable resources in the region that can assist. For example, Deloitte & Touche Europe Services publishes The European Update Series which are business handbooks for individual countries that provide useful and recent business information. Also, local chambers of commerce and development agencies are compiling and packaging useful information for prospective business people.
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4
kUROI?E?
CEE is a big region of small countries (with the exception of Ukraine and Poland). They were submerged for 50 years as entities of the USSR, so they rarely achieved notice other than by exiles and CmigrCs to other countries who worried about relatives trapped behind the Iron Curtain. This chapter presents a map and thumbnail sketches of the countries that comprise CEE. In a way, they are like the children of a large, dysfunctional family that has dissolved, releasing wounded siblings to make their own, idiosyncratic ways into a world for which they were unprepared.
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Accordingly, what is reported in this chapter (and in the entire book) is a “snapshot” taken in late 1999, and by the time this is published, some new disasters or misadventures will have changed the picture in small or large ways. To say that it is a dynamic era in this part of the world is an understatement. There is a lot of yeasty culture and sociology colliding with the future. Much of what is thought of as “old Europe” is to be found within CEE. Cultural issues are more apparent and more potent as local nationals struggle to rediscover their pasts. This adds to the unexploited potential for tourism in the region and, curiously, no one seems capable of taking advantage of those opportunities to “show and tell” about the recent and distant past. What is happening is a contest between the cultural integrity and uniqueness of these states, and the homogenizing influences of such companies as McDonald’s, Benneton, Esprit, M a r t , and Tesco.
Some Definitions One of the minor challenges of assembling this book was in determining which countries comprise CEE. For example, by most definitions, Lithuania is one of the Baltic States which, by some logic, could be thought of as Northern Europe. Certainly, it is east of most of the rest of Europe. The French National Geographic Institute, however, has identified a site 24 kilometers outside Vilnius as the geographic center of Europe, and an open-air international sculpture museum on that site is known locally as Europos Parkas. Some sources say there are at least two other sites designated as the geographic center of Europe, but they are well to the south. Polish film director Krysztof Zanussi, quoted in The Baltic Times (April 15-21, 1999, “At the center of Europe,” by Rokas M. Tracevskis), says that the issue is one of “culture and mentality.” Specifically, he said that Western Europe is Catholic and Protestant; Eastern Europe is Orthodox and Muslim (including Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria). His observations of the Baroque architecture in Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary mark them as Central European. Further observations are that, in the Orthodox countries, the rights of the state supersede those of the individual-while in CatholidI’rotestant countries, there is more emphasis on individual freedoms and rights. Central Europeans are people with a Western mentality and Eastern life conditions.
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Without further efforts to differentiate between Central and Eastern Europe, the following countries are included. Readers may wonder at the exclusion of Yugoslavia, but events there have been so much in the news that there is little that can be added in this text about the business environment or the cultures that harbor the well-documented, organized, and orchestrated hate.
The Baltic States Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia combined have fewer people than Los Angeles County but, like the canaries that coal miners used to take into the mines because of their sensitivity to methane gas, the survival of these small countries in Russia’s shadow is an important element is projecting the health of the region. Further, these northernmost outposts of CEE are significant because of their social distance from each other, as well as other countries in the region, and their relative fragility as stand-alone economies. Estonia, with a population of only 1.5 million, has fewer people than any other country in the region, and it also is one of the smallest in land area. Its capital, Tallinn, has well-developed port facilities, and is the trading center of one of Europe’s most open economies. With a decidedly pro-business environment, shaped by courageous legislation and aggressive development activities, Estonia received more per capita financial investments in 1998 than did the other two Baltic States. There are heavy investments from Finland, because of proximity (90 minutes by hydrofoil from Tallinn to Helsinki) and because their two languages (along with Hungarian) share common roots and native speakers across the Finnish Sea can communicate because there are enough similarities that they can understand each other. In 1999, Eesti Keele Sonaraamat, the new dictionary released by the Estonian Language Institute, became an instant best-seller, selling out the initial printing of 16,000 copies (at 600 kroon/$40 each)-even though the dictionary is only up to the letter “S.” Not a dictionary in the usual sense, it is a reference document for writers and academics to check out word forms and endings. The language is said to be gender neutral, perhaps giving rise to a strong sense of parity between men and women. In the efforts to prepare for European Union membership, however, a controversial statistic was brought to the surface-that women earn 37 percent less than men.
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In addition to language compatibility, Estonia is a favorite summer vacation destination for Finns since their money goes further than at home. Its economy was growing in low double-digits until the Russian crisis intervened, both with reduced trade and an embargo on Estonian farm products. Two banks collapsed in 1998 (along with others across the region as the Russian crisis exacerbated structural weaknesses), and unemployment went up to approximately 11percent as local industries had to lay off workers. A major issue, for Estonia and other countries in the region, is the lack of entrepreneurial spirit and a basic lack of understanding of how business is done in the West. One hears the comment that “ . . . they want to work the way they did during the Soviet Union and live like in Sweden. ” Tourism is a major source of revenue, as is foreign investment, both primarily from Scandinavia. With an average monthly wage of about $300, tourists find bargains in food and lodging along the Baltic coastline. Lahria has continuing concerns over the integration of some 650,000 ethnic Russians who are a major percentage of a population of 2.5 million. Citizenship laws were liberalized late in 1998, but tensions internally and with Russia continue. The nationalistic (and retaliatory) fervor is brewing, however, as manifested in legislation requiring all public school and university faculty to be tested for written and spoken fluency in Latvian. Realistically, Russian is the street language of Riga, the capital, and there are some jobs that cannot be obtained without Russian-reminiscent of the requirement for Spanish in Miami. Not only has this evoked a major protest from those whose livelihoods are threatened but from the Russians, as well, who promise economic retaliation against Latvia if the legislation is enforced. Such legislation, however; appears contrary to EU membership requirements and probably will disappear. In the meantime, Latvia’s new president refused to sign the legislation on its first passage. Vaira Vike-Freiberga, most recently a psychology professor at Montreal University, had fled with her family ahead of the Russian occupation to a displaced-persons camp and then to Canada after the war. She worked continuously while in Canada to support the documentation of Latvian culture, and returned to live and contribute after her retirement. She is seen as Latvia’s best hope of getting into the EU on the first round of expansion in 2002. Meanwhile, Latvia, too, lost two banks and others would have failed if it were not for large infusions of Scandinavian cash to pay for
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privatization deals. With an average wage of only $220 per month, limited raw materials, and poor quality of goods for export, there are major challenges. Latvia relies too much on selling timber and wood products, which are not the kinds of industries to lift the country out of poverty. In November 1999, teachers staged a walk-out over a new wage scale of $86 per month, and a cap for those with tenure at $132. By contrast with these statistics, Riga is a cosmopolitan capital city that is becoming the financial center of the Baltics. Its city center streets are clogged with new and expensive cars that suggest a booming economy. Riga also is a beautiful city, and a 30-minute train ride opens the way to a vast and beautiful coastline dotted with small villages that contain an interesting-if not amazing-variety of architectural styles and colors. Latvia, however, currently has the highest property tax rate of all three Baltic States. Realtors say that this is a major barrier to foreign investors, and are lobbying for a reversal of that part of the tax structure. Given the availability of an affordable labor force, the economic growth can be accelerated if taxes are reconsidered. Even so, an American firm has invested $52 million in remodeling commercial sites in the beautiful Old Riga section, and a Norwegian firm is investing a like amount in refurbishing hotels and building new units. To the credit of all concerned, the World Bank’s Economic Development Institute reported in April 1999 (Daniel Silva, “Latvia Named Top Corruption Fighter,” April 8-14,1999, The Baltic Times) that “Latvia is the only country in the former Soviet Union that has implemented an anti-corruption program that has had a chance to take root in society. . . . We would like to see this happen in other countries.” Lithuania is the largest and has the strongest economy among the Baltics, with 3.7 million people and a pro-business, LithuanianAmerican president. Valdus Adamkas, a retired Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official from Chicago, has maintained his popularity as he has coaxed occasional progressive moves from a lackluster parliament (Seimas) and a leaden bureaucracy. Still, with a full third of its trade vectored to Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, Lithuania has felt economic impact from the Russian financial crisis similar to its neighbors. Lithuania’s government, however, is not pro-business as there are too many Soviet system hold-overs who do not understand economic
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development and seem to think business is bad. As a result, job creation has not kept up with downsizing and plant closures, and structural unemployment is in the double-digit range. Worse, there is a significant measure of anti-EU and anti-U.S. sentiment among the people and the media. One economic challenge concerns its Chernobyl-type nuclear power plant at Ignalina, which the European Union wants shut down-felt by many to be a condition of membership. That plant generates the bulk of Lithuania’s internal and export power, and its closure will mean major economic losses to a country with an average monthly wage of $261. In January 2000, however, a team of Lithuanian nuclear energy specialists went to England to learn from the experience there in shutting down nuclear reactors, and there is a national energy plan under development to set time lines for decommissioning Ignalina, as well as privatizing the electric and gas utilities across the country. An interesting statistic is that after the German and then Soviet occupations spanning 50 years, there was so little intermarriage that Lithuanians remain 80 percent “pure” and have maintained the use of their difficult language, the oldest of the Indo-European family (with Sanskrit as its closest linguistic relative). There may be a practical (and controversial) reason for this. Unlike the Estonians and Latvians, who refused to take “official” jobs for the Soviets, the Lithuanians did. Therefore, with Lithuanians accepting any jobs offered, the Russians sent fewer of their people into the country. By contrast, both Latvia and Estonia had and still have larger numbers of Russians than does Lithuania. As one might imagine, there are ardent discussions about the propriety of collaborating with the Russians, some saying it was ignoble and others saying it ensured that Lithuanian interests were better served. That “go along and get along” attitude has surfaced again as closing the Ignalina nuclear facility comes into the planning stage. There are 5,000 Russians who have been Ignalina employees since the Soviet withdrawal. There have been no efforts by the Lithuanians to replace the Russians with some of their own people or otherwise to disturb that enclave of gross overstaffing. Was that an oversight, nonaction by international agreements, or just avoidance by the government of what might have been some kind of lose-lose confrontation? Now, with the plant closure virtually assured, what is to be done with all those Russian scientists and others in a remote area with unemployment officially listed as above 20 percent? Stay tuned.
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In addition to its president, a number of Lithuanian-Americans are in-country serving the government and the economy. The military has as its commander a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a retired Marine colonel is developing the curriculum for Lithuania’s military academy and managing a function similar to the office of the inspector general. Several others are in the Seimas (parliament), development agencies, and ministerial roles. Lithuania was the first country in the Baltics to apply for NATO membership and is the only country in CEE with equal opportunity laws and an EEO ombudsman to monitor compliance and to receive complaints. One of the cases under investigation late in 1999 involves a Lithuanian-Polish secretary in the Polish Embassy who refused the persistent advances of her boss, the first secretary. Appealing for help from the ambassador, she was advised to resign. Not surprisingly, with diplomatic immunity, the Polish ambassador has declined to be interviewed. There is continuing tension between these neighbors on a variety of issues since there is a long history of collaboration and conflict between them. Business persons, as heard at the American Chamber of Commerce, still grumble about the stifling bureaucracy, the murky tax system, and local legislation that changes almost by whimsy-and sometimes retroactively. Reforms are slow in coming. Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, has one of the largest “old towns” in Europe, and is home to a stunning array of Roman and Orthodox churches. Among them are outstanding examples of Baroque art and architecture.
Going South and East Belarus, perhaps, is the most damaged country in the region, with a regressive president who wants to rejoin Russia and feels that his decision to maintain a command economy is vindicated by the Russian economic failure. As in the old Soviet days, production is reported according to plans rather than actual output, and reports have it that goods produced there are of poor quality. Its major export may be cheap cement which has cut sharply into cement sales by Lithuanian producers. Despite sharing borders with Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, few of the social and economic advances in those states are crossing the border. In fact, from the appearance of its farmers and small goods vendors who
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show up at open-air markets in Vilnius, little has changed for them. It is as though they come from the place where time has stood still for the last 70 years. Minsk is not a city that attracts tourists, and it might be thought of as the ugliest capital in the region. The police presence there is the most obvious in the region, and there are numerous reports of shake-downs of tourists and even their own citizens. By all accounts, it is not a place to visit and a place with no constructive future until its president, Alexander Lukashenko, is replaced by someone with a better understanding of the economic benefits of participating in the world economy. In fact, Vytautas Dumbliauskas, a professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science in Vilnius said, “Of all our neighbors, Belarus is the one we speak about least. Maybe that is because it remains stuck in the past from which we want to break away.” He raises an interesting speculation: Maybe all the post-Soviet countries were not equipped equally well for the task of reforming their economic and political systems. The professor, quoted in The Baltic Times (“Opinion: About us and them,” March 4-10, 1999, p. 23), admonishes restraint in judging a society in which its citizens voted against the right of land ownership. How can it be compared with countries whose citizens voted for private ownership, a market economy, and democracy? The Belarussian government has received gas “for practically nothing” from Russia, and electricity from Lithuania on credit. Now, in one of those Byzantine twists, the Lithuanians are selling electricity to Russia which, in turn, provides it to Belarus. It was never a question of depriving Belarus of energy, according to Lithuanian sources, only who was more likely to pay them for it. “ . . . Neither famine nor economic collapse threaten Belarus, and we should accept our neighbors as they are. They have chosen their path, and we have chosen ours. After all, there were only two paths to chose: one to the East and one to the West,” Dumbliauskas said. Meanwhile. a de facto government policy of “a1coholization”-and the police presence-keeps the natives quiet and, perhaps, content. Poland, with its 38.7 million people and abundant resources, is a relative dynamo in CEE. Warsaw is emerging as a regional capital, and its center city is host to the region’s largest collection of international businesses. Average monthly wages ($371) tell that there still are bargain-basement labor rates available across a country dotted with clean small towns.
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A “secret weapon’’ that Poland has in its economic arsenal are its southern industrial centers in Krakow and Katowice. Katowice is a center of heavy manufacturing and mining, while Krakow (a beautiful, old-world city) is growing more in the direction of electronics and light industry. Motorola is providing the “anchor” for a large new industrial park, expected to be the Polish “Silicon Valley.” That the British think it will become a major trading center is indicated by their opening of a Consulate there. And, in the north, there is Gdansk (of Solidarity fame), home to shipbuilding and major port facilities, and more recently identified as the transportation hub for coastal resorts. As a result, Poland appears to be recovering from the impact of the Russian crisis better than others in the region. Now with NATO membership, the government and military have backed away from plans to invest a fortune in hot new jets, following the NATO line that it is unnecessary for all countries to have sophisticated interceptor aircraft. During 1999, an annual NATO emergency response exercise (“Cooperative Bear 1999”)was hosted by Poland. As a sign of the times, the exercise even had its own web site: http:// www.cbear99.mil.pl/. For all that it has become an energetic, Western-style economy, Poland has yet to complete its privatization program and is said to need to do so to broaden its economic base. Its roads, except for some urban bypasses and connections, still are two-lane, black-top, making it time consuming to move goods in and out of the country. For frustrated race car drivers, however, the narrow roads and the mix of heavy trucks, farm wagons, and even horse-drawn carts, provide ample opportunity for down-shifting and exhilarating spurts of acceleration. As an indication of fractiousness among neighbors that is frequent in the region, a border-crossing-delay competition between the Poles and Lithuanians can create literal kilometers of trucks waiting. Delays of several days are considered routine. In mid-1 999, however, constructive talks between the two governments were held on connections to the Trans-Baltic Highway that will terminate in Tallinn. That might terminate, as well, the ridiculous and costly delays. Ukraine appears stalled in its transition from the command economy to the market economy. Few of its companies have been privatized, so old management styles and systems (and results) persist. With almost 51 million people, Ukraine should be a natural locale for a booming, agriculture-based economy, but the country’s political center
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seems based in reactionary policies, corruption, and support for a socio-economic status quo. A devaluation of the hryvnia resulted in a loss of purchasing power for many people, but did not result in shortages and major unrest. Multinationals are unlikely to be attracted to a country where there has been so little business retraining and political progress toward support of serious economic competition. It would be unnecessarily difficult, and why bother when so many other opportunities exist? Even the mail system is reminiscent of Soviet days, with excessive opening of inoffensive packages, pilfering (otherwise, how to explain the losses?), and delays that deny explanation. The stagnation in the Ukraine has to be examined in the context of its exclusion from planned membership in the EU, despite its acceptance as “a security partner,” and the failure of Western governments to provide promised funding to close the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and to build a new containment structure around the deteriorating reactor. In the first instance, Ukraine has settled its border disputes with Russia, but concern for its neighbor’s instability is magnified when a type of “Eurocurtain” is being drawn between it and the West. In the second instance, its biggest liability and economic asset cannot be dealt with without outside help. In the American idiom, Ukraine is caught between a rock and a hard place, and its leaders wonder about how to get a clear political signal that when they meet the EU requirements, they will be accepted. EU Commission officials say that it is difficult to imagine where Ukraine-the strategic link between Russia and the Westfits in. In the face of so much ambivalence, will it take some military or nuclear catastrophe to get Ukraine the economic and political boost it requires? Meanwhile, the economic stagnation is forcing the outmigration of large numbers of Ukrainians, to the point that Polish, Slovak, Czech, and Hungarian governments were considering visa requirements for Ukrainians late in 1999. It turns out that restricting westward travel by Ukrainians is a condition for EU membership. The Slovaks want to tighten the border because of alleged criminal activity-Ukraine is said to be the destination of most of the cars stolen in Slovakia-so many, in fact, that Western European rental agencies often will not permit taking their cars into Slovakia.
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Authors’ note: This is a point to introduce a discouraging reality. Western Europe is awash in guest workers, Balkan refugees, and illegal aliens from CEE. Where it was once thought EU accession would begin in 2000, the date now is 2003 and, some say, as far out as 2005 or 2008. One way of interpreting EU requirements is to create economic stability among post-Soviet states so EU countries will be less attractive to CEE immigrants. How many more “outsiders” can the EU countries accept and maintain their economic growth and political stability? Further, from a purely sociological point of view, many who would migrate west at the first opportunity are not seen as “desirables” by many EU citizens and governments.
The Czech Republic has the benefit of a good public-relations image generated by its poedpresident Vaclav Have1 who resigned rather than preside over the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, and who returned to government when the political ideologues ran the ship of state aground. Beyond that, Prague is one of the world’s beautiful cities, and was the site of the Soviets’ brutal crushing of dissent following “The Prague Spring” of 1968. The Czech Republic has 10.3 million people and an economic recovery that has proceeded despite a series of stops and starts. “The people had lost their sense of enterprise,’’ wrote Ivan Klima, a Prague novelist, in the November 1999 issue of the Central European Economic Review. “Most of them had gotten used to working badly and stealing, and they saw nothing untoward in their behavior. . . . The country had a shortage of capital and capitalists, but there was also a shortage of experienced managers, politicians, bankers, journalists, and tax inspectors. What was perhaps lacking most was a tradition of democratic behavior.” The “Mass-Media Revolution” launched by artists and writers produced results the people were not prepared to deal with. Czech banks were slower than those elsewhere to impose fiscal discipline on companies with bad nonperforming debt service-nearly a third of all debt. Now, companies are confronting the need for reengineering, downsizing, selling-off subsidiaries, and taking other painful measures that will permit them to become competitive and attract more foreign investors. This will be hard to accomplish since privatization there often looks to be on paper only. When funds controlled by banks are the major shareholders-and the banks still are owned by the government, it means “privatized” companies have limited access
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to investment funds and management expertise. This creates a muddle that will be difficult to unravel, because a lot of decaying companies are postponing inevitable restructuring, waiting for government bailouts that probably will not come. One of the learnings the authors share is, “What’s the point of bailing out firms if the same inept managers are left in place?” Late in 1999, Skoda Auto remained the last prize in the Czech deregulation disaster. Volkswagen bought a 70 percent stake in Skoda in 1991, and it has been a successful partnership. The Skoda “Octavia” has been a best-seller. Now, with a new engine and gearbox plant due to complete in 2001, the company is poised for further growth. In 1998, Skoda Auto accounted for nearly 10 percent of the Czech Republic’s exports. So, now, what is the remaining 30 percent of the company worth? Whatever that value, maybe it could be used to cushion the losses that will attend the cleaning-up of the banking sector. Meanwhile, in November 1999, there is an intense search for investors. In that sector, the government has left some of the worst cases for last. Perhaps reforms in bankruptcy laws will allow some of the financial clutter to be cleared away. Meanwhile, international banks such as Bank Austria Creditanstalt are entering the market to take the clean business away from faltering local lenders. One of the interesting rumors circulating early in 2000 is that the American Secretary of State Madelaine Albright will return to The Czech Republic to run for its presidency in 2002 to follow her longtime friend, Vaclav Havel. While her candidacy can be justified (and argued against) on a number of grounds, certainly the rumor is an indication of the shallowness of the pool of leaders from which the Czechs can choose. Slovakia turned a major corner in 1998 when the voters ousted Vladimir Meciar and ended his government’s wishful thinking about maintaining Slovakia as a land-bridge to the heart of Europe when Mother Russia is resurrected (Bratislava is only 60 kilometers from Vienna). Meciar used his powers as prime minister to frustrate democratic process, keep the presidential palace unoccupied and, in the process, stall foreign investment for five years. After the split from the Czech Republic (engineered by a small group of politicians and never submitted to voters), Slovakia was left with a decaying infrastructure and 5.4 million people with an immense distrust of the West (as represented by the Czechs). With the loss of sales
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to the Soviets, followed within two years by the loss of sales to and support from the Czechs, the economy was effectively trashed. Worse, by accident or otherwise, except for a network of two-lane roads that were in good shape, most of the plants and equipment Slovakia inherited were obsolete. Further, during the several economic transitions, state banks lent money to state companies with little eye to repayment. Those debts, in turn, were carried forward into the privatized companies and, without bankruptcy relief and protection, banks were hesitant to foreclose and put people out of jobs. The delay in imposition of “business discipline” permitted Sovietstyle management practices to continue, causing an additional lack of competitiveness. Volkswagen’s plant outside Bratislava, however, is a model facility producing outstanding results; and Slovnaft’s aggressive modification of plant, facilities, and management-fueled by foreign investment-has made it an effective competitor. One of the intriguing possibilities for Slovakia was proposed by a Yugoslav consultant who commuted between Belgrade and Bratislava, working with banks on both their technology and their management. He had a surprising vision-of Slovakia as the Switzerland of Central Europe. With its central location, Bratislava’s proximity to Vienna, and the potential for the strength of its banks and for their collaboration with one or more U.S. banks created, in his mind, a natural opportunity. With a little help from the government and some assistance from Western agencies, his was a plan that could have worked. He proposed electronic banking to Vesobecna Uverova Banka ( W B ) , Slovakia’s largest bank, initially for all industrial and commercial customers because, as he said, “Banks and government agencies are the only institutions that still require people to come in and stand in line for service.” Once that was in place, he saw W B capturing customers from its competitors, and becoming attractive to major Western banks. In the process, competition would force other banks to modernize and to market their services. What an idea! What a vision! Alas, the moment was missed. The government played games with bank privatization, and the special interests were too invested in protecting the economic opportunities of a few (including bank managers) to engage in envisioning a future with benefits for the many. So, Milan Mitrovic now is commuting between clients in Montenegro and Moscow, making a difference for banking systems that are in distress. Privatization of the five Slovak banks may begin in 2001.
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With a new government in place, the environment is becoming more business-friendly, and Slovak businesses need foreign capital. A local tire manufacturer will be making tires for Germany’s Continental; and the large steelworks, VSZ, has a joint venture with U.S. Steel. This venture, however, was put on hold early in November 1999 due to irregularities in the Bratislava Stock Exchange involving a major VSZ stockholder. However, the deal went forward early in 2000. Bratislava is a microcosm of what Westerners think “Old Europe” will be. If there is no delay at the border, Bratislava is only an hour from Vienna, and a long way from Vienna’s absurd prices! Visually, the transition begins at what some locals call the longest border in the world-from the late 1990s to the 1950s in a thousand meters. The Austrian side of the border is high-tech, well-lighted-and, well, Austrian. The Slovak border brings to mind what a Slovak professor said about her country and its people, that “They are the Mexicans of Central Europe.” But, getting past that is the gateway into an amazing trip back in time. The other side of the Danube is charming, crossing the high bridge into the center of the Old Town where the Jewish quarter used to be, with the castle on the heights to the left and the Coronation Church on the right. Going east toward Ukraine, the cities and towns become more “Old European” as you pass the High Tatras with their affordable skiing and on to Kosice, about 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, an elegant old city that was a crossroads from Asia Minor to Central Europe a thousand years ago. In between is a mountain town, Banska Stiavnica, home of Europe’s first school of mining and a place where it is possible to sense what life was like in the distant past. No slick restorations, no fast food chains, a place where cocks crow at dawn a hundred meters from the hotel and, in the morning mist, the walls of the buildings and homes soften so their pock marks, cracks, and stains demand photographing. Slovakia is an under-developed, under-appreciated country. A couple of hours east of Bratislava, it begins to remind one of America’s West Virginia hill country-remote, beautiful, and without developmental infrastructure. Hungary has had a very different post-Soviet economic experience. As a result of creative and forward-thinking legislation to protect foreign investors (passed in 1988), Hungary was able to rebuild its business infrastructure with foreign investments.
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In November, 1999, Fortune magazine writer Anna Bernasec hailed the “Hungarian Rhapsody” that has put it five years ahead of the Czech Republic while “ . . . the rest of the region, from Ukraine to Romania and beyond, is still probably 20 to 30 years behind Hungary, bogged down in corruption, politics, and a fear of foreigners.” Its privatization program has put most former state holdings in private hands, and has created cash flow to support the government’s drive toward free enterprise as the engine of economic growth. With tax-free zones and tax breaks, Hungary attracted more than $20 billion in foreign investment, more per capita than any other country in the region. This allows private business to generate more than 80 percent of Hungary’s gross national product and, as a result of its willingness to accept foreign investment for improving its utilities, Hungary became the first country in the region to have an all digital telecommunications system in 1999. As elsewhere, privatization meant loss of jobs for many as companies downsized to profitable scale. The resulting social costs put the government into a sharp deficit spending program and resulting inflation (in mid-decade) until tax revenues could catch up, supported by economic reforms. Where other governments feared to forge ahead, the Hungarians persisted in privatizing and have prospered. They alone in the region seem to have broken free of the constraints of command-economy ways through what was called “goulash communism” that allowed private companies to develop along side stateowned companies. Many observers think Hungary will be the first CEE country to be admitted to the European Union. Small and new enterprises that can keep the economic growth alive will overcome the impact of the Russian crisis, both from direct loss of sales and from the limits it imposes on markets in neighboring countries. NATO membership is a matter of pride, as is pending EU membership. Someday, there may be monuments to the leaders who had the political courage and insight to drive these programs. Budapest is a bustling and vibrant capital, and is said to offer tourists (and investors) more for their money than any major city in the region. The city center of the eastern (Pest) side of the Danube, provides a great walking and shopping zone, and one of the great city markets in Europe is housed in an 1899, three-story iron-and-glass building that was recently remodeled. Fresh- and salt-water fish in tanks, green groceries that have never looked better (because of the artist’s studio quality of the light), and smoked and fresh meats and
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cheeses and breads are available. On the top floor, handmade goods are sold, including a fine selection of the beautiful and delicate lace that is unique to the country. Across one of the three bridges that span the Danube to the Buda side of the river is another world. The old castle and adjoining buildings atop the Buda hill provide powerful images, and another memorable walking and shopping zone with spectacular views-a great place to work and play. Romania has 22.6 million people with an average salary that is less than $200 per month and there seems to be no real prospect of its becoming a competitive economy anytime soon. The politics are contentious, as well, and the politicians seem disinclined to sell failed businesses at the bargain-basement prices they warrant. The small number of companies that have been privatized were acquired by nationals and have contributed little to the economy. Bucharest is a faded capital, with wide boulevards that once earned it the name of “Europe’s Second Paris” (French then was the second language). The economy is decidedly lackluster, and there appears to be a lack of focus on creating an inviting climate for business. This is surprising, given that in 1990, Romania often was compared with Poland in terms of developmental potential. It is the secondlargest country in CEE, and had the advantage over Poland of a broad industrial base, a positive trade balance, no foreign debt, abundant natural resources, including a well-developed agricultural base, and great tourism potential, because of both dramatic mountains and a coast on the Black Sea. All of that potential, however, was bundled up in Soviet-style conglomerates that did not encourage competition and would not give up control, and its major heavy industries were neither privatized nor restructured. Almost a decade later, change finally is coming, and 64 enterprises are being privatized to comply with International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank requirements for loans; and another 58 projects are being financed by the European Bank for Recovery and Development (EBRD). The long slide into the past appears to have been reversed-and just in time to avoid the dire predictions of the IMF and others. The political will to move forward and to maintain the momentum seems to have been realized. As a shadow of so much hesitation to join other CEE countries in growth, the human resource picture there is a bit cloudy, according to Mihaela Burila, a Romanian national who has covered Romania for
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the executive search firm tmp.worldwide for three years. The lack of sophistication of Romanian nationals, according to Burila, is a major difficulty in finding suitable staff for Western companies. “We undertake extensive coaching of candidates to help get them through the interview process,” she said. “Their qualificationsknowledge, skills, and abilities-tend not to be as well-developed as Western employers expect. Also, their social and interpersonal skills are weaker relative to what we’ve seen in Hungary and Poland. “Our client companies want us to provide background on qualifications, skills, and other convincing reasons that candidates will perform at expected levels,” she added. “They have learned that, in Romania perhaps more than in other locales, a company’s work practices and cultural accommodations are what dictates performance and retention. Employers want to be sure that we are bringing them candidates whose sights are on successful performance instead of on social acceptance. They have learned how long it takes to get the buy-in, commitment, trust and dedication. It’s a tough market.” There are some positive signs that things are changing, however. Romania is top-heavy with engineers who work cheap. For example, for $5,000 per year, a company can hire the best and brightest (vs. $60,000 in the U.S.). This is the reason that American defense contractor Raytheon set up shop in Ploiesti, according to the International Herald Tribune (December 27, 1999). The site is a run-down vocational school, but Raytheon plans an $8 million facility because their Romanian experience is so positive. For the computer-assisted design work being done, location is less important than competence, and Raytheon’s Australian operations manager has said that his engineers are so highly educated “that we’re probably overqualified.’’ There is another pocket of exceptional performance-the manufacture of high-fashion clothes. Several of Europe’s leading designers have facilities in Romania for manufacturing clothes for export. This burgeoning industry is said to be an extension of the century-old reputation for fine handmade lace. Bucharest is an interesting city with more than two million people, a large mix of Western companies, nine internet cafes, a mix of gypsy carts and Mercedes on the streets, and McDonald’s restaurants can be found in some of the underground Metro stations. Excellent skiing is only a couple of hours by car or train, as is the Black Sea coast. Around the country, there are 25 towns with populations in excess of 100,000.
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Moldova, sitting between Romania and Ukraine, is not so fortunate. It has been hit perhaps hardest of any country in the region by the Russian crisis. Its primary export is wheat, and half was committed to Russia in 1998. Further, it is dependent on Russia for gas and has had to give away large parts of its internal gas distribution system to repay debts to its Russian supplier. As with other countries in the region, the democratic process does not run uniformly in the direction of business development. Despite this obstacle, the government has been nudged into economic reform by the IMF and the World Bank, which may make foreign investment more attractive. This land-locked country of almost 4.5 million people is 65 percent MoldaviadRomanian, 14 percent Ukrainian, and 13 percent R u s s i a n 4 0 percent of whom are involved in agriculture and only 14 percent in industry. This means that the economy is largely dependent on agri-business-mainly fruits, vegetables, wine, and tobacco. Accordingly, its major exports are foodstuffs, wine, tobacco, textiles, and footwear. And, as a result of uncontrolled use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the country has a substantial pollution problem. Persistent energy shortages (since all energy must be imported) are said to be a major impediment to industrialization. Since nearly 80 percent of its exports go to Russia, every sector of the economy was hurt by the ruble crisis. In a country that is so short of jobs, and tax revenues, there is a harrowing story told by a businessman from Bucharest. It involves the development of a $5 million wood product manufacturing plant by a Western syndicate. It was to have employed 250 people. When the plant was complete, however, and the new equipment in place, someone in the government decided that it would require another $1million to connect the plant to the electric grid. The outcome? The facility was sold for a token-a single Swiss franc-boarded up, and abandoned. Bulgaria went through economic turmoil several years back, but the imposition of tough economic policies got the country stabilized, just in time to fall into the quagmire of the Russian financial collapse. According to Business Central Europe, a heavily-indebted chemical plant, Agropolichim, was sold for a nominal $1 (yes, one U.S. dollar). Bulgaria, because of its geographic location, has been visited by a large number of refugees from the Kosovo conflict, which has taxed local resources but has also brought infusions of cash from military and relief operations. The economy was caught in triple-digit inflation
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during 1996 and 1997, but was brought under control by an IMFsponsored currency board. By 1998, inflation was controlled with a one-percent increase in consumer prices. Currently, the IMF provided a three-year Extended Fund Facility that makes $864 million available between 1998 and 2001 to support Bulgaria’s reform efforts. Heading the agenda are privatization and liquidation of state-owned enterprises, and agricultural reforms including creating conditions for development of a land market. Across the region, there is contention about selling land to foreigners, and to corporate farms in particular. Meanwhile, huge tracts that formerly were collective farms lie fallow. Also key to Bulgaria’s success will be control of unemployment and inflation, combating corruption, and curbing black-market and Mafia-style crime. Slovenia has the smallest population of any country within the region. Despite the authors’ decision to omit the countries of what formerly comprised Yugoslavia, Slovenia was included because it and its people appear focused on self-generated economic success rather than conquest of old enemies. In fact, Slovenia is an independent nation for the first time in its history and, according to author and regional expert Yale Richmond, its people are 95 percent ethnic Slovenians and therefore not involved in the ethnic cleansing and the other civil distress of its neighbors. The Slovenes were part of the Germanic world from 1778, when they were conquered by Charlemagne, until 1918. Accordingly, they have inherited the industriousness of that world and have been known variously as Austrians who speak a Slavic language and the most successful industrialists in the Yugoslav confederation, from which they were the first to leave. Alone among Central Europe’s capitals, Ljubljana exudes an atmosphere of widespread prosperity. It is at a meeting point between CEE, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans, which is why the two panEuropean transport corridors cross there. As so often happens in the region, construction has been slowed on road-building projects because an ancient Roman road network was discovered that followed pretty much the same routes-a great archeological discovery. A country of beautiful mountains and forests, with a strong and growing economy, and without destructive internecine combat, Slovenia is a rarity in the region. Hypermarts are on the way, privatization is being accelerated to meet EU demands, and it boasts average monthly wages that approximate $1,000-the highest in the region. Its
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economy, which was growing at a brisk rate, has been slowed by the war in the Balkans, as both imports and exports have been reduced. This is seen as temporary, however, and, with so much highway, railway, and office construction around the capital and radiating outward, long-term prosperity is the forecast. With its cultural and religious (Catholic) homogeneity, strong economy, and high wages, Slovenia’s only “enemy” appears to be competition in the marketplace for its domestic and export products. If anyone is speaking ill of the country and its future, those comments did not show up in the scans done for this chapter.
SUMMARY As one reads over the list of countries included in this arbitrary selection of CEE states, it is easy to see that it truly is a mix of sizes, successes, and situations. It is tempting to focus only on the three new NATO members, but the facts are that more attention needs to be paid to those on the margins. As noted above, perhaps it was foolish to think that all countries and their people would be equally enthusiastic for the democratic experience. The Belarus experience may provide the most rigorous rejection of the popular assumption, but local government activities across the region exemplify the difficulty of democratic processes, especially when collaboration and negotiation still are new skills for many. It is probable that the median age for legislators in the region is 50 plus-meaning that they spent their formative years learning how to cope with Soviet-style participation. Likewise, most have never been entrepreneurs (except as corruption provided them with extra income), and they still look at the world through the half-empty glass rather than the half-full. It does not take much imagination to see that some cultural sensitivity is required to function effectively across CEE. As in the case of Raytheon in Romania, however, flexibility and appreciation of local capabilities is a large component of the necessary sensitivity. There are, in fact, a lot of similarities across the region, and differences, too. Chapter Three takes a look at some of them.
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S o MANY SIMILARITIES, S o MANY DIFFERENCES Xenophobia-the fear of anything foreign-is alive and well among many managers and executives in CEE. Part of the post-Soviet residue is caution in dealing with anyone who could conceivably represent a threat (and that is a large percentage of those one meets). Formality is more than a matter of etiquette-it is a means of maintaining distance until the purpose and intent of a relationship has been verified-and that might require several meetings, if not months. Decisions are not made quickly-unless they are negative, and that is why observing cultural issues is so important. One of the frustrations for many Western managers is that delay in getting down to businessin waiting for people to get in gear and to get on with the deal. Even where personnel from sister companies are involved, the same danceof-delay must run its course.
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In fact, that is one of the major points of conflict, since Western managers don’t always make allowances for local culture and conditions. That has often been the case in North America, too, when a new manager comes into an organization. In every continuing group setting, there are routines, ways of handling work, and they exist for a reason. Still, they may not meet the requirements or expectations of the new manager. Where there is cultural parity between managers and subordinates, and there is the capacity for constructive confrontation of issues, understandings and accommodations can be made by both parties.
Withholding the Gift of Feedback Where there are marked cultural differences, which is frequent in the region, perceptual barriers will impede the development of mutual understanding. Primary in the hierarchy of difficulties is the imperative to yield to perceived authority on the part of local nationals. This means no one is likely to give Western managers feedback, to interpret for them what the local people are seeing or feeling. When asked, even English-speaking locals will admit to withholding feedback. “That is not my role,” they will say without rancor. Such positions do not augur well for participation and involvement. There is a capacity for ingenuity among locals, but a counterbalancing reluctance to be obvious or to risk being seen by peers as “showing off.” It often is hard for Westerners to comprehend the programmed and practiced reserve of local nationals for whom such constraints are survival skills learned during Soviet times that reinforced local cultural norms. Clearly, those of us who did not live through it never will understand the depth of that caution. Without feedback, managers criticize what they see as lack of initiative, failure to ask questions, and poor productivity. This situation often remains unchanged until the manager asks for, or is given, clarifying information from someone who is culturally more astute.
Initiative Is a Sometime Thing Over time, many from the West find that their CEE counterparts are well-trained and effective technicians who accomplish significant amounts of productive work despite the frequent reality of obsolete equipment, facilities, and social constraints. Yet, even where equipment
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is not a major barrier, productivity is likely to be significantly less than that achieved in comparable plants in North America and Western Europe. The work ethic is biased toward precision (and avoidance of criticism) rather than productivity, and the pace of work definitely is slower. “While Middle and Eastern Europe have an educated work force, market economies require additional human attributes. There are open questions about motivation. As any visitor could attest, no one worked very hard in the factories of ex-communist countries . . . Initiative is a more important concern . . . After a lifetime of being told what to do and what not to do, initiative may be a hard attribute to recapture,” wrote Lester Thurow, Dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, in his book, Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among lapan, Europe, and America (1992). While wages are low across the region, a profitable compromise is possible between pay and productivity. As wages rise, however, cultural adaptations need to be developed to accommodate profit. That this can be done is evidenced by Volkswagen, whose Bratislava, Slovakia, plant is said to be the most productive of all their plants except for one in Bavaria and, as a result, the plant has undergone several major expansions. These large companies, though, usually have had major infusions of Western consulting and technology, frequently supported by grants from governments or non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Conversely, one of the major U.S. consulting firms won a contract, funded by an NGO, but their personnel walked off the job after a week, totally frustrated by the “Lithuanian logic” of the management of that 2,200-employee facility. Likewise, even in takeovers, companies as successful as Motorola have difficulty overcoming the protective culture of local, Soviet-style corporate structures. Specifically, managers can be intransigent and often subvert corporate directives to maintain local prerogatives and practices.
HR Without a People Focus Part of this protectionism results from the fact that there is a shortage of jobs-early downsizings and plant closures put many capable and competent people out of work in the first years of capitalism (1992 to 1994), and many never have returned to work. In Russia, it is not
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uncommon to find Ph.D.-level scientists working as laborers or as lowlevel supervisors in multinational firms. A job with a stable employer, even a menial job, is better than no job at all. One challenge large firms face is getting work forces “right sized” for profitable operations. In some locations, one of the prices of corporate acquisition of state-owned companies is a covenant against layoffs for periods as long as three years. That means carrying a lot of dead weight, and creates a major human resource (HR) dilemma-why train people whom you will lay off as soon as possible, and how can you train the “keepers” and not the others? Perhaps this is one of the reasons that HR is not a well-developed function in most organizations. In fact, HR is not a well-developed profession in the region. During Soviet times, personnel departments often were staffed by people selected by the KGB to keep records and to report on employees. As such, it was not a pro-employee function, but rather the vehicle through which rewards and sanctions were administered to keep people in line. It was a powerful position, but not at all concerned with development of people or concepts. Now, HR has devolved into a boring role involved with mundane record keeping. Part of this is because local managers see no need to invest in HR beyond ensuring that time sheets are collected and that people are paid no more than they are owed. Part is because there is an unstated ethos that argues that when employees want a steady job more than one that offers advancement, training for individual growth or as a retention strategy is unnecessary. This, in turn, keeps most HR personnel limited to routine, clerical-level tasks. There are some anxieties, then, about HR on the part of managers who want to maintain the status quo or to protect their own roles and prerogatives. Misperceptions About Human Resource Development The “natural” instrument for introducing change in organizations is the HR function, following the concepts of Human Resource Development (HRD).At large in the region, however, are some important misperceptions about HRD, in addition to the structural impediment mentioned above. Following are some of the misperceptions that need to be clarified in most organizations in the region. Misperception #1: HRD weakens the manager’s role and reduces output. Of course, this is totally wrong. Any intelligent approach to
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HRD shows managers how to be more effective, get more output, and contribute to putting more profit on your company’s bottom line. How often do managers, though, want to hear that message? One of the early learnings for Westerners is that managers within the region-as may be the case universally-do not want to acknowledge any incapacity. Misperception #2: HRD means “democratic” management, and that means workers tell managers what to do. This is a major issue that will come up again in this book, and one that Western managers will come up against over and over in their efforts to assist local managers to become more effective. Workplace “democracy” is not the issue. Participation is the issuegetting employees to work with their managers, with each other more effectively, and to use their experience to find better, faster, cheaper ways to get work out the door and to bring job-protecting profit into the company. For those familiar with the lexicon of Western management, these words almost have become clichts. But not in the region. It isn’t that managers mistreat employees. Rather, there is a rank and social distancing that is part cultural, part past practice, and part convenience for both workers and managers. Looking at this issue from the perspective that “there always is a reason” opens a Pandora’s Box of overlapping and interwoven issues that this book attempts to address. If there were, however, a KGB headquarters in your city in which people were tortured and murdered for misspeaking, for unfortunate social connections, or by mistaken identity, the caution of locals might be seen differently. Misperception #3: Our workers are used to Soviet-style management, and they will do as little as they can unless authoritarian managers are there to push them. The skewed logic here is a perfect example of the self-fulfilling prophecy at work: Soviet-style authority did not create productive workers or work places during their occupation of the region. Why does anyone think that approach will work for Latvians or Poles or Romanians in the New Millennium? The facts are that in most instances, it is the managers who maintain the distance between themselves and their workers. When the late Douglas McGregor wrote that it is as natural as rest or play for workers to contribute-to work with their managers to achieve worthwhile goals, he was talking about an American context. One of the surprises for the committed participative manager new to the region is that no one seems to want it.
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Most Western manager education incorporates participation as a cornerstone of profitable organizational structures. HRD-oriented training gives managers participation-based, production-improving skills, and gives them a choice to become more effective instead of more authoritarian. Misperception #4: It takes authority to make people work and to get work out the door. Weak managers cannot survive here. Probably, this is true, as far as it goes. Terms like strength and weaknesses, however, may carry valences in the region that are quite different from the West. Referring back to McGregor’s writings in The Human Side of Enterprise about Theories X (tough, rough) and Y (participative, democratic), one of the points he and advocates of his theory made repeatedly is that the toughest, most demanding managers are those of the Theory Y persuasion. Those managers demand that individuals perform up to their capabilities rather than doing as little as possible. Those arguments, while not really subtle, sometimes are hard for those managers to understand whose role models have tended to be people who wield the power to be hurtful (instead of helpful), and who are fear-inducing (instead of fear-reducing and success assuring). One example seen daily throughout the region are the ubiquitous “security guards,” frequently outfitted in all-black attire like SWAT teams from TV movies-replete with berets, automatic pistols and Uzis, MAC-lOs, or pistol-grip shotguns slung from their shoulders. Authority always is there in the supervisor’s or manager’s role. Strength comes from intelligence in making it easy for people to perform tasks as planned and scheduled. Otherwise, workers determine the least amount of work they have to do, and authority will get you that much output every day. The Western, Theory Y-based approachmaking it easy for people to do the right thing and to do things righthas been proved in some of the world’s most challenging workplaces, and it will work in this region, too. But substantial re-education of workers and managers both is required. Misperception #5: Participation means a lot of time-wasting meetings where the dumbest employees talk the most and the smart ones keep their mouths shut. This is an interesting response, since most meetings in the region are virtual monologues of the senior person or his appointed reporter. Asking questions creates the opportunity for ridicule, and most people avoid making themselves available for that. Conducting an effective meeting is a basic skill that the majority of managers have not developed (in the West, as well). There are two
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kinds of meetings-information-sharing meetings and problem-solving meetings. In the first instance, with a little organization, a lot of information can be conveyed quickly. In the second, meetings to work on problems can be divided into two types: problem-identification meetings (less than 10 minutes) and problem-solving meetings. The latter should involve only those two or three people who are directly involved and have relevant information. Everyone else should return to their tasks. The reason for including these comments about meetings is that local nationals, in general, do not conduct meetings that encourage information sharing among participants. Certainly, people will perform and describe current activities if asked to do so, but problem information, cautionary information, is unlikely to be volunteered. This is where the cost of authoritarian management-and the losses it engenders-may be the highest.
THINKING OUTOF
THE
Box
One way of thinking about culture is that it is a collection of boxes into which people are fitted by life’s circumstances. As illustrated above, work-related concepts generally accepted in the West are seen as threatening by people looking through the peepholes in their boxes. To follow the analogy, one of the roles of HRD is to help people step out of their boxes to become more effective by accessing skills and competitive capabilities previously ignored or unrecognized. Chapter Eleven deals with this in detail and presents a model of the kinds of experiences that could lead managers in the region to be more available for some versions of participative management. Versions, as used in the previous sentence, was chosen to acknowledge that participation must be culturally congruent. The kind of firstname familiarity that is standard in Western companies will not work in many companies within the region. If the issue is one of effective delegation, however, releasing individual and group energies for costeffective task accomplishment, it is useful not to confuse form with function.
High Structure Seems to Work One Polish executive begins each day with a meeting of his top staff, 30 minutes to clarify what each will accomplish that day. His manner
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is slightly self-deprecating, which is possibly his way to compensate €or the silent acquiescence of his competent subordinates who address him as Mr. Blank and never use his first name. He always uses their first names, and he is younger than some of them. All acknowledge that he is a competent and supportive manager, that their enterprise is growing, that all are learning and developing as effective managers, and that he really is an “Old World” manager even though he has not reached his 45th year. Mr. Blank knows something about his workers, however. He knows that without the “short tether” of daily meetings and short-interval scheduling, his subordinates probably will not yield to the activist imperative required to be effective in competitive businesses. In fact, just several kilometers from his office is another manager who has been so participative and non-authoritarian that the employees have not been caused to learn “to work Western” and still provide poor return on the investment in their salaries. Will Mr. Blank’s subordinates be able to make the transition to more effective ways of working together? Will Mr. Blank be able to allow them the freedom to learn? Will their collective success-they are doing better than most of their competitors-lock them into patterns that may not optimize their potential? That is a possibility. But Mr. Blank asks questions, thinks, and always watches the bottom line. When he sees that lower costs and higher profits may result from another managerial style, he will probably try it out. Meanwhile, his employees are all making more than they ever imagined, and know that their value in the labor market has been enhanced by working for Mr. Blank.
Involving People for Improved Performance In their book Think Out of the Box, Mike Vance and Diane Deacon talk about the compulsory, two-day training on “The Disney Way” that all contractors working at Walt Disney World in Florida had to attend. That way, everyone who worked on the site was paid to understand what “The Disney Way” represented in terms of quality performance and collaboration. One unwilling participant was a very large man who operated a bulldozer. When asked what he did, he said, “I move dirt.” After two days in the seminar, he went to Mike Vance to thank him for the seminar, even though he had not liked all of it and had hated Vance at the end of the first day “for using all those big words I didn’t understand.”
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The man, however, added, “You knew I didn’t understand, but you used them anyway. . .You didn’t treat me like I was dumb. Thank you. Please tell Mr. Disney I appreciate being invited. Nobody ever invited me to anything before. I’ll move the dirt really good.” Rather than just conveying the man’s message, Mike Vance took the dirt mover to meet Roy 0. Disney. Disney ordered coffee and pie, and the two men talked about working on the project. A pot of coffee and a whole pie later, the men finished their conversation. Naturally, it was not long before every worker on the site knew the story, and it put the concept of “doing quality work” into a very comprehensible and human context. Even in America, not everyone feels important. People who don’t feel important cannot be expected to put the extra effort and attention to detail into their work. If workers don’t feel important and valued, how much importance can they ascribe to the work that is given to them?
The Power of Feeling Needed Among citizens of CEE, how many workers feel valued by their employers, whether in the public or private sector? After so many years of Soviet occupation, producing things determined by some bureau in Moscow without concern for cost and schedule, can you imagine how hard it is for them to take planning and scheduling seriously? In their formative years, most workers in the region became immune to the Soviet plans and schedules, because there always were convenient intervening variables to blame for delays. Now, what “magic message” will help people overcome their practiced indifference to become committed workers? The magic message is one of coming obsolescence. The Soviets, operating from a concern for security and interdependence of plants and people, scattered production facilities around the region. One of the surprises to newcomers is how rural the region is once you leave the cities, and how little there is out there. From Serbia north to Estonia, the landscape is reminiscent of America’s Appalachian region, which is infamous for its intractable poverty. There roads are poor, jobs are scarce, and poverty is evident even at 100 kilometers per hour. Lush fields of rape seed-a glorious yellow in the spring-wrap across hillsides and down to the edge of wooded creek sides. These are bucolic scenes that could be in America’s West Virginia or western
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Maryland, but they are in Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland. Small villages of 40 or so houses are clustered in valleys, but nowhere is there any sign of life during the work day. One such village was several hours east of Bratislava. It was a 100-house village that was not on maps until after the Soviets withdrew because it had hosted a foundry that once made armor-plate for Soviet tanks! The plant was filthy. It had not been painted for years. Piles of abandoned equipment and parts, drab stairwells, reeking rest rooms, unwashed windows. The “workers” smoked or stood idly by watching the strangers, looking like the people in 1930s Depression-era photographs by Walker Evans and Margaret Bourke-White or the people John Steinbeck wrote about in Grapes of Wrath-except that these were not migrants because there was no place for them to go. Their skills are in using obsolete technology to make cast metal products in sand molds. They were unneeded-and they knew it.
Lost in Time and Space North and west, a hundred miles or so as the crow flies, a modern, German-operated plant makes auto parts in a Polish locale that is similar in its appearance of rural remoteness. Worker attendance is poor and sometimes-during hunting season, harvest season, or planting seasonone-fourth of the employees will be absent to busy themselves with filling their larders with the home-produced food on which so many depend. North and east at least four hundred miles up narrow, two-lane roads, the land is a flat, glacial moraine in the middle of Lithuania. The former manager of a collective farm was showing a consultant the worn-out machinery and equipment sheds down the road from a collection of twostory concrete apartment buildings and an office building that could have been build in the late 1930s in an American small town. Through an interpreter, the manager asked earnestly for help in marketing the facilities and the labor of 110 workers (from teenagers to a few in their eighties) who still live in the village. During Soviet times, they did a little farming, but their primary job was de-watering fields on the sprawling collective farms, drawing down the water level so the fields could be tilled. He was frustrated to learn that there probably were at least a thousand facilities just like his own around the region, and that the presence of a railroad siding probably would not be an inducement for a manufacturer to locate so far from the port at Klaipeda when there are
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equivalent facilities nearer the coast. The free, but ineffectual, consulting was rewarded with a memorable farmhouse dinner. Everything except the flour used to make several kinds of bread was made or grown on the premises. Vodka was poured freely. Over dinner, the host talked of the pending trip to Germany that he and his son would make to buy used and wrecked cars that they would rebuild over the winter for sale the next spring. Then, after dinner, the family provided music with coffee, playing a flute, a clarinet, drums, and an accordion. Sometimes, even imagination, a generous spirit, and true grit cannot overcome geography.
MYMANAGER SHOULD BE HERE Another similarity among workers in CEE and the West is the common refrain heard in training, “This is interesting, but my boss ought to be here to hear about this.” This is the refrain of the powerless or the uninvolved, or of those who are expressing resentment. The latter category of persons are involved, but only in watching (and not offering to help) as their managers struggle to accomplish their work. In the West (and certainly most significantly in the U.S.), workers can choose to be present at work but emotionally absent. “DO you think I’d be here if I had a choice?” In CEE, however, having a job is important and job mobility is unusual except among those relatively few high achievers at the upper right end of the bell curve. Their job-hopping is as frequent as among their peers in the West but, in a region in which managerial talent is in such short supply, it is more disruptive than in the West. Where there is a problem of supply and demand, however, count on large companies to devise a scheme for buying loyalty. Xerox Poland instituted a program in 1997 that would pay its executives an amount comparable to a year’s salary if they stayed for four years. This program reduced their annual turnover from 38 percent in 1996 to 13 percent in 1999. The executive labor pool is small, and executive recruiters had a field day moving executives from company to company back in the front half of the 1990s. As the influx of multinationals slowed, however, and the Russian crisis hit, job searches also declined-by 44 percent across CEE in 1998 as reported by members of the Association of Executive Search Consultants. This means that fewer companies were looking, and more executives were discovering the benefits of loyalty.
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Lack of Choice and Resistance to Change The significance of the job, of the security it represents, and the belief among non-executives that they do not have choices is part of the culture of the region. Where lack of choice is perceived, resistance to change is strengthened. Where there is so much resistance to change, it is necessary to find an enabling model that will help people cope more effectively when changes are foreseen. Choices, though, especially for managers in CEE, are being impacted by technology. In fact, many will lose their jobs because they are ignoring the implicit requirement to develop their skills as technology is changing the way they do business. When interviewed for this book, Budapest-based Milena Ivanova, European HR manager for the search firm tmpworldwide, said, “Local national managers too often become complacent. They are content with their station in life, and would move only for a dream job. But what they don’t see is that they are not keeping up with the technology that is changing their companies. They are snoozing while the Internet is bypassing them. “Even executive recruiting is going to the Internet (tmpworldwide owns Monster.com, the web-based job-finding service), and those who are sleeping will not be able to manage their own careers. We have the same trouble with many of our staff in CEE. They don’t believe corporate managers will be recruiting from the Internet. But they are wrong. Several of our clients recently advertised thirty director-level and above openings on the Net.”
Playing to Win in a Changing World Larry and Hersch Wilson, in their book, Play to Win: Choosing Growth Over Fear in Work and Life, said that there are four fatal fears that most of us Westerners must overcome to learn and grow and succeed:
1. Fear of failure. 2. Fear of being wrong. 3. Fear of rejection. 4. Fear of being emotionally uncomfortable. These four fears are “fatal” in the CEE, too, but with a different kind of potency. People have difficulty separating criticism of some element of performance from a damning indictment of the individual. For
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so many of them, simple survival and avoidance of punishment are major motives. Success, that cesspool of subjectivity, always needs to be defined by comparison with some standard. The late John Gardner, founder of America’s “Common Cause” organization and the first Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, said that “A first-rate soup is of more value than a second-rate painting.” Living and working in the region, one learns that failure means more than ridicule and criticism by co-workers. It can mean loss of livelihood and support for your family.
Caution in All Things Being wrong is not so much about ego as about being noticed unfavorably. If a poor choice of words or actions invites official criticism, so recent history prethen ostracism or police trouble could follow-r dicts. Rejection means more than wearing the wrong designer label jeans or shoes. It could mean isolation from primary reference groups-lans over here-that are the primary legitimizing authorities and the source of much of one’s support for self and family. Emotional discomfort is more than embarrassment or loss of face. It is fright-visceral fear-that tightens the gut. This may seem irrational to Western observers in the New Millennium who did not live with the reality of secret police, informers among your co-workers, and local KGB headquarters in your city-and all this less than a decade ago. The Wilsons follow their discussion of the four fatal fears by quoting a naturalist who said that, in nature, there are no rewards or punishments-nly consequences. This may be one of the major points for this book to make about cultural imperatives and critical differencesthe appreciation and acceptance, if not the understanding of perceived
consequences. People will not, of their own accord, move forward into a pattern of negative consequences. Successful change must be preceded by an examination of the perception of consequences of the people involved, because those perceptions otherwise will become major obstacles. It is necessary to remember that in CEE, “consequences” may never be heard as a positive concept. Then, there is the matter of rewards-r the absence of them. In this region, even a simple “Thank you” is unusual. A co-worker of the authors asked, “Why do you say ‘Thank you’ so often, even for things that are not important?”
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The only answer, of course, is that any service provided, even if it is part of another’s paid responsibilities, deserves to be acknowledged. Otherwise, co-workers who are of a lower rank in the organization’s hierarchy disappear as individuals and become silent, nameless servants of “the system.”
Recognizing Individual Effort Everything that has been learned about motivational techniques calls for the acknowledgment of individuals and their contributions. During Soviet days, the “system” and its leaders were recognized, and everyone else was ignored. Perhaps the withholding of effort by the unappreciated (and unbelieving) masses is one of the reasons for that system’s collapse. It is important to realize the value, the emotional and psychological significance, of rewards and awards. In the region, especially on holidays, expect to see elderly men and women wearing their Soviet-era medals, tangible evidence that they and what they did once were valued and appreciated. Paychecks and pensions are necessary, but insufficient for fueling the “bonding” of employees to their enterprises. Appreciation is a more powerful “tool” here because it is unexpected. Living in CEE as a Westerner, especially as an American accustomed to wide-ranging mobility without borders and barriers, without “papers” and passports, brings frequent reminders that the “powers of the state” are different in the post-Soviet world than one might experience in California or Connecticut, North Dakota or North Carolina. The Soviets may be gone, but the bureaucracies-and the bureaucrats-spawned by the Soviets remain in place. It is the authors’ experience, and those of their colleagues and friends, that the attitudes toward “citizens” by bureaucrats/officials still is cold, abrupt, and demeaning. At the border. At the post office. Even at medical facilities and pharmacies. This is a major reason why it is so important to express appreciation to co-workers and employees. Their money is not appreciated when they buy their food. Their patronage is not appreciated at the theater. They are never (or rarely) treated as significant individuals. Not feeling appreciated happens even to corporations. Late in 1999, the South Korean electronics giant, Samsung, moved its offices and inventory out of Lithuania to neighboring Latvia because of the
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frequently-changing customs rules and the heavy-handed control of Samsung products by customs police. The good news is that Samsung’s departure, and the loss of tax revenues it engendered, was noticed and pending legislation to ease customs rules was pushed through the Seimas (parliament) within weeks. Attitudes, however, are more resilient than rules, and probably will remain harder than required and somewhat antagonistic to a pro-business environment.
Ten Criteria for Assessing Work Cultures Philip Harris, in his important text, High-Performance Leadership, suggests the use of 10 points of diagnosis of work-group culture so that leaders and others entering those systems can be effective. In terms of a model to use in organizing information, it is both straightforward and surprisingly comprehensive. Note that the first point of observation relates directly to the discussion, immediately above. Harris’ 10 points are listed below in an annotated form to support the purposes of this book: 1. Identity & Purpose: How do the people view themselves as members of the organization? How do they feel about the significance of their contributions, or of themselves as members of the group? And what is it they do that gives purpose to their tasks and duties? That gives them personal satisfaction or gratification? The dismissive treatment of others by bureaucrats is purposeful, feeding the “Big Me, little you!” attitude that is seen so frequently in police stations, drivers’ license bureaus, and post offices-and in private sector organizations across the region. 2. Communication & Language: How do people address one another? Subordinates? Superiors? How to they convey work-related information? Is it a top-down system, with little lateral or horizontal communication? When you speak to them, do they avoid eye contact? When you ask questions, do they give the least information possible, making you probe to get the specific information you want? 3. Dress & Appearance: Is there anything distinctive about the way people dress, the types of attire they wear? Are rank and hierarchical differences immediately apparent? Do they appear energetic, enthusiastic? Or is their demeanor one of depression, disinterest, disengagement? 4. Food & Feeding Customs: Notice people at coffee breaks and in the cafeteria. Are they talking among themselves? Are co-workers
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staying together, or do they create distance? In short, is there any fellowship when it isn’t imposed? 5 . Time & Time Consciousness: Does work proceed as though minutes matter or do people extend each task to its maximum duration? Is there any sense of urgency, or is there none? Is the exit crowded at quitting time? Do people start preparing to leave 15 minutes or so ahead of lunch and quitting time? 6. Relationships & Sexuality: How is work organized? Are there all-male functions, all-female functions? Are there women in managerial roles, or only men? Are men and women colleagues, or is there an obvious division among them? 7. Values & Norms: What to do employees value about their work? About what practices do they say, “Oh, that’s normal!”? Are there performance standards? Are there ethical standards? Are some/all managers getting kick-backs from suppliers? Do gifts of cash expedite work processing or order sequencing? 8. Beliefs & Attitudes: How would you describe the philosophy of the work force? Of their managers? What are their attitudes toward the work, toward each other, toward customers or clients? What do they believe about the company, and its attitudes toward them? What kinds of beliefs do they have about their respective futures, and their ability to control and shape those futures? 9. Mental Habits & Learning: Are people awake at work? Or are they just drifting through the day, waiting to get away to their gardens? Is there any systematic effort to teach or train them, to allow them to advance within the company? Is there any inclination toward investing in learning on their own time? Of course they keep records, but is their system set up to support learning, prevention of similar errors in the future? 10. Work Habits & Practices: Do people approach their tasks in a methodical, get-it-done quickly manner. Do they reflect a “work ethic” that is the sustaining force of a productive work group? Are their work practices and processes designed to optimize resource use? Are there any signs of “arrangements” to isolate certain workers because of “cultural” differences? Such a compilation of information will provide insight into the similarities and differences between a leader’s expectations and the attitudes driving work-place activities. The observations one makes may be disappointing initially but, from a point of clarity, purposeful movement may be initiated.
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INVOKINGTHE EXPECT/ INSPECTMANAGEMENT STYLE Chapter Eleven presents a manager-education model devised to overcome some of the structural “blindness” programmed into managers across the region. It was calculated to make it easier for participants to release the rigidities and certainties of old management models and to consider more Western, contemporary, and success-producing models of management. If the model works, managers can begin to ask about differences in understandings about roles and expectations between themselves and workers. The contents of the model are based on the values implicit in the context of the expecdinspect management model. Specifically, if you expect something to happen, then it is necessary to inspect for progress while there still is time to make corrections, if needed. It is a fundamental component of a success-assuranceapproach to management. What do you expect? Can you describe it in simple terms that will not get tangled in the morass of linguistic ambiguity? What makes people effective in getting the results they seek is predicated on being clear about what they want. What Westerners want, however, and what people of the region hear may be incompatible, even when explained in painful detail. That wonderful old learning device, “vicarious experience” via reading, lectures, and simulations, usually is not compelling enough to overwhelm life experiences that are contrary. What people “know” out of their experience is that you give as little as possible because giving more than that makes no sense. There is no reward for doing more, and no punishment for doing less as long as “less” cannot be attributed to a single individual.
Teamwork Is Not Positive in All Instances For Westerners who want to build teams, it may come as a surprise to discover that workers in CEE know more about teams and teamwork than they are likely to be taught by outsiders. They have been “cooperating to survive” for many years, during and since the Soviet era. But what about the privatized companies in which many have worked after the Soviets departed? Well, who got control over those companies and what was the implicit contract with employees?
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Most of the smaller privatized companies went to people who were favored by local governments, which means people who were connected to Soviet-era leadership structures. For little real money, many companies were handed over to the same people who ran them for the Soviets-or to friends of the new “democratic” governments. As far as employees went, nothing changed. Same managers, same work, same salaries-until the money ran out. Many thousands of people work in plants where salaries often are partial or up to six months in arrears. But, where else can they go? One of the major examples of “friends” getting deals took place in Slovakia, when former premier Vladimir Meciar sold off many of the state assets to cronies, who used loans from state banks to pay for those assets. With weak bankruptcy laws and an inefficient court system, there is little the government or the National Property Fund can do to reclaim the lost cash. Some property may be reclaimed but, in all likelihood, it has been degraded by the new owners, few of whom ever made the capital investments required as part of their deals as new owners. Under-financed companies working with obsolete equipment become de fucto private welfare systems, paying employees when they can, and owing them when they can’t. Worse, the new owners typically cared nothing about Human Resource Development, invested nothing in plant improvements, and just tried to hold things together until some Westerners came along to buy the company so they could get rich. There have been, generally speaking, no strategic investments, no plans to take the companies out to the year 2005, because that kind of planning for the future was not part of organizational life. One exception to this generalization has been the sale of public utilities, from which governments asked for and got major revenue relationships with Western companies. Most of the new partners, however, had to accept restrictive covenants on employee retention, which meant becoming a de fucto part of the social support system while simultaneously introducing new technologies through existing work forces. In one instance, 12,000 employees were inherited for a system that needs only 5,000 and a condition of the sale was that no layoffs would occur for three years. Even at depressed wages, that is a lot of overhead to carry before profitability becomes possible.
Monkey Business How do people learn to behave in such self-defeating ways? Northbrook, Illinois-based entrepreneur and management educator
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Carlos Frum, who has spent time in the region contributing his experience to local manager development and entrepreneurial training efforts, offered the authors this powerful allegory to answer the question: Put five apes in a tall cage. There is a banana hanging on a string, and stairs under it. Soon, an ape will go to the stairs and begin to climb toward the banana. As soon as the ape starts up the stairs, spray all the apes with cold water. They will scream and race about the cage. But soon after the water is turned off, another ape will make a try for the banana. Douse the apes again. The next time an ape tries for the banana, the others will stop him. Replace one ape with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and starts for the stairs. To his horror, all the other apes attack him. But he tries again, only to suffer another attack. Replace yet another of the original apes. Soon, the new ape will go for the banana. He will be attacked by all the others, including the newcomer, who attacks more vigorously than the others. Replace a third original ape and he, too, will be attacked when he goes for the banana. The two other newcomer apes have no idea why they are attacking, why the stairs are forbidden territory, but peer pressure prevails. When all the original apes are replaced, the banana will hang on the string and the stairs will not be climbed. Why? Because that’s the way it’s always been around here. Re-programming the apes to allow their natural curiosity and banana-hunger to function probably will be much easier than dealing with the mass of people in CEE and all the punishment, repression, and fear that underlies what at first looks like their lack of ambition or achievement motivation. In fact, there is quite a lot of entrepreneurial ability that has had to be channeled into survival activities. Motivational theorist Frederick Hertzberg used to speak of people “jumping for the jelly beans” (going through the motions of their jobs) because that’s what they have been taught to do. He also spoke of holding the bone above a dog’s head so the dog would jump for it. Was the dog motivated? No, he just wanted the bone. The motivation was in the person holding the bone. It was he who wanted the dog to jump! Many in the West are accustomed to gimmicks and “artificial incentives” aimed at “go along and get along” workers who will “play along” with the manager. The “Hey, have I got a deal for you!” approach will not work in CEE, among people who have lived with disingenuity too long. There remains a large measure of distrust of all institutions-and of key persons within them-that must be remembered and factored into daily operating decisions.
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WISDOM CANNOT BE DISPENSED IN 15 MINUTES by Christine Schrage * Western business people have become so intent on the concept that “time is money” that researchers often approach them by stating a research instrument will only take a short period of time to complete. Until recently, however, Central Asian businessmen from former planned economies have not been asked their opinion and very wisely refrain from “just filling out the questionnaire.” During two years of researching how cultural differences affect joint venture success in Uzbekistan and other neighboring countries, it was a rare occasion to have an executive from that region not wanting to share about their culture, their business, and their country. Relationship building is an important aspect of their culture that should not be overlooked by potential partners from market economies. Besides, as one distinguished Uzbek gentleman put it, “You can’t dispense wisdom in 15 minutes.” The hospitable and warm nature of the people in these regions of the former Soviet Union provide an opportunity for western businesses to build a strong alliance. However, the tendency of executives from market economies to push for early agreements and “to get down to business” often backfires in these cultures. Information gathered from executives from both economic backgrounds involved in joint venture alliances provided some interesting results. Both the negotiation period and implementation periods of joint ventures were analyzed in the research. From the initial pilot study, it was determined that some cultural differences impact the joint ventures throughout the entire period, while others are stage-specific. *Authors’ note: Schrage visited Uzbekistan several times over a two-year period and developed her MBA thesis on negotiations between the Case Corporation and Uzbekistan for a cotton-harvester project. She is an instructor of Marketing and Management at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, where her interests are behavioral aspects of both domestic and international management. Another of her essays appears in Chapter Eight.
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One key factor of interest is that some cultural differences work to bring harmony to the alliance rather than to disrupt the processes. This initial analysis indicated the need for negotiators and directors to develop cultural sensitivity. The second level of research built upon the first. Data gathered from over 100 respondents split fairly evenly between market economy and centrally planned backgrounds provided some valuable insights for potential success in mixed economic alliances. Allow ample time for negotiations to occur-they will take longer in other economic or political environments. Take advantage of any social occasion you are invited to attend-it provides opportunities to build the business relationships so valued in this region. Make sure to check the protocol on what is expected (i.e., toasts, speeches, social interactions, and so on). Realize that most issues are only slightly disruptive to the process, so don’t get overwrought about the little things. They will iron out with trust and relationship building. Prepare for the risk of a legal and contract environment that is not as structured or detailed as in the West. Use their wonderful social and cultural environment to build trust, understanding, and to create harmony in the alliance. Provide training in basic Western business practices and theory to promote understanding. At the same time, ask questions about their practices so that you have a better understanding of their viewpoint. Your desire to comprehend their methods of business creates an environment of mutual respect. Find ways to keep the partners from losing “face” in front of associates-and never back them into a corner and leave them there. While many of these suggestions may seem like common sense, Western business partners too often overlook such simple methods to help to create an alliance that has the potential for a long and successful life.
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Revisiting Motivational Theory Despite all that has been written on the subject, both about techniques for motivating people and the ethics of using them, motivation remains an uncertain process. It requires clear goals, supported by a vision that all involved share, along with managerial will, rewards for accomplishing interim milestones or objectives, and continuous feedback about progress toward the goal. This process, of course, does not happen overnight. It also requires a strong and insightful manager, along with collaborative foremen and lead workers. As an alternative, and one that can empower individuals, consider the research of David McClelland on what he termed N ach-or the need to achieve. He proved to his satisfaction that it is not evenly distributed in any population. But-and this was the rationale for his extensive cross-cultural experiments-N ach can be developed among those who lack it if they want to learn and will stay in community with others who are also achievement-oriented. Not entirely unlike the apes mentioned previously, people who learn how achievers think, then mimic their behavior, and who then are rewarded tangibly and emotionally for movement toward definable so the theory goes. It objectives, can themselves become achievers-r is the basic motivational structure of multilevel sales organizations, whose members probably constitute most of the market for motivational audio and video tapes. If you hear someone ask about author Og Mandino, for instance, you can bet they are involved in multilevel sales as their “break out of the system” scheme. Even in America, however, where multilevel sales are a major mechanism of the upward mobility aspirations of the lower-middle class, and where there are ample “rags to riches” stories, those who succeed admit that it is necessary to recruit 100 people to find five with the focus, drive, and discipline to rise to profit-making levels in their pyramids, and only one of them will become a star performer. One of the differences between these numbers and the kinds of successes McClelland claimed is that he worked with business men and women-small business owners who were able to learn “achiever’s ways” to build their businesses. Subsequently, his methodologies proved successful with alcoholics and drug addicts who were committed to recovery. His partnership with another researcher, David Berlew, continues as the McBer Corporation, providing achievement training and recruiting/employee-screening consulting services.
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The references to motivation training in the U.S. is made because, there, most people (except second- or subsequent generations of welfare dependents) know that they will have to work, and that success largely is a matter of their own efforts. By contrast, in CEE, most of the people at work today grew up as “children of the State,” being taught that all good things would come to those who followed the dictates of the Party and the State. Those promises were broken. There still are many who are having difficulty learning the ways of the new economic realities visited upon them. This includes many who are in positions of governance, either as elected officials or functionaries in the bureaucracies. It also includes many in the media who, as with their Western counterparts, tend to be left-of-center in their thinking and writing. In stable economies, this is part of the “checks and balances” mechanism that ensures that the “common good” is observed and preserved.
Finding the Cultural Key One of the continuing problems in CEE is the extent to which most of the governments in the region are anti-business in their social programs and tax structures. Since the business acumen was stripped out of the region by the Soviet pogroms and purges, it is no wonder that elected bodies and their bureaucratic support systems are equally without business sense. Consultants from the West, with five or six years of experience in the region (which, in context, is a lot), concur that it is almost as though the gene pool has been purged of corporate and collaborative inclinations. There is no shortage of examples of individual efforts expended iut self-interest (as represented by the metaphor of the gardens in the region or the continuing issue of bribery and corruption), but little is said about the building-out of individual enterprises. One of the great speakers on the management training lecture circuit was the late Gordon Lippitt. He reflected in a graduate seminar on an embarrassing faux pus he committed while lecturing in the Netherlands, 20 years after the end of World War Two. “When I mentioned the power of collaboration,” he said, “I could feel the whole room go dead. For them, the term was still connected to those who collaborated with the Nazis, and evoked ugly and painful memories.”
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After so many years of freedom, visitors (and even residents) from the West often are insensitive to the negative impact of their words and stated expectations. How different is collaboration from collectivism in the semantics of the region, ignoring for the moment all the difficulties in translation among so many languages? How often are well-intentioned professionals tripped up by such confusions in meaning? How often are Westerners misunderstood in profound and fundamental ways? More often than most of us realize. In an effort to create some perspective on the pervasiveness and power of culture, consider a recent example straight out of a wellknown, successful American enterprise that failed. The failure was caused, in part, because of some of the same kinds of dynamics mentioned above.
A Crash Course in Corporate Culture Writing in the September-October 1999 Harvard Business Review, about the failure of his intriguing catalog sales company (“The Rise and Fall of the J. Peterman Company,’’ p. 64), J. Peterman, John Peterman described the perils of bringing successful people from other organizations (and organizational cultures) into one’s own. The J. Peterman corporate culture was built around take-charge, can-do people whose problem-solving skills were rewarded and nurtured. What Peterman found is that a carefully-developed culture can be contaminated, and turned quickly into a dysfunctional mass. When you don’t have time to offer continual positive reinforcement,” Peterman wrote, “the natural tendency is for the new people to slip back into old cultural habits. After all, that’s what they know best. In the absence of constant reminders that they now have the authority to do this, and that the organization is structured so that they can do that, they’ll recreate their old cultures and set up boundaries between people, levels, and departments when none previously existed.” If such destructive reversions can occur among proven American business men and women, working for high wages in an exciting environment, it is no wonder that overcoming culture is such a challenge in CEE! As Peterman noted, “ . . . the natural tendency . . . ” is difficult to overcome. What Peterman created was a culture-but it turned out that the culture could not be maintained without his personal direction, counsel, and coaching. Within CEE, with all its various local cultures, cus-
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toms, and languages, it is impossible to come up with a single prescription that an individual can follow. Most certainly, though, Westerners need to realize that they will be viewed by many as “contaminators” of cultures and will be resisted, however politely, by people who have been shaped by experiences and pressures that most Westerners cannot comprehend. We can read about it, talk about the Soviet experience, and attempt to connect with the people who lived it, but their experience and ours involve a difference in perceptions that never will be bridged. As the general semanticists say, “The map is not the territory.” Where culture is the “map,” extraordinary patience and sensitivity are required to negotiate the “territory” successfully. People in CEE and Russia may stand in line for their Big Macs, but this doesn’t mean that they are ready to accept all elements of the management cultures that were able to put McDonald’s and other Western corporations into the region. That is the puzzle, or the riddle, that this book attempts to make visible. In the next chapter, one of the co-authors chronicles her journey away from and her return to the land of her birth. In it, she describes the constant confrontations between value systems in conflict that continue and probably will into the foreseeable future.
CHAPTER 6
Working with a Professional Team
This chapter looks at the nuances of working with a professional team, and the differences that exist in the professional team environment that may not happen at the collegiate, league, or sponsor level. Some of the tips here can apply to the collegiate side, especially at the top levels of Division I sports. However, the difference here is that at the end of the day, professional sports is a job for the athlete. The amount of interest, even from the largest university, is different, and because there are real dollars involved, the perception, even though it has narrowed in the last 20 years, that these athletes are now “professional” as opposed to “amateur” collegians makes all the difference. Therefore, the way some situations are handled, or even the time spent attending to detail, may be different. Even at the largest collegiate institutions there are many opportunities to shift job focus depending on the time of year. The demands are year-round but can become seasonal. On the professional team level, the demands for one sport in most locales have now become year-round. Between off-season programs, the draft, player trading periods, free agency, Olympic events, and the need to keep the product relevant to business partners and season subscribers as teams justify the bottom line—there is very little time for offseason work. Like other roles in sports PR, the professional team publicist is evolving. The times of being the stats person, the media guy, the person dealing exclusively with the day-to-day has changed as teams look for more and more forms of publicity from the department. As long as there is balance, the change is not necessarily a bad thing. The team PR staff now has to deal with many more masters and find ways to understand the business side of sports more fully than before, which will make them more valuable. It will also expose 117
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the person to more areas of publicity than before, ranging from entertainment press to business press and others. It makes the job more challenging, but ultimately more rewarding for those willing to take the challenge. What you will find on the professional level is that many of the skills you have acquired in other places still apply, although you may have less time to use them. In many cases, desktop design and layout, Web site design, long feature writing, marketing and sales programs, and sometimes community relations fall into other professional areas of an organization. However, the fact that you have those skills and can relate to those departments will make you a better person in the team setting. They will help you break down barriers and get the job done quicker. The problem is that the level of importance of your media relations skills will probably give you less time to concentrate on areas outside of your chief function than before. On the team level are six principal roles as shown in Figure 6.1. In many instances, the importance of each role will vary by sport and marketplace. Examples of how bigger markets differ from smaller markets will be shown later in this chapter. However, the basic functions and the need to master each will not change in the general team environment. You work for a very recognizable brand in a sizeable market where everything your coaches and athletes do will get attention—for better or for worse. How you are able to maximize that exposure and help grow these very powerful brands will be the trick.
Team Spokesperson/Public Relations Unlike many college settings, the role of the team publicist in many instances is to be the daily face of the organization. Therefore, he or she is dealing with various forms of media on a 24/7 basis. He or she also gets the brunt of the focus from a very hungry public looking • • • • • •
Team spokesperson/public relations General media relations Credentialing Game operations Publications/record keeping Staff “coordinator”/budgeting/person about town
Figure 6.1
Principal roles of the team publicist.
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for information, whether they are calling in with questions or complaints, season subscribers looking for information, or just the man on the street. The position of the team PR person is very visible, no matter how he or she tries to be in the background. The need for media to get information on a timely basis makes the spokesperson the gatekeeper, and in many markets the gatekeeper can be the first and only contact with the public through mass media. As the team spokesperson, many challenges have to be carefully thought out. You are solely responsible in many cases for shaping the media story for the day, putting out too little or too much information, or unknowingly creating news or knowingly withholding confidential information. You speak not for yourself and sometimes not for an individual. You speak on behalf of a brand, which many times is larger than many Fortune 500 companies. It is a very serious role, and one that has to always be taken as such. Therefore, some basic rules to follow as a spokesperson are:
1. Think Before You Speak. Many times, the biggest issues arise because one is not prepared for a question, or doesn’t answer questions in the most direct way possible. Take a second and consider what it is you are saying before you say it. 2. Know with Whom You Are Speaking. Especially in major markets, calls can come in from media or fans at any given time. Never answer questions or give out information without knowing whom you are talking to. It is the media’s job to obtain information, sometimes at any cost. Always be aware of who is on the other end of the phone. 3. Make Sure the Information Is Accurate and Approved. You are speaking on behalf of the organization, so make sure everyone is aware of what you are giving out and when. It is much more important to be fair and accurate than timely. Acting too quickly can create a news cycle that is not needed. 4. Off the Record Is Usually Never Off the Record. In today’s society, the media need more and more information and need it quicker than ever before. Therefore, the need to befriend media and go “off the record” becomes more and more of an “easy” opportunity. Always know that you are speaking, even if it is your opinion, on behalf of the organization. If you are not sure, don’t give out what it is you know.
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Tip Always think that your boss/coach/athlete is in the room with you when media ask to go “off the record.” Is what you are saying in the best interests of the organization? If so, then take the opportunity. If not, think twice.
5. Going on Background Can Be the Way. As opposed to going off the record, making sure the media have the proper background from you, as spokesperson is always helpful. It will help form the opinion and you will have made sure the proper information is conveyed without giving your opinion. By background, you are making sure the media member fully understands the position of the organization as to what has already been made public record. You are making sure they have all the background, and do not assume they are aware of details they may not have taken into consideration that help establish your point. 6. You Are the Spokesperson, Not the Story. In today’s world it is very easy for the spokesperson to become part of the story, either intentionally or unintentionally. The media’s need for unnamed sources to fill out a story has become more and more important. Therefore, it remains your role to disseminate information but not create news. In many cases, it is even helpful to make sure your name is not a part of the news cycle. Team spokesperson can be more than sufficient. 7. Stay as Switzerland. You are also the neutral party in many cases, and it is good to stay that way when disseminating information. Distributing the facts the organization wants out there in a calm, professional, calculated way is what should be done. Getting emotional or opinionated is not helpful to anyone. 8. The Customer Is Always Right. It is true in sales, and in public relations. The role of the spokesperson is to disseminate information to the media and the public, and sometimes that information is disappointing, controversial, or difficult to explain. It is your job to anticipate a negative response and make sure you have your game plan to deal with the emotional or the disappointing. It is OK to placate hurt and emotional feelings as long as you are communicating the
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correct message for the organization. Your personal feelings here do not matter; you are speaking on behalf of a bigger entity and that must be conveyed. 9. Always Be Organized and Professional. Rarely will there be a moment when you are interacting with a member of the public or the media when you will not have a chance to make sure you look and act professionally. Many times, it is how you say as much as what you say that counts. Your confidence is key. Believe in the message, have all the information, anticipate the basic questions—and always think before you speak. 10. Remember the Soundbite. The media is very short tempered and short cycled these days. Make sure the key message is short and to the point, and what you are conveying is the facts the organization wants conveyed. Avoid going off on tangents. You are the messenger, not the message. It is always OK to say less than more.
The “Public” Relations Aspect Again, here there are many masters to serve. You as the spokesperson have to speak with the media, sometimes business partners, and sometimes fans. Never forget the audience and always remember the fans. These are the people who care about your product almost as much as we do, and sometimes even more. They are emotional, opinionated, passionate fanatics who do not have to be rational. They don’t even have to be sane. However, they are the consumer of your very expensive product, and we have to treat them as the great customers they are. Many times, this is the least interesting part of the position in a team professional sport. The fans are always coming up at the most inopportune times; they are sending the letters and the e-mails, leaving the messages, and most of the time are upset about something. They are there at the end of the day, after the game. Many times, they just want to vent—so let them. Also, many, many times they do not expect an answer. Take the time to listen and to read. If you feel a call to action is needed, occasionally surprise them and do that. The little acts of kindness will go a long way. There is another, sometimes even more serious role to listening and reading. As said before, sometimes fans act out of anger or frustration. There may be warning signs that come only to you of a more serious issue. Maybe they are considering a harmful action to
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themselves or to a team member or family member. If you don’t take the time to listen and read, there may be a bigger tragedy afoot. In many instances, a crank call or a hate letter can have serious implications and you as the public voice, the public face, have the ability to diffuse and protect. It is not your primary role as spokesperson, but it can be an important one.
General Media Relations This is the essence of the team publicist. The biggest difference with the professional side is the daily interaction with media, the volume of daily media, and the ability to control media flow and access. In many professional leagues, the media access time is mandated by the league and controlled by the publicity staff. The rules are easy to follow and are usually respected but usually not loved by members of the media. Once again, taking the time to prep, shape, and control messages is key. You may not be the person doing the speaking, but you have the ability to work with those of influence to make sure they are aware of who is asking questions, what is being said, and where the daily flow of media will go.
Media Training More and more, the idea of media training spokespeople is going from taboo to rote. Keep in mind there is a big difference from what was originally thought of as media training—namely, telling people what and when to say it—as opposed to what is being done with teams and organizations in sports and entertainment today. Today’s focus of media training is much more about shaping what an athlete or team spokesperson is saying than what he or she actually says. In many cases, the goal is for the athlete to understand his or her role in a media setting and what control he or she has in setting the tone, controlling the message, and making sure he or she understands his or her responsibility in the process. Why is this necessary? The media has a role to play, and especially in a professional team setting, the players and coaches have a responsibility to respect the media’s job and deal with it the best they can. After all, the media provide the organization with its greatest amount of publicity, whether TV, radio, print, or new media. It is also important that the athletes, coaches, and executives provide adequate and respectful answers to all topics, not necessarily just ones they want to answer. Properly executed media training will help everyone.
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Another aspect of proper media training is that it helps make all those in the organization more responsible for their actions, and in many cases, the athletes themselves will help understand each other better and even police each other when media issues come up. That being said, today’s 24/7 news coverage dictates that media access be controlled and that those speaking fully understand the power they have. That is where the publicist’s role in training and shaping the message comes in. The publicist has to be responsible prior to media interaction to explain and help craft the appropriate message. This takes several forms.
Formal Media Training Sessions These are done with all staff and players in the preseason. They explain the rules for interaction set by the club, some scenarios that have come up and how they can best be addressed, and a broad interaction and role-playing period in which media members or staff conduct mock interviews. Some teams will also go over whom the regular media members are, their tendencies, what has been done in the past, and how to be mindful of what could happen in the future. These sessions can last anywhere from 45 minutes to several hours. Sometimes, there is video presented to show examples as well. A majority of teams now also use professional trainers, either former journalists or professional speakers, to address this group. Sometimes, take-aways are also provided. In many cases on the professional side this is not the first time athletes or coaches have been taken through a media training program. Many colleges perform the service to a degree, as do sponsor companies young athletes may be involved with. However, the training provided by the team is essential, as the media scrutiny and expectations at the professional level is much different. The perception of an athlete as a professional is just that. He is no longer an amateur and this is a job, so the training needs to meet that standard.
Daily Follow-Up and Prep The daily follow-up is again a key component of media training. The publicist needs to constantly be aware of what issues his or her players and staff may face on a daily basis, and taking two or three minutes before the media interaction to remind the players and coaches of potential issues and answers is a big part of the job that
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is sometimes lost. The extra prep time can make the difference in avoiding controversy and gaining the trust of the athletes or having a scandal develop from nowhere. Again, the role is not to tell the person what to say. It is to merely remind him or her of the issues and the consequences, and make sure the athlete fully understands what surprises may be there. Is it foolproof? No. Will it be helpful? Absolutely.
The Q&A Prep For major press events and one-on-one interviews that are scheduled and substantial, it is best to do a full question and answer session with the principals involved. The preparation on the part of the publicist could take upwards of a few hours and is the standard for most CEOs and spokespersons in the corporate world. It has not been the standard in sports until recently. The written Q&A gives the publicist the chance to think like the journalist for an extended period, and present the best- and worst-case scenarios to his or her athlete and coach. It will be wide ranging and extensive, but is designed to make sure every potential point is covered and he or she is aware that anything can come up in an interview. The prep will also include the key messages the subject needs to convey during the interview, along with ways to make sure he or she can always work in the key points. It is a very useful tool.
Who Is Your Buddy? One of the key things to remember in the course of media training is the buddy idea. Buddy is never an option with anyone involved in professional sports PR, although each person involved (with the exception of the athlete) will try to be someone’s buddy along the way. The media member will try to buddy up to the PR guy, the coach, the player, the agent, as he tries to put himself into position for a story. It is also easy for the PR spot to become the buddy or protector of the player or coach, or even do the media guy favors as a buddy—none of which will have a great long-term effect. The players and athletes should be aware of the buddy idea and realize two things: the relationship with the media should always be cordial but professional, and as soon as they do a favor to their media buddy, all other media become their problem. Consistency again is key, as is professionalism. The relationship with the player and coach can also be a transient one. It is the nature of the business. The PR
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staff is there to protect the best interests of the brand, the players, and coaches. That will sometimes mean telling them or getting them to do things they don’t want to do for the good of the brand. That balance and professionalism again will lead the way to a good relationship.
Follow-Up Once any media interaction is completed, there is always time for review and follow-up. One of the biggest issues that can come up is that the publicist “checks the box” after the interview and moves on to whatever the next task is for the day. It is best to immediately review, take the temperature of the subject, get his or her opinion, and always follow up with the media person on his or her thoughts. This is the best way the publicist can tell if the training is paying off and how one can anticipate issues.
Dealing with the Demand One of the great things about the professional side of sports publicity is the immediate media attention one gets. One of the worst sides of the professional side is the immediate media attention one gets. Therefore, the balance needs to be struck to make sure you are best serving your constituents (the organization) while still feeding the demand the media has. Prioritizing on the professional level is always the biggest challenge. Some tips for getting the job done are as follows: Service long leads, but especially those who you see every day. The daily media—beat writers, TV, radio, and even Internet—are your priority. These are the folks you will live with, your players will live with, and are your best voice. It is important to always treat them fairly and evenly in good times and bad. This is a professional relationship and needs to be treated as such. They are not the enemy. They can be demanding but they have a job to do, as do you. You have to keep the best interests of the club at heart, and find ways to still service them. Going the extra mile for the little things—making sure you always call and keep them updated on facts, keeping their deadlines in mind when announcements are made, providing quotes and facts they may not be thinking of, providing third-party quotes, making sure technical information is explained in simple detail (on things like injuries, for example)—are just some of the ways to keep your main media as focused as possible. Can you be their friend?
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Depends. You can be respectful and professional, which is best. But being a caring person (knowing their family issues, wishing them happy holidays, making sure they get the giveaways that go to the fans on game nights) comes with the job as well. In times of crisis, those little things can go a long way. Be aware at all times the differences in the medium. In today’s 24/7 world, media are becoming more and more the problems of TV and Internet media vs. print. The immediacy of news gathering and posting has made the competition that much stiffer. That being said, there are always instances where TV and radio folks may have different needs and questions the print writers who do not have to work in the soundbite. This has to always be taken into account on the professional level. Keep the needs for each in mind during media availability and figure out how to best service both groups. Will each be happy? Probably not. But if it takes splitting some media sessions into “TV first” to get their soundbites and then doing print, so be it. The session may be a little repetitive, but will also be productive for all involved and both groups will appreciate the effort. Also, asking the media for feedback as to how the sessions go in advance will also be helpful as you plan your strategy. Knowing their needs will also avoid any problems if they do not get what they need. Pitch and plan. Even with the great amount of media coverage on the professional level, there is still the need and the ability to pitch and plan for the quiet day. Make sure you know your players and staff, and what other things may be going on in their lives or careers that may be of interest to them in getting some publicity. Being able to cash in a favor or two to get those valuable notes in will go a long way. Pitching some smaller but interesting stories also gives you the ability to assist the consistent writer TV personality in his or her job growth. At the end of the day, the fans still want to know more about their athletes, so pitching stories and having a list of ideas will help get those points out there. Know the editors and the decision makers. It sounds silly, but even though you may never see an editor or a radio or TV executive at a game or an event, it is still in your best interests to have a relationship with those people. In times of crisis, or maybe even in pitching an idea or dealing with a minor issue, it is good to have an understanding of the bigger picture of the sports section of the newspaper or TV section, and being able to call that senior person from time to time will be a big asset. Don’t hide behind e-mail, either. Still use the personal touches we talked about in the “pitch” section—the phone call and the note if a sit-down does not allow.
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Keep the front section in mind. Again, the demand will come from the sports in most cases, but being aware of current and community events will also help deal with demand. If there is a crisis or an issue in a city that has nothing to do with sports, many times media outlets will look for the celebrity opinion. You can easily head this off by making sure folks understand what they should or shouldn’t comment on outside of their daily work, and the best way to do that is to make sure you know what the issues of the day away from sports are. Know the columnists. Another issue we sometimes forget about is the influence of the columnists. They have the ability to shape opinion—sometimes just their opinion—with more influence than the editor or the beat writer. In many cases the resonance of their syndication ability (stories run in multiple outlets both in print and online) can surface for as long as a month. It is very important to always know when the columnist will be around, who he or she is talking to, and how you can help. It may be in casual conversation and sometimes may be obvious, but many times columnists will show up not knowing what they want to write, and if you know their tendencies you may be able to help shape an opinion. Given their stature as an entity may require a little more work on the day-to-day side, but the assistance and the “service with a smile” will pay off in the long run. The little guys count, too. One of the biggest issues in demand is dealing with the smaller outlets that will give you coverage: local cable networks, hometown papers, college radio stations, weekly papers, and niche Web sites. This coverage, welcomed in the minors and college, can sometimes be seen as a nuisance at the pro level. However, it is important to never underestimate the cumulative value of these outlets, and that this is where many of your regular journalists got their start. Can they be given every courtesy and every point of access the daily media gets? Probably not. However, setting aside quiet times for opportunities, acknowledging their work, asking them for copies of work they have done, and making sure they are seen as members of the media is important in serving the greater public. The long-lead management. Another big time management issue is the long lead and lifestyle publications. These are high-volume, nontraditional media opportunities that are essential in completing the professional publicity picture. They are also assets that can be pitched for great stories. However, there is the double-edged sword here as well. They will detract from media time your athletes and
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coaches spend with the regular coverage, and because they can come in and out they are not held accountable as regular sports media covering your team. Therefore, picking the spots, controlling the access, and making sure you understand their needs before agreeing to anything is very important. In many cases, the dollars and man hours they spend against a story is far greater than what your regular media would do. That has to be remembered and factored in. Also, always remember the risk you run is that the story can never appear if it is not meeting the agenda of the outlet. If there is not enough edge or freshness, the work will go to naught. Therefore, make sure all involved from both sides understand that before making a determination.
Example During one preseason, the New York Knicks worked with Life Magazine to do a behind-the-scenes photo shoot of what it is like to be at training camp. The magazine gave the team six digital cameras for players and staff to use over a one-month period, shooting behind-the-scenes photos the magazine would then edit together. It was to be exclusive to Life, and would run in early January. After taking literally hundreds of photos and passing up on two similar opportunities with other local outlets, Life determined that the photos were not edgy or creative enough, and the photo spread never ran.
National and visiting broadcasters. Usually, this is more of a game day opportunity, but the ability to effectively use the national and visiting broadcasters as a PR asset is more and more valuable as teams grow their profiles to a more regional and national level. Given the turnover of players, the use of the Internet to expose more fans to a brand and the use of more regional sponsors, making sure the national broadcasters have up-to-date community and personality profiles on players, making sure visiting teams know what is going on with the franchise, should be a key part of the media demand. In recent years, the focus was (and should still be) on the local broadcast as the way to communicate with the fan base. However, having messages and video delivered by visiting broadcasters and the national broadcasts is also a great benefit.
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Don’t forget who pays the bills. At the end of the day, with all the media demands out there to prioritize, the rightsholders, nationally and locally, should get the brunt of primary attention. Now, sometimes on the pro level this will cause great conflict. There will be times when a rightsholder such as OLN (now VERSUS) at the start of the NHL deal might not have the exposure or brand power as another potential partner (ESPN), but the dollars invested and the time spent in promotion make the decision a tough one with regard to access and coverage. At the end of the day, the rightsholder “pressure” should make the decision clear, but in some cases, the “weight” delivered by the dollar sign has to be considered strong. This is also a two-way street. You as the publicist should also be able to lean on the rightsholders in a creative and tactful way to make sure they are maximizing their time with you. Book ’em. Another area of demand management is the booking of guests on shows. This will include everything from regular sports talk radio shows to national shows such as David Letterman and The Tonight Show. It is always important to ask some key questions before confirming the booking schedule, and they should include:
• Who are the other guests? You want to make sure there are no conflicts of interest, or your person is not being set up for an uncomfortable situation. • Is it live? You always need to know the difference between a show going on live or on tape. It can affect how guests will feel about doing the show and how they come across. • What is the time commitment? Many times, shows may ask guests to arrive two hours prior to air. It is important to find out when their segment will be on the show. • Is there a preinterview? The preinterview is actually very helpful. It will give both you and your guest an idea of what type of questions may be asked. It is usually done by a producer, sometimes as much as a day or two before the show. • Is it a sitdown or an activity? Many times, guests may not be asked, especially if they are athletes, just to sit and answer questions. If there is a skit of some sort involved, you have to be able to know and be sure the guest is comfortable with the interaction. Sometimes, what seems funny to an audience or a host is not funny to a subject.
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• Have they done their prep? Even if they say all their background work is done, it is important to send them whatever information you want included in the interview. Take nothing for granted. • Do they have photographers? It’s always good to make sure there are stills available for you to use in additional publicity opportunities. • Exclusive? Many times shows will ask for an exclusive; namely, that the guest does not appear in a similar show for a period of time before. When dealing with athletes on a media tour, that is sometimes difficult to manage, and you may have to make some hard decisions to do or not do a show. The quantity over quality issue has to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. It is important to be up-front as much as possible with the show producer on this matter. Those simple questions can help manage the booking process, and make sure you are able to best deal with the interview process.
Dealing with the Superstar in the Team Setting One of the great experiences in team sports is to work with an athlete or athletes who are even beyond the gifted—the superstar. In this day and age, a sport as it becomes entertainment is even more susceptible to the “moment” for the individual in a team sport. The flamboyant and the unusual have become the media attention getters (see Dennis Rodman and John Rocker), as opposed to those who do their job (Steve Nash, Cal Ripken) and become pillars of the community. Still, with both groups, the amount of increased media exposure (hopefully) sets them apart and makes the publicist’s job more enriching and more interesting. When dealing with the superstar or the media star, there are always several rules of thumb to keep in mind, balance out, and make sure are communicated well. Communicate effectively throughout the process. One of the biggest problems with the superstar is scheduling. Agents, sponsors, community groups, and team personnel will all pull at the superstar’s time to satisfy their needs. It is very important for you as the publicist to unite the group and make sure each minute is scheduled out, and not over scheduled. All sides should appreciate the effort.
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Example Marcus Camby of the Denver Nuggets is very focused on his community activity, and annually schedules a “March with Marcus” Day, when he goes to school, literally walking with kids through the streets as the kids begin the school year. He has done this in every city he has been in. Teams can work with him and use this as a time for access and publicity for other opportunities as well, such as making that day the first day individual or group tickets will go on sale. By combining that message with this great community event, you are able to get broader coverage for both the marketing and community sides, while helping the player promote what is important to him—his work with kids. Without communication, the groups would work in a vacuum and do these events on different days, losing that combined media impact and even splitting media coverage. Work to find consistent time for daily media. In some cases, team PR folks have worked to set up a special designated time each day after practice or before a game to make sure the larger group of media gets time with the athlete. As long as this is spelled out in advance and proper notification is given that this will be the media’s only access time, it can work well when there is large demand. It is also important to coordinate this time with the home PR staff when on the road, so all possible media are not overlooked.
Example When he began his career in the NBA with the Golden State Warriors, there was a huge media demand in every city for Chris Webber. He was a member of the University of Michigan’s “Fab Five,” telegenic, highly talented, and always a little controversial. Therefore, the Warriors established a time prior to the team arriving at the arena when media in that city could talk to Webber. It was usually at the team hotel, and made the process easier and fair for everyone. Some media objected about having to go the extra distance to talk to him, but overall it worked effectively for everyone.
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Keep the athlete involved in the process. The media drain on an athlete on a daily basis can be significant as repetition sets in. It is very important to avoid surprises with the athlete and explain the reasons for the session. Quick updates on questions and answers are also important here. You are there to protect and maximize his or her time while still being professional. You will know what his or her interests are and be able to know when and how to push the right buttons to get stories done correctly.
Example Grant Hill has enjoyed tremendous notoriety as a role model both on and off the basketball court. However, especially given the health problems he has experienced later in his career, his time with the media was very limited. One of Grant’s other passions was collecting African American art. It was a side of Hill that showed off his off-court side, and gave people a glimpse into what his post-career ambitions could be as a collector. It also gave Hill an opportunity to use his notoriety to expose some rising artists to a different world. The Orlando Magic worked with Grant’s foundation and his agents to identify the opportunity and worked closely with him to create a tour of 46 pieces of his art in seven cities. He was thoroughly involved in identifying the cities, selecting the artists, and reviewing the media that could cover the exhibits. The result was a very big positive for all involved. It showed Grant’s other interests, got him talking about basketball in other markets, and helped him grow one of his big passions, which made him a strong advocate of the efforts of all those who had helped him out.
Repeatedly review the requests. Keep constant lists of media requests and opportunities completed, and make sure efforts are consistent to maximize exposure for all concerned. The one-on-one major hits may detract from some smaller more popular pieces, but over the long haul what is best for the brand is what’s best for the process. Use economies of scale whenever possible. If your star is doing a community appearance or a sponsor event, make sure those media
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members who have not been able to get to him or her are aware, and explain that this may be their best shot to attain the access. Many times, they are surprised that the athlete is more accessible in that setting and can get them more time away from the usual media scrummage.
Example Peyton (Indianapolis Colts) and Eli Manning (New York Giants) may be doing a photo shoot on NFL apparel for Reebok during the preseason. During the shoot there is usually a great deal of downtime, so both teams and Reebok worked together to find reporters, both on the business and the sports side, who had been trying to get the brothers together for a group interview. The result is a much more relaxed setting, and larger, broader stories than what could happen if they were talked to separately.
Make everyone the hero when media attend. By being the coordinator of events for the superstar, you are in a position to champion his or her causes or sponsors as well. Assist whenever you can (but avoid conflicts with team partners), and when the events do get media play, make sure the agent or business manager gets sets of clips/video as an FYI. Use your rightsholders as a benefit. Again, access is key. Giving the rightsholder a little extra time as a “reward” for covering a community or business sponsor event is the right thing to do, and will score points with everyone. The rightsholders are the local and national television and radio outlets who literally pay fees, usually in the hundreds to millions of dollars, to broadcast your team and/or your leagues games. Don’t become “his or her” guy or gal. Despite all the time and effort you may spend with superstars assisting and prepping them, your primary duty remains to the team and the brand. Athletes will change places more than brands will, and it is important to make sure you pay proper attention to all those on your team. Avoid the jealousy issue as much as you can, and find ways to include and work with everyone.
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Be consistent and fair, don’t be the apologist. To get and maintain the respect of the athlete, it is important to have him or her understand that you have everyone’s best interests at heart at all times. There will be things he or she may not want to do but will have to. There will be times when he or she does not want to speak to the media. These will happen, and you will have to deal with them. Keeping a list of things turned down will help to show him or her at the appropriate time. Also, having the agent or business manager as an ally is important. If you treat them with respect, in most cases you will get the respect you need and deserve. Moreover, be true to your word. If you say an interview session is a half hour, try to keep it within that time frame. If a photo shoot will be all day, you also need to make sure they understand that and buy in with your help. Include the coach. Sometimes in the rush to placate the athlete and his group we forget about the folks who are most directly affected by the demands of the media on the superstar—the coach and general manager. It is very important they are included in the process from the beginning and you get as much buy in as possible. A happy and healthy superstar will make the best story for everyone.
Credentialing the Media Another necessary evil in all sports, but especially on the professional side, is credentialing and media seating. Credentialing is the detailed assigning of media credentials to cover the team. Credentials are issued day by day or by the season, and each team is able to determine a pecking order depending on their requirements. The leagues will also issue season credentials to select national media, who are able to go from city to city. Usually, these media will also be assigned a local credential through the home team. The process is similar but is usually less formal on the collegiate and the event side, except at the highest levels of Division I sports. Credentials today may also include things like holograms and bar codes to make them easier to track and assist with security. In some cases, teams have put bar codes on their season credentials, which media can then use as a debit card for media food and sometimes for access to and from certain areas. Traditionally, most teams still use some kind of color differentiation system to distinguish both type of access (locker room only, pregame, postgame, field access) and day when access is
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allowed (game day only, practice only, etc.). It has to be visually simple, so security and staff can easily make a differentiation in a large crowd. Post 9/11, the need for more stringent crackdown on credentials has become a key factor. Also, the volume of outlets getting credentials and what are considered legitimate credentials at the professional level is different in most instances than the collegiate or minor league level, and will take a good deal of initial time. The politics of credentialing numbers will also factor into the equation, along with figuring out seating arrangements on a game-by-game basis. In many instances, the final seating category can be relatively easy. However, the way credentials are administered is different in each city and for each team. While some teams may grant a good number of Web site credentials, others may not. International media, the largest growing amount of requests, are usually dictated by the league and then handed down to the teams for seating. Credentials also have to allow pre- and postgame access (both or neither), practice access, photo access, and space. The policing of credentials, and potential abuse by members of the media, is another key component to the process. The language on all credentials is dictated by the leagues, respectively, but the actual assigning is at the discretion of the team. The one thing always to remember is that the name and responsibility of the actions for all credentialed rest with the team PR staff, and must be taken seriously.
Example Recently, a long-standing member of the New York media from a suburban small television service was caught selling his season credentials from one team on eBay. He would use one credential for himself and then have a guest cameraman come into the locker room with him. That person would be whomever bought the credential. Although many times the cameraman looked legitimate, he was not. The abuse was caught and the person was both arrested and banned by all New York area teams. Figure 6.2 lists the do’s and don’t when dealing with credentials.
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Credential Notes: 1. Always have requests sent on letterhead. 2. Photo IDs and wavers are a must. 3. No matter what level you are at, everyone is responsible for policing credentials. 4. Make sure whatever league you are involved with has final say on wording and sign off. 5. Make sure you have adequate seating to rotate smaller publications and groups. 6. Never use the same credential less than three games apart. Never use the same credential look in consecutive seasons. Figure 6.2
Do’s and don’ts when dealing with credentials.
Game Operations On the professional level, the role of game operations usually does not fall to the public relations staff as it does at the collegiate level. For the most part, a game operations group, usually overseen by the marketing group, will handle many of the functions the SID would handle. The PR staff is usually responsible for the essentials—clock and statistical keeping and the dissemination of information. However, the role of promotions usually goes to a separate group. Volume of duties in the two roles is the reason for the difference. The amount of media coverage and media needs take priority over the regular duties at the professional level. You will be involved in the countdown and coordination of pregame and in-game activities, but rarely will you be responsible for them. The duties of game operations fall to making sure all media are credentialed and seated, information is organized and disseminated, and all media availability is coordinated correctly. During a game, the PR staff will mainly concentrate on media relations and troubleshooting potential problems. The leagues also designate many of the on- and off-limits spots for camera positions, so the coordination of spots again is the principle role. It is extremely busy and demanding, but the great thing about professional leagues is that the duties are pretty clearly defined, and the support is provided to make sure you are able to handle the correct PR ability.
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Publications and Record Keeping Again, the good news here is that the volume of publications is greatly decreased for the college ranks. In many cases these days, even the game programs have fallen away and are under the domain of the marketing staff. For the most part, even Web site management does not fall to public relations. What does fall is the media guide and the game notes, two very high-volume pieces essential to team business. There is also a yearbook in many cases, which may also fall under team PR, but the chief function remains the other two.
The Professional Team Media Guide The hardcopy of the media guide, with all its information dated the minute the season starts, remains the backbone of team publicity publications. The color covers, color stock photos, and team historical data have not changed in over 20 years. It remains perhaps the biggest cost in the PR budget. The average across sports is roughly $75–100, and coupled with the mailing costs, easily takes up probably between 20–30% of most team PR budgets. The average page count in the 5 × 9 standard size is between 300–350 pages, with most teams determining the volume by size of market. For example, while the New York Knicks may order 13,000 copies of their guide for the season, the Sacramento Kings may order 8000 copies. The guide is rarely seen as a money maker. It is usually included in season subscriber benefits and is sold in-arena and in-stadium, but less than 10% of monies spent are usually made back. The guide is there to do one thing—to service the media. It is rarely used as a recruiting tool as it is in college, and its shelf life is limited because of the volume of games and length of season in most team sports. What it is is a historical record keeper for teams. It houses all points of interest the media may need during the season, and player and staff data. It is referred to on a daily basis by media members, and is distributed on a team-by-team basis to all media in their area. For example, the Dallas Morning News and the Seattle Post Intellingencer and ESPN all receive full sets of team guides—in many cases in boxes—at the beginning of each professional season. They are used daily by the staff. Beat writers receive their sets usually at home. Any mistakes are kept in those boxes and could be made useful at any time, so accuracy is key.
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The Value of the Notes Another aspect of team publicity grossly undervalued is the notes. Game notes, quote sheets, daily updates all have great value to a media throng that continues to grow its thirst for information. The great thing about the professional team side is that the leagues all employ a stats service—the Elias Sports Bureau—to keep almost hourly updated statistical information that is done by the team and the league at the collegiate level. That frees up a great deal of time and effort for the team publicity staff. The effort then goes to discerning what information is needed and what is relevant for the media covering the team on a micro basis. We went over the need for good and accurate notes earlier, but it is important to make sure that timing on the professional level is key. Each league provides a series of deadlines for when notes have to be provided for media access. The important thing is to make sure the earnestness of posting notes does not lead to errors of fact. Again, the chief use for game notes may be at the game itself. However, once notes live on the Web, if they are inaccurate there is little chance to retrieve. It is also very important to do your own checking with your media to make sure the information you are giving them is useful and timely, and what you are spending a great amount of time on makes sense to them. Collecting “best practices” from places also makes sense. Clean, concise, and easy to read are key. The same goes with postgame (and sometimes pregame) quotes and facts. Keeping in mind the demands of media on deadline and what they need to complete their picture to your fans is key. Always be aware of career highs and lows, records broken, streaks broken and continued, and keep the notes and quotes short and to the point. The need for a transcription is rarely needed postgame—the need for relevant information about the game’s heroes and goats is most relevant. Also, remember that you are not the reporter in the postgame situation, you are the transcriber providing the service. Make sure the tape has what he or she said exactly. It will greatly help avoid controversy and the misquote by athletes and coaches.
Coordinating with Others—Balancing the Business Side and the “Team Sport” Side Although the balance of the team public relations function still resides with what goes on in and around the playing of games, there
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are still a number of elements regardless of what position you hold on the staff that you need to always be aware of.
Cost Justification and Budget If you are a department head, always be aware of what costs are. The biggest issue with public relations is usually it is very hard to track actual return on investment, which is becoming more and more of an issue as time moves along. Even with franchises that spend several million dollars on the business of PR, the actual number will be small considering the team operating budget. That being said, it is very important to look at needs vs. expenses on the little things you may hit. Here are some examples: • Getting and making dubs vs. requesting from a service. In this day and age, most people have access to a CD burner or highend VCR for recording team publicity events. In many cases, the quality of those dubs are near to what you may get from a video monitoring service anyway. Always ask for a dub from the TV entity you are working with regardless for your records. • Don’t order things such as still photos or high-end video stock for dubbing unless you really need it for a specific purpose. In many cases, the volume one can buy at a Costco or Best Buy is just as good as what you can get from a distributor. • A huge part of budgets in many places comes from the overnight shipping industry. If you can use less expensive overnight costs, especially just going across town, then do it. Try to lower those numbers every year and make sure folks realize the effort made. Now, even sending large, compacted video and print files online is also a great alternative to shipping and is sometimes preferred. • Try to think like a finance department in advance. Always justify game night staff size, photo costs, and printing costs ahead of time. The last thing someone wants to hear is, “this is the way it is always done.” In this environment, that will not always work. • If there is a high-end cost that is unbudgeted, don’t hide it; explain and justify it. • The budgeting process must be inclusive of the entire staff. The department head will be responsible, but like the PR project or game night event, everyone should be aware of costs before the fact. Buy-in is key.
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• Lastly, don’t be cheap, but be professional. Spend wisely and review periodically. It will help you be a more well-rounded person and garner more respect from other members of the organization.
Understanding the Business and Marketing Side Because of the amount of time spent with team business, many times the PR group can suffer from a lack of awareness or aloofness with regard to the team business side. This was acceptable for a very long time, largely because of the time and distance that sometimes existed to get the job done. With the advent of cell phones and e-mail, that distance has now shrunk, and the communication between the two sides sometimes falls to the PR group. Especially in the offseason and in downtime, taking the opportunity to meet and discuss other areas of team business, and giving input, will be a huge help in uniting these sometimes divergent groups. PR in many cases needs to be the advocate and the link to players and coaches from the front office—you have the opportunity to work both sides of the road without getting run over. It is a very rare opportunity, but one that is to be taken as a challenge to improve the overall culture. Many times, folks on the business side will feel isolated from daily team goings-on. Making sure they are “in the loop” is a huge help. Some small thoughts on unity: • Use e-mail as an ally to make sure everyone in the front office is aware of team activity. If there are press releases, media events, or special circumstances, make sure everyone knows about them. The worst thing a person in a team setting can feel is left out. • Schedule time to talk to staff members not regularly around the team about team comings and goings and get their opinion on things. This is not to be a gossip session or to get a “scoop” on players and coaches; it is to make sure folks understand issues you may be able to clear up. • The easiest way to communicate clear information to everyone in the organization is through a monthly fact sheet. Simple data about the past, present, and future of the team provided by the PR staff can literally keep everyone “on the same page” and feel included.
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• If things go wrong or a miscommunication results in an issue with the players or a coach through another department, find ways to help fix the problem. It is very easy to add to a problem; it is harder to lift people up when they are down. • Conversely, when things go right with an event involving other parts of the staff, if you have the opportunity to mention something to a player or coach about someone he or she may not know well, then do so. Make sure credit is given where it is due.
In Conclusion The team publicist at the professional level has to serve an evergrowing number of masters, perhaps more so than in any area of sports publicity. He or she has to make sure the quality control of information released is fair, accurate, and consistent. He or she must make sure the business side and the “sports” side are getting a fair return on their investment in his or her product. At the same time, the publicist and staff must find new and unique ways to try to placate a 24/7 news cycle that is fair and still maintains the integrity of the organization at every turn. All the while, those goals must be achieved on a very tight budget and with limited staff. The cycle of work has gone from “seasonal” to year-round, with very little downtime, making it ever more challenging as sports and entertainment grow into one.
FINDING POINTSOF SYNTHESIS Most managers and executives in CEE recognize the competitive disadvantages they face, and want to acquire Western techniques for manipulating the variables impacting their organizations. Among some who are owners, however, the prospect of losing prerogatives from management techniques based on participation is a major emotional obstacle. Consider the Ph.D.-level engineer who is articulate in three languages, has built an effective organization, and says, “I am a one-third owner and I want to make one-third of the decisions.” Which third does he want? The third that keeps his partners from doing things that constrict his own freedom to do essentially everything he wants to do. When he fears he may be confronted with information that would diminish his control, he boycotts meetings rather than engaging in discussions. He has found that this kind of petulant behavior works to control his partners. He knows that withholding his participation can kill their initiatives.
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He and his colleagues have built a substantial and growing business, dealing with innovative technologies, but his need for control likely will sabotage his company’s growth and survival. Like many of his counterparts, he is unable to take the small steps toward new ways of working and managing that could lead to a more intelligent use of their collective intellectual and financial resources. Is this manager an exception? Possibly, both in his achievements and in his myopia. The reasons for including this example are to highlight the mistrust of those Western management techniques that have worked so well in so many companies-techniques that many local managers think are successful only in the West. In CEE, there is resentment among many people over the broken promises of capitalism. They have seen an abundance of national wealth disappear into the pockets of those who were positioned to take advantage of early privatization scams. This collective experience has created the impression that what capitalism offers is economic subjugation rather than the socio-political oppression of Soviet communism.
As Always, Women Suffer Despite the presence of cell phones and expensive German cars, life continues to be difficult economically for most of the people in the regionespecially for women, many of whom are heads of households. Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State (U.S.), speaking on October 8, 1999, to the Conference on Women and Democracy in Reykjavik, Iceland, said: Women held 14 million of the 25 million jobs lost (in the region) since the dissolution of the Soviet system. The aftershocks of that momentous event have hit hardest those sectors of the economy that have traditionally employed women-medicine, bookkeeping, teaching. Women also are disproportionately the victims of the rise in crime and the fall of health care. And then there’s a painful political irony: With the spread of democracy in what used to be the Communist countries, there’s been a 10 to 18 percent drop in the number of women elected to the national legislatures of the region over the past 10 years. The irony that Secretary Talbott mentioned likely will intensify. The more ephemeral the good fortune of the successful appears, the more
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they revert to proven, culturally congruent ways of managing and owning enterprises. And that means fewer opportunities for women. The title of Talbott’s paper was “Progress and Hardship: Women as a Force for Change in the Northern Neighborhood.” In the Northern neighborhood and below, talks at the American Chamber of Commerce, and attendance at lectures by itinerant consultants are insufficient to close the gap between what people over here know that works and what they hear as preaching about economic gospels from another universe. Women’s rights, developing human resources, and encouraging participation and leadership all take a back seat as the prevailing, maledominated ethos is reinforced. The focal points are scarcity and limited opportunities rather than an expanding economic environment. An American businessman who is buildmg a chain of hardware and paint stores in Lithuania confided that all of his employees are women except for a couple of men who are needed for heavy liftmg. “In Lithuania, women do most of the work, but their men treat them with great disrespect.” As a matter of perspective, Lithuania is not a particularly male-oriented culture. Certainly, the kind of financial support for women as entrepreneurs and activists committed at the Reykjavik conference will be necessary. At the 1999 conference, the U.S. pledged a million dollars to match the contribution of the Nordic Investment Bank to support programs for women in Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Changing attitudes and behaviors deeply rooted in culture, however, will be accomplished only by example. Probably the example that will work best will come with pay equity for men and women, which is still an issue in CEE-and probably in most other places as well, except possibly for the Scandinavian countries in which so much has been done to create parity in all phases of life and work. Also, it needs to be remembered that in the Soviet system, with its veneration of the citizenworker, women had the opportunity to ascend into the professions, because they were held of lower value than “workers.” As Western concepts of contribution and value become more pervasive within the region, professional pay scales may rise sharply, pulling women’s salaries up with them. When this happens, however, expect that men will attempt to constrain these advances.
The Strength of Culture Manchester Center, Vermont-based Curt Russell has worked in the region long enough to speak with authority. He reminded attendees at
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the 1999 Latvian Business School HR Conference in Riga, that “Culture is 100 times stronger than the efforts to change it.” Russell went on to say that accomplishing change in organizations and in cultures is a complex process-not because the process is unmanageable, but because there are so many variables that can intervene. More than the “wild card” variables that appear (like deaths or defections among corporate staff, strikes, etc.), whatever is the target of change efforts already is rooted in the organizational culture. That predicts a host of definable variables (if the effort is made to identify them). Russell explained that between the culture-that-is and the changes being sought are four major variables: 1. Skills of both change agents and targets of change. The change agents have to be persistent and effective in their use of change-inducing techniques. The people whose behavior must change (and all change involves changes in behavior by and among individuals) must have skills to support the new behaviors. “Skills” must be viewed in the broadest possible context, because the skills involved may be interpersonal, technical, or social. 2. Incentives to drive movement toward change goals. Why should I? Why should we care? What’s in it for us? What happens if I don’t participate? Does anyone notice? Does anyone say “thank you” for movement in the right direction? 3. Resources must be available. Resources, again, must be viewed in their most generic context, and will be highly situation-specific. This means that something more than money, materials, and people may be required. Increasingly, the “something more” could be technologybased. The major missing resource in the region, however, is leadership, possibly because the focus for so long has been on individual and familial survival. 4. Actions have to be initiated and maintained. Among the variables Russell mentioned are customer satisfaction, employee motivation, and fiscal performance which, at first glance, may not seem to fit directly with “action.” When the reaction to those three issues is considered, however, this is where another host of independent varia bles resides that can appear instantly and disrupt momentum-or prevent it from happening at all. These elements, and how he has positioned them, makes Russell’s model both intellectually interesting and illuminating when applied to actual change situations. For more information, connect with
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Acknowledging Disincentives Swinging back from the world of theoretical constructs to the world of opportunities and obstacles that operate in CEE, it is possible that there are more disincentives to change than there are incentives. Further, the conceptual structures that underlie all disciplined action have their roots in practiced repetitions that become culturally integrated as though the actions supported are ordained rather than arbitrary. Consider religious and military rituals and the way they are held dear by those who invested time and energy in practiced repetitions that become comforting, as well as habitual. When proposed changes will remove comforting and habitual responses-r self-confirming attitudes, such as superiority over others because of sexual or racial differences-what is being offered that will be equally comforting? And how can the substitute comfort be sold? It is common to hear that people resist change. That is not correct! People resist changes that they do not understand and that may put them in a disadvantageous position. This means that change planning and management must include large components of education or information sharing with those whose patterns of behavior and responses are to be changed. This is why authority alone generally is not adequate to invoke lasting change, as affirmed in the old adage that asserts, “One who is changed against his will is of the same opinion still.” Some useful questions to ask when planning change are:
1. Why do we want this change to come about? 2. How can we describe what we want people to do differently? 3. How are they most likely going to hear what we plan to say?
How can we get around those objections? How can we get them started? How can we keep them moving? How will we know when they have moved enough? 8. What “pot of gold” is at the end of this rainbow for them (who have to do the moving) and for those of us who will do the pushinglpulling?
4. 5. 6. 7.
Here, where many inefficient plants were closed and others downsized in a frenzy of streamlining for profitable operation, structural unemployment was the result which, depending on the part of the region, can approach or exceed 20 percent. This fact keeps wages depressed which, in turn, keeps individual productivity lower than it could be.
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Via satellite dishes and cable, “average” workers see CNN, BBC, and are very aware of the disparity between “local wages” and those paid for comparable work in other countries, and especially to expatriates in their own country. This is important information when considering incentives and motivating employees to make more than minimal efforts.
The Hazards of Responsibility When local national managers realize that more authority will not create needed productivity-as it did not for the Soviets and has been proved ineffective in the West-a “teachable moment” will have been reached. Then, Western management and manufacturing techniques become more credible to managers, and progress in “partnerships” between managers and workers become more likely. Are such new relationships “comforting” to either managers or workers? Western bias argues that they are! Local experience, though, raises doubts. People who have learned that visibility and responsibility offer as many hazards as benefits will require some convincing. Warsaw-based Jacob Leja, country manager for the search firm tmp.worldwide in Poland, has a response to those who need convincing: One of our toughest jobs is to remind local managers that communism is long gone. Managers in Poland need to learn to be clear about what they expect from their team members, and to be fully responsible for getting targeted results. When your people start acting more like passengers than seamen, it’s time to make consequences clear to them-and that includes firing. People weren’t fired for lack of achievement-in fact, no one was supposed to achieve under the old system. But now, managers are measured by results, and this means that when people choose not to perform as required, it’s time to get your courage up and to tell them good-bye. Repeatedly, the message is the same: there are some tough lessons that local people have to learn about working effectively in Westernstyle organizations. It is not, as some allege, only about money. It is about getting a lot of people to learn new ways of working together instead of doing old things in old ways that turn out to be counterproductive.
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Looking for the Communists Westerners sometimes wonder where the Communists are. No one they meet seems to have been a Party member-or will admit it. In fact, most people did not belong to the Party. Yes, they may have been Young Pioneers (scouts),or members of the Komsomol as high school or university students-because everyone was. But Party membership was, for many, only by invitation. Who was invited? Those who were identified as promotable to leadership roles. Those who were considered eligible to be school principals, for example, would be invited to meet Party leaders so that their opportunities could be discussed. On such a basis, one might join the Party for professional advancement without any socialist fervor or involvement other than attending functions deemed mandatory. Numerically, then, the majority of people were not Communist Party members because they were not in high-visibility roles. This would extend to most of the workers (for whom the Party supposedly existed to support)-people who went with their families to gardens after work, using the long hours of summer sunlight to get in a second day of work for the family larder. Who among them will want to compromise that comfortable routine to risk becoming “the tall blade of grass that will be cut”? Who will risk becoming one who speaks up at meetings-who proposes better, faster, cheaper ways to do work, representing procedural changes their managers have not seen? This is a necessary line of inquiry for Western companies arriving late on the scene because, while wages still are favorable, employee attitudes may be hardening in favor of the old ways at the same time that other costs are increasing. Cultural issues need to be factored in-sensitivity about “teachable” and “learnable,” about being able to package productivity-related concepts. That way, Western values can be accepted into the cultural framework of the community and allowed to become central elements in the culture of the organization. Westerners tend to cluster around the two poles of cultural sensitivity-being substantially culturally insensitive, or worrying too much about it. Culture sometimes is viewed differently by “Westernized” local nationals. When interviewed for this book, search executive Jacob Leja, a Polish national who spent 10 years working in America, said that employees have to choose between culturally comfortable routines and having jobs in international companies:
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As a result of so many managers failing to understand this reality, tmp.worldwide now has a substantial outplacement business, especially in the fast-developing southern Poland market. These guys are embarrassed to have to go through our program but, as “career doctors,” we have to make major efforts to repackage them. I keep emphasizing the need for them to build up their technicakomputer skills and to embrace the Western management philosophy of collaboration, information-sharing, team building; and to understand the importance of getting cost-effective, on-time results. After my 10 years in the States, it often is difficult for me to take the time-consuming, culturally-sensitive approach that so many people over here still seem to need.
HUMAN RESOURCES TO THE RESCUE Detractors of the HRD movement often ridicule the “hand-holding” approach to dealing with employees. As Leja noted, however, a lot of people in CEE (not to mention other regions) still need to be coaxed into productive work modes. In flagrant cases, of course, termination is necessary. When a large group is involved, though, maybe some nurturing is the profit-sensitive approach. Human resource management is seen as the only practical vehicle for making these kinds of cultural accommodations possible. Recent research at Rice University by Annette J. Towler and Stephen C. Currall resulted in a poster at the 14th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in Atlanta, Georgia, in May, 1999. Their paper was titled, Organizational Innovation through Human Resource Management: A Conceptual Model. It argues convincingly, in the authors’ experiences, that an effective Human Resource Management (HRM)system is a necessary component of organizational growth, development, and profitability: Successful organizations harvest employee creativity by transforming it into innovative products or services. Hence, we define organizational innovation as the organizational implementation of a new product, process, or procedure conceived by an employee or group of employees.
Towler and Currall found that employee creativity resulted from two sets of enabling factors: individual qualities and environmental
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factors. Among the former, they cited personality traits (competencies, in the managerial vernacular) such as curiosity, persistence, energy, problem solving, creative thinking strategies, self motivation, and risk orientation. For environmental factors, the researchers identified three that are key-both for their model and for the purposes of this discussion:
1. Leader’s expectations and recognition and rewards for creative performance;
2. Noncontrolling supervision and freedom in controlling one’s own work; 3. Receipt of coaching in problem construction.
Harvesting Creativity How is employee creativity harvested into organizational innovations? By using HRM (compensation systems, assessment-based selection, and sophisticated manager development) as an integral element in linking employee participation and empowerment to individual and corporate productivity and profitability. HRM can reinforce individual efforts through the design of performance appraisals that emphasize the importance of creative contributions. To support these processes, HRM will include training for managers on how to facilitate and demonstrate their support for organizational innovation. This will lead to higher productivity, higher job satisfaction, and higher retention of valuable employeesand these results, in turn, lead to a competitive advantage for the firm. This research paper by Towler and Currall is striking because it validates the authors’ own designs for HRM systems for companies in CEE and Russia. What is particularly appreciated is the expression harvesting employee creativity and a five-step new product development sequence. These five steps are: 1. Idea generation
2. Feasibility assessment
3. Prototype development 4. Production setup
5. Production and distribution
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These steps usually are discussed in project management training offered by the authors, and it was refreshing to find them associated with employee creativity. See Chapter Six for a discussion of the relationship between project management and refinement of customer service processes. The challenge to create such organizational intelligence and excitement in CEE might require more forethought and day-to-day discipline than many local and expatriate managers are prepared to commit. The investment of time and commitment, however, might be rewarded beyond all expectations from cheap labor in a post-Soviet economy.
Ochoco Lumber as a Case in Point Shortly after the Soviets left, an American lumber mill owner came over to explore the possibility of opening a mill in Lithuania. An abandoned and unfinished Russian brick factory was located that was thought to be an ideal setting and, in 1994, UAB Ochoco Lumber Co. began operations. Enthusiasm led to some predictable errors, including sending over American machinery that was not well suited for producing products for the available European market. While refocusing of the marketing strategy solved these problems, it did not solve the company’s “people” problems. It turned out that the mill’s employees worked like former Soviets, not like Westerners, and none of the usual motivational techniques made much difference. Neither did a succession of American managers. The parent company in Oregon asked John Rowell, who had run his own mill for 16 years, to come over to take a look. His wife, Karen, came with him in December, 1995, and they decided to stay in the beautiful little town of Kupiskis, and to accept what Rowell thought would be a very interesting challenge. After his first few days on the job, Rowell asked a company representative from Oregon why all the doors in the plant were closed and the lights turned off. The company representative didn’t know. So, Rowell went through the plant, opening doors, turning on lights, and finding people huddled together in corners of the offices, as though confiding secrets. The next day, all the doors were closed and the lights were off again. “I took my interpreter, opened every door, turned on all the lights, and had the interpreter tell them that I didn’t understand how they
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could do business if they didn’t talk to each other,” Rowell said. “Therefore, I was going to fire the next person who closed doors and turned off the lights. That got their attention.” Then Rowell delivered the words that changed working relationships in Ochoco Lumber Company Lithuania from that time forward: “This is an American company, and it will be operated as such.” Rowell said that this was the first time that he realized how frightened the people were, how secretive, and how much they feared being noticed-“being seen on the skyline.” He did not understand yet why they would do their respective jobs adequately, but not help others-or why the local nationals, managers and workers alike, trained to take directions from above, would not make even elementary decisions on their own. Rowell conducted meetings to tell everyone what was going on within the company, what the issues were, and what was being done to address those issues. He assured them that their jobs were secure, but that they had to learn to work together and to realize that there would be overlapping responsibilities. They had to learn to step in and pick up the slack. Four years later, they do that as well as any group of mill employees in America. They speak up at meetings, they make suggestions, and the mill is finally hitting the break-even point-maybe making a little bit of profit. Through this experience, Rowell learned the importance of: of following-up to ensure that there was understanding Being a cheerleader and infusing employees with enthusiasm for tasks and production targets Celebrating successes, cooperation, and initiative W Encouraging them to solve problems and to take action independently Being consistent, being honest, and building trust in every action and statement W Realizing that customs and cultures always are different, but differences can be worked out
H Explaining everything in as much detail as necessary-and
As for the other problems, they involved marketing and developing dependable suppliers. The first attempt was to sell to European markets, but the lots were too small and the specifications too varied for the mill to make profitable runs. Likewise, lumber supplies from
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Lithuania were inadequate and undependable in quantity, quality, and delivery. Working through Russian brokers also was unsatisfactory, because the brokers did not know the lumber business. Now, Rowell has developed dependable sources, through Ochoco’s lumber procurement department which buys, for the most part, directly from Russian sawmills in rail-car lots. Railroad bureaucracies and inflexible formalities on both sides of the border continue to be difficult, as are customs policies, but the mill now gets enough raw product to ship in volumes that are cost-effective-five years after the plant opened. Rowell reported that anyone planning to open a business of comparable complexity should be prepared to work at a loss for the first few years as there are always unknowns that are not apparent in the beginning. Rowell was not asked to comment on costs and delays associated with “collateral payments” to local and federal officials, but he did say that cutting bureaucracies by half and work rules by three-fourths would go a long way toward bringing more jobs into Lithuania. “There is a jumble of old Soviet labor laws mixed up with current EU requirements,” Rowell said, “resulting in a time-consuming and ridiculous mass of conflicting rules and regulations.” Rowell cites these anti-business elements as major disincentives to foreign investment and, thus, they contribute substantially to the lack of opportunity that is driving many young Lithuanians out of the country. [Note: As this is being written, Lithuania has the worst record for U.S. visa violations in CEE. Nearly seventy percent of applicants are granted visas, but nearly forty percent of them do not return as scheduled, “going underground” to work as illegal aliens.] One consultant who worked with Ochoco characterized Rowell’s efforts as
. . . training in self-esteem, building competence among people whose capabilities were masked by fright; training that emphasized the importance of individuals’ contributions of observations and intelligence, not just physical effort. It was training in believing that teams and teamwork are a matter of “all of us working together to create products that customers want to buy.” And, most of all, it was about the need for workers at all levels to “own and solve” production problems out of their own capacities as effective, important, competent individuals.
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This story has a happy ending because Rowell persevered. In addition to effecting a turnaround at Ochoco Lumber, Rowell has served for several years as president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Vilnius, a two-hour drive from Kupiskis. If you want to know more about his efforts, check the website at www.ochoco.lt. The behavior and work patterns that Rowell defeated are perhaps the most potentially-damning residue of Soviet social programming, and are the hardest for consultants and other management educators to overcome. These work habits are rooted in the Soviet authoritarian tradition and they embody that perversion of the “Golden Rule” that says, “He who has the gold makes the rules.” What we continue to learn, and hope to convey to others, is the need for putting a humane face on HRM and HRD. Then, “development” is the discovery of one’s competence and potential rather than a performance requirement to be mastered as a condition of employment. This is possibly a clue to more effective enterprise-building in the New Millennium.
A Point of Cultural Congruence One concept that seems to transcend cultural barriers is competence. Are people provably competent to perform their assigned tasks? Can their ability to perform more complex, or even supervisory tasks, be assessed with accuracy? Then, if people have competencies in excess of those required for their immediate assignments, why do they not use them or make them known? Culture is the answer. First, it is not considered acceptable behavior to “blow your own horn” in a region where boasting, in the recent past, could lead to retaliation by informers and police harassment. It is as though the childish statement, “That’s for me to know and for you to find O U ~ , ” has become the stance of many people in their dealings with anyone except immediate family. Second, many, and perhaps most, managers in the region will admit that their operations are over-staffed. For some, it is difficult to imagine that work could be performed without so many supernumeraries. For others, there are the haunting questions, “Where would they go? What would they do?”
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In conversations such as these, one wonders what kinds of measurements are being used in those organizations to assess employee contributions and their capacity to add value, as well as to determine who is promotable? In some, people are hired and allowed to sit, underemployed, for months or years until the “new job” actually opens. Others know that they have no mobility and take all their creativekontributive energies to their gardens. Alas, authority intervenes too often. Many managers see the competence of subordinates as irrelevant. All relevance is based in role and rank. “But why should he do that? That’s my job.” As in the case of the previously mentioned executive who wanted to make one-third of the decisions, control is of more importance than competence. Competence in three areas, at least in terms of Western management, is what the paycheck is for; i.e., at a minimum, employers expect:
1. Fully satisfactory performance of specific tasks as measured against existing standards; 2. Emotional flexibility to accommodate small changes in routines; 3. Interpersonal skills adequate to function effectively in a work group or other collaborative setting.
In translation, what bosses really want are people who are able to spot problems and fixthem before they become expensive or, at least, point them out to someone who can take action. Will that happen, unprompted, in CEE? Probably not. A major error of Western managers (and companies) is thinking it possible to impose a Western work culture (and an American “can do” attitude) on the bright people who occupy the region. What they underestimate is the power of the dulling influence of Sovietstyle bureaucracy, so that even bright people do not attempt to solve problems that are not in their immediate (and narrow) sphere of responsibility. Rather like the Biblical “Mark of Cain,” knowledgeable expatriates say, everyone over 30 carries the “mark” of Soviet organizational behavior, which is a variant on the North American mantra of the unempowered: “Know your place and stay in it to stay out of trouble.” Worse, through acculturation in the family, those attitudes have been communicated to younger people, too. That leads, naturally enough, into another generation growing up with the limiting personal philosophy that leads them to say, “That’s not my job.” And this argues more compellingly than anything else for introducing the concept of employees as stakeholders.
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Do companies fail in contemporary CEE? Yes. Did they during Soviet times? Rarely.
Exploring the Stakeholder Concept What do employees expect? A job for life, secure as long as they know their place and stay in it. That means the security of having a boss who will make the necessary decisions, provide the necessary instructions, and ensure that necessary materials are available. This leaves only one necessity for the employee-to show up and follow instructions. For many employees who are invited to discuss the subject of having a stake in their organizations-that is, being active in problem identification, proactive in solving problems-their thoughtful response is, “Why? That’s not my job.” This is followed by the question, “If I do that, then what does he do?” These questions point up a limited understanding of the dynamics of Western-type organizations, based on their experience with the strictly linear and long-chain hierarchical Soviet management model. As an indication of the kind of impediment to effective performance that hierarchy can be, consider this: When the Finnish telecom giant, Sonera, and a minority partner, bought a 49-percent stake in Lattelkom, the Latvian national telephone system, and assumed operational control, one of their primary reorganization goals was to reduce the structure to no more than five management levels. When only obedience is required, people have to suppress their curiosity, reactions, and opinions. What results is a kind of blank expression that could be interpreted as dullness. Usually, however, this is not the case. Thinking, like everything else people do, is largely a matter of habit. Thinking behind the barriers of self-protection and caution, based on personal experience or knowledge of the experiences of others, is a strong habit. As the advocates of positive thinking and imagery say, “You are the only one who controls what goes on in your head.” After so many years of programming, however, this may be a tough argument to sell. For many, “truth” is a story about the residual fear of Westerners. What is the fear? It is a fear of being disappointed and abandoned, as they were by the Germans first and then by the Soviets. As a counter-theme to the promises of prosperity, capitalism often is seen as a take-over of national interests (media, telephones, transportation) by foreigners. Local nationals are becoming unemployed to
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support the profit objectives of foreign companies. How is it different from what happened before, at least in the minds and experiences of working people? Few families were untouched by the deportations carried out, first by the Nazis to concentration camps and then by the Soviets to Siberia. Why were “the chosen” sent away? Can people acknowledge that not being chosen probably means that they are “safe” people who probably don’t possess the imagination, initiative, and organizing ability to cause trouble? Is that self-concept the key to their survival? Moreover, everyone was touched by the collapse of the Soviet system, the devaluation of the ruble, and the effects of being tossed, like beginning swimmers, into the deep waters of personal and financial risks after years in the predictable shallows of social and financial security. No one was hungry, without financial support, or a place to live. Then, when the Soviets left, those misfortunes were visited upon many people. For most older people, the social security network no longer exists. And, as Western ways and goods come into the market, prices rise and add further economic stress to those already disadvantaged. If these facts are not true for workers, they likely are for their parents. If “the past is prologue,” then the poverty of parents provides background anxieties for workers. A missing ingredient in this maze of suspicion and mistrust is the concept of stakeholding. Ownerskorporations “stake” the operation with cash, capital equipment, and technical, managerial, and marketing expertise. Workers, in turn, are expected to invest skill, energy, and intelligent responses to situations that arise in the course of performing their jobs. Then, they become stakeholders emotionally committed to protecting their jobs through contributing to the success of their employing organization. In the region, it may be that most workers see their stake in the status quo, in a return to the security-that-was instead of the future-thatmay-appear. In the past, when workers pretended to work and managers pretended to plan, and both pretended that “the company” paid them a salary, there were a number of unspoken agreements. Not the least of these was the mutual consent to ignore plant maintenance and deteriorating working conditions, and the fact that there were always too many people for the number of tasks available. This led to the acceptance of very limited and proprietary roles, narrow to the point of an “each one fetch one” system. These were the tasks-
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and relationships-that provided the salaries. If it was a disagreeable system, no one said so. There was no alternative. In conversations all over the region, no one contests this scenario. Some say that things are better, while others say that not much has changed. Everyone agrees, however, that this is the “front line” of the battle to change attitudes and orientations, and that the nature and extent of the several kinds of mistrust operating on plant floors do not lend themselves readily to remedial action. Changing this reality is not a matter of weeks or months, but of years. Stakeholding, by contrast, is a matter of trust and economic education. Even in North America, there still are factories with virtually no stakeholders other than the actual owners. Why? Because the culture of the plants and the relationships among workers and managers is rooted in deep furrows of past practice and sanctions. In such North American workplaces, people who complain get terminated, despite elaborate protection provided by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Wage-Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, and their counterpart agencies in states and cities. In CEE‘s recent past, the penalties could be much harsher. Additionally, more people participated in the constraints, and there was no one to whom to complain. It was the only game in town. Everyone had a stake in maintaining the system that was. People could not attack “the force,” so they did it by being closed, secretive, and reactive-withholding extra effort, ideas, and intelligence. This “closedness” was so pervasive, it extended into families. No one was talking about the myth that all were living. Even within the clans, the close familial groups, it was a forbidden subject. Why talk about distressing things that no one could do anything about? This situation has been described in this detail to make these simple points: If you come from North America and have worked extensively with blacks and Hispanics or members of other closed ethnic communities, you may have some idea of the power of culture to resist. If you come from Western Europe and have experience with “guest workers” who have come from elsewhere in search of economic opportunities, you should not be surprised by the worker attitudes you encounter.
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Only the naive will be misled by the look-you-in-the-eye blank stares received in response to conversations with workers about participating, contributing more, assuming more responsibilities, and attaining more efficiencies (which will be translated by very adept survivors as more work by fewer people, some of whom may be relatives). Remember, the Soviets have been gone less than a decade-following 50 years of obliteration of economic education in most of the region. Except in major cities and those rare rural areas in which there are pockets of entrepreneurship such as Ochoco Lumber, “business basics” do not exist except in terms of barter and the supply-and-demand realities of the farmers’ markets.
Stakeholding as an Economic Concept When the state owned everything, no one had any power, except to withhold their personal efforts. In most instances, now that the states have relinquished control or sold ownership of plants and facilities, employees are no more involved in plant management than before. For employees, the same power to withhold exists. The difference is that it may become expensive to exercise that power because, in contrast to the old days, such withholding will be noticed and may lead to termination. Or, where many employees are involved, plant closures may occur. Interviews and literature scans indicate that management is using two strategies to help employees adopt new work philosophies. The first (and least frequently used) is exemplified by the Ochoco Lumber story. The second is to “go along and get along’’ with local workplace mores, hoping to introduce new levels of effort by the examples and leadership provided by expatriate managers. Unfortunately, most such managers leave too soon for the models they provide to take root. In most plants, it takes at least a year for some modicum of trust to be established. Remember that when the Soviets were running things, workers and managers colluded to protect each other from the Soviets. Now, it’s other foreigners, but the protective reflex still operates. This means that local national managers need more coaching from expatriate managers than usually is available. When expatriates arrive, there is so much to do to make plants profitable that there is no time for coaching. By the time they get the plants running and the local
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nationals are becoming comfortable with their management styles, the expatriates rotate out to some other assignment. In many plants, experience has shown that local national managers don’t get enough coaching and reorientation to maintain plants at the productive levels attained by their expatriate predecessors in the usual 30- to 36-month tour of duty. Longer tours are necessary, or more effective transitions between a succession of expatriates, so that the coaching/training/re-orientingof local managers can take place and be reinforced. Robert Vichas, who was instrumental in establishing the Management Training Center in Panevezys, Lithuania, says that learning is impeded by three forces. The first is historical experience with “boss practices” that are so authoritarian and remote from Western experiences that major re-learning has to occur before Western practices can take hold. Also, he points out that there is almost a total absence of “a Calvinistic Protestant work ethic” that Western managers might expect. The second impediment is the negative reinforcement provided by the Eastern customers with whom CEE managers deal, whose orientation toward deals and dealing can effectively neutralize Western-style models (politically correct code for bribes, pay-offs, and other inducements prior to the deal). The third impediment, perhaps more potent in the Baltics than elsewhere, is the structure of the language. The directness of English often cannot be translated literally, so circumlocutions are required that can lend themselves to unintentional distortions by the interpreter or the hearerheader. Sometimes, too, distortions can be intentional. This happens to a greater or lesser extent in all cross-cultural exchanges since the “emotional loading” of words often cannot be transported. As a result, it is not unusual to find the “feeling tone” of a conversation change as one party follows a meaning down an unintended cultural path away from the original intent of the other.
Moving Away from Subjective Judgments Given all the variables that can impede the training of local national managers, a way to maximize returns on the investment of time and expense is to engage in assessment of all existing employees to find out which are competent and trainable, as well as which have
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managerial potential. This way, investments can be “hedged” by betting only on those individuals whose assessment ratings predict success as managers. Also, assessment permits “selective pruning” instead of the usual mass layoffs in the name of economic efficiency (in which many potentially effective employees are lost). With many employees being retained, with some being re-trained and some promoted, morale can be maintained at high levels and productivity targets reached more quickly. Further, when local nationals are identified for future leadership, the coaching and mentoring process can be more structured and directed. When strong employees are identified by assessment processes that are objective, even labor unions lend their support and endorsement since, in this region, promotions and other staffing decisions made on objective bases are a rarity. What is assessment? It is the measurement of individual responses to questions and simulated circumstances against criteria developed in numerous replications with similar populations of workers and managers. Over time, the predictive validity of the standard responses can be established-that is, what the assessment results indicate will probably happen. Then, management can use this information to work with employees who can accept the coaching, mentoring, and exposure to become more effective contributors to the organization’s success. To restate the content of the previous paragraph and reduce it to essential information, try this: Assessment can tell managers which employees are willing and able to take the help that’s offered. Where resources are scarce (managers’ tutoring time and training, in this instance) the imperative is to work where and with whom you can win. Assessment can point the way and increase the number of successful promotions. As his colleague, Ellen Hayes, reported in Chapter One, Jacob Leja says managers with proven competence in the Polish labor market are earning nearly at Western levels: In terms of selling themselves to the top bidder, which is a very Western concept, it’s already happening. But there is plenty of speculation about how many managers there are who can yield old mindsets, and how long it takes if they can. That means a tight market for managerial talent for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, it will require tight monitoring of managerial performance to ensure that those who auction themselves at a high rate can perform up to expectations. There have been some disappointments.
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The shortage of managerial talent is as much a major impediment to economic development in the region as are anti-business legislation and corruption. In fairness, it needs to be acknowledged, again, that even under rather ideal circumstances, expatriate managers usually cannot succeed in developing local nationals to replace them in a single, threeyear tour. This is not because local nationals are intellectually incompetent, but because their years of cultural programming cannot be overcome by five minutes of attention every two or three days. Many Western managers and consultants, especially those from North America, fail to understand this because they have never lived through an occupation by foreign armies. For local nationals, words are “loaded” differently, responsibilities are segmented in ways that are different (a “good neighbor” is one whose misfortunes are greater than your own, for instance), and culture is an invisible mesh that binds them to old responses. Further, there are defining experiences that divide people in moments of stress--(‘You didn’t live it, so what do you know about. . . ?” Unlike Westerners, local nationals are unlikely to express themselves in such a confrontive manner. They may not say such things, but they think them! If one is paying attention, a visible change will occur in the posture and facial expression of the person having that thought. Then, it is time to do a “process check,” to ask clarifying questions and possibly, to restate the comment that launched the cautionary or anger response.
The Need to Be Explicit Ultimately, the issue of cross-cultural activities becomes one of “joining up.” An apt analogy is connecting pieces of copper tubing-there are specifications that have to be met to get a tight connection, and others that describe how far the tubing can be run without external supports. Competencies are the specifications, and the more precisely they can be stated, the greater the probability of a successful joining. Join-up can be signaled by matching uniforms, common responses to questions, and modes of addressing one another that establish relationships and boundaries. The “tight connection” cannot happen, however, until the joining takes place at the level of shared values, when actions by managers are consistent and congruent with a value system. For the purposes of this book, those shared values might read like this:
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1. We believe in the competence of our people to do more than the jobs they have been given. 2. We know that they may be fearful of ridicule or rejection if they volunteer information, so we must recognize and reward everything they do or say that moves them in the direction of participation and ownership of the work processes they perform. 3. We will be able to get more profitable work performed for the same or lower costs if our people join us as partners. This will mean more job security for all of us, and we must emphasize that point. 4. If we are patient, persistent, and consistent in our efforts to involve them, our employees will become our partners. Collectively, we can solve any problems that confront us. If you read this and believe it, can you share this philosophy with others every day and remind them of the relevant points as you prompt people and see them respond? Can you remember to reward approximations o f t b e behavior you want? This is one of the major laws about behavior modification which must be honored if you are to change the way local national managers and employees respond to you. You cannot wait until you get the exact behavior you want, because it never will come if you do. Rewarding people (mostly, just by saying “thank you” daily), is the hardest part of this process for most managers-for Western expatriates as well as for local nationals. Why is this hard? Because they forget to use Value #2, as previously stated-r because they don’t believe in Value #l.Many managers and professionals do not believe in them, having bought into mythology that advanced degrees produce advanced and superior beings. Or that rank has its privileges-including the freedom to ignore the contributions of underlings. So, there is a need to be explicit about:
1. What you are trying to accomplish; 2. What you need to teach your people; 3. What you need to learn together with them; 4. What competencies you must acquire for teaching and learning; 5 . What written goals and objectives you need to start. This is the major point of synthesis-the need to be explicit, to let people know what you expect so that you can mutually inspect to
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ensure that you accomplish the transfer of knowledge, abilities, skills, and other attributes that will allow local nationals to become successful. In short, what is needed is an active approach to human resource management.
Human Resource Management-or Development In fact, neither human resource management nor human resource development are possible without a clear picture of the competencies needed for individuals to succeed on the job. There are two key words here: succeed and job. If jobs are different, then criteria for success, too, must be different. This is concerned with different mixes and levels of knowledge, abilities, skills, and other attributes (KASOs), and that refers to defensible reasons that some people have greater responsibilities than others and that some, therefore, earn more than others. If that sounds logical, then you are a Westerner! In this region, where nepotism, favoritism, cronyism, and economic barbarism are the rules rather than the exceptions, it is not a given that hiring, retention, or promotion are equitably determined. Consequently, there are layers and layers of reasons why employee productivity is about one-third that of their Western counterparts. The short-hand way of expressing this is that it is a cultural issue. The larger issue, however, is that this represents a major area for development, as exemplified by the previously discussed Ochoco Lumber example. While employees need evidence that they will be treated fairly, managers need training in how to build rapport and team spirit among their subordinates. Why do people need training for such obvious things? Because there are some issues that would be important in the West that have become non-issues by neglect and common assent here in the region. Bluntly, most people at work have no expectations of their managers beyond not being treated discourteously. Workers in the region appreciate having a job and a salary-however small. Remember, except for high-profile executives, this discussion concerns people whose average monthly salary is in the vicinity of $250. Buying power of these small salaries is shrinking as inflation rises, and as imported goods from the West, along with Western brands that are manufactured locally, provide options-but cost more, as well. If local companies are to survive and grow, their managers must begin to address questions such as these:
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1. What business are we in, do our products meet Western quality and price standards, and do our manufacturing processes permit meeting promised delivery schedules? 2. Do our employees’ KASOs support our corporate success, or how can we close gaps in competencies that would allow us to grow? 3. How will our business change in the next two to five years, and what must we do to get our employees ready? 4. What are we doing to prepare our managers to lead their employees in performing against new and more challenging standards? 5. Are our managers knowledgeable about the relationship between their performance, the performance of their subordinates, and “the bottom line”-i.e., do they and their employees understand costs, losses, and profit? These are basic questions about basic issues. In the majority of workplaces in the region, they will constitute major confrontations of the status quo, and cause some uneasiness among managers and workers, alike. These are things that are often not discussed. When employees are asked about such issues, however, what follows is a typical response: “What do I know about the goals of this company? What business is it of mine? It’s my manager’s job to deal with these issues. If they want us to work more and to produce more, they should pay us more!” The next chapter addresses some ways to go forward, and to avoid being frustrated by these cultural proscriptions. No one is going to say that people in the region do not want to do more, as well as contribute and earn more. What this book is about is the fact that they often do not know bow.
CHAPTER 8
The League Publicity Office
This chapter addresses the league publicity office and how it functions in relation to team publicity and individual athlete publicists. It looks at the role of the league publicity group, how it manages and administers certain functions, and how general media guidelines are set by the teams from the league level. We have talked about how the publicist for teams and individuals should include those folks at the higher league level in the PR plan and use them as assets. However, there are great publicity opportunities at the governance level as well, and involve various levels of skill and ability to be successful. Also, there are vast differences in how many of the major leagues handle publicity and how they are seen and used by the clubs they are involved with. We will look at the differences and the opportunities that exist from a few leagues, and some ideas on how if you work at the league or NGB level you can help maximize exposure for your sport, whether it is indoor soccer or the NBA.
The Role of the League Publicist Many times, the role of the publicists at a league level is determined by the league commissioner or president and his or her style. Depending on the financial state of the league and the way the league is structured as an organization, the publicists can be largely support services dictated by the clubs (such as the case in Major League Baseball), or very diverse and proactive publicists working with the teams or clubs to aggressively identify media opportunities and set forth an agenda that is constructed in the overall vision of the league (the NBA). That being said, there are several similarities in the role publicists play at every league level (see Figure 8.1). 163
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1. The dissemination of statistics records and rules. 2. League governance and policy setting. 3. Managing and implementation of national or international overall branding. 4. Overall national or international media management. 5. Running championships and special events. 6. Overseeing cumulative publications and Internet activity. Figure 8.1
Role of publicist at league level.
Each of the league PR offices, at its core, will work with the club and serve as the liaison between teams, business and national TV partners, and other departments such as community relations, marketing, and operations to make sure all information is properly conveyed so the sport runs smoothly and consistently. Examples of each are as follow.
Dissemination of Statistics, Records, and Rules It seems simple, but this is a basic and essential function of the league office. The need for clear and correct record keeping, the settling of record disputes, the maintenance of all statistics (usually by an outside entity like the Elias Sports Bureau) is one of the key functions of the league publicist. That includes staying on top of all the member teams to make sure information sent is up-to-date, and when information needs to be changed, it is sent out with one voice, clearly from the league level. Many times, the league will work with the team to make sure the media are notified simultaneously in a hometown about an accomplishment or an issue, but the ultimate say comes from the league office. One difference here is that the league will provide unbiased, clear facts both on the positive and the negative. Sometimes, teams tend to avoid the negative reporting of facts, but since the lowlights are sometimes just as noteworthy as the highlights for the long-term establishment of records, the league will make sure all information is included. You may not see the record for most errors by a second baseman in the Chicago White Sox media guide, but it may be in a league publication. Also on the rules front is the clear settling of disputes by the league. This will always come consistently and clearly from the league office, since ultimately the league is responsible for addressing the transgressions of its players. Many times any type of this kind of media reporting will be coordinated with the club or clubs involved
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so they have full background, but the league will issue the information via press release. The league will also be responsible for all awards balloting and information collecting, and then making sure awards are adequately publicized with the input of the teams from a local level. This, too, is a big function of the league PR office: to make sure balloting and awards reception is both fair and consistent to the teams and to the athletes. With the ever-growing tendency to just acknowledge stars and success for name value, it can sometimes become more of a popularity contest. The goal is for the league to provide balanced look and select those athletes most worthy for the time period considered.
Example Each year it is up to the league office to publish a series of books for the media to use. The NBA will publish every year the official NBA Guide, which will list all facts and figures needed on a team-by-team basis for the year. That will include schedule, roster, team personnel, previous years results, and a year-by-year breakdown of league standings, playoff results, and records. The NBA Register will list the year-by-year statistics for each current player or players in recent years. It will also have an all-time greats section and a breakdown of recent and current NBA head coaches. Many years these books are copublished with the Sporting News, and serve as mainstays for both teams and media reference tools for the year. The league will also annually publish all rules for the season for the media and teams.
League Governance and Policy Setting Since the publicists at the league level will work directly with the league president or commissioner and his immediate staff, the publicist will handle many of the issues with regard to how the league is run, what rule changes (on and off the playing field) will be made, and the tone and positioning of the sport as it relates to the overall sports landscape. The league publicist will also be the repository for answering questions with regard to league rules. Many of the media questions
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handled by the league will involve rules interpretations that answer to the governance of the sport. The publicists will be the experts on such matters and the styles in which they will be handled. In addition to general rules of the game, the league will also set policy as to how team publicists will deal with issues such as credentialing, TV, statistics, and in many cases out-of-market media. The league PR staff is also responsible for making sure media are treated fairly and respectfully from city to city and from team to team. Many times, the league office will settle grievance disputes by media with regard to access time, credentialing, and other issues. The league PR staff will also set the overall guidelines for teams to follow with regard to overall media access and make sure each team follows the same rules. In many cases, the consistency of rules is almost as essential as the access itself, and it is up to the league office to make sure all are on the same page despite differences in market size and media coverage. The league is also responsible for monitoring the growth of new trends in media to make sure all forms of access are given fairly. For example, policies on digital photographers and Internet reporters may be different from league to league, but it is up to the league to make sure its media rightsholders are handled fairly and consistently by each of the teams. Also along these lines, the league PR staff is responsible for overseeing the correspondence and availability of the top league staffers, including commissioners, presidents, and league governance staff. Shaping the message delivered to the media and the public by the league’s top spokesperson is perhaps the most challenging part of the position, because his or her words, like those of any top executive, have to be carefully crafted and all divergent points have to be covered with the executive prior to speaking with the media.
Example The league is responsible for communicating any suspensions and violations of league rules to the media, and then usually is the only party that will have official say on what a decision will be. If a player is suspended for a rules violation, for example, rarely will a team official criticize the league ruling publicly. Many times, the criticism of a league decision will be followed by a fine if made publicly.
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NFL Exercises Football Message Control Proliferation of new media has helped fuel distrust and curtail access to information on players and coaches. by Randy Covitz A few days before the season opener, two Arizona sportswriters noticed during the 30 minutes of practice open to the media that the Cardinals had shuffled some offensive-line starters. The writers confirmed the position moves with the two players involved and reported it in the next morning’s newspapers. Coach Dennis Green wasn’t happy. “One of the things you guys (reporters) make a mistake is you see something and you write it as if it’s true,” Green chastised them. “The fans are counting on you telling the truth, and you don’t know the truth.” Turned out the news was accurate as reported, despite Green’s admonition. Welcome to the sometimes contentious relationships between NFL clubs and the reporters who cover them. The NFL is unquestionably the most successful and popular sports league in America, fueled by record attendance in 2005, off-the-chart television ratings, and a TV contract worth nearly $25 billion over the next six years. That kind of interest demands accurate, in-depth reporting by newspapers, radio and television stations, and Internet sites, where fans historically have gotten most of their information on their favorite teams. It requires access to players, head coaches, assistant coaches, and practices. But the proliferation of so much new media, including talk-radio and Web sites—not to mention the immense pressure on head coaches to win—has led to an uneasy coexistence and even a distrust between the teams and reporters. Consequently, newspapers and other media wanting to provide fans with satisfactory coverage are running into roadblocks. All but nine of the NFL’s 32 teams close practices to reporters; some high-profile players don’t speak with the local media; at least seven teams limit or deny access to assistant coaches; and on game day, only one local television affiliate per market is allowed an on-field camera. That affiliate must share its video with the other competing stations if they want to supplement already-seen network game footage in their sportscasts. “My nightmare scenario is 10, 20 years from now, you will not be able to cover the NFL unless you pay a rights fee,” said David Elfin of The Washington Times and president of the Pro Football Writers of America. “As The NFL Network gets established and the teams’ Web sites get established, and you have the whole ESPN machine, anybody who is
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either not working for the team or not paying a rights fee is not getting great access.” Indeed, the NFL itself has moved into the media business, having launched The NFL Network in addition to its own Web site and team sites that show the league and franchises in a mostly favorable light. In other words, you’re not likely to find a story about steroids on nfl.com, or the news of Jared Allen’s DUI on kcchiefs.com. “We know the NFL wants to govern everything it does,” said Andrew Lackey, director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University. “Any business can try whatever it wants, but they have to realize they’re part of a public trust and have a responsibility to the public.” “A lot of it is about control, but one place they haven’t been able to control is the media. Because the media are all over the place, and their job is to find what’s interesting, unusual, or perhaps negative in some cases, what (the NFL) is doing is keeping these people from doing their jobs.” Greg Aiello, the NFL’s vice president for public relations—who, incidentally, has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia—says access to teams is better than ever. It’s just difficult to spread the love to so many. “There’s more and more media covering a team,” Aiello said. “It’s more competitive than ever. If you watch television and read newspapers, it would be hard to conclude there is a lack of access to NFL players and coaches.” The latest flap involves restrictions on what newspapers can put on their Web sites from game-day coverage. An increasing number of newspapers, including The Kansas City Star, are posting game stories and still photographs from games on their sites during and immediately after games. However, the NFL will not allow newspapers (or any nonrightsholders) to show their postgame coverage of news conferences or locker-room interviews on their Web sites. Even video from a newspaper’s reporter asking questions of a coach or player at a podium or locker cannot be posted on the newspaper’s site. The NFL contends anything that happens on game day is proprietary to the league and its rightsholders, NBC, CBS, FOX, and ESPN. “We understand the rights issues with (not allowing) game action,” said Jim Jenks, executive sports editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the president of Associated Press Sports Editors. “But once you’re in the locker room, in a media setting, at a postgame news conference where they bring in a coach and players, we don’t understand why we can’t use a talking-head video.”
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It’s not just sportswriters and editors who are concerned about providing fans with better news. Any restrictions to newspapers’ ability to provide information are unacceptable in the eyes of the Associated Press Managing Editors, said Otis Sanford of The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal. He is that organization’s representative on dealing with NFL issues. The Washington Post and The Associated Press, together with their attorneys, plan to ask new NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for permission to show postgame coverage online. Jenks will endorse the request on behalf of APSE, which counts more than 600 newspapers among its membership. “Video from our stadiums on game day is one of our most valuable assets, including video of our people, players, coaches talking about the game,” Aiello said. “The policy is designed to ensure that our rightsholders, who have paid for access to that asset, receive the value they’ve paid for. “At the same time, it ensures that news organizations have a fair, reasonable, and equal opportunity to cover the news from NFL game sites. There’s no limit to the amount of written NFL information that Web sites can carry.” Aiello emphasized that newspapers can post video interviews of players and coaches from weekday news conferences and open locker rooms on Web sites in addition to transcripts from game-day coverage. “That sounds really nice, but the reality is the written transcript is very different from the audio or the video,” said Bob Steele, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a training and research institute for journalists in St. Petersburg, Florida. “Many of the users of Internet services will want to hear the coach talking or want to see the linebacker who bats down the pass at a key moment in the game. To say, ‘Well, you can put written words on there, not the audio or video,’ is creating a restriction that is going to limit the storytelling ability of the journalists. When you do that, it ends up as a disservice to the public.” To which Aiello responded: “Of course, they’d like to see the actual play. At some point we have to draw the line.” “By prohibiting postgame video on the Web site, the NFL says it is following the Olympics model, in which the International Olympic Committee forbids any cameras at venues except for its current rightsholder, NBC. However, the United States Olympic Committee brings athletes to the main press center, and nonrightsholders are allowed to put video on their Web sites, though it cannot be live,” said Bob Condron, USOC director of media services. “The million-dollar question is whether this is a journalistic question for (the NFL), or is it just money?” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, sports editor of The Washington Post. “Are they going to take and sell the
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access they are denying everybody else? They’ll go to a Yahoo or Google or AOL and maybe sell that for $50 million.” Aiello says no plans are in the works to sell the rights to postgame video. However, the league, like any billion-dollar business, is always searching for more revenue streams, and what happens if someone makes an offer too good to refuse? “There is a smell here,” said the Poynter Institute’s Steele, “and it gives the impression that the NFL and the teams are more interested in their own financial protection than they are helping the public understand what goes on in the field with the players in the games. “If that’s the case, the audience, the public, is the loser.” The NFL contends that there is more mandated access for the media than ever. After listening to concerns voiced by the Pro Football Writers Association and APSE, the NFL determined that locker rooms now must be open a minimum of four days a week instead of three; and for a minimum of 45 minutes, instead of 30. On the surface, that sounds good. But on many occasions when reporters enter a locker room, key players are not around. They are in the weight room, training room, lunchroom, or meeting room until the 45-minute period ends. Some talk only on certain days. Others, like Chiefs center Casey Wiegmann and the Denver Broncos offensive linemen, do not speak to reporters. When former Rams head coach Mike Martz returned to St. Louis on Sunday as offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions, he was not made available to any media during the week of the game, even though he customarily has a Thursday news session. Nor was he available after Sunday’s game. Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, the face of a publicly owned franchise who has been candid and cooperative throughout his 15-year career, is now talking to the media just twice a month. “He has one bad year, and this is how he reacts,” Elfin said. “What kind of message is he sending to the fans and younger players when things go bad? But they’re letting him get away with it.” There are no repercussions from the league or clubs for players who refuse to speak to reporters. Other sports, such as the NBA and NHL, have guidelines that try to ensure cooperation with the media. In the wake of the NHL’s labor stoppage, the league adopted a media policy that states, in part, “Cooperation with the media, to the maximum extent, is obligatory.” To those on the outside, it wouldn’t seem that the availability of assistant coaches is important. But on some teams, the head coach has very little to do with one side of the ball. And some assistant coaches are more eloquent than the head coaches and give the fan more insight. However, the NFL is a copycat league. Once New England coach Bill Belichick, who like his mentor, Bill Parcells, denied access to his
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assistants and won three Super Bowls, other coaches followed. Historically, Chiefs assistant coaches have been available to Kansas City media, but all requests to speak with staff members must now be cleared with coach Herm Edwards through the public-relations department. Under former Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil, practices were open on Fridays, but now all practices are closed, except the first 20 minutes or so when reporters can take roll call and see what players might not practice because of injury. Super Bowl participants Pittsburgh and Seattle are among the teams that open all their practices to local media during the regular season, along with San Francisco, Atlanta, Carolina, New Orleans, Houston, Indianapolis, and Tennessee. Philadelphia offers open practice on two days. There’s a tacit understanding between the media and franchises that reporters who watch practice do not write about strategy and trick plays, but depth-chart changes are fair game. Or are they? Cincinnati coach Marvin Lewis threatened to eliminate the first 20 minutes of practice open to the media after a reporter asked who would start in case cornerback Deltha O’Neal was unable to play against the Chiefs. Lewis announced it would be Johnathan Joseph, but when asked who would replace Joseph as the nickel back, he got testy. “This is our business . . . that’s why the rules are the way they are,” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll shut it down.” Elfin, president of the Pro Football Writers, believes newspapers will gain a more sympathetic ear now that Goodell has replaced Paul Tagliabue as commissioner. “Goodell is more hands on, more involved with us than Tagliabue ever was,” Elfin said. “Roger grew up as an intern in the business sort of like Pete Rozelle was, while Tagliabue was a lawyer who didn’t know anybody. Roger is a politician’s son, he’s a lot smoother, he does appreciate what we do and that we still are important to this league. That’s a positive.” Source: Reproduced with permission of the Kansas City Star. Copyright © 2007 the Kansas City Star. All rights reserved. Format differs from original publication. Not an endorsement.
Managing and Implementation of League Branding One of the other jobs of the league PR staff is to make sure all the league brands, logos and nicknames and colors of teams, the league marks, and the marks of its business partners, are being
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handled correctly by the teams and the media. The league PR office will usually put out a style guide once a year to give to teams and media partners to make sure there is consistency and that any changes are implemented that are made in the offseason. The league PR office will also make sure that if there are any special logo changes during a season—playoff patches, holiday or memorial insignias—that the message as to what and why is communicated to the teams and to the media overall. Another area league publicists deal with is the overall creative look and use of footage within the media. Most leagues have their own creative arm ranging from NFL Films to MLB Productions to NBA Entertainment, which sets policy and creates vehicles for the teams to use for marketing, publicity, and general awareness. These hightech, highly creative league arms have a whole range of publicity opportunities overseen by the league office, from technical and technological publicity to TV and personality opportunities. The league publicists also have the opportunity to deal with the business side of sports publicity, an area that fits into the branding concept most teams do not usually get involved with. They will deal with business press on a national and regional level about the state of the game, the industry they are in, and the economic growth of their league from a television and sales perspective. All those numbers are collected and then distributed by the league office.
Examples In 2006, the NBA implemented a special green uniform for select teams to be worn on St. Patrick’s Day. The league publicity staff worked with each market and national business trade media to create a comprehensive rollout of the uniforms, which became some of the best-selling specialty team uniforms in recent years. On the television side, each of the leagues will work very hard on a proactive basis to see if their team brands can be integrated into some of the most widely viewed television shows and movies. Conversely, if there are shows being shot or movies made that may present the sport in an unfairly negative way, the league may choose not to grant permission to use team and league rights and marks. One recent example was with the critically acclaimed ESPN show Playmakers, about the behindthe-scenes lifestyles of fictional football players. The NFL chose
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not to participate in the show, which portrayed football players in a general negative light. On the opposite side, Major League baseball cooperated with Disney to use the life story of baseball player Jim Morris in the film The Rookie. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays were prominently featured in the film. The NFL also cooperated with Disney to make the film “Invinceable,” the story of the Philadelphia Eagles Vince Papale. This shows both the flexability and the ease with which decisions can be made at the league level. Playmakers is controversial, “Invinceable” was not.
Overall Media Management The league publicists should be the group that assists the clubs in finding opportunities for publicity, establishing best media practices, and making sure the overall image of the sport projected to the fans through the media is done consistently. The maintaining of national lists for media contacts both in and out of the sport, the ability to maintain up-to-date databases of newspaper editors by section and genre, the ability to maintain national lists of nonsports contacts, and the ability to make sure all national media partners are treated fairly and are promoting the game, all of this falls to the league publicity office. In many ways, the league office will also serve as the sounding board for issues the teams may not be able to deal with on a daily basis. The league publicist is able to be the consensus builder for trends in the media, and should be able to best present those opportunities to the teams in an efficient manner. Conversely, the league publicist has the ability to explain team trends and nuances to the media better than the individual clubs sometimes do. There may be very good reasons why certain things such as media availability or the interviewing of a star player is done differently in New York than it is in Sacramento, and it sometimes falls on the league publicist to make sure there is a fair and logical explanation for such issues. Another big area for league publicity management is on the community and grassroots side. The league, with its teams, is responsible for collecting data on opportunities taken to send a greater message through the media about community iniatives. In some cases, as it is with the NFL, the league will also work in partnership with the
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players association (the classic example is the United Way campaign) to develop a national platform to tell these stories. The league marketing and community relations groups will also work with publicity to identify key grassroots iniatives for the teams to rally behind, and then find publicity opportunities on a market-by-market basis using the clubs as the driving force in bringing the message home. The key here for league publicity is to make sure all efforts are being realized to their full potential. The coordination of community stories into the national eye, be it through league broadcasts, on the Internet, or in national print publications, is usually done with the assistance and guidance of the league publicity office. Also, the league is able to bring clubs together to have athletes tell similar stories on a national or regional basis, or make sure charitable endeavors being recognized on a national level are worthy of such high praise. The NFL “Man of the Year” program is another example of how the league publicity arm is able to take a local story and make it into a much bigger deal on a national level. There is also the growth of international and specialty media policing that exists now for the league office, and making sure the right media members are being treated fairly and given, or in some cases not given, the access they desire. Because this remains a very new area for most of the teams, it is very hard for each market to judge what is a legitimate request from a non-American publication, as opposed to a person who just happens to be in town and wants to attend a game for free. The leagues for the most part also have extensive rightsholders agreements outside the United States that local teams may not be aware of. Therefore, it falls to the league publicist to make sure everyone is treated correctly. The influx of non-North American players into traditionally North American sports has also made this situation a bit more contentious. Now, in addition to dealing with local media, team publicists have to deal with different relationships between athletes and the media from their native lands, and things can literally get lost in translation. Therefore, having someone at the league level to police these situations in advance, and offer assistance and clearance in many cases is a very positive service. The rise of Internet publications and blogs has also created another dichotomy for the team publicist. Determining who or what is a legitimate request, and for some teams these requests can come in the hundreds throughout the course of the season now, can also become a full-time job. The immediacy of the reporting for many of these sites can also create issues with accuracy and rightsholders as well, so having the league publicity office there to offer counsel and set policy is a huge plus for the teams.
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The league should be the repository for all information on a macro basis about the sport as well as TV ratings, equipment sales, participant numbers, and should aggressively work with each of its clubs to make sure they have this overall information when they are dealing with local media. Because many teams are streamlined in their PR opportunities, the league should also have the ability to provide pitch stories from market to market to try to tell the best story possible. Another key area the league publicity staff will oversee is media seating. The leagues will review media seating and access areas in each arena and stadium and set minimum standards for the teams to follow. They will also regulate broadcast positions so team broadcast rightsholders all have consistent vantage points, and both home and visiting broadcasters have an equal vantage point. This has become a bigger issue in recent years as teams look to increase revenue in prime seating areas, many of which used to be occupied by members of the media. In many cases, teams have shifted media seating away from prime areas to less desirable locations, or decreased the amount of media seating. The setting of minimum standards and policing of these standards falls to the league PR group (see Appendix 6).
Example The Major Indoor Soccer League publicity office will work with each of its clubs on a weekly basis to provide updated trends and league highlights for dissemination to the local media. The league office will also take in much of the information from the clubs about local activity and then find places to place those stories on a national level. Because smaller leagues like MISL do not have local publicity staffs that can effectively pitch national stories, that ability and duty falls to the league office.
Running Championships and Special Events Unlike the day-to-day activities that go on with running a sport, the league office is ultimately responsible for the marquee events, championships, and all-star games especially. Here the league publi-
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cists take on a role, which they do not normally have during the regular season or most play-offs. Since this is the crowning moment of the sport on the league level, the event with the most media coverage, where the message to a wider audience is usually the most accessible, the availability of the sport and the governing body takes most precedence. At these events there are normally 50% more media than a team would normally deal with, and knowing what each select group is looking for is impossible for the team publicist to handle. The credentialing for a largely national and international media contingent is also overwhelming for a team publicity group to handle, and dealing with each outlet needs well in advance, such as hotel, phone lines, wireless access, etc., is done much more efficiently by the league office. The coordination of schedules and interview times is also handled by the league office for large-scale events, which frees up the team publicists to continue to deal with the day-to-day team needs during these busy times. It also goes back to the theory of “One Voice.” With the league acting as the voice to the media for all procedural issues, there is much less chance for confusion in the media as to what access is granted, what photo positions are available, what live shots can be done, etc. The league publicists can handle those questions clearly and concisely, and most importantly, with uniformity.
Example For events such as the Super Bowl or the NHL Finals, the league publicity office is able to work to determine media seating for the nonlocal press based on the amount of games the outlet attends, whether they are a rightsholder (they pay considerable money for the right to exclusively show an event), or the size of the media outlet. Especially in international markets, this is usually not information the local publicist would have. That media coordination also frees the team publicists to deal with their regular team issues, which usually grow exponentially by the time a championship comes around.
Normally, most leagues will bring in other team publicists to assist in major events. It would not be unusual to have the publicity heads of the Philadelphia Phillies or New York Mets, for example, be at a
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World Series game involving the Boston Red Sox or the New York Yankees. These savvy pros are used by the league office to deal with every detail of the media horde that covers major events from around the globe.
Overseeing Publications and Developing Internet Strategy The other area the league publicity office is heavily involved is the regulation of publications, the inclusion of key information, and the policing of Internet content. Being part of a league brings with it a certain uniformity of information. Many key national stories need to be told with consistent content by the clubs. They range from overall community and branding ideas, to record keeping and information about league structure and rules. All are simple but very important messages that are needed as much by the hometown radio station as they are by the national broadcaster. It is the league publicity office’s function to make sure the language for these messages is included in all publications, and any issues that arise are dealt with consistently and correctly. The league is also in charge of the timing and accuracy of many publications, ranging from media information guides to rule books. Making sure these vital publications are in the appropriate hands, and most importantly, at the appropriate time, is also a key function. The league will also pre-produce interesting content for teams to include in their game programs and other consumer-friendly publications, giving each team a bit more of a national cache with regard to stories and fan access.
Example The NBA requires each team to make sure there is a dedicated section to community events in each team’s media guide, and that each team has the directory for the NBA Developmental league. These two categories are important to the long-term health of the league, and categories the media can sometimes bypass in the heat of the moment of covering the season. By having these pieces in each media guide, the league is able to make sure the messaging is consistent and available to all members of the media across the markets, and gives the implied support of these programs by each team.
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On the College Level Although many of these policies may apply to the league publicist on the college level, especially at the Division I level, one of the biggest functions for the collegiate league publicist is to create the preseason and postseason media attention. The biggest way to do that is with a media day.
Media Days on the Collegiate Level On the collegiate level, the media day usually occurs well ahead of the season—in July for football and late September for men’s and women’s basketball. It is the league publicist’s job to strategically pick the site (usually a major market but sometimes a vacation destination with a media golf outing included), work with the schools to provide players and coaches as spokespeople, and then gather all the publications for distribution. The league publicist will also actively recruit media to come to the media day from all the participating schools, and those media doing national previews. In most instances, the league preseason team will be revealed to create more news. Oftentimes, especially on the football side, there will be 10–20 news crews set up at stations for coaches and players to go through. The league publicist will coordinate many of those details with the school SID. For the postseason, pretournament, or sometimes preBowl season push, the league publicist will also coordinate details and media coverage for postseason awards, basketball tournament credentialing, and coach availability. Again this will all be in conjunction with the SIDs, but it remains a big responsibility for the league publicist at the most crucial times of the year for media coverage. With the advent of new media, the governance, look, and content of Web sites has also begun to fall under league observance. The league publicity staff is usually the group that disseminates key content to the public, and can be a huge assistance in helping teams find new avenues for Internet publicity as well.
A Look at Media Access Policies Set by the League Each league sets its own media policies with regard to player and coach access. These are usually set as minimum standards and teams need to adapt to them so all media get fair and equal access on a regular basis. Noncompliance with league media policies by the
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team can result in fines to the team. The regular media covering the teams usually serve as watchdogs with regard to access, and the league publicity heads will usually rule on access controversies.
NBA On gamedays, coaches and players must be available following their morning shootaround (the gameday morning practice, which usually lasts an hour). Locker rooms are open between the 90-minute mark and the 45-minute mark prior to the game. Locker rooms are then open to the media following a 10-minute cooling off period after a game. Players and coaches are made available to the media following each nongame day practice as well. Most teams practices are closed to the media. Any additional time is not regulated and is set up by the team publicity department.
NHL On gamedays, players and coach are made available following the morning skate for 30 minutes or so. The locker rooms are closed prior to the game and then open again following a cooling-off period after the game. Hockey will also make a player or coach available to the TV broadcaster following each period if needed. On practice days, most media are allowed to watch practice and the locker rooms are opened after practice.
MLB Because of the number of games, the major league baseball clubhouse is probably opened the most to the media. Clubhouse access is from 3:30 p.m. until 45 minutes prior to first pitch (if at 7:05 p.m., then it’s 6:20 p.m.). It is then open again following a coolingoff period after a game. There are rarely any practices during a season.
NFL The opposite of baseball because there is only one game a week, the NFL media policies are probably the most structured. Rules stipulate that the locker room has to be open four days a week, 45 minutes per day, and it is up to the individual teams to structure the
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week as best suits the team and the media. Locker rooms are closed pregame and then open following a cooling-off period postgame. One difference is that media have access to the field postgame and many times may get a player before he goes into the locker room as he exits the field.
Other Sports Tennis The ATP and WTA make players available after their matches if requested by the media. They also have access to players by request at other points during the week. Both tours also legislate a comprehensive nonmatch publicity effort designed to grow the game, ACES for the ATP and FIRST SERVE for the women. The players in the field are obliged to do different levels of activity away from the court—media, sponsor, community—as part of giving back to the sport.
Golf Both the PGA and LPGA will make players available after matches. Depending on the course, access to the clubhouses is limited. Most times, media will also find players on the practice areas for time.
Colleges For major colleges, there is usually one day a week where the conference coaches are mandated to do a general media conference call, especially with major conference football. Traditionally, regional areas will do a once a week luncheon or call for notes writers, where many of the college coaches gather to report on their teams, or major colleges will do a once-weekly luncheon to make the head coach and sometimes a player available. This is also similar in some markets with basketball. In big markets there may be a weekly luncheon many college coaches attend depending on schedule, or in smaller markets the league or the school may do a weekly call for the media. Other than the preseason media days and the weekly football call, rarely do college leagues have any say in media availability for coaches and players.
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NASCAR The media availability for a NASCAR race week usually begins on Thursday. There will be some availability earlier in the week, but Friday is the major availability day, after qualifying is completed. Once race weekend begins, time is limited for drivers. In closing, the league publicist has to be the consensus builder and the rule keeper. However, there is great opportunity to be entrepreneurial as well, as you are able to combine teams and information to tell big picture stories to national media and shape the position of your sport more than most teams will be able to do. When there are big time events, the league PR team is generally the biggest influence.
Reference Covitz, Randy. “NFL Exercises Message Control.” The Kansas City Star, October 3, 2006.
CHAPTER 9
Women’s Sports and Athletics
In this chapter, we look at the subject of women’s sports and how the unique challenges and opportunities both on the team and individual levels. We also look at the differences in publicity in women’s sports outside the United States and how these issues can be addressed. Now, some of the suggestions in this chapter may seem repetitive or generic to promoting any sports entity, regardless of whether the sport is coed, men, or women. However, it is the experience of the author in working in entities that involve women’s sports that these thoughts bear repeating or establishing with clear examples geared to women’s athletics. Women’s sports is still very much a growth area and a prime entry point for those entering the sports publicity field. The social acceptance of women as athletes has grown in lightyears since the 1980s, and with it the participation in athletics as socially acceptable has risen dramatically. That growth has begun to take a foothold in developing countries as well, and that area of growth will also be an area for the emerging publicist. The establishment of women’s athletics in the mainstream is growing, but is not at the point of across the board acceptance in what has traditionally been a male dominated field. This chapter looks at the specificities of women’s sports from a publicity vantage point. From the advent of Title IX (which established equality of opportunities in collegiate sports) to the growing discretionary spending of women and girls and the continuing emergence of marketing to a female audience, the opportunities appear endless. The success of the WNBA as a league, along with the strong continued force of women’s athletics in gymnastics, figure skating, tennis, and golf, appear to have opportunities for publicity at an all-time high, especially in the United States.
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Still, there are the many failures when the element of sports is brought to the marketplace. Leagues like the ABL, WUSA, and others have tried and failed to crack the mainstream. The name recognition in the male-dominated sports world, especially outside the United States, is lacking behind male athletes, and in doing so the sponsor dollar also lags behind. Although that is not great for the dollar value in women’s sports, it is not a terrible thing for the publicity side at this time. As women’s sports do make the crossover into the main stream, the driving force behind the growth has been the publicity angle. We will look at some case studies of some of the successes in crossover publicity on the collegiate and professional level, but first, here is a look at the differences and challenges in publicizing women, or women and men together as opposed to a male athlete focused sport or event.
It May Be a Game, but There Are Differences in the Way It’s Played and Pitched One of the great pitfalls into which publicists can plunge is the “Battle of the Sexes” concept. Now, in the first boomtime of women’s sports in the 1970s, the Philip Morris-owned Virginia Slims Tour made tremendous strides in taking its brand slogan “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby,” and tying it to the ever-growing sport of women’s professional tennis. This came to a head with the famous Billie Jean King–Bobby Riggs “Battle of the Sexes” match in 1973 at the Houston Astrodome, in which King beat Riggs and effectively gave women’s athletics a landmark leap forward. This was the grandest, and most effective, male vs. female publicity stunt before or since, and it still resonates with many of the millions who saw it on TV or heard about it since. It was a crowning day for women’s sports to be sure, and it opened a great door. However, in some ways it opened a door for competition that is not very realistic in many ways, and created a problem for women’s sports in gaining a place to stand alone as an entity. The publicity idea of men vs. women for the most part has not gone well. There is so much more the female athlete can offer as a stand-alone, the idea of competing with men on the same playing field can sometimes slow growth and exposure as opposed to broadening it. Tennis and golf are the two sports where this has been tried the most, and perhaps there are parts of tennis where the level of competition could be comparable among names as in the King vs. Riggs match. This
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was the most respected but not the only time the Battle of the Sexes has been tried.
Example The Virginia Wade–Bobby Riggs match, where Riggs soundly defeated the rising young Brit in 1970, was seen at the time as a huge blow to the sport for more recognition. The attempts by Michelle Wie to play on the PGA Tour as opposed to growing the game of the LPGA Tour have also been met with some skepticism and have not helped a women’s game grow. At the end of the day, having a twenty-something superstar in her prime beat a fifty-something former champion in today’s world of sports would seem more silly than competitive. The key in promotion of women’s sports is its uniqueness, and the audience it appeals to. In publicizing a women’s-specific sport, as it is with any opportunity, it is always important to work from your position of strength. What are the story angles, the high level of competition, the newness of these athletes and the games they play that exists in this event and sets it apart from similar sports and events? It is important to always think of these athletes and these events not as a woman’s sport. Do any men’s sports ever use the word men on the professional level? Never. In college athletics, yes, because the advent of Title IX has created gender equity. However, many colleges have also gone to generic names as opposed to names for men and women. An example is St. John’s University in New York. When the school began its women’s sports programs, the women had the nickname “The Express” while the men were the Redmen. The school’s recent rebranding has both men and women playing under the Red Storm logo. Another key area where this has been adopted is the names and logos teams the WNBA and the WUSA select for their teams. In previous women’s sports incarnations, names like the Gems and the Peaches were selected as team nicknames. The advent of women’s pro soccer and basketball showed that these new brands could have strong recognition in athletics without having to be portrayed as just sweet or cute. They could be representative of what the game and the athlete actually are and should be thought of, and that should be reflected in the public relations pitch.
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Now, the differences in the two can be the positive in the publicity play. In some instances, the style with which women play a game is actually more similar to the way the average person plays and can relate to a sport. For example: • Men’s professional tennis is largely a big serve game, while women’s tennis for the most part has remained a serve and volley game. Talking up the nuances of the game and the athlete makes it much more understandable and less intimidating than the men’s side. • Women’s golf is also more about the short game and the way the course is handled, as opposed to the long drive of the PGA Tour. • Women’s basketball is much more geared around the team concept, and around shooting and passing than the NBA or the NCAA men’s game, which has evolved into much more flash than fundamentals. The other big advantage in many women’s sports is the accessibility to athletes, and their willingness to listen to and work harder to implement a publicity plan in many cases. Now, in the top pro professional leagues and in many top collegiate programs the media demand may actually exceed or be comparable to the men’s. Venus Williams, Annika Sorenstam, or the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team will garner as much publicity as most male counterparts. With that comes the same ability to balance media request time and prioritize opportunities. However, for the most part, the female athlete is much more accessible and open to ideas from a publicity side to make both her and her sport more successful. The important thing is to listen to their wants and needs for publicity, communicate well, and find the best ways possible to achieve the level of public relations activity everyone needs to be successful. Another good and bad news story here is the fact that women’s athletics is not funded on the professional level the way men’s athletics is. The positive side is that women athletes may be more interested in doing the small endorsement or taking the PR opportunity to bring in some extra money for themselves and their career. The negative side is that many of these athletes will go overseas, or play in lucrative and unregulated exhibitions, to get more money in their offseason. For example, many WNBA stars will go to Europe or the Far East to play during the winter, and many will not return until the WNBA season is about to begin, which will limit the PR window. In tennis, the few months of downtime provide for promoters to come in and have players participate in exhibition matches in cities
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pro tennis does not reach, and that conflict can create a smaller window of opportunity for publicity as well. The trick here is to again use those instances of exposure as a positive for the sport. Although the manager or team or league official may view these things as an annoyance in the short term, the publicist must view this as a chance to extend compelling story lines, support the athlete, and open up new areas of media contact that may not exist on a regular basis. Having the glass half full here will make you the champion of the cause and the sport.
Sensitivity Training So, we have now established that the nuances of the areas of women’s sports that are promotable, and where opportunities may lie.
It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It One lesson learned in the politically sensitive world we live in is exactly how women athletes are referred to and how this affects the public perception.
Example 1 In the basketball world on the men’s side, those involved with the game will constantly refer to the guards as “smalls” and the forwards as “bigs.” In one incident, a publicist was referring to a very impactful female guard in the WNBA as a “small,” and a very imposing and athletic female forward as a “big.” It was with a female writer who was being pitched for a sports feature on the two teammates. The writer, a long-time advocate of women’s sports who was more than happy to hear the pitch, took great offense to the terms as demeaning to the physical presence of both players, and actually had a hard time dealing with what she thought was an “insensitive” male publicist again. In turn, the head coach of the team also spoke to the publicist, who again went back to calling (at their choice) the players guards and forwards. It was an innocent mistake and the lesson was learned, but it was one this very savvy publicist had never dealt with in men’s sports.
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Example 2 In 1992, the WTA Tour was looking for a title sponsor, and was represented in the marketplace by their long-time media and business partner IMG. Also in the marketplace competing for a sponsor was IMG’s largest rival at the time, Advantage International, which is now part of Octagon, itself one of the largest and most successful sports media and marketing companies in the world. The title sponsorship of a Tour or an event is the most lucrative and all-encompassing branding statement a company can make. It bonds that brand with the sport or the entity for the period of time designated, usually several years. In that time, the brand name through publicity and marketing will become synonymous with the sport or event, and either solidify the brand with the marketplace it is trying to reach or grow the brand name into new areas. The best title sponsorships can accomplish both. As the sport was just regaining its foothold in the public sector after a downtime in the 1980s, and competing for worldwide sponsor dollars, there were not many choices. However, one of the companies to step up to the plate and put up the money the Tour was looking for was Johnson and Johnson, the maker of women’s hygiene product Tampax. Johnson and Johnson was looking for the right vehicle to grow their brand and reach their core audience, and the demo of women’s tennis fit them exactly. The deal never happened, largely because of the PR perception. The feeling of the CEO of the women’s tour, Anne Worcester, after counsel from her players and board, felt that the PR issues that would be created in a Tampax titled tour, especially outside the United States where the media would be less accepting, far outweighed the benefits of exposure and dollar value. (The Tour eventually landed software sponsor Corel as its title sponsor, and has had various incarnations over the years, including Sony Ericcsson as the latest.) Now, in today’s marketplace, with pharmaceuticals being the rage and Viagra and Cialis becoming much more mainstream, the idea of Tampax sponsoring a women’s sports league may be more acceptable to the general public. But in the 1990s, the stereotype and negative PR possibilities outweighed the positive.
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Example 3 Sexual diversity. Women’s sports have come a long way in addressing the issue of sexual diversity and tolerance in the workplace, but the issue remains a PR topic with many women’s sports when they try to enter the mainstream, which can still be a very homophobic atmosphere. The Los Angeles Sparks or the Dinah Shore LPGA event marketing to a gay audience has been a public relations issue for many years, and has affected publicity plans positively—exposing the events to mainstream media coverage, and creating niche publicity opportunities with sponsors—and negatively, such as the sports media backlash and off-color stories, and protests from conservative groups. However, the gay bias as a PR concern when working with women’s sports has to be considered and factored in, but not be the main focus. It is not important to overcompensate with stories of married, attractive females with their kids and boyfriends. It is important to have balance and be sensitive to the needs of the athlete and the sport.
Example 4 Locker room space: Another male/female issue all publicists should consider and be ready to deal with female reporters and publicists in a men’s locker room. While we have come a long way from the famous Lisa Olson story with the New England Patriots in 1990 (Olson, a reporter for The Boston Herald—and now the New York Daily News—was sexually harassed by three players in the Patriots locker room following a game and the incident was confirmed by the commissioner’s office), many issues still have to be addressed, considered, and eventually overcome for the nonathlete in the male athletic environment. In the United States, virtually all locker rooms are open for media following a cooling-off period, and generally athletes nowadays do use better decorum with regard to robes and towels. Many teams actually institute a “woman in the locker
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room” heads up to stay even more on top of things. While this sometimes is not taken well by female journalists, who feel like they are being singled out, it is most times meant as a courtesy for both the athlete and the journalist. From a publicity side, the female SID or team PR staffer has to deal with these athletes every day, and most will pick their spots entering the locker room. Again, it may present some problems with regard to watching interviews or making sure media get what they need in terms of access and publicity in a locker room setting, but the idea of having male assistants around to help out in what is sometimes an uncomfortable situation is very helpful, and can help speed the process.
Women Reporters in the Men’s Locker Room: Rugged Terrain by Randi Druzin Cub reporter Paola Boivin entered the St. Louis Cardinals clubhouse with her male colleagues after a game in 1987. While searching for infielder Terry Pendleton, one of his teammates approached her. “Are you here to interview somebody or to look at a bunch of guys (deleted)?” No sooner had he spat out the words than a jockstrap landed on Boivin’s head. She fled the clubhouse and later interviewed a sympathetic Pendleton in the hallway. Subsequent locker room visits were less problematic for Boivin, a former president of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM), but she was surprised again a few years ago. During a postgame interview with then-Arizona Diamondbacks infielder Tony Womack, Boivin felt someone tugging on the hem of her jacket. The Arizona Republic reporter looked down to meet the son of thenDiamondbacks outfielder Steve Finley. “Miss, miss,” the little boy said. “You can’t be in here. This place is only for boys.” The lot of the female sports reporter is much better today than it was two decades ago, when women took their first steps into the locker room, tiptoeing through a minefield of jockstraps and naked men. Nonetheless, the female sports reporter is still not competing on a level playing field. She still encounters obstacles and frustrations her male colleagues do not. A decade before Boivin’s unfortunate encounter with a sweat-drenched bit of men’s athletic apparel, Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke had a run-in of her own. When Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn prohibited Ludtke from interviewing players in the locker room during the 1977 World Series, SI publisher Time Inc., filed a
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lawsuit. The following year, a U.S. federal judge ruled that male and female reporters should have equal access to the locker room. Players howled in protest “We’re not a nudist colony putting on an exhibition,” insisted NBA rookie Toby Knight, “and the locker room did not change overnight.” Indeed, In 1979, the Fort Myers News-Press battled the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers to win equal access for sports reporter Michele Himmelberg. Later in the season, before a game in Minnesota, Himmelberg arrived in the press box to learn that all reporters would be banned from the Vikings locker room because of one woman reporter. After the game, reporters were herded into a designated interview area. “We stood there for a long time and no players arrived,” recalls Himmelberg, a cofounder of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) now with The Orange County Register. As deadlines neared, reporters began checking their watches anxiously and grumbling aloud. Himmelberg found herself cornered by two radio reporters. “What are you doing here anyway?” they demanded. “You’re just a pervert trying to get a look at these guys.” Himmelberg left the interview area, got some quotes in the Buccaneers’ locker room, and filed her stories. She then returned to her hotel room and burst into tears. “Let’s face it. I’m an outsider in the players’ domain.” Her job became less difficult over time. By the mid-1980s, all four major professional sports leagues (NFL, NHL, NBA, Major League Baseball) had adopted policies in compliance with the U.S. court ruling on equal access, and female sports reporters had become more commonplace in the locker room. Nonetheless, several of these women learned that, while they were allowed into the locker room, they were not welcomed there. “Changing the rules doesn’t necessarily alter attitudes,” Ludtke observed. No one learned that lesson better than Lisa Olson, a reporter for The Boston Herald. While conducting interviews in the New England Patriots’ locker room following an NFL game in 1990, a group of Patriots surrounded the reporter and made aggressive, vulgar comments. The players were later fined and the team’s general manager was fired for trying to cover up the incident. When the incident sparked a national debate, Olson began receiving death threats. Vandals burglarized her apartment and painted an ominous message on a wall in her home: “Leave Boston or die.” She received another note when the tires of her car were slashed: “Next time it will be your throat.” Olson later recalled that she received mail that “would make you physically ill—depictions of rape scenes and horrible, horrible things.” Olson fled to Australia, where she covered cricket and rugby for five years. She returned to take a writing job at The New York Daily News hoping to put the past behind her. Nonetheless, she started receiving threatening phone calls and letters again, when two famous athletes spoke out against female reporters in the locker room. In a 1999 Wall Street Journal article, retired NFL defensive end Reggie White wrote that he couldn’t see a legitimate reason “for forcing
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male athletes to walk around naked in front of women who aren’t their wives.” White claimed to have seen female reporters “ogling guys in the locker room,” and encouraged players to fight against equal access for female reporters. Within a few days, New York Knicks guard Charlie Ward was distributing copies of the article to his teammates. The basketball player claimed having women in the locker room violated the sanctity of marriage. Madison Square Garden president and chief executive officer Dave Checketts condemned Ward’s actions and warned him not to use the locker room as a pulpit. No surprise to Rachel Bachman, a sports reporter at The Oregonian who covered the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers during the 1998–99 season and has covered them in postseason play since then. “Today, when a woman is harassed or there are access problems, there is an immediate response and a general understanding that the reporter has the right to be there,” she says. “That was not necessarily the case just 10 years ago.” But some things haven’t changed. Bachman confesses she is bothered by the current “blurring of boundaries” between professional male athletes and female reporters. “Female reporters suffer a lot of harassment because some men don’t understand or respect that the women are in the locker room to do a job.” Bachman says few women speak out because “they want to be defined by their work, not by their struggles.” “I have had athletes either ask me out or make inappropriate suggestions sexually. It’s a horrible position to be in because you have to keep writing about these men after you have rebuffed them, and often they are not very understanding about the reason you say no.” Male athletes’ problem with female reporters is rooted in “stereotypical, outmoded, and confining images of women, not at all suited to the reality of their actual lives,” suggests Ludtke. “Let’s face it,” sports reporter Christine Brennan once wrote in the Washington Post. “I’m an outsider in the players’ domain.” Source: www.womenssportsfoundation.org
Now, do the same issues exist for male journalists and PR staffers in the female sports world? Perhaps to some extent but not to the same degree because of the lack of male publicists involved in female sports and the smaller amount of female sports regularly covered by a larger media contingent. Ironically in many cases for female sports, the locker room situation is different from their male counterparts. Locker rooms for females are largely off limits to the media, with the exception of small media access areas. One of the biggest exceptions is at the U.S. Open in tennis, where the female locker room is open to media to the same extent that the male locker room is open to females.
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Example 5 The sex symbol issue. The quickest way to get into the male dominated area of sports with publicity is to play up the issue of physical attributes over athletic skill. Again, like the sexual diversity issue, this cannot be ignored in the public relations plan. The LPGA Tour has made the “sexiness” of their players a prime asset in their PR and marketing plans, as the WTA has for years. The AVP (professional volleyball) have often been criticized for high cuts on their uniforms for women’s players, as opposed to men. Women’s fashion, most recently Serena Williams’ black “cat suit” at the U.S. Open, is always a central part of the publicity plan at major tennis events for both apparel companies and athletes. It is very rarely the case with men’s sports. Indeed, when these issues have come up as part of a publicity push in men’s sports, the ideas are often shunned by mainstream sports media as “silly” or “uninteresting.” Andre Aggasi’s sex appeal is one of the bigger recent examples. Most sports writers chose to write little about Andre’s physical persona, yet all physical attributes about his future wife, Steffi Graf, were easily the cause for debate, especially when she became pregnant. The question in the publicity world becomes if the publicist can effectively play both sides of the fence. Can you pitch stories about physical beauty and sexiness like an Anna Kournikova and then expect a serious athlete who does not want that side of her persona to be the central focus to be taken seriously by the media? The answer is yes, but there must be a balance, and the athleticism must also be the main focus. Without the athleticism, the message is lost and that athlete usually becomes known just for her physical attributes and not her athletic ability.
Example 6 Respect for social tradition. Many times, Americans living in a very liberal society forget that there are still traditions and cultures that are thousands of years old in other parts of the world that need to be factored into our decisions, even in the
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world of women’s sports publicity. As women’s sports grow around the globe and emerging nations realize that having young women participate in athletics is acceptable, new issues arise. Islamic culture has seen backlash in tennis and volleyball, where shorter skirts and bikinis, common in some forms of competition, are not acceptable. Indian tennis player Sania Mirza actually received death threats several times during 2006 for wearing skirts during tennis events while openly talking about her devotion to her heritage. Pro tennis and golf events in places like Dubai have seen great acceptance among larger populations, but players have had to be very careful and respectful when circulating in general population. The AVP Crocs Tour has looked to grow its game internationally, yet because of the social moirés in Islamic countries, has been careful with its growth. Publicists must be respectful of these issues and be able to deal with them in a crisis situation as women’s sports grows. It will also affect the ability to effectively pitch such stories and athletes in an international sport setting as sports become more acceptable in emerging countries for women.
Do Not Work as An Island One of the common misconceptions in sports publicity for women’s athletics is that each sport is going to be the trailblazer to get women’s sports on equal ground with men’s. Women’s tennis, basketball, golf, softball, volleyball, collegiate sports, figure skating, soccer, gymnastics, and even boxing have all at one time or another proclaimed the breakthrough that will get their sport into the main male demographic with unique publicity ideas. All have tried, and many have worked for short periods of time (with tennis and golf being the obvious leaders), but in the end the wave rises and falls with little consistency. Companies hungry to attach themselves to both the ever-growing female demo and the sports-minded male demo jump in eagerly hoping to ride the wave, Yet when the smoke clears they do not always see the return they envisioned. Are there good publicity opportunities in the temporary intervals of mass popularity? Absolutely. The Women’s World Cup will be one of the greatest case
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studies ever for strong initial publicity. Venus Williams and Anna Korunikova have created unique and intriguing opportunities for the game of tennis. Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie have changed some of the perceptions about women’s golf. Danica Patrick’s presence in open wheel racing has helped a rise in that sport. However, they are all short lived and on the publicity side many operate in a vacuum, or will copy off the other. The perfect case study for this is women’s tennis and golf on the individual side, and women’s basketball and soccer on the team side. Some examples follow.
The WTA Publicity Machine of the Mid-1990s and the LPGA Publicity Machine of 2005 Arguably, both tennis and golf have produced the greatest individual sports publicity opportunities for women’s sports. After Sally Jenkins’ famous “Is Tennis Dead” story in Sports Illustrated during the late 1990s, the sport—especially the women’s game—revamped itself to use the personalities of the game to sell the sport. The conscious effort was made to work with player agents, sneaker companies, and marketing agencies to combine efforts and find opportunities collectively to grow the game. Hence, the images of Martina Hingis as the first female athlete on the cover of GQ to Conchita Martinez featured in Wine Spectator became the norm, because those publicists took the time to find out the interests of the athletes on and off the court and effectively manage the publicity opportunities both for the long and short term. The result was a boom over a five-year period in the interest of the sport, which resulted in growing prize money, the first-ever prime time exposure for a women’s championship on television (the women’s final of the U.S. Open shown on a Saturday night), and more mainstream coverage of the sport. Move ahead to the recent past, where the LPGA has now announced that they are breaking new barriers in sports by promoting the personalities of their golfers off the sports page like never before. The results there see Annika Sorenstam with record endorsements and appearances, huge increases in interest for Michelle Wie, and a larger audience for the sport.
The WUSA and the WNBA Following an outstanding run by the American women in the inaugural Women’s World Cup in 1999, the WUSA was formed. The
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league, founded by Discovery Channel magnate and passionate women’s supporter John Hendricks, sought to capitalize on the great images from the World Cup, such as Mia Hamm’s athleticism, Brandi Chastain’s memorable winning goal, Julie Foudy’s passion, and launch a new team sport in key cities by promoting outdoor family entertainment for the world’s greatest sport to a new market of soccer mad young people and their parents. The initial success was solid, and the league used the great personalities from the American team as the PR launching point. These faces represented the core future of the league, and the media that followed them through their first team experiences was mainstream and memorable. The other landmark move on the team front was David Stern’s 1996 launch of the WNBA. The summer league began as a single entity opportunity to come off another strong Olympics and showcase the game of basketball year-round, using the strong and vibrant athletes who had flourished under Title IX at the collegiate level to grow basketball to a new year-round family audience. The league used its leverage with its NBA partners to launch the league to great fan-fare crowds, sponsor dollars, and television numbers, including a landmark deal with NBC. The personalities and the passion of the women’s game was different from the NBA style, and had the support of the NBA behind it to push it solidly into the marketplace. WNBA faces and logos were seen everywhere in what was arguably the best startup from a publicity standpoint of any professional sports league. The WNBA—although in a slightly different format, many teams are individually owned now and in some non-NBA markets—continues to be the hallmark for women’s sports leagues as it entered its 10th season in 2006. All of these were great efforts and have had their tremendous publicity opportunities in their lifetimes. What’s the problem, then? Consistency. Sport, as we know is cyclical, and for growing sports struggling to find the consistency, they need to work together to combine their facts, figures, and opportunities to maximize the good days and get through the rainy days. If you are a sports publicist working in a women’s sport, take the time to study, contact, and work with other sports entities who are trying to find your niche. As the WUSA launched in the window of the WNBA, there was inconsistent cooperation between the two from a publicity standpoint. In some similar markets, the established WNBA teams actually shunned efforts from the WUSA teams that reached out to try to work together. They were then competing for the short-term dollar
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and an inch on the sports page. However, for the long-term success of women’s sports, the images of Sheryl Swoopes and Mia Hamm in a joint publicity campaign would have done wonders for both brands. The united numbers of buying power and exposure would have shown more for the whole than the sum of its parts. Tennis and golf are the same story. A joint campaign by the governing bodies championing the efforts and ability of Annika Sorenstam and Serena Williams would have been groundbreaking and very telegenic. Numbers combining the two audiences would get each sport through its highs and lows. Instead, the two work in their own silo, trying to each proclaim themselves “number one” in their media push at various times. As a result, the short term is served and the long term suffers. As a publicist, one should seek to unite to create new opportunities as opposed to constantly recreating the same ones. It would be trailblazing, and as a women’s sports publicist, would set one ahead. As an aside, one group does use the cumulative to grow the women’s sports picture for all. The Women’s Sports Foundation, founded in 1974 by Billie Jean King, is a charitable educational organization dedicated to advancing the lives of girls and women through sports and physical activity. The Foundation’s Participation, Education, Advocacy, Research, and Leadership programs are made possible by individual and corporate contributions, run by Dr. Donna Lopiano (www.womenssportsfoundation.org). The Foundation is the data collection and voice for all women’s sports, and works the hardest to provide these services to the media and sponsors alike. It is a great resource for the publicist and is very underserved.
Find the Advocates and Make Them Your Biggest Voices One of the biggest challenges for women’s sports publicity to find the biggest advocates and make them yours. The sports editor of a specific paper may continue to focus on his male demographic and subsequent stories, but there are the other angles to the paper, and columnists, to find who will be your voice as the entrée. If you are involved in women’s sports publicity, the knowledge of those who have written and championed the causes (Christine Brennan, Sally Jenkins, Harvey Araton, Karen Crouse, Liz Robbins, Liz Clarke, Rachel Nichols), voices that are very well heard in all sports, will be able to help you open doors.
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The publicist today also has the great resource of the Internet to locate those voices, an element previous women’s sports publicists have not had before. The ability to work as a consensus builder is key here, too. Identifying those voices who have a passion for the cause will make your job easier.
Example The sports editors of the Philadelphia Daily News have to serve their solid male consistuency. However, there is also Mel Greenberg, the long-time voice of women’s basketball for his paper, and in many instances for the nation as well. Mel has been covering women’s basketball for more than 20 years on a consistent basis, and his ability to help open doors and create interest in compelling stories is essential for any sports publicist.
There are also many niche Web sites that can also assist in the effort as never before. Being able to identify, sometimes create, and grow demand through blogs, chats, and data will be essential in your efforts. You will also find that attention paid to these sites and online publications can come back to help you grow into other areas of publicity when there is peak demand for your sport or athlete. Many times, this is where the mainstream sports publications will turn to for information, and the more familiar and accessible your efforts are with these easy online sources, the better chance you will have for wider coverage at the right time. Also, do not forget the use of Olympic sites, and national governing body help. Because so many women’s sports have pique Internet times around Olympic events, these places, and the publicists who work for the sport in general year-round, need to be your friends and key resources. Many times on the professional level these sources are not seen as allies (again the exclusion vs. inclusion problem), but as a publicist for a professional sport you need to strengthen, build, and pitch these key groups in both their quiet and active times. If you are on the pro side of women’s sports, never forget the college sites. In many instances, these female athletes garnered their
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widest attention during their collegiate or high-school years. The long-time allies of these athletes are more than willing to assist, do update stories, and help guide you to new streams of publicity. Inclusion vs. exclusion again. Lastly on this subject, make new allies. Doing all the little “pitch” things we talked about throughout the earlier chapters will help you create new allies with good, solid stories. Providing long-term lead ideas, constantly furnishing positive numbers, becoming an advocate for the sport in general as opposed to the athlete or league specific, are all key to chipping away at the walls and making your female athlete publicity efforts strong, diverse, professional, and impactful. The following information is provided to make sure the appropriate facts and figures are used as background for working in women’s athletics publicity and to provide a base as to where one can turn to for information.
Some Facts and Figures about Women’s Sports (Courtesy of the Women’s Sports Foundation) Participation Opportunities for Female Athletes Nationwide, more college women have more athletic teams available to them than ever before. • 8.32 teams per school is the average offering for female athletes in 2004. The 2004 number of 8.32 is near the 2002 all-time high of 8.34 and far exceeds the 1972 (year Title IX was enacted) number of a little over 2 per school and the 1978 (mandatory compliance date for Title IX) number of 5.61 per school. • In the two-year period of 2002 to 2004, 270 new women’s teams were added. In 2000–2004 there have been 631 new teams added and in the last six years, a total of 1155 new women’s teams have been added. • The 10 most frequently found college varsity sports for women are in rank order: basketball, volleyball, cross country, soccer, softball, tennis, track/field, golf, swimming, and lacrosse. • Soccer exhibits the greatest growth of any sport in the last 27 years. It is now offered for women on 88.6% of the campuses while in 1977 it was only found on 2.8% of the campuses. Soccer has increased 40-fold since.
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• Girls comprise 47.3% of the high-school population (NCES, 2002–2003) but only receive 41.5% of all athletic participation opportunities. (NFHS, 2003–2004)
Individual Pro Sports vs. Team Pro Sports While women has been actively participating and involved in sport, the number of women who organize sports events has been gradually on the increase. Even women who make a career of sports have appeared: the birth of women’s professional athletes. In women’s professional sports, individual sports, such as golf, tennis, and bowling, have a much longer history than team sports. For example, one of the oldest history of women’s professional sports in the United States is in golf. In 1950, the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) was established and became an international organization in 1970s. This kind of organization set up a standard whether or not the professional sport prospers. LPGA continues to grow, and the total prize money for the year 2006 reached $50 million for the first time. The Sony Ericcson WTA Tour was established in 1971 and offered more than $60 million in prize money in 2006. In bowling, The Professional Women’s Bowling Association (PWBA) was established in 1959 and the Ladies Professional Bowlers Tour (LPBT) started in 1981. As of today, no current professional bowling circuit exists for women. On the other hand, women’s professional team sports have had a hard time trying to survive and stabilize compared to individual sports. Some people argue that the masculine image of team sports has inhibited women from participating in them for a long time. It is quite a recent event that women’s team sports began to develop and professional organizations of those sports emerged. The rest of this section briefly overviews the history of women’s major professional team sports in the United States.
Women’s Baseball Since many men were on the battlefield during the Second World War, the All-American Girl’s Professional Baseball League (AAGBL), in place of Major League Baseball, was created in 1943 to provide entertainment for people exhausted by the war. It was such a success that the number of people who attended women’s baseball games reached almost 1 million in 1948. Yet, when the war ended and Major League Baseball players came back home, female baseball players were obliged to fill the role of housewife at home. AAGBL
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lost its audience, struggled with finances, and ceased to exist in 1954. Forty years later, in 1994, a businessman in Atlanta struck a $3 million sponsorship deal with Coors and formed a women’s professional baseball team called Colorado Silver Bullets. About 20 members were selected from 1300 baseball players nationwide for this team. The Bullets played games with men’s semiprofessional teams and regional teams. In 1997, when the Ladies League Baseball was born and it included four teams, the Bullets fought with them. The Ladies League Baseball changed its name to the Ladies Pro Baseball and added two teams into the league in 1998. However, after the first month, the league was suspended, being faced with financial difficulties of its sponsors. The Bullets has not operated since 1998 as Coors terminated its contract.
Women’s Volleyball The Women’s Professional Volleyball Association was established in 1986. The association organized professional six-player indoor volleyball leagues and beach volleyball leagues, such as Budlight Pro Beach Volleyball League in 1997, in which four teams participated. The league dissolved in 1998, but with the help of super-agent Leonard Armato, was resurrected as the Crocs AVP Tour in 2004. It is now a co-ed league that has grown each year and offers both men and women the opportunity to play professionally on a consistent circuit.
Women’s Basketball The first women’s professional basketball league in the United States was created in 1976, and consisted of eight teams. It was very popular, as the average attendance of 1200 per game suggests, and the games were televised, too. The league did not survive the following year, however, since some teams faced financial problems and the league lost its audience. Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), which emerged in January 1997, remains the hallmark for women’s professional sports. In 2006, the league did well. WNBA consists of 14 teams, with 7 Eastern Conference teams and 7 Western Conference teams. There are many countries where women’s professional basketball leagues exist besides the United States, such as Italy, Germany, Spain, and Brazil. Many Americans players went overseas, and some WNBA players play basketball in foreign countries during WNBA’s off-season.
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Women’s Softball and Soccer The first women’s professional softball league was established in 1976, but only lasted for four years because of financial reasons and failure in marketing. In 1994, the Women’s Professional Fastpitch emerged to prepare a rebirth of the professional league, which came into existence with six teams in 1997. The teams were divided into two groups, had 66 games a year, and the winners of both groups did play-off. Several games were on the air. However, like its baseball counterpart, lack of funding forced the league to fold in 2001, with no current plans to revive it. The 1999 Women’s World Cup spawned the WUSA, the first and only women’s professional soccer league, which launched in 2002. The league lasted only two seasons due to overspending and too much early growth. Plans to revive a league are currently being discussed. In closing, women’s sports publicity does have its challenges. However, the opportunities as a growth area when one can be well researched, strategic, and informed about making a pitch can be very rewarding. The effect on pitching stories at the grassroots level and the subsequent breakthrough into the mainstream can be very rewarding, and will open many doors for the publicist in virtually every area.
Reference Druzin, Randy. “Women Reporters in the Men’s Locker Room: Rugged Terrain.” womensportsfoundation.org.
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CULTURE, CORRUPTION AND OTHER IMPERATIVE In the process of developing this book, the authors have interviewed approximately 100 people, browsed the Internet, and made a reasonable search of the literature. Two themes emerge from all of this effort: Excitement about the market potential, and dismay at the level of corruption involved in doing business in the region. More revelations have recently come to our attention. Specifically, a colleague who had spoken to the American representative of a firm operating in Ukraine said that 30 to 40 percent of his operating budget went to pay bribes. Everything they needed to do as a business required a bribe. Even going to the office of the minister in charge of his industry, for instance, required a bribe. It didn’t matter how often you went, you would never get on the minister’s appointment calendar unless you
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gave the secretary $50. Then, as if by magic, the meeting would become possible. According to this same source, when the Ukraine found itself in a budget deficit last year, officials decided to impose a 0.03 percent of valuation “business continuance tax” on all foreign businesses. Everyone complained, but everyone paid. As a result of that spur-of-the-moment business tax, the U.S. State Department posted warnings about doing business in the Ukraine, and the European Commission refused to hold talks with the Ukrainian government until a long list of “housecleaning” items were completed. One international bank, having lost an embarrassing amount of money there, now has a program to coach Ukrainian officials away from bribery as a way of doing business-or as a way of life. It is “the dirty little secret” that no one discusses, because everyone is paying someone, and there is no need to talk about it. Nothing will happen. But, as Linas Kojelis told us, “There ought to be a therapy group for all of us who have been shaken down.” Another American doing business in Lithuania refused to participate in a tender for a service contract, because a bribe was required just to submit a b i d - o r to have a submitted bid considered. Is bribing cultural, or economic? In places where tipping waiters is not expected, how does one explain “tips” to physicians and government officials? As acknowledged earlier; when official salaries are too low to support a reasonable living standard, bribery probably will flourish.
When Corporate Executives Skim the Cream One of the authors confronted a group of executives on this issue. The comments went like this: We have heard from a number of your workers that some among you are taking bribes and kick-backs from your venders. We have heard that this is in the category of “Everybody knows.” And, when everyone knows this is going on, how will employees hear demands for more productivity, for reducing costs? Does it make sense that employees will work harder when executives’ “unofficial” incomes are larger than employee salaries? And how long will it be before such practices are declared illegal? And what will happen to your company if one of you is arrested for business practices that are illegal in the West? If you really want more productivity and profitable performance from your people, what kind of leadership example are you providing?
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Naturally, no one said anything. Did anyone stop taking bribes? Probably not. Was it an appropriate “intervention?” Maybe not. But if the issue is productivity, there is an obligation to talk about all the variables that operate, for or against more productivity, and to give the people involved a chance and a choice to respond. For people at managerial or ownership levels in the private sector, it has to be a cultural issue more than an economic necessity that supports bribery and corruption. Does the culture support abuses of rank and privilege? Locals will say that it just happens, always has happened, and probably will always happen. What can you do? What can you hypothesize about the strength of democratic processes when becoming a recipient of bribes is the reward for being successful in the electoral process? How can the dimensions of the leadership problem be defined, when so many see the leaders as the problem-as continuing the morally and ethically corrupt Soviet practices and making a mockery of representation? What can be done? Begin by recognizing that doing more of the same old things-from bribery to power politics that leave workers and citizens out of the decision-making loop-is a proven path to failure. More of the same will not work. (In fairness to people over here, one of the authors remembers a discussion with a manager in America’s super-secret National Security Agency, whose retirement plan was to return to his home state and run for sheriff. “If I can’t be a millionaire after one four-year term, shame on me! ” Was he joking, or describing real opportunities?)
The Importance of Legitimacy By contrast, “A New Manifesto for Management” in the Spring 1999 Sloan Management Review describes another approach to management, leadership, and organization-one that reclaims managerial legitimacy:
Institutions decline when they lose their source of legiti-
macy. This happened to the monarchy, to organized religion,
and to the state. This will happen to companies unless managers accord the same priority to the collective task of rebuilding the credibility and legitimacy of their institutions as they do to the individual task of enhancing their company’s economic performance.
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The authors of this article-Sumantra Ghoshal, London Business School; Christopher A. Bartlett, Harvard Business School; and Peter Moran, London Business School-make a powerful point: People distrust their institutions as represented by the corporation which is “ . . . perhaps the most powerful social and economic institute of modern society.” And when asked to rate professionals by ethical standing, “ . . .people consistently rate managers the lowest of the low-below even politicians and journalists.” These authors are writing about the U.K. and the U.S., not about CEE-but they could be. One of the major similarities among these three entities is destructive disbelief, based on experience and daily examples, in the corporate and governmental structures that shape citizens’ lives. The Sloan authors encourage people to work collectively toward shared goals and values, rather than more restrictively, within their narrow self-interests. By using as examples Intel, 3M, Motorola, and GE, they argue that the future is to be found by abandoning old management models and instead assuming “ . . . the commitment to help people become the best they can be” as a productive, profitable, ethical, and value-adding approach. This leads to “engaging, energizing, and empowering their constituencies to work together for mutual benefit.” In the context of value creation for all constituencies, there is no place for ethical misconduct nor the contemptible practices reported earlier in this chapter. When everything and everyone has a price, there is no room for “the little people” and no way to get the collective value of their many small contributions. As a result, they stay home on election day and they do the least possible at work-and these behaviors make a lot of sense in context.
Building New Work Cultures The companies and executives cited in The Sloan mirror the contrarian philosophy attributed to Jack Stack in Chapter Six. You cannot build really effective organizations without the involvement and commitment of the people, the employees, whose thousands of small gifts of intelligent action every day make the difference between success and so-so performance. So, except in the most rural and backward parts of the region, the most important cultural issues involve building work cultures that sup-
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port the learning and continuing employability of the workers. This is done by offering employees opportunities to learn how to participate, how to work cooperatively, and invest themselves in their workplaces-as well as by encouraging employees as they go through the learning process. Work cultures of the type described in the Sloan Management Review article begin with executive-level integrity, clear statements of purpose and mission, and commitments to employees (to help them learn and grow on the job), to customers (to be conscientious in delivering quality goods and services at competitive costs), to vendors and suppliers (by giving them a chance to “partner” with and benefit from the company’s success), and to the community (by being a contributing member of the socio-economy and taking a leadership role, along with employees, in doing constructive things in and for the community). While some of this sounds familiar, the big points of difference have to do with integrity and commitment. In America, for sure, employee loyalty has been destroyed, even among senior managers. Everyone is a temporary employee and, except for the relatively few companies in which real HR development is practiced, companies do little to encourage employee loyalty. However, now with lowest-ever levels of unemployment in some regions, and high mobility among knowledge workers, some companies are offering incentives for employees who will stay. By contrast, in CEE there never was employee loyalty, because it was unnecessary since there were no competitive offers for most workers. Workers were paid on a par with or higher than professionals-which is one of the reasons why so many women are in the medical professions. Men could earn more as machine operators or in some other less cerebral occupation. Likewise, managers never were rewarded for their coaching and counseling skills, or for developing capabilities among their workers (though this must have happened sometimes and in some places). The opportunity in CEE is to go immediately to “best practices” and skip all the intermediate stops. If computer-assisted design is being done in Moldova with state-of-the-art computers, and if “how2.com” brings the same home repair and healthcare hints to CEE as to Century City, California, how can half-way measures be taken over here? This is the challenge.
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As Milena Ivanova, regional HR Manager for tmp.worldwide said: Even some of our recruiters in Warsaw and Prague cannot believe that our clients will use the Web to conduct searches. But right now, our clients in CEE have more than 30 executive positions posted on the Web, and that means our people and theirs have to learn to keep up with the technology. If someone has skills, ability, experience, and access to a computer, he or she can go directly to the job market. When Fortune magazine included us in its new “e-SO Index,” it’s because we are able to provide a full range of client services worldwide.
The fact that recruiting is an entirely new “e-commerce” business was confirmed by Peter Drucker, writing in The Atlantic Monthly (“Beyond the Information Revolution,” October 1999): “Almost half the world’s largest companies now recruit through Web sites, and some two and a half million managerial people. . . have their resumes on the Internet and solicit jobs offers over it. The result is a completely new labor market.”
The Internet and IT Can Change Everything No one knows yet what the Internet will do to minimize the constraining effects of culture, and how far cultural homogenization will extend. Clearly, however, there are tools and information sources universally available that provide more people with more information than ever before. Is it possible that, in this “information age” with all the emphasis on Information Technology (IT) and knowledge workers, culture as we have known it will be transcended? That it will be easier for international business to be conducted more on the basis of credentials and data, and less on the significance of tea and vodka rituals? That patience and courtesy, supported by fact sheets from the Web, will suffice instead of cultural training that emphasizes often-arcane practices that seem to trivialize culture? What information is really necessary? Perhaps it takes three forms. One is in general semantics, which teaches sensitivity to the use of words and their meanings. Another is cultural, in which the meaning of words and the viability of relationships is conveyed in tone, body lan-
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guage, and timing. A third is through the complex gauze of rituals and prerogative developed over time to assist people living and working in a single place to interact effectively. We are indebted to the pioneering work of Alfred Korzybski, Irving J. Lee, Edward and Mildred Hall, and S. I. Hayakawa for leading us to understand the significance of cult u r e - o u r own and that of others-as a determinant of effective communications and interactions.
Welcome to the Global Village One of the first important books of the last decade of the Twentieth Century was Managing Cultural Differences: High-Performance Strategies for a New World of Business. Authors Philip R. Harris and Robert T. Moran created a text that has gone into five editionsalmost unheard of in the publication of business and academic books. They anticipated much that would follow in academic and corporate communications studies as they looked at the “Global Village” phenomenon as a business challenge that would require new skills for managers. They positioned that field of inquiry and training as a primary function of HRD and manager development. According to their book, there are 10 points of importance driving cross-cultural training, meant to: 1. Encourage greater sensitivity and more astute observations of situations and of people who are culturally different. 2. Foster greater understanding in dealing with representatives of micro-cultures within one’s own country. 3. Improve customer and employee relations by creating awareness of culture differences and their influences on behavior. 4. Develop more cosmopolitan organizational representatives who not only understand the concepts of culture, but can also apply this knowledge to interpersonal relations within the organizational culture. 5. Increase managerial effectiveness in international operations, especially with regard to cross-cultural control systems, negotiations, decision making, customer relations, and other vital administrative processes. 6. Improve cross-cultural skills of employees on overseas assignment, or of representatives of microcultures in our own country.
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7. Reduce culture shock when on foreign deployments, and to enhance the intercultural experience of employees. 8. Apply the behavioral sciences to international businesses and managements. 9. Increase job effectiveness through training in human behavior, particularly in the areas of managing cultural differences. 10. Improve employee skills as professional intercultural communicators. These very same skills are required in the new century in CEE, and it is probable that their absence has contributed greatly to failure to find a common vision for the region-a vision that could be trans-cultural, trans-national, and unifying. Philip Harris next teamed up with George F. Simons and Carmen Vazquez to write Transcultural Leadership: Empowering the Diverse Workforce.This book, too, was a pioneering venture in that it elevated the discussion about race and gender in the workplace from the politics of confrontation to an intelligent dialogue about outcomes with predictable causes-and causes that were comprehensibleonly in the context of culture as tightly held belief systems that shape world views of people. Their book title includes two concepts that became very important in North America toward the end of the 1990s-empowering and diverse workforce. The failure of companies to maintain implicit contracts with their employees, to involve and empower them, has added to the cynicism that is rampant among North American workers, and is heading east toward Western Europe. In CEE, cynicism is alive and well, fueled by the hypocrisy of the Soviet system. The tools this book offers will be invaluable to expatriate and local managers who want to replace cynicism with positive visions and ideals. These probably are prerequisite to allowing CEE to achieve its potential as a region and a market. Since participating in that book, Simons has relocated to France and is involved extensively in integrating multicultural work teams, especially during the highpressure times when companies merge-and programs, people, and cultures must be integrated. Next, Harris collaborated with Farid Elashmawi to write Multicultural Management 2000: Essential Cultural lnsights for Global Business Success. There are a number of enlightening comparisons of American, Japanese, and Arab cultures, with the three “legs” representing Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern cultural groupings.
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Case studies and charts make the subject interesting and confront readers with the reality of substantial differences. Elashmawi’s consulting firm specializes in corporate culture reengineering, and he has worked extensively in the Far East. In 1998, a 656-page reissue of several of Harris’ books was released as The New Work Culture: HRD Transformational Management Strategies. This is a conceptual source book, full of insights about managing, HRD strategies and benefits, along with reproducible instruments. In Chapter Nine of this book, opportunities for HRD in CEE are discussed, and this is one volume that should be part of the intellectual arsenal of every manager and change agent in the region.
More Required Reading All of Harris’ books integrate culture with HRD, and equate crosscultural savoir faire with managerial effectiveness. In organizing material and experiences for this book, the authors came to concur with Harris. It is not possible to be effective in CEE without having and using many of the skills he describes so clearly. Another author, whose contributions to the literature and the business community is Richard D. Lewis, one of Britain’s foremost linguists who speaks 10 European languages and two Asiatic languages. He has turned his linguistic ability and resulting cultural sensitivity into an industry, with offices in 30 countries. In addition to his lecturing, he has written two recent and very helpful books. When Cultures Collide: Managing Successfully Across Culture, continues to be a best-selling management book in which Lewis takes readers hop-scotching across cultures, pointing out unique elements and areas in which Westerners are likely to commit a faux pas. His knowledge of cultures truly appears encyclopedic, and his ability to make the material interesting and entertaining is a gift. Lewis has worked with these concepts so long that he is able to convey graphically some very difficult concepts and their relationship to each other. He uses a number of these illustration in his lectures and, in 1999, came out with an invaluable, large-format paperback, CrossCultural Communication: A Visual Approach. In this book, you can see how people communicate and listen, as well as lead their subordinates and manage their staffs. The 118 diagrams make the subject easier to understand than it has ever been, especially when cultural attributes are compared.
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What is the difference between Russian and Hungarian listening habits? Between Poles and Balts? You can study the diagrams and thus understand the differences. Late in 1999, Lewis’ team completed development and testing of a CD-boxed cultural sensitivity assessment instrument (“The Cross-Cultural Assessor”) that can be used by individuals or groups, and then scored on a computer for local discussion. As more people travel overseas to work, this kind of sensitivity assessment will be helpful in both solving individual performance problems and in creating developmental plans for entire teams. Another very helpful book is Richard R. Gesteland’s Cross-Cultural Business Behavior: Marketing, Negotiating and Managing Across Cultures. This second edition was issued late in 1999, and is relevant for readers of this book because of Gesteland’s inclusion of “Negotiator Profiles for the Baltic States, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Russia.” A clue to the tone of the book is found in the Introduction, where Gesteland wrote that “The material for this book comes from three decades of observing myself and others spoiling promising deals because we were ignorant of how business is done.” He is on the faculty at the Copenhagen Business School and maintains a busy consultancy, too. And, like many of the people who will read this book, he was an expatriate manager in Germany, Austria, Italy, Brazil, India, and Singapore for 26 years. His use of brand and company names in his case studies make them even more readable. One last book on culture and the region is recommended: From Da to Yes: Understanding the East Europeans, by Yale Richmond, who spent 30 years in the region for the U.S. State Department and other agencies. His is an indispensable read for anyone wanting to work in CEE, not only for the cultural differences, but for the historical insights that are woven into his narrative as part of a good storyteller’s craft. His discussion of Serbia and KOSOVO, though written before the hostilities there erupted, is prophetic. It may occur to some readers to ask why more materials from these fine source books (and others listed in the Bibliography) were not quoted more often and more fully. The answer is simple: The authors hope you will discover them on your own, because excerpts taken out of context tend to minimize the value of these rich source books. Collectively, the books recommended here and in the Bibliography would constitute a fine library for change agents, team builders, and management educators.
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Culture as Points of Departure Every journey has to have a point of departure, though not all journeys have to have a designated end. Much of the significance of culture in CEE is reestablishing a cultural base from which people can depart on their respective journeys. And so it may be with all the folk-dancing, native costume-wearing advocates of the post-Soviet cultural renaissance going on across CEE as they attempt to establish or reinvent “who we were before we were part of the USSR.” Historical revisionism is as intense and intentional among former Soviet satellites as it was during the occupation, according to Lubov Fajfer, editor of Communist and Post-Communist Studies (Center for European and Russian Studies at UCLA). “It is as though saturation coverage of long-dead cultural icons will create a golden haze of nationalism to obscure the SO-year break in cultural continuity,” Fajfer said. “Perhaps, as some surmise, there is more emphasis in public schools in creating a past than in preparing kids for the future.” Educational reform always is problematic, with school systems and teachers serving as the drogue parachute on social change. When governments and their ministers are uncertain about how economic and social changes will impact their territories, there is little incentive to change the existing system. Then, too, there is the matter or cost. Lester Thurow, cited earlier, noted in writing about America’s economic combat with Japan and Europe, that education is a key element in the equation. Even in America, Thurow has said, “local governments don’t want to pay for first-class schools. They know that less than half the population has children in school at any time, that graduates leave home and use their skills in different geographic regions of the country, and that high taxes necessary to pay for good schools would drive industry away. Firms would locate next door and free ride on their well-educated work force. Someone else should make the necessary investments.” That approach to funding has to be considered in the region, too, as so many young people escape to the West every year. Those with the “get up and go” do just that, and take their earning power and taxpaying to other countries. This leads to a somewhat leaden atmosphere throughout the region. By contrast, an expatriate colleague who returned from a visit to Seattle said what he noticed most there was the vitality.
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“Every day,” he said, “the newspapers report new technologies, businesses, and jobs being created. Maybe not in the inner cities, but I really felt that the business atmosphere was electric. The newsstands and book stores were also full of special-interest magazines. ” With its dozens of languages, there is not enough market in any one language for many special-interest journals, and even many of the largest, popular, and economically strongest publications cannot afford to enter small countries, except in English or Russian. This is among the forces that are pushing even the most ethnocentric countries to school its children in “major” languages as well as their own. In Vilnius, for example, public schools can be categorized by their language specialization-English, French, German (along with Russian and Lithuanian). So, culture is pretty much what you make of it. Some people believe in cross-cultural training; others say common sense and courtesy will get you through. Probably the truth is somewhere in the middle because, as with accents, outsiders always are noticed and too much effort to be “in the culture”-instead of just respectful of it-creates negative impressions.
A LOCALHERO Kenneth M. Leavitt, DPM, left his medical practice in Boston in 1992 to devote a few weeks as a medical missionary. That he landed in Lithuania was as much accident as choice. He found a medical system that was more backward than he had imagined, and enormous needs for medical care that were matched by the enormity of the resistance and resentment he later encountered from “the medical mafia” for bringing Western, consumer-oriented medicine into their midst. In the course of treating hundreds of patients with foot and ankle deformities, diseases, and injuries, however, he came to love the people. He was touched by their appreciation and appalled that competent care was often being denied them by a medical establishment frightened by competition. “The power and paranoia of the ruling medical elite often focused on preventing the introduction of new methods for the needy rather than admitting that there were superior and competitive medical practices that consumers could choose,” Leavitt said.
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In December 1993, Leavitt formed a partnership with two Lithuanian physicians. The Baltic-American Medical and Surgical Clinic, with financial support from U.S. investors, opened in mid-1994. Leavitt hoped to run the clinic with local management and to provide guidance via faxes and e-mails from Boston, with trips back to Vilnius every few months. By mid-year 1996, however, it was apparent that absentee-management would not work, so Leavitt sold his home and practice, and moved to live full-time in Lithuania to assume active management of the clinic. The resentment and resistance he had faced initially intensified, with some in the community of physicians organizing the immigration, taxing, licensing, and permitting functionaries into a combined front. No one expected the counter-resistance Leavitt launched, including inviting a tax audit to establish the clinic as the cleanest of business and professional operations. “In this environment,” Leavitt said, “even the cleanest business cannot survive an unfriendly audit, so I felt that I had to do something both dramatic and drastic to neutralize my enemies.” In several conversations, Leavitt was quick to point out that a lot of this is Soviet culture, not Lithuanian culture. People were taught to lie to each other and themselves, Leavitt said, and to live in a system that was rooted in dishonesty. One of Leavitt’s continuing frustrations is that “There is a programmed inability among many to believe in the value of hard work or to have a vision of the future. They cannot imagine that honest business practices can be a path to prosperity. “The Soviet system robbed people of honesty, taught them that any problems could be resolved with bribes, and conditioned them to expect immediate rewards for any extra effort, however minimal.” Leavitt’s experience has taught that only “Western-quality” supervision will work here, and that means finding people whose values are consistent with Western ethics and business practices. Leavitt offers this caveat to anyone considering doing business in the region: “You’ve got to understand that most people are not motivated to work for themselves, much less anyone else, and there will be a major educational job to be done about the relationship between their economic welfare and productivity in their workplace. You can create a
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sub-culture of success, but you will have to work at it. As one Lithuanian related the other day, ‘I have friend who is doing well in America, but boy, does he hate the fact that he actually has to work for it!”’ Leavitt has another observation, mentioned earlier in this book, regarding the plight of men in the region: “Women are more capable than men, and respond more quickly to AmericanNWestern management practices. Finding good male candidates for any position is difficult, because men have been so demoralized for so long. They are threatened by competent women and, in general, treat them with disrespect. Probably, that is why it appears that the majority of competent women are single heads of households.” Leavitt’s efforts have paid off. Not only was the BalticAmerican Medical and Surgical Clinic the first 24-hour clinic and the first U.S. joint venture medical facility in the Baltics and Poland, it is one of few to survive. “Patience and persistence can pay off,” Leavitt confesses, “but you have to be prepared to fight for the right to be an honest and professional business person.” Leavitt was awarded Lithuanian citizenship by President Valdas Adamkus on February 24,2000. Now, he no longer has to fight every year to have his visa renewed.
LIVINGIN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE One of the most critical factors in the decision for people from the West in deciding to move to CEE has to do with their questions of what it’s really like to live there. In the next few pages, the authors will attempt to answer that question in a factual manner, though we confess to loving living in the region. Living here requires some adjustments, of course, but none that will be overwhelming-unless you really want to be someplace else.
A Land of Anachronisms If you are like most Westerners, you think that the abacus is an Oriental calculator. You will be surprised by how frequently they are to be seen over here, among street merchants and even in upscale shops and stores. To be sure, most are backed up by hand-held calculators, with which foreigners can be shown the price of goods. Sometimes, though, you will see the initial calculations done on the abacus, and
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only the final amount entered into the calculator-which merchants will show you so that you know how much to pay. One of the really quaint aspects of living over here is that you rarely will hear a motorized leaf blower. Instead, you may hear the soft swishing of birch branches tied to broom handles wielded by an army of workers (mostly women) who sweep the streets of yesterday’s litter. Some carry their tools (broom, shovel, and small bucket) on brokendown baby carriage frames or other makeshift rolling stock. It is an amazingly efficient system. In the winter, you may hear, even through the double windows, the “chop chop chop” of a shovel chipping through the ice on the sidewalk as the same people make a safe passage for pedestrians. Or, if you leave your flat or hotel early, you may see one of the street cleaners with a bucket of sand, tossing small scoopsful across areas where the ice is too thick to chip or where the area is too large to clear. It is impossible not to say “thank you” when you start to cross an icy patch and an elderly woman is walking in front of you, tossing the sand that will allow you to go on your way instead of on your back. Since slush and sand are such a major part of life in the region, it is a common practice in most homes to leave shoes at the door (as the Japanese do) and to don slippers or scuffs to reduce the amount of dirt that gets tracked into the house. Given this preoccupation, it is not surprising that clean and shined shoes are important at work and on social occasions.
The Farmer’s Market Farmer’s markets have re-emerged in the West as the interest in fresh food has overcome the people’s fascination with the convenience of frozen foods-and perhaps as a reaction to the pervasiveness of fast food. Here, many of the “farmers” really are vendors who pick up their supplies from jobbers, and there are people whose entire economic lives are spent at stands or kiosks in open-air markets. There also are the people who do come from the country, with their baskets of mushrooms or berries or “farm fresh” eggs (that are straight from the chickens’ nests without benefit of washing. There is a difference in the taste of those eggs that makes the small issue of sanitation worth the bother). If you want to see “real food,” you can see mud-splashed vehicles pulling into the markets about dawn, with entire carcasses in the small,
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two-wheel utility trailers that are common across the region. Inside the market, you will hear the “whack” of axes chopping into bone as sides of pork or quarters of beef are reduced to smaller pieces. Instead of the butcher blocks and band-saws most often seen in the West, you will see waist-high tree trunks (but they are cleaned the same way, with steelwire brushes and salt). Of course, you will find cheeses and homemade bread and, according to the season, vats of sauerkraut and pickles. You can buy unpasteurized milk, cream, and butter from people who milked the cow. (Perhaps the biggest surprise for “city folk” is the taste of sour cream that is nothing like the chalky stuff that comes in plastic cartons in North America. It is more like the $12 per pint creme fruiche sold in upscale markets and delis-at about 75 cents for a 500 ml jar.) Seasonal fruits and vegetables have been hand-picked, and the appearance of the apples and pears tell you they have not been sprayed. In the spring, sorrel and dandelion greens, fresh from open fields, make wonderful soups and salads. If these forays into rural husbandry sounds like a lot of effort, major food chains are coming into the region (Kmart from the States, Tesco from England, and Metro from Germany among others). In addition to Kodak, Coke, and Pepsi, you can find Kleenex, Clorox, and Tabasco, along with many other familiar brands. When you read labels of regional products with contents or instructions printed in eight languages, and none of them are English, you know you are a long way from home! With air freight and widening distribution channels, a variety of melons are available year ‘round, as are all kinds of citrus fruits, grapes, and even pineapples. You can “eat healthy” if you choose. Some acquaintances from an American Embassy boasted about all the products they brought from the States or from periodic “commissary runs” to Germany-including that precursor to all fast foods, Velveeta. Happily, that hasn’t appeared yet. And, hearing things like that, one wonders why those people bother to come to the region at all. The food is different, of course, but that should be part of the experience.
Bring a Pressure Cooker Along (or Buy One) Back to the butcher shop-a pressure cooker is nice to have. Local meats are not aged and tend to be tough-calling for long, slow cook-
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ing or an hour in the pressure cooker. Even chicken is tougher than you expect, being “free range” and raised without benefit of antibiotics or growth hormones. Steaks, which you can buy in almost any market in America and toss onto the barbeque, don’t exist over here. Try that, and what you get is something like shoe leather. Likewise, local wines are not aged, either, because of the need to convert products to cash quickly. Local beers offer a variety of tastes, but multinational brewing companies are reducing the numbers and choices of local brands. Multinational hygiene may be superior, but pasteurized beer tends to have a bland, transnational taste. Then there are the flea markets, many constituting major shopping centers. Selling goods from the back of cars or trucks, setting up shop under a tent or awning, people sell an amazing array of goods. Video games, TV sets, stereos, kitchen utensils, furniture, carpets, women’s lingerie from the conservative to the exotic, hose, socks, shoes, complete suits for men and women, jackets bearing the logos of all the major NFL teams, and even fur coats. What is most indicative of the global village with its several kinds of entrepreneurs are the CDs, cassettes, and videotapes. While The New York Times is carrying full-page ads for a new movie, chances are you can buy it on videotape, dubbed in Russian, on any weekend for the equivalent of about $8. This situation, however, may be changing. A news report late in January, 2000, said that the Lithuanian Police Department had received a letter of gratitude from the Motion Picture Association in Los Angeles for its stepped-up campaign to protect intellectual property rights against piracy, both through prosecution of video pirates and a public information campaign.
Hotels and Restaurants Restaurants vary in competence and quality, as anywhere else. Over here, though, the food tends to be basically the same in any community, driven by availability and what local people prefer. The number of “ethnic” restaurants is increasing, however, including Thai, Chinese, Italian, Greek-and Japanese, although sake usually is not available, since alcohol imports are the concessions of a few selected businesses. If the sales volume is insufficient, even Japanese restaurants cannot get it. And, for people who need a fix of “Americana,” Ronald McDonald is well known across the region, and the chain’s locations are doing a brisk business.
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Major chains are refurbishing local hotels in most cities of any size, and it is possible to pay U.S. prices in many of them. A recent trip to Warsaw revealed that a single room in a city-center American chain hotel was $300 USD. It is possible to find comfortable, clean, and safe accommodations in most cities, however, for reasonable rates. Satellite television means that many hotels, even in rather remote areas, offer a dozen or so television channels. A chain hotel over here provides rooms that could make an American think he or she was in Detroit or Des Moines rather than Prague or Krakow. The authors have a bias for local establishments that may be a little “funky,” but charm and “Old World” ambiance do not mean the absence of in-room bars and other amenities. And the “Old World” breakfasts that come with so many rooms are a long way from North American fare (but similar to what often is found in Western Europe).
Edible Anthropology Culture dictates much of what we eat and drink, and how we live. Part of the experience of being in this part of the world is experiencing different cultures, folkways, and life rhythms. It is sad to see people come over here only to be unhappy because it is “too different.” These are old cultures and cities. They have only recently been freed of an oppressive regime that tried to destroy cultures and standardize everything. The results were devastating. What one experiences here now is something less than “authentic Polish” or “true Hungarian” because whatever was the essence of local cultures now has to compete with the literal onslaught of Western cultures and tastes. Perhaps, as some allege, Soviet domination has been replaced by economic homogenization of life and lifestyles. Come to visit, work, and experience. Come before it is gone. Come to appreciate rather than to judge, and to marvel at the resiliency of peoples whose lands have been occupied by so many strangers for so long and so often. Come to learn, listen, and sense different lifestylesto taste different foods, and to be touched and changed just a little by the experience.
There Are Some Cautions to be Observed Where there is so much poverty (most people in the region have not benefited economically from the promises of the market economy), it
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is not surprising that there is theft. When Communism collapsed, the people who rushed into power were not all humanitarians. Corruption, major and minor, is mentioned elsewhere in this book, and is mentioned here because it can be a lifestyle issue. Pickpockets work the major cities, so be forewarned. Cars frequently are targets for “smash and grab” thieves, so park your car in a safe place (locals can tell you where), and even then do not leave valuables in sight. This is no different than in any other major city. Locks are important here because home burglaries are frequent, and it is a rare person whose own flat or that of a friend has not been burglarized. Most exterior doors have at least two dead-bolt locks, and steel doors with pins that extend 10 millimeters into steel frames are popular. They cannot be kicked in. Selling and installing burglar alarms and security services is a brisk business. Cars and drivers are another point of caution. Perhaps it is because car ownership is fairly recent, but most drivers must be counted on to ignore pedestrians and bicyclists, and to drive too fast for conditions such as narrow streets with minimal sidewalks. In fact, what in America would be called “reckless driving” is usual. Water quality is a variable. While generally it is safe to drink, old systems occasionally deliver water that has off-colors and odors. Fortunately, inexpensive water filters (plastic or glass jars with disposable filter cartridges) do an admirable job of cleaning up water for drinking, cooking, coffee, and steam irons. For long visits, in-line filters are available, and can be installed for approximately $100 (both hot and cold water lines). In bad cases, a combination of in-line filters and jar filters provides satisfactory quality. If you want the bother of demijohns, and the space they occupy, bottled water is available, too, including home delivery in many cities. Urine in the entry of your apartment house is a condition that almost everyone in the region must contend with. Even in buildings with truly elegant apartments, if there is no doorman, some passing beer drinker will relieve himself in the privacy of your entry hall. In a land where “public facilities” are far apart and use costs 10 or 15 cents, your hallway or a large bush becomes a substitute. Likewise, it is not unusual to see people stop their cars along the highway and relieve themselves, shielded only by the open car door. Potholes and broken pavement are a hazard everywhere in the region. Yes, there are rules and government regulations like those promulgated by the U.S. Department of Occupational Safety and Health,
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but they tend not to be enforced. Watch your step and carry a flashlight. If you fall, there is no one to sue, and people only will wonder why you were so inattentive. Underpaid police, driving old Ladas, are unlikely to be sympathetic to well-off foreigners. Take a local with you if you have need to seek police help. Also, check with locals to find out what kinds of bribes to pay and to whom. It may be illegal where you come from, but $10 or $20 can make things happen a lot faster for you, or remove obstacles to your having a nice day or evening. With the advent of Transparency International (a Soros Fund Project) and other efforts to curb corruption, however, you may get a larger fine by offering a bribe than a reduction. Check it out. Underpaid physicians can give you the assistance you need, but there may be the expectation of “something extra” if procedures need to be scheduled. Again, relatively few dollars can expedite scheduling. While most people would recommend that major procedures be done in the West, local physicians tend to be competent, and increasingly there is technology comparable to anything found in the West. Facilities housing that technology, though, tend to be old and sterile conditions difficult to achieve. (If you have a medical emergency, competent help will be dispatched quickly, usually two women, one a nurse and the other a physician.) If you are hospitalized, you will be expected to buy your medications. If you need a hip replacement, buying the prosthetic device in advance can move you months ahead in the surgical que.
Culture and Entertainment Even villages have cultural centers, and docents who will walk you around the premises for a small fee. They will also sell you souvenirs that, usually, are in good taste and often made locally (rather than in China). Most cities of any size have an opera house, and some are quite old and elegant. The one in Prague is a national treasure. So is the one in Bratislava, a copy in miniature. Remember, too, that the Soviets supported art and artists, so the levels of musicianship encountered across the region are surprising. In cities of any size, there is something ‘‘cultural” nearly every night of the week, and at prices a fraction of those charged in the West. While an American couple would spend more than $100 to see a football game and have a couple of beers, across the region the same pair could see a
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first-class symphony or ballet with wine, sit in the best seats, have a glass of wine at intermission, and dinner afterward, then take a cab home for about half as much.
Summary In all these issues, the relative poverty of the region is a factor. With average wages of $250 per month or less (physicians, too), most Westerners will be pleased with their exchange rates for local currencies. Yes, city-center hotels can be expensive, as can housing for executives or embassy employees (and be sure locals will know the upper limits of housing allowances). The closer you get to living as the locals live, however, the lower the costs you will encounter. For scenery, “Old World” charm and hospitality, CEE is where to find it. Also, tours are relatively inexpensive, and travel assistance is widely available through private agencies and state tourist offices. The potential of the tourist trade has not been exploited, so come before everyone else does and while there is a price advantage. Once you see the beauty of the region, CEE will become a more attractive place in which to do business.
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LOOKING AHEAD CEE is an important area for economic growth-which is why Fiat’s chairman has identified the region as the company’s business development target for the next decade. And, if the region does not experience fairly rapid growth, and if opportunities to participate in “a better life” do not come fairly soon, some among the less prosperous of the region’s countries could stumble into destructive instability. As noted several times previously, the free market’s benefits have eluded a large number of people even in the most successful economies. As the gap between the haves and the have nots widens, the memory of “care-taker” governments becomes more appealing to people whose lifestyles really are not impacted by freedom to travel the world or ideals beyond affordable food, shelter, and alcohol. Please do not read this as an elitist statement, or interpret that it reflects insensitivity. One has only to look at Belarus, about which a Western diplomat said in 1999, “The local idea of democracy is a choice of 12 kinds of sausage instead of one, and the ability to buy vodka by the case for the equivalent of 51 cents American a bottle.” Needless to say, such a price advantage continues the Soviet practice of “alcoholization” of people and creates major smuggling opportunities
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and problems along the Polish and Lithuanian borders where comparable products cost 12 times as much. People have to have the opportunity to push their individual incomes ahead of inflation. Then, more discretionary income will be available for consumer goods for which there is a continuing demand. Some small businesses may yield to the power of chains and “super stores” as they come into the region, but there is time for NGOs or others to lead small merchants in “niche discovery” exercises that might allow them to co-exist with KMart, Wal-mart, and Makro superstores and hypermarts. The earlier frustration on the part of many consumers (“There are too many choices”) appears to be yielding, in turn, to the reality of choices and price advantages that a competitive environment provides. Western-style “sales” and “close-outsyyare coming into the region, bringing more goods into the financial reach of larger numbers of people.
Buying Power Is Necessary, But Not Sufficient Consumer goods and their consumption are important indices of change, but should not be allowed to become a smoke screen that blinds investors to the reality that the majority of people still want caretaker governments. However, governments at all levels are too cashstarved to fill the expectations created by their Soviet predecessors and the support payments to which people became accustomed. There is little evidence of community action or grassroots democracy to be found. Democracy-building programs, giving support to NGOs, have been funded by USAID, EUPhare, and individual European governments along with the Soros Foundation. But the resistance to learning how to lead, how to create civic consciousness, and how to encourage individuals to be civic-minded and participative cannot be overstated. It is as though the risks of participation and involvement are greater than the possibility of rewards. Of course, some citizens do participate eventually, but most often after a lot of persistence on the part of volunteers. The leadership vacuum so obvious at national levels extends to communities as well. There appears to be nothing in the cultures of the region to support such “stand upyybehavior. In the minds of many people across the region, there are still activities conducted by “the Government.” The ideas of self-help, commu-
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nity action, and of people helping people still are undeveloped at best. Until people can see what is possible in front of them, how can they participate and support nation building? The next question is, Where are the visionaries? And the “gardenvariety” leaders? Where in the region are the charismatic leaders who can galvanize people into action? The heroes of Gdansk and the Velvet Revolution are old men now. Already, they have been defeated in the political arena, and probably agonize over the passing of those magic moments when it seemed that everyone was able to “rally ‘round the flag” and move to a common drumbeat. If there are no leaders at the “grassroots” level, where do people learn and acquire leadership skills? And, without the opportunities for individuals to assume leadership roles in their neighborhoods or on their jobs, is it any surprise that leadership is a missing ingredient in the future-building resource bin? In the U.S., leadership development is a major element in supervisory and shift-leader training. What is workplace leadership? It’s helping co-workers do the right thing. What is a supervisor or a manager? Someone who gets things done by assigning tasks to others and overseeing timely, satisfactory performance. Leadership is getting people to organize around an issue or problem and to release energies toward a solution that is the right thing to do in the context of the situation. Leadership is tough to build among people who were programmed to comply, not lead; to be led, not to lead others. Better, faster, and cheaper execution of tasks cannot exceed planned levels of performance without the active involvement of the people who do the work. Therefore, in a managed-only environment, their goal is to achieve output as close to the specifications as possible to avoid criticism and demands for extra effort.
Looking for Leadership, Again and Again Where leadership is involved, better, faster, and cheaper options for performance often are limited only by imagination. This is the reason Jack Stack and his book, The Great Game of Business, were introduced in Chapter Six. He turned working people into business people, and gave them skills and permission to use those skills to make money for the company and to have more fun on their jobs.
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In the post-Soviet world, leaders are in short supply. In autocratic, authoritarian organizations, leadership turns people into the tall grass that gets mowed down. When that is the paradigm, who wants to be a leader? Who wants to offer leadership when the risk of punishment for taking a leadership stance is greater than the probability of reward? No wonder, then, that leadership training is a void in most manager and supervisory training in the region. One local national with a lot of university and seminar experiences said, “Of course we get leadership training. It’s the same thing as team building.” It should come as no surprise that, according to some recent studies, Russian productivity is 20 to 30 percent of that achieved in the West. (Productivity among former satellite countries is comparable, possibly because the emphasis is on titles, not results. People boast, sometimes, about their titles, but not about results. That is why it is necessary to use assessment and testing as key elements in employment and HR practices.) Michelle Schorr, general manager of Kelly Services CIS, agrees. Even though some competencies are not objective (such as ability to work in a team, lead a group of people, or communicate), skilled interviewers can get to the important issues. “I’ve found in my practice and in my experience at Kelly that asking theoretical questions-‘What would you do if. . . ?’-is not as important as asking ‘What have you done?’” Schorr said. Assessment centers and testing add significantly to the cost of recruiting in the short term. Proponents argue, however, that effective screening provides more productive employees who are more likely to stay with their employer. Also, such screening and testing sends a strong message to candidates about performance expectations. Certainly, production deficits are multivariant situations. But equally as certainly, without leadership at executive and managerial levels-and on plant floors-productivity-restricting practices will not be recognized and replaced with intelligent, capability-confirming ways of getting work done better, faster, and cheaper.
Why Can’t Leaders Lead? Warren Bennis raised the question more than a decade ago, and produced a book titled, Why Leaders Can’t Lead. The reasons he identified, studying North American managers and executives, probably are
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just as compelling in CEE and equally constraining. The reasons he listed are based on four competencies that are in short supply. Specifically, Management of attention through a set of intentions or a vision, not in a mystical or religious sense, but in the sense of outcomes, goals, or directions. Leaders make ideas tangible to others, so they can support them. No matter how marvelous the vision, the effective leader must use a metaphor, a word or a model, to make that vision clear to others. Management of trust is essential to all organizations. The main determinant of trust is reliability, constancy, and consistency. “I cannot emphasize enough the significance of constancy and focus.” Management of self, knowing one’s skills and deploying them effectively to create success for others (and self). When these competencies are present, and people are working together to accomplish worthwhile goals, people feel significant. They feel chartered and challenged to make something happen. If they make mistakes in a trusting, supportive environment, they can acknowledge the mistakes and turn them into learning opportunities. Without trust, work remains a narrowly-defined set of individual responsibilities, each cordoned off by a prohibition of initiative. Initiative is reaching over the rope to pick up something that no one is using or doing. It is seeing a problem unsolved and acting on it. It is also getting “out of the box” of perceived limits and constraints to move things and people forward. The breakdown in this scheme, as the words are heard and interpreted in this region, is that leaders are people high up in the hierarchy-not foremen, supervisors, and first-line managers. In so many conversations, the recurring theme is one of resistance-and it goes like this: What you Americans call leadership or initiative would be seen as overtaking someone’s job, cutting into their responsibilities and prerogatives. No one will appreciate that. Not the people whose jobs you have meddled with, not your coworkers (who will begin to avoid you), and not your manager, who did not assign you that duty.
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This orientation among workers all but demands that leaders, by whatever title, perform in an authoritarian, proscriptive manner; that is, anything not specified is not authorized. For many local managers, for whom the Soviet model really is the comfortable way to operate, it is easier to revert to old ways than to fight for the new. This is like the old sociological experiment in which members of a class are briefed on responses to influence the instructor’s presentation, and in less than an hour, the instructor has changed his presentation to fit the approval responses of the class. T h e Passive/Aggressive Whip Saw Expatriate managers across the region confirm that the most difficult part of their roles involves getting their employees to volunteer information, and to tell the whole truth-in time for remedial action to be taken. It is the passive-aggressive stance of the powerless, or of those who want to seduce the manager into the “tell me what to do” role. This is mistrust operating at a very basic and performance-impacting level. There is a reciprocal dance among some managers, whose public personas are like Teflon-nothing penetrates and nothing sticks. In one instance, in which the manager had worked with most of the people for two to five years, the manager’s small daughter contracted a serious disease requiring hospitalization. The manager was away from the office for hospital visits, but never gave the staff (who soon found out what has going on) an opportunity even to send a “Get Well” card. How artificiahperficial this relationship is, despite the Christmas party behavior of sitting around with employees-as-colleagues smoking Cuban cigars. The questions here might be: 1. Does the manager think no one would care that his daughter was seriously ill? 2. Does he think that it is family business not to be shared with others? 3. What are the boundaries between professional and private lives? 4. Is there anyplace for authentic relationships at work, or does he perceive his staff as too immature for adultkolleague relationships? 5. Or does he fear that if anyone knows he is distracted by a personal issue that his staff will somehow take advantage of him?
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In truth, all these questions may be irrelevant. The relevant issue is that he keeps his people at a “safe” distance, and they, in turn, respond to that behavior by withholding information. It would be difficult to defend this anecdote as a CEE-specific problem, but likely it is more pervasive here than in other regions. And it may be related to some North American research done by psychologist Daniel Goleman, also a former New York Times reporter, in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than 1Q. He wrote about the “soft skills” that allow people to work together effectively, and hit a responsive chord with the public that put the book on bestseller lists. He followed up with a second book, Working with Emotional Intelligence, that provided corporate data to validate the hypothesis that self-confidence, self-awareness, self-control, commitment, and integrity create more effective employees and more successful companies. How does this relate to CEE?
The Power of Soft Skills In a compelling article for Workforce (“The Hard Case for Soft Skills,” July 1999) Shari Caudron says that soft-skill training can contribute to the successful integration of nontraditional employees as full employment in the U.S. has led to hiring prisoners and members of the “hard-core unemployed. ” People from these populations typically will have some dysfunctional responses to stress, which predicts conflict at work. Given that people in this region were traumatized by Soviet oppression, and limited in their opportunities to develop the soft skills required for collaborative effort, could it be that a major key to unlocking the productivity puzzle is soft-skills training and acquisition? Caudron’s article puts competency identification and development into a dollar-and-sense context, quoting Goleman’s research on the incredible power of collaboration at work. One example from Caudron’s article and Goleman’s book: In computer programming, the top 10 percent of performers outproduced average performers by 320 percent; and the top one percent “produced an amazing 1,272 percent more than average. Assessments of these top performers revealed that they were better at such things as teamwork, staying late to finish a project and sharing shortcuts with co-workers. In short, the best performers didn’t compete-they collaborated.” In CEE, where typical employees have a very limited relationship with each other and their employing organizations-and poor levels
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of productivity that mean delayed and limited returns for investorsthis may be the remedial input required, along with large doses of reinforcement to try new behaviors and to incorporate them into workplace repertories. First, however, managers and executives have to understand the value of employee participation and believe their employees capable of contributing. This may be the larger struggle. It is obvious that the HR challenges and opportunities in the region are enormous. The HR establishment is populated by clerks who spend the bulk of their time on HR clerical functions. In most places, this appears to reflect the predisposition of incumbents, the indifference of senior managers, and the reality that not much has changed in employee mobility and training.
The HR Decade Transformation is the task and reducing it to manageable increments is the challenge. Setting priorities and goals is a first step at the executive level, along with hiring competent change agents and giving them a charter to make changes happen. This will take a decade, at least. Although there will be many failures, every successful conversion of an individual or a company creates a new model to emulate and strengthens the economy of the region. Information sharing-success stories, things that didn’t work, helpful resources, tools to try-is necessary to sustain the effort. Individuals will exhaust themselves and this is why groups of colleagues need to organize discussion and data-sharing forums in every city, as well as in national associations or networks. In Lithuania, two models are being developed. The first, by the Business Management Center (BMC) in Kaunas, Lithuania, is an HR association for people in noncompetitive industries (someone from Pepsi or Coca-Cola can belong, but not people from both). With their successful training programs and university affiliation, BMC can create something of an elite association at the same time they have a marketing platform for their programs. By contrast, another group is being formed in Vilnius around a core of colleagues/consultants associated with the major cultural and operational changes being undertaken by the Sonera (Finnish) and Telia (Swedish)partnership that bought controlling and managing interest in Lithuanian Telekom. Volunteer associations have not had great success in Lithuania. Sensitive to this, the organizers invited only 10 people to the first meeting.
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A subcommittee was formed to draft interim objectives and an invitation letter to another 10 people. The idea is to hold membership at that level until the group’s value to members is established and continuity is assured. Only then will others be invited to participate, since there would be little value in creating an organizational structure for a group without a future. There are other models and a European HR Association, but the need being specified here is for localized support and data sharing to benefit HR managers, rather than creating yet another forum for consultants to sell their services. There is a lot of useful information on HR and managing change that is in the public domain. It might as well be shared. There is strength in collaboration, and today’s gift to another company might be repaid in the answer to a pressing problem that comes just in time. These, of course, are somewhat fanciful ideas in a region in which everyone in the HR business perceives themselves as desperately busy, and where the several cultures represented are biased against helping others.
An Innovative Approach Is Killed In the region, there is distrust of strangers and competitors. There is also doubt about the value of anything that is free, and a powerful aversion on the part of many consultants to giving anything away without a fee. There was an idea, for instance, on the part of a consultant in Slovakia to publish introductory supervisory training material and to give it away to every indigenous consulting firm and company with a training department, along with an opportunity for implementation training. The idea was killed, however, by a representative of a Big-Five consulting firm (with support from his Washington office) who could not visualize such a release of information as increasing both the level of competence among managers across the country and the awareness of the value of consulting support (including that of Big-Five firms). What a missed opportunity to make a lasting and wide-reaching contribution to the economic develop,ment of that country and the region! At least one benefit was derived, however. In lieu of free material, the consulting firm managing the USAID contract contrived to put out a journal called Business Performance (with Slovak and English versions on facing pages). This publication made it possible for some
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bright young professionals to get published. One of them, Marko Mitrovic (son of the visionary consultant mentioned in Chapter Two), did an exemplary job of explaining the concept of “restructuring.” Simply, it is a means of restoring cash flow-the life blood of business-in a series of constructive moves to remain or become economically viable and competitive. Probably there are opportunities for a variety of NGOs to contribute to HR effectiveness by providing information and training on recruiting, selecting, and retaining competent employees; compensation and salary administration; competencies and their development; and on position-description development and performance assessment. Realistically, unless NGOs or other credible, regionally-sponsored assistance is provided, most companies will not get the HR assistance they require. Before HR innovations can be implemented, however, executives and managers will have to understand, approve, and support those initiatives. Such approval will not come without information and orientation that carries credible endorsements.
Work Where You Can Win All of this means that the old change agent’s dictum must be followed: Work where you can win, with those who want what you have to offer. Make them successful, and use them as role models for others to emulate. Of course, that requires a systematic program with guidance, funding, and support from “credible endorsers,” and that likely would not be local governments nor even universities. What about local development agencies, involving business superstars from the region? Basketball teams (and information packaged to incorporate sports idioms and examples)?There are a lot of models to choose from. Some actually have been successful because they were developed to achieve a specific purpose for a specific client system in a specific region. This means “headwork and homework.” It means getting input and involvement from a lot of people. It means criteria for participation, and working with people who are committed to sharing what they learn and perhaps inviting others to visit their plants and see their programs. And all of that means coordination, a couple of key persons, and some funding. In making suggestions like this, it is necessary to remember that these are new economies with very little experience in self-government,
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and a long list of demands for funds from a limited resource base. Even in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, it will take years to sort out and respond to competing demands. For all the prosperity in Warsaw and Krakow, Poland is said to have some of the worst roads in the region. Even by fast, international busses, it is a nine-hour trip from Vilnius to Warsaw. North Americans looking at the map might figure four hours at the most, but when they drive it they will wonder how the busses can do it in nine hours. HR, HRD, and HRM likely are not perceived as priority issues, because the relationships among human capital, corporate profits, and foreign investment are not widely perceived. If they were, local governments would be working with schools and universities to ensure that curricula will equip graduates to work in the kinds of industries being sought. If this is happening anywhere in the region, it has not been reported widely. The suspicion is that current curricula in high schools and universities are not preparing pupils for economic life in the 21st Century since educational institutions in the region are as resistant to change as those in North America. Meanwhile, where graduates of the Sovietstyle technical training can be matched with job specifications, added value for salary investments can be .achieved. Infrastructure development will continue to be slow, given that costs tend to exceed governments’ abilities to create revenue. Likewise, until “EU-style” cooperation and agreements are negotiated, delays at borders will continue to create logistics problems and costs for businesses large and small. The “Euro” currency will be more difficult to establish in CEE than in Western Europe. Many, perhaps most, citizens of the region will prefer to continue with their new currencies as symbols of re-established, re-defined, post-Soviet national identities. This may be an unexpected benefit if the global economy stutters and growth is experienced in local and regional economies. This is an important point: Having been “hyphenated-Soviets” for so long, what does it mean to be Hungarian, Slovak, Belarussian, Lithuanian? And, what does it take to anchor that cultural identity?
Growth Through Invisible Linkages There is no doubt the several economies in the CEE will continue to grow, despite the uncertainties of the Russian economy and its influ-
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ence on the region. Proximity to EU countries, favorable wage rates, and increasing local demand for consumer goods and housing will sustain growth rates at 1to 2 percent per year-barring some military catastrophe or related border conflicts that will serve to destabilize the region. As more CEE countries enter NATO (as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were allowed to do in 1999) and the EU (as several may in 2002 and beyond); and as smaller cooperative agreements within the region develop, the de facto integration of CEE economies and those of their Western neighbors will continue at an almost invisible level. Regional offices, branch offices, and distribution centers are the tentacles of commercial networks that may prove stronger than national alliances, and create bonds that can transcend the barriers imposed by local languages, rampant nationalism, and cultural differences. A visitor to Los Angeles from Copenhagen several years ago, after touring one of America’s largest malls, decided that she had seen many of the same products at the same prices at home. Increasingly, Western goods are commanding “back home” pricesexcept thus far, most consumers do not have access to the outlet malls and hypermarts where products are deeply discounted. Hypermarts, however, are on the way-in Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic within the first 18 months or so of the New Century. Creativity is the key. Using resources intelligently to create common visions and values is the way to begin to position entrepreneurship and economic success ahead of narrow nationalistic interests. In one such proposal, widely reported in July 1999, George Soros proposed an “open society” in the Balkans as a free-trade zone, rather than attempting the failure-prone remedy of working with the several nation states. Then, KOSOVO,Serbia, Bulgaria, Albania, and Romania could follow the example of the European Union, receive financial support from the EU (already budgeted)-and could accomplish, collectively, what none of them are likely to be able to do working alone. The plan Soros proposed was developed in part by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and contains a framework for collaboration and cooperation that enhances the welfare of all while compromising the national integrity of none. The unfortunate lessons learned from the reconstruction efforts in Bosnia should not be overlooked, which is the point of both the CEPS and Soros positions.
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Second- and Third-Order Consequences The Soros recommendations would provide means for bringing transparency, stewardship, and personal commitment from top management down to make this collaboration possible. Increasingly, in North America and Western Europe, organizations and their managers are discovering that authoritarian management just doesn’t produce results anymore, but many (perhaps most) have trouble following through with true participation. As a result, employees hear the words, but the music-the behavior of their managers-is dissonant. Employees thus become increasingly cynical and self-protective, creating a hard core of resistance to change. Until change processes are implemented that consider second- and third-order consequences, consultants’ advice and interventions actually can weaken management processes and the credibility of both managers and consultants. Before making changes, thought must be given to the question, “Then what happens? And what after that?” Momentum lost is a breeding ground for disillusionment and contempt. In the early 1990s, there were a lot of “single shot” interventions aimed at extracting profits from government-owned and recently privatized organizations. Typically, those interventions stalled out quickly and created the impression among employees that nothing but profits was important. Managers lost face-and faith in consultants, largely because the consultants’ activities were so visible and so limited in scope and effectiveness. Ultimately, there is little left to try except taking empowerment and involvement and participation to exciting new levels. And why not do that? If employees are committed and intelligent (as all of them are, in one way or another, in their problem-solving capacity), what is the fear of giving them the freedom to be in partnership with their managers and employing organizations? Of course, the answer is management’s fear of losing control-or management’s belief in the limited capacities and concern for the enterprise. This is why, in so many ways, the future of the region is dependent upon manager development and the broadening of the visions-so that many will come to see the relationships between what happens in the community and what happens in the plant. There is no shortage of management training concepts and methodologies, from the fad-of-the-month to the prestigious training programs conducted at major universities.
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Building a Conceptual Foot Bridge What is needed in the region is a kind of “grass roots” developmental program that will teach the economics of respecting employees, how participation gives managers a competitive edge, and how empowered work forces can contribute to the success of their companies. No frills or fancy stuff-just a conceptual footbridge to take them from Soviet-style authoritarianism (which, in reality, is the predominant management style in the region) to the basics of partnering with their people so that all can survive and succeed in the free-market economy. In Lithuania, there are a number of entrepreneurs’ clubs, sponsored or launched by BMC in Kaunas, the Management Training Center (MTC) in Panevezys, and the Training Center of the Lithuanian Industrialists’ Association in Vilnius. Late in 1999, in one of the last programs it would fund in the area, USAID sponsored two two-week programs, conducted by MTC, for entrepreneurs in Belarussia and Khazakstan. One of the objectives was to send participants back home to start entrepreneurs’ clubs. The seminars were rated highly by both participants and the funding agency. They met and mixed with real people who came from the same kind of economic environment and succeeded as independent business persons. In the same way that societies without a middle class remain impoverished, countries without small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are unable to create dynamic economic environments-not to mention jobs and tax revenues. Entrepreneurship training at the local level, as well as programs such as Junior Achievement in high schools, and a variety of types of governmental encouragement, are needed across the region to build this vital element in stable economies. There is so much material in the West, illustrated with graphs and charts that would be easy to translate, that local program leaders could use to suggest new ways of thinking and working. The Cooperative Extension Service in the U.S. has proven models for undertaking these kinds of grassroots efforts in communities that probably were as resistant to change as some here in the region. Probably some of that experience is incorporated in training provided its volunteers by the Peace Corps. But certainly not universally. Sales training is a major issue that lends itself to skill building at the local level. An easy-to-use book by Virden J. Thornton, Prospecting: The Key to Sales Success, would make an exciting curriculum.
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Moving from prospecting to sales calls, the “problem probes” offered by Barry Farber and Joyce Wycoff in their rich text would make an ideal-and natural-next step in a tutorial program (BreakThrough Selling: Customer-Building Strategies from the Best in the Business). And how do you reward employees who are willing to try new sales techniques? Bob Nelson’s book, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees, is full of ideas that lend themselves to adaptation by managers in the region. For leadership training, Mark Starmer’s Will the Real Leader Please Stand Up? is full of useful information and easy-to-replicate charts and drawings that could be transferred to a chalk board or flip chart. Nothing supports successful selling like the practice of “good business manners” (which are sadly lacking in the region). There are a lot of books and guidance documents in this area, as well as an entire arena of customer service concepts. Possibilities are limited only by the lack of recognition of the need to develop learning opportunities. There are those who would say it is naive to think local people would be willing to launch such programs on their own, but there is no doubt that people, including business people, in this region think differently. They come to conclusions that often are surprising to Westerners. Anyone who wants to explore how thinking patterns work and how to build better understanding will find a great tool in Joyce Wycoff‘s exciting book, Mindmapping: Your Personal Guide to Exploring Creativity and Problem-Solving. Moving from thinking about selling, planning for sales, and objective-setting, Wycoff has another powerful text with Tim Richardson, Transformation Thinking: Tools and Techniques that Open the Door to Powerful New Thinking for Every Member of Your Organization. In the change processes discussed in this book, it is clear that change agents, managers, and volunteers working in CEE realize that it is more important to teach people how to think rather than what to think! Most of the business people in the region have attended seminars by consultants. The consensus is, “Enough of consultants and theories! Give us s o m e t h g we can use today, that fits into our economic situation and our culture.” The previously mentioned resources will support meeting that need.
The Economics of Involvement During America’s “Great Depression,” when so many companies and so many people failed, there is an extraordinary success story
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about a company that is still in business-Lincoln Electric, manufacturers (then)of welding equipment. In 1932, in the depth of the depression, Lincoln’s management was facing having to close the company, lay off the workers, and risk never getting them back once the economy turned around. Someone, however, had an incredible idea: Why not send the workers, the men who built the welding equipment, out on the road to sell Lincoln’s products to the small shops and garages and plants that still were open? These workmen-turned-salesmen talked about welding with shop owners and workmen across America. The orders they produced saved the company-which continues to do innovative things today. Check it out at www.lincolnelectric.com. Around the region there probably are several companies that could profit from hearing the Lincoln Electric story, and perhaps by replicating it; and thousands of managers who could benefit from a no-nonsense crash course in why people are important and how your employees can save their company and your career.
The HR Challenges To summarize, most companies in the region are over-staffed. This is a Soviet-era heritage from times when everyone was guaranteed a job, and when production costs were unimportant. In addition to providing jobs for everyone (which is seen by some as an important value), that system fostered consequences that have proved devastating to the concept of cost-effective operations: 1. People performed tasks that are narrow in scope. 2. People tended to be concerned about their tasks to the exclusion of all others. 3. Skills, too, were developed very narrowly, and cross-training was not practiced. 4. Team work, in the Western sense, did not exist, neither in practice nor concept. 5. Hierarchical, authoritarian management was practiced, limiting the effectiveness of everyone as all waited to be told what to do. 6 . Loyalty to companies and managers was not an issue of concern to employees. 7. No tradition of initiative or innovation or contributing to the success of the company or co-workers evolved.
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In short, “That’s not my job!” is a common refrain-as is, “If I make those decisions, what is there for my manager to do?” These worker attitudes can be seen as consequences of a management system they did not create; therefore, they should be held blameless but expected to adapt to current realities. The American idiom, “DO or die,” certainly seems to fit CEE employees and employers today. What
Should Companies Do?
Another heritage of Soviet times is secrecy-although withholding information happens in the West, as well. Secrets can be discussed only in whispers or behind closed doors, preventing problem-identifying, problem-solving dialogues. Secrecy kills involvement and participation. Experience in the U.S. has proven that down-sizing is a poor tool for achieving organizational and economic effectiveness. Over-staffing in the U.S., however, is not comparable to over-staffing over here (except, perhaps, in governmental and other regulated bureaucracies, in which the cost of inefficiency is born by tax payers or rate payers). A dispassionate focus on profitable performance that is intense enough to “see through” the mass of people and patterns of precedents, privilege, and prerogative that obscure the potential for profit (or for optimal output) is needed, along with tough questions such as: W W W W W W W W W W
W W
Why do people perform tasks in the most cumbersome way? Do we reward competence here, or just compliance? Are rewards more powerful than sanctiondpunishments? Has anyone ever suggested a better way to do anything? Is this workplace an extension of the welfare system? Has anyone ever mapped the work flow to see what is required? Who around here is worth keeping, and how do we know? How do we keep certain employees and retrain or get rid of the rest? How do we help those who must leave to “land on their feet?” What would happen if we told the truth about money and options? Are our employees more ethical and intelligent than we are? Do we demean everyone because we are afraid to be honest?
These questions are not rhetorical. They have been asked in a number of organizations moving from problem awareness to action possibilities.
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A fact: Official unemployment rates across the region are in double digits. A question: What would happen if people were told the truth about over-staffing and operating costs and were allowed to leave early with incentives? Other questions: What would happen if people were offered an opportunity to choose retraining instead of being fired? If retraining were offered, would the government participate financially, through tax incentives or in-kind participation? And would there be jobs for those who are re-trained? What skills do departing workers actually have, and are they transferable? If so, who needs them and how can the match be made? How many workers in the region have written a resume? Without that basic, job-finding skill, what do you expect will happen when their jobs disappear? How much does it cost to teach people to “package themselves for success” or otherwise learn to think of themselves as marketable commodities? How many people can be diverted from long, useless, early retirements into constructive, productive roles with some really inexpensive assistance? There are some “human costs” in every downsizing. Life is not fair. But, by how much can those costs be reduced, and is it worth the effort? What is the public relations value of such programs, both for companies and governments? Would it approximate the cost of the programs? That is an ethical question as much as it is an economic question. It reduces to, “Who cares?” Maybe that is a possible learning for all of us. Chapter Eleven proposes a model for manager education that might enable CEE managers to learn to be competitive and compassionate, based on the authors’ extensive experience in training managers and working with organizations through their struggles to manage change and stay competitive.
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CEE-SPECIFIC MANAGER DEVELOPMEN MODEL Someone said, “Everythingis like something else,” and perhaps that is so. One major similarity-and one that says volumes about Human Resource Development (HRD) and training needs in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)-is between CEE organizations today and those of the U.S.in the 1960s and early 1970s. What is the similarity? It is a reliance on authority as a primary managerial tool and strategy.
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In CEE, most managers were trained to emulate the Soviedcommand economy approach to “management,” i.e., to meet production goals without regard for costs. As a result, many managers never developed a curiosity about costs, costs-per-unit, overhead, or profit. Without a mandate and rewards for reducing costs within a specified period (something easily measured), there is no incentive to involve workers or to view them in any way other than as recipients of instructions and orders. There is a reciprocal position among workers that the most important things they do are to: (1)show up for work on time; (2)wait to be told what to do; and to (3) perform all tasks at a pace that does not reveal the differences in the performance of individuals. This is more important than accomplishing tasks on time. In the U.S. in the 1960s, the majority of managers had served in military organizations during World War Two or the Korean Conflict. The white shirts and crew cuts affected by most managers (and mandatory at IBM) were the de fact0 uniform for success. In some organizations, even the “mail boys” wore suits.
Military Models of Organization The tables of organization of IBM, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture all looked the same (and very much like that of the U.S. Marine Corps). Each organization had approximately 110,000 employees and, from the perspective of HRD, there were more similarities than dissimilarities among them (except that USDA had more bureaus and divisions-and probably more Central Intelligence Agency operatives). Working among those three, and dozens of other public- and private-sector organizations, revealed a startling similarity of needs, problems, opportunities, and challenges. All were dealing with production and performance issues, containing costs, and getting new levels of effectiveness from supervisors and managers as major components in resolving performance and production problems. At one time in America (and, to a lesser extent, Great Britain), the behavioral sciences (a collection of research-based theories about the behavior of people at work) were being offered as a means of releasing “human potential” in workplaces to obtain more profitable performance and money-saving suggestions from employees. Supervisors and managers, given their experience with rank and hierarchy in the
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military services, were nearly universal in their initial rejection of such “soft” ideas as participative management, involvement, and being “sensitive” to the needs, experiences, and interpersonal styles of employees and co-workers. This happened during a period of prosperity in America, when Japanese cars still were novelties and racial segregation andlor discrimination were usual and unremarkable. Perhaps only in a time of prosperity can “human potential” be considered, explored, and invested in by corporations. Many managers, smug with their individual and corporate successes, ridiculed the “touchy-feely” approach to manager development and performance improvement. The more rigid the attitudes of managers as they appeared for training, the more resistant they were to such concepts, and the more likely they were to express openly their contempt for employees and their capacities to contribute. Employees were often unworthy of basic courtesies, even to the point that some managers refused to introduce “please” and “thank you” into their vocabularies. [Author’s note: These comments about managerial attitudes are not being exaggerated! Co-author Sears spent four years as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, and so understands those attitudes and their antecedents.]
Models of Effective Management-and
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“Rank has its privileges” (RHIP) was a well-known tenet of life in uniform. It translated as a justification for the de fucto double standard that permitted freedoms to officers that were denied to enlisted personnel. Despite RHIP and the nonfraternization rule, effective officers knew how to manage the boundaries among the ranks to keep morale and performance high and to minimize conflicts. Perhaps this was because of the egalitarian and democratic bearings of the predominant American culture, and an almost universal respect for the mavericks, the rule breakers-the leaders who “put it on the line” for their troops or employees. Interestingly, these “counter-cultural” behaviors were more fully suppressed in industry than in the military. By contrast, the Soviet system spawned elite groups that were more privileged relative to opportunities and circumstances than even most upper-class Americans. Special stores with special prices made rubles go farther; special housing with amenities that were not available to the masses made living easier; and other perquisities were offered that bought allegiance and compliance and justified social distance as a
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matter of obligation to one’s family and to maintaining their standard of living. Such role models of what managers are and how they behave do not lead people to readily accept the power and potential of involvement and participation. Operationally, many hear participation as meaning “more for them is less for me.” So, at the end of the century and at the beginning of the new millennium, the major and necessary training opportunity in CEE is to teach both managers and workers the values of participating more fully in contributing to the success of their enterprises; of being colleagues and co-workers instead of adversaries; of accepting the truth that all at work are there because their contributions are needed (even though not all are compensated at the same level); and of honoring all who perform their tasks fully and satisfactorily as the peers of anyone else, at whatever level, who does the same. Workers and managers can move toward more effective ways of working together if they are given comprehensible reasons for changing their socially prescribed relationships, as well as given feedback that validates their efforts. Overriding 50 years of programming cannot be accomplished overnight, or as the result of a single training program. With content that answers basic questions and senior managers capable of maintaining a program of initiatives and rewards, however, behavior can be changed and attitudes will follow.
Looking for a Training/HRD Model Most Westerners who have worked in the region agree that such ideas about cultural adaptations, and the perceptions and relationships to support them, would be most unusual to find. If it took American managers and workers (with the egalitarian bias so often observed there) 30-plus years to make the transition from authoritarian to generally participative management, how long will it take in CEE? How many steps, fads, and theories must managers and workers in CEE go through to find their own versions of participation and cooperation? Of organizational effectiveness?Of competitive profitability? Or, could that period be shortened by reducing the conceptual requirements on which an effective participative management style can be built? This is possible, despite 50 years of intentional destruction of trust among individuals and the fostering of dependence on a central authority (the State and its appointed leaders). As a result of
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that belief, a model has been developed that, while contrary to all usual codes of organizational conduct, can make difficult concepts comprehensible to managers within CEE. The model is rooted in the assumptions that follow. The results of the American experience, as reflected today in a majority of workplaces, is equality of the competent, as well as organizations that provide cost-effective productdservices for clientskonsumers. Usually, this can be extended to job security for competent, contributing employees and satisfactory returns on stockholders’ investments. The conceptual input to move workers, managers, and their organizations toward more effective ways of operating probably need not include everything from the same “menu of options” used in North America and in Western Europe. In fact, there is an almost-straight line of concepts that provides managers and executives in CEE with the conceptual framework necessary to forge their own versions of participation and involvement.
First-Name Follies and Other Nonessential Issues It is usual in Western management conferences and staff retreats to use first names, wear casual clothes, and otherwise minimize the symbols of rank, hierarchy, caste, and class. However, it is not unusual to see everyone comply, if uncomfortably, but revert immediately to comfortable and customary formality as soon as the trainers leave the room. As so often happens, form becomes more important than function! In this instance, form of address is much less important than the learning and acceptance among participants that certain kinds of information must cross hierarchical lines promptly, without distortion, and with no threat of punishment. The conceptual line central to this training model begins in the first decade of the 20th Century-with the work of F. W. Taylor, who proved that management is “scientific” and that human effort can be measured and predicted-and trips lightly over the next 90 years, touching down only briefly on some conceptual and academic high points. This is important because: W If human behavior can be predicted and measured, then it can be manipulated to obtain specific results. W Part of the manipulation is the extent to which participation is permitted, creating even more results and an array of collateral benefits.
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All the conceptual material needed to shape a viable management
theory can be learned in two weeks or less. Retention and application depend on a major variable-the will of managers to whom trainees report. The conceptual and experiential tools are easily and economically available. These concepts transcend culture-or are not in conflict with cultures in the region. Managers in CEE, moving through the discovery process at a pace dictated by their perceptions of competitive pressures, can generate their own confirming and validating evidence that “their” theory works. How will that kind of ownership occur? By allowing people-managers and work leaders-to derive their own successes from experiments within the organizations they make more productive. If there is the will to make changes, the conceptual tools offered here will work.
Management Fads vs. Visionary Thinking Some of the original visionaries created concepts of such clarity and theoretical elegance that they have not been improved upon. In fact, most so-called management “advances”-“management fads of the month”-are variations on the main themes. Consultants and academics who know the field may develop an alternative list, but for the purposes of this book, the following short list of “conceptual building blocks” is provided. Most involve some element of participative theory-and all can be used to increase productivity and, as a result, profitability. These, truly, are major “social inventions” with the power still to lead managers to dramatic discoveries about the process of management. F. W. Taylor is sometimes called “the first management consultant” for demonstrating that the output of individuals can be increased dramatically-but their work must be organized and structured so that individual performance can be measured and rewarded. Although this finding is still being sold by consultants, it was a precursor to “re-engineering” and productivity improvement. Taylor also proved that the performance of individuals working in groups will sink to the level of the slowest worker. Further, anticipating the identification of “best practices” by about 80 years, Taylor demonstrated that output can be optimized when
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tasks are analyzed so that the “best ways” of performing those tasks are developed, and that individuals are coached to follow prescribed procedures to meet standards of performance. Taylor expected these results because he employed “scientific management” techniques, i.e., following the “scientific method” of research that many university students follow in developing theses and dissertations. Two decades later, during the five-year period 1928 to 1932, Harvard researchers F. J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson used research techniques and found something they did not expect. Looking for the impact of situational variables (light levels, task composition, and so on), they found instead the power of, and increased output resulting from, paying attention to workers and involving them in making work decisions. These studies were carried out at General Electric’s Hawthorne, Illinois, plant-and this is why the phenomenon of morale and productivity improvement that follows, making workers feel special, is called “the Hawthorne effect.” The researchers verified their results by studying a number of test groups in a variety of workplace simulations and situations. Theirs was a major conceptual breakthrough that still is ignored in many workplaces. In fact, most managers never have heard of this incredible discovery. About the same time, Kurt Lewin moved from Germany to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S. where he founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics to continue his work on resolving conflicts. Lewin demonstrated that the ideals and actions of individuals depend upon the groups to which they belong along with the goals and expectations of those groups. This led to the development of “force field analysis” as a means of predicting individual responses and analyzing the forces that cause people to maintain or change their behaviors. What Lewin presented, more than a model for planning and managing change, was a conceptual platform from which most managers can understand and use this important dimension of “group dynamics” to become more effective. One of Lewin’s collaborators was Alfred J. Morrow, a professor who invested an inheritance to buy a knitting mill to test his theories about the power of participation and of democratic (as opposed to autocratic or laissez-faire) leadership. Not only did his workers in the knitting mill achieve goals faster with participative management, but they also maintained production levels because the ideals and actions, the values of the group-shaped by the opportunity to participate in
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making decisions that managers usually made-shaped the behavior of individual members and created powerful group norms. It is this lesson that is central to releasing the energies of the CEE work force, but the lesson is unlikely to be accepted without being “framed” by earlier and subsequent researches. In 1946, Rensis Likert formed the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. When Kurt Lewin died in 1948, his center at MIT was moved and merged with Likert’s to form the Institute for Social Research. Likert’s important book, New Patterns of Management ( 1961), proclaimed that “employee-centered” supervisors are higher producers than “job-centered” supervisors, and that employees who participate in setting their own work pace are more productive than others. For managers in CEE to accept these two research-based axioms as truths (despite their acceptance by so many successful corporations) will be a struggle, because these ideas are in direct opposition to almost everything they have been taught about “subordinates,” that is, about the lower classes or orders of humans. Douglas McGregor’s seminal book, The Human Side of Enterprise (1958), provides a means for reducing the high-level abstractions of “manager behavior” to comprehensible dimensions. His “Theory X” manager believes that people must be controlled-that they are lazy and will avoid work if they can. His “Theory Y” manager believes that people will meet expectations-that working to meet or exceed goals they understand and believe in is “as natural as rest or play.” The surprise for many is that the really “tough” managers are those with the Y orientation, because they believe that people can think, solve problems, and perform at high levels-and they persist in getting those results through democratidparticipativdcoaching means. McGregor achieved a level of clarity in explaining complex behaviors that has rarely been matched. He made it possible to discuss manager attitudes without condemnation and blame, and offers managers a choice of strategies for getting the results they say they want. His book gives managers “permission” to surrender old biases as the price of becoming more effective. Many managers doubt that changing their behaviors, attitudes, and approaches will pay off. “What about our employees? Who will change them?” Frederick Herzberg’s “Motivation-Hygiene” theory is a powerful response. He proposed that as important as motivating people might be, it is of equal importance that managers abandon practices
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that de-motivate workers. His research, involving thousands of workers, proved that workers who do not feel aggrieved by management policies and practices will respond with 10 to 15 percent more productivity without other rewards or inducements. Conversely, when workers feel that they are being treated unfairly (and it might be fair to say that most workers in the region harbor some resentment toward their managers), they withhold their productivity. Herzberg’s research shows that (1) dissatisfiers are as potent as satisfiers in their impact on employee behavior, (2) satisfiers and dissatisfiers are not reciprocal, and that (3) workers always will want more rewards and money. His research also showed that workers are realistic and that they will respond to honest, respectful treatment by their supervisors. This theory certainly deserves consideration in CEE, where hard lines exist with mistrust on both sides. Herzberg’s evidence about “satisfiers” and “dissatisfiers” could go a long way toward helping managers and workers in the region to discuss divisive issues and, in the process, come closer to understanding the murky relationships among individual effort, productivity, profit, and salaries. “Sensitivity Training” (T-groups), as promoted by the National Training Laboratories, is a powerful tool for enhancing interpersonal effectiveness. T-groups were based on Leland Bradford’s synthesis of the works of Lewin (“Force Field Analysis”); psychologist Abraham Maslow (“Hierarchy of Needs”); Alfred Morrow, who chronicled his learnings about participation in his book, Behind the Executive Mask; and Douglas McGregor. This collection of theoretical constructs and behavioral prescriptions emphasized that individual effectiveness, regardless of academic or professional discipline, depends on being competent at the interpersonal level, on the ability to listen to others, and on the personal courage to tell the truth. It might be fair to say that most of those managers and executives who tried T-Group values at work had their learning extinguished by resistant co-workers. Many, however, benefited from experiential learning that demonstrated the power of being “fully human” at work and of getting “feedback” from peers on how to optimize their interpersonal strengths to become more effective, personally and professionally, while dealing with issues of power, control, and performance. A surprising response to the question of getting more performance from employees is found in the work of Thomas Connellan, whose
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approach to behavior modification is Theory Y in action. Connellan said he would undertake any behavior-change effort with any group (with no fee unless he was successful) if management agreed to three conditions: (1)that he could fire anyone who openly resisted new standards; (2)that he could reward all who adopted new practices on the way to meeting new standards; and that ( 3 ) he had a year to achieve targeted results. This exposition of “expectjinspect” management and intentionality is aesthetic in its simplicity while being a model of maintaining focus on the desired results. As Connellan explains behavior modification, it’s as simple as A, B, C when A standards for antecedents-what is put in place to require and explain changes; B stands for the resulting behavior by the people who must incorporate changes into their patterns of responses; and C stands for consequences-both positive and negative. The major challenges here are focus on results and clarity about standards of performance that will produce desired results (which sounds rather like Taylor’s work six decades earlier). Another challenge is overcoming managers’ fears about using consequences to shape the behavior of subordinates. The next component in this developmental model requires a jump over 30 years of research and writing by a lot of conscientious writers. It may come as a surprise to many readers, but the last element in this assemblage of “irreducible conceptual minimums” is Jack Stack’s work and action research at Springfield Re-Engineering as reported in his book The Great Game ofBusiness (and earlier in this book). Stack realized, in leading the purchase of Springfield as an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, that the actual limits on employee participation were rooted in their lack of knowledge about the tools, processes, and language of business. He decided to remove this obstacle by teaching all of his employees how to play “the great game of business” to the point that it became a component of new employee orientation. Did it pay off?So much so that Springfield is immensely profitable and its employees have “spun off” nearly 30 subsidiary companiescreating even more profits and jobs. Stack’s insight was based in the question, “How can you expect people to help you make money when they don’t know how companies make money?” What a powerful insight this is for CEE! It may be difficult for Westerners to realize that, for workers in CEE, “costs” and “overhead” never were factors in production decisions in the Soviet system.
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As noted above, others might present another short-list of writers and concepts, but these offer a powerful mix of tools: Task analysis Assessment of skills and abilities Performance standards Standard operating procedures Planning, implementing, and managing change Motivating employees for optimum performance Showing managers and supervisors how to perform more effectively in their leadership roles W Building more effective work groups W Teaching everyone “the great game of business,” including how to develop business plans, strategic plans, and teams of competent employees who are excited about the work they do and the results they create
W W W W W W W
Naturally, some will ask, “But what about. . . this or that favorite concept or author, and that is okay. Where is Management by Objectives (MBO)? It was omitted intentionally, as were Program Planning & Budgeting System (PPBS),Quality Circles (QC),Theory Z, Managing by Walking Around (MBWA),and another dozen or so fads based on easy-reading books and glib generalizations. In fairness, most of them have some merit, but most failed to talk to the basic and unmentionable subjects-such as competence, successful performance, and the waste of investing in people who are unlikely to become profitable performers. ?77
The Ability to Learn-and to Adapt It is important to confront the issue that, in the post-Soviet countries, there is reluctance to address the differences among workers and their abilities (perhaps more than in the U.S.). Since people in CEE were taught for years that inequality in salaries was immoral, it still is difficult for many in management to conduct effective performance evaluations. In CEE, as elsewhere, not all people have equal abilities to perform on the job. Not all people are motivated equally either. The equation that “ability times motivation equals competence” may be useful as a slogan, but production factors in most workplaces cannot be assessed
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closely enough to measure abilities, motivations, and competence so precisely. What can be measured with some precision is general learning ability and this varies as much in CEE as elsewhere-although it is the best predictor of success on the job. This is the authors’ experience, and it reflects the research into assessment and measurement done so scrupulously by John L. Hunter, professor of psychology and mathematics at Michigan State University, and Frank L. Schmidt, professor of human resources at the University of Iowa. The myth of the “highly educated” workers in CEE does not include the mind-dulling impact of the Soviet educational system and the bias against initiative and curiosity. Assessments of employees and managers can pay dividends quickly, by rearranging people at work so that they can be more successful, and by identifying remedial thinking needed by both employees and managers as indicated by assessment instruments. Assessment results also allow for “selective pruning” of those who may lack the ability to adapt to new technologies despite their stated desire to do so and helpful coaching. This will be a major issue as companies upgrade technologies that, in many instances, have changed little in the last 30 or 40 years. Downsizing or restructuring should be preceded or accompanied by an assessment. Otherwise, there is no defensible reason for selecting those for release-other than “last in, first out,” which is a blind and wasteful strategy. Those who have seen the gardens that so many people in CEE maintain realize that the average gardener in the region should be writing “how to” articles for Organic Gardening magazine. What would commerce and industry in the region be like if workers were asked-and allowed-to release some of this creativity and energy into their workplaces? Perhaps there could be a lot of happy surprises as the freedom to contribute triggered the capacity to do so. The mix of management concepts outlined above could show managers how to clear the way. Are they sufficiently culture-free to solve performance and production issues in CEE? Test them against the following “culture-free imperatives.”
Nine Culture-Free Imperatives Culture-free business premises, supported by culture-free management concepts and tools, are needed to transcend the authoritarian
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work cultures found across CEE. Since business decisions increasingly must reflect corporate, cultural, and national requirements, nine culture-free business premises are identified in the following paragraphs. Taken together, these premises should constitute a universal, moneymaking, management system, as well as bridging some of the “cultural chasms” in which imported ideas perish. Premise #l.Corporate vision and strategic plans must be developed and communicated by management; employees should participate in development implementation tactics. Once courses of action and outcomes are specified, let employees “buy in” and lend their support to the success of the strategic plan. It is a mistake to ignore the people who make thousands of small decisions daily about how much work gets done, how soon, and how well. Strategic plans must have tactical components that supervisors and representative employees can develop. In relatively few hours, strategic goals can be articulated as a series of strategic interventions that, in turn, can be defined as subtasks to be accomplished by named individuals and completed on dates contained in a master schedule. This way, everyone “owns” a piece of the strategic plan and gets to contribute to its success, while creating new levels of cooperation among employees and visibility around group and individual performances. Premise #2. Empowered workers contribute gifts of extra effort and ingenuity. Allowing employees to participate affirms them as significant members of the corporate team who are expected to suggest better, faster, cheaper ways to do their work. Empowered employees do not waste time or materials. They plan their work, help each other when appropriate, and create a social infrastructure that protects the workplace from sagging morale and declining productivity. Managers forget that many employees fill demanding leadership roles in familial or volunteer organizations and have skills beyond those required by their current jobs. Those skills and talents are a rich and undiscovered resource lying fallow in most organizations-just because no one thinks to ask employees, “Isn’t there a better way to do this?” Management’s challenge, then, is to listen, give credit for ideas used, and let this powerful energy build a cooperative community. Premise #3: All people want to receive value for their money. Regardless of measure or cost, things are worth what people are willing to pay. When they pay, however, they want a full measure of quality and quantity for their money. This is the essence of customer service, good salesmanship, and effective merchandising.
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This also is an expectation fundamental to all continuing relationships, with built-in inspection mechanisms that say “yes” or “no” with each transaction. The way to maintain relationships-business, professional, or personal-is to ensure that expectations are defined, clarified, negotiated when necessary, and met fully each time. True, the “real world” is filled with compromises, failed expectations, and disappointments. But where variables can be manipulated to deliver quality products, services, or outcomes, it is worth the effort. People notice, and it matters. Short-changing people is a disaster that persists and multiplies as unhappy people tell others about their dissatisfaction. Premise #4. Standards are required to define values and expectations. We live in a world of standards-kilos, liters, kilometers-perhour, and so forth. Corporations, families, and affinity groups have code words that convey meanings, reflecting other kinds of standards. Within organizations and with customers, standards are needed to convey meaning and value. Otherwise, misunderstandings arise and result in failed expectations. Partly as a result of the emergence of international quality standards (IS0 9000), and partly as a response to more discriminating customers, specifications for products and services have become easier to obtain and more precise. Customers can adjust expectations in trade-offs with price and delivery schedules. What about in-company standards, specifications, and expectations? The means for simplifying processes, standardizing procedures, reducing numbers of independent variables, and diminishing failed expectations? These are major leadership challenges, but the results can be spectacular. Premise #5. Inspection is the heart of systems of standards and expectations. Pre-determined criteria are used to assess adherence to design specifications (quality),progress toward completion (schedule), and consumption of resources (costs).This permits “failure-proofing” tasks by providing structural support for success by individuals and work groups. Despite popular notions about the “freedom to fail,” success-assurance focuses employees on performance. Then, their creative energies can be used to discover shortcuts by planning in enough detail to identify unnecessary steps-without putting co-workers and jobs at risk. Inspection is analogous to making mid-course corrections on a trip when the arrival time is important. What is inspected gets done, because employees know that success matters.
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Premise #6. Routine replication of processes and procedures produces profits (RRPPPP). Assembly lines prove this point. Off the production floor, however, processes frequently are ill-defined and develop frustrating rhythms of their own. Invoices are late, accounts age, cash flow is restricted, and all because production disciplines are not extended to executive and administrative areas. When processes are allowed to become idiosyncratic, they become person-dependent and unreliable. A $%our employee who wastes six minuteshour on imprecise processes creates $1,00O/year in dead loss. One benefit of RRPPPP is the identification of costs hidden by imprecise processes and redundant staff. Overhead that does not add value is the enemy of profit. Premise #7. Quality results from intelligent use of controls designed as fast-feedback systems. With effective controls, managers can focus on three major variables: quality, schedules, and costs. What about managing people? Managing information about individual and group performance makes sense-as opposed to the old notion of a 1:7 span of control. This enables managers to be more effective-although variance data must be prompt and definitive. When schedules begin to slip, costs exceed budgets, and quality is off the mark, managers must be able to take immediate remedial action to prevent failure. Why not employees too? With intelligent use of controls, employees can be selfcorrecting and progressively self-directing. Unfortunately, controls still are used too often as a vehicle for “catching” people. Fast-feedback systems are the key. With these systems, managers can make a difference, and not excuses. Premise #8. Performance measurement validates the organization’s ability to meet goals. Except for creativity and innovation, if something cannot be measured, it probably does not exist. Companies run on information, not on faith. Still, people say, “Well, measurement is a good idea, but my job is too unique to be put on a meter.” How, then, is value assessed and a salary justified? In a world of RRPPPP, everything gets measured, weighed, and tested for value. Where there is no added value, activities are dropped. When performance is not cost effective, entire functions are eliminated. Unless satisfactory performance is defined, goal setting is an empty exercise. So is strategic planning. Performance measurement must prove that routine tasks get done better, faster, and cheaper. Or, other ways to perform those tasks must be found. How else can organizations stay competitive and survive?
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Premise #9. Planning and scheduling are necessary, integrative processes. Managing is allocating resources for optimal return on investment (ROI). Planning defines necessary resources. Without scheduling, how do you know if necessary resources are available? This is a basic premise, but one that is overlooked by many who fail to watch their ROI or realize that market share is shrinking. Few people are productive eight hours a day. Keeping large numbers of people in profitable activity six hours a day is a laudable achievement. It can happen only through work planning at high levels of detail, and through flexible scheduling that ensures that priority jobs are completed on time and that no one is idle because of sick calls by other workers or delayed delivery of materials. Planning is such a fundamental organizational skill that every employee should have the ability to develop plans at a 50-activity level of detail. This way, ideas for better, faster, cheaper productivity can be described visually rather than verbally, and this means that every employee has an equal opportunity to contribute. This method creates an entirely new dimension to the concepts of “workplace democracy” and builds effective, contributing work groups. Planning in enough detail makes both possible, because all of the “players” can see the issues and their roles in resolving them, and management’s controls (fast-feedback capabilities) are strengthened. Of course, there are other strategies for ensuring the success of subordinates and co-workers. The issue is bringing them to the forefront of managers’ thinking, putting them to work to release the creative and productive potential of the people who come to work every day. Ultimately, as the late Julius Simon wrote, an organization’s people are its most important resource-its “secret weapon” in the effort to be competitive. This is a useful point to remember in answering the question: Can CEE managers and workers “skip some steps” in their evolution from being part of an authoritarian organization to a more effective and profitable organization? If offered a menu of proven management techniques, can they compress the journey made by their American counterparts in 30 years or so to a decade or less? Is the set of theories and models presented above culture-free to a level that permits adoption?
Overcoming the Hard Sell These theory-based practices are going to be hard to sell because, regardless of having been proven in profit-making workplaces, they are
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contrary to the culture of conformity that operates as a powerful counter-force to change. Many managers will perceive that they are losing face if they must ask their subordinates for help and insights to solve persistent problems. (“Face” is every bit as much an issue in the region as in the Far East!) Likewise, nonsupervisory personnel may think it is a risk to volunteer information rather than to wait to be asked (or told what to do); to solve problems and then tell their managers what was done; and to act daily as though their managers are in place to help them succeed in getting work done rather than the reverse. This is going to be hard to sell because almost no one in the region has experience in this kind of work setting. Participative management is neither attractive nor interesting except to those who have worked in North America, Western Europe, or in companies from those regions that have brought participative management with them into CEE. Even technically inventive and socially adept executives smile indulgently about the possibility of their employees playing a larger role in decision making and work scheduling. They counter with dismissive remarks such as “She is just a . . . ” or “He has no education in that area” or “What do they care about costs and profit margins?” Of course, “they” cannot risk caring about things that are “my manager’s responsibility” or take actions that have not been pre-approved-no matter how routine the task or how obvious the response. There is some justification in these remarks, however. Many employees are not very flexible. But they never were trained to be, nor rewarded for it. Many do not use their intellectual resources effectively (from a boss’ point of view) for the same reasons. One of the instances in which this is most obvious is in selecting people to sell, or in attempting to teach people in outplacement seminars how to “sell” themselves. It is as though the entire concept is repugnant. In the Soviet system, people were assigned roles without having to make choices. Choosing, arguing, and selling still are a stretch for many people who are otherwise bright and articulate. Bosses with negative attitudes can have a negative impact on employees. In a recent example, a teacher had made a career change to become a customer service representative for an international pharmaceutical firm. Unable to fill a customer’s request from the usual supply source, she used the computer to find an alternative source with an overstock, called her counterpart, arranged for the shipment, and placed a re-supply order to cover the transaction. Then she called the
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manager of that office-a physician, no less-to report what she had done. He was enraged, screaming obscenities into the phone, and demanded to know with whom on his staff she had made such arrangements. No one had ever spoken to her in this manner. The demeaning manner in which her boss rebuked her revealed how he actually felt about her. Just as surely as turning off the switch on an electric light, something was turned off in that employee, and she never again felt the same about her work and her superiors. When is the next time she will use her problem-solving skills, honed in 20 years of high school and university teaching, to solve a simple logistics problem, to respond to a client, to save money for her company? Or will she wait for someone in authority to tell her what to do-as is the practice of so many other employees throughout CEE? Another issue: How many employees-underlings-has that physiciadmanager turned off? Regardless of his effectiveness as a sales representative, how much are his economic contributions diminished by the daily subtractions of contributions that could have been made by the people he abused? This is a calculation rarely computed in totaling corporate gains and losses. This small example-one story out of millions of similar events-is included because it exemplifies the enormity of the management training challenge in CEE, not the least of which concerns clarifying the value of the contributions made by women at work (who, on average, make about 60 percent as much as men) and their very right to make contributions. This is another cultural issue that is responding to the economic imperative in the U.S. and Western Europe; i.e., it does not make sense to treat half your workforce as second-class citizens.
The Cost of Management Attitudes Manager education, then, must begin with an examination of the costs and consequences of attitudes toward employees articulated into management philosophy and practice. Experience in several resistant client systems suggests that the key to opening managers’ minds to the possibility of changed behavior is economic. “Sure, you can continue to do that, but this is what it’s going to cost you . . . ” In the schemes for making CEE managers more effective, perhaps it is as important to help them discover ways to stop the losses engendered by resentful or uninvolved employees as it is to show them how
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to be more effective. The withholding of talent and initiative is a major obstacle to profitability in companies large and small across the region. Another imperative is to re-orient managers’ thinking about plans and planning, from macro-level strategies to micro-management planning at high levels of supervisory detail. Mission statements, goals, objectives, immediate targets for performance improvement, and daily measurements of work-against-plans is required to demonstrate competence, to prove-out the profitability of processes, and to make it possible to continuously reduce costs-per-unit (CPU). In most CEE workplaces, CPU is a mystery number that makes guesswork out of other, profit-impacting decisions.
A Proposed Series of Interventions Behavior change and performance improvement begin with information. Getting that information into organizations in a logical manner depends on developing a strategy with senior management. Since executives frequently are invested in maintaining the status quo, this educational challenge falls to the HRD specialists or consultants working through industry or trade associations. Somehow, the message that there is a better way to work with people, to use human resources, and to improve productivity must be “translated” to penetrate the barriers of cultural resistance and reliance on lowest-common denominator strategies rooted in authority and fear. The sequence of events and subject-matter exposure represents the authors’ best estimates of how to accomplish this penetration. Imagine that the client is a manufacturing company with 300 employees, that their products represent current technology and are priced competitively, and that corporate management wants to know how to become a more effective competitor in the international market. Having explored distributorships, licensing, creating a “Westernstyle” marketing department-and having decided that a new generation of manufacturing equipment is not affordable-corporate management has turned to Human Resources as a last resort. Neither the president nor his four immediate subordinates (who, collectively, own nearly 90 percent of the company’s stock) are “true believers,” but they are curious-some more than others. Given the over-staffing that is endemic throughout the region, the first task should be a skill and abilities assessment of all employees. This may be the most expensive single element in this curriculum, but one that will be a high-return investment within months.
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If the assessment process-interviews, paper-and-pencil tests, and job simulations-has been validated against populations doing similar work, the information that results will be invaluable. Managers then know which employees have affordable developmental potential as aboveaverage performers and supervisors or managers. They also know which employees are without much developmental possibility, and should be released. This is where assessment becomes an investment. It takes the guesswork out of succession planning, staffing and retention plans, and identifying candidates for phased out-placement. Then, training costs can be invested in individuals from whom a return on the investment can be predicted-by validated assessment processes rather than by their relationships, interpersonal skills, or tenure. This is a first step in building a world-class, high-performance organization. Once assessment is underway or complete, the next step is to devise an organization that fits the work you plan to do. Most organizations develop work-flow patterns over time that are not entirely rational. Sometimes, the reasons that supported work-flow patterns no longer exist; sometimes earlier reporting relationships have been abolished or proximity to materials no longer exists; and sometimes technology creates opportunities for changed patterns of interactions and relationships that are not reflected in the table of organization. Often, the actual task of mapping the work flow makes it possible for employees and managers to see opportunities for process improvements. Sometimes, the causes of long-term communication or coordination problems can be seen and resolved. And, frequently, more effective relationships can be developed for coordination and reporting. For many people, the development of a step-by-step process will enable them to see, for the first time, how their organization’s work actually is performed. Also, when bringing new people into the organization, such a map facilitates their orientation and understanding of how their roles fit into the production or administrative sequence. Do not underestimate the power of this simple process to illustrate what otherwise may be high-level abstractions. At this point, it is time to audit positions and descriptions to determine (a) how many people are assigned in each work area; (b) what tasks they actually perform; and (c)whether those tasks are performed in the most logical sequence, locations, or if they still are necessary. Not infrequently, there is a relationship among production delays, customer service problems, and an awkward sequencing of work because the work changed and the organization and reporting channels did not.
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This is a process of asking questions. “What do you do? Where does your work come from? To whom do you give it after you have done your part?” These questions will be difficult for many employees because no one has ever asked such questions and because, for so many, there is such a short chain of activities. Even chronologically senior men, whose titles identify them as “manager o f . . . ’’ have almost no decision-making authority, no latitude to choose courses of action, and no ability to negotiate agreements on even the most routine items without going to someone else for authority or approval. What do you want people to do? How do you want them to create value for you? How will you know when they are creating value? This information should be contained in position descriptions (PDs) that are designed to be as dynamic as the corporation.
The Essential Contract in the Position Description Things change-new equipment, new products, new services, new reporting relationships. Such changes will impact the roles and responsibilities of employees, and those changes should be reflected in current PDs. PDs should provide four important kinds of information:
1. Tasks to be performed by and responsibilities assigned to the incumbent 2. Criteria for measuring successful performance 3 . Criteria for selection into the position 4. Diagnostics for solving performance problems There are two major flaws associated with PDs: H They contain so much detail that they will not be used by supervisors (but if they are necessary for government inspection or other justification, then develop a second set of PDs that will be useful to supervisors) H They are written to justify a salary range rather than being specific about tasks and duties (and, again, are useless for control of day-to-day work)
PDs are the basic tools for ensuring that the organization can perform to “design specifications”; i.e., that employees, using existing
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technology and processes, can produce planned amounts of products. PDs crafted to contain the four pieces of information, above, are necessary for recruiting, training, retaining, and rewarding employees. When work is not getting done as planned, and performance of individuals is a causative element, PDs must contain necessary information so that supervisors can find the “key” to resolving those problems. Except in rare cases of direct insubordination, individual performance problems usually can be remedied with some directed conversation and coaching. Supervisors, however, need PDs that provide necessary job content, results, and knowledge/ability/skill requirements for successful performance. When employees are recruited and hired because they meet the knowledge/ability/skill criteria for successful performance, performance problems can be resolved quickly with a review of necessary skills and some coaching in the appropriate application of skills. A prerequisite is that supervisors have coaching skills and are expected to use them. Those skills, and the willingness to use them, should not be assumed.
A Proposed Curriculum One of the things that business people forget is that most employees do not think in business terms. Concepts like profit and loss may be familiar, but probably have no real meaning. Likewise, overhead, carrying costs, retained earnings, and capitalization are concepts without experiential hooks for most employees in CEE. For these reasons, the training proposed here should be conducted in local languages, because experience repeatedly shows that participants with limited language skills will not ask questions. Then, without knowing why it happened, instructors find themselves confronted with people who nod knowingly but cannot perform in simple exercises or simulations. Issues concerning money and finance are among the most confusing. This is one of the reasons why employees often seem unrealistic in their salary expectations-they see sales and revenues as clear profits and wonder why they do not get larger shares. So, this proposed curriculum begins with 1. Business Basics, taught as two full-day seminars (12 hours of content), in which every employee participates. Employees who understand, for example, that every corporate expenditure of $100 must be supported by $1,147 in revenues will be more effective,
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regardless of their roles. Especially in the region, where there is little comprehension of business basics and a history of mistrust of managers, it is useful to create a common understanding of business concepts as a foundation for new and improved relationships. Specifically, employees need to understand that their earnings must bear some relationship to the nature and scope of their contributions, and seeing “the big picture” of how their salaries are generated is the place to begin building that understanding. 2. Master Concepts for Getting Results should provide a through grounding on the work of Taylor, Roethlisberger & Dickson, Lewin, Marrow, Likert, McGregor, Herzberg, Bradford, Connellan, Stack, Hunter, and Schmidt. In its initial offering, this course could include developing a mission statement, if one does not exist; a statement of corporate purpose and values; goal statements for each division or department; and a strategic plan. This block of instruction will require at least 80 hours, but can be broken into segments to fit the convenience of the group. Some part of the program, however, should be conducted over several days in a residential setting to support the experiential learning component. The purpose of the training is to ensure that all in leadership roles understand the concepts and values fundamental to effective and profitable management of corporate resources; that the concepts and values can be used to guide daily operations; and that all members of the corporate family can learn new ways of performing and interacting to create success for the company as an international competitor and to provide growth opportunities for employees who are qualified. With this information as conceptual grounding for all in leadership roles, corporate executives can drive a program to change the corporate culture from reactive/passive to proactive/dynamic. As Douglas McGregor observed, managers’ actions toward employees is philosophy-in-action; i.e., the view of employees in a manager’s mind will be reflected every day, and employees notice and respond. In that way, managers who believe that employees are lazy and not to be trusted create a self-fulfilling prophecy that reduces contributions and limits possibilities. 3. Supervisory Tasks and Skills should involve at least 20 hours of instruction on the purpose and roles of supervisors; basic tasks and duties; coaching and counseling skills; fundamentals of organizing and motivating employees; strengthening the organizational culture; explanation of and practice with all reports and forms they are
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required to submit; and using assessment to get people placed appropriately (and to remove those whose ability to learn and perform is marginal). Emphasis should be on “people skills” and on being effective as the organization’s first line of management. Someone in the organization should be responsible for this basic and follow-up training to ensure that supervisors are kept continuously “in the loop” about corporate goals and plans, pending changes in salaries or benefits, and in the company’s economic performance. If supervisors don’t have this information, they cannot be effective in their roles as management’s first-line representatives. When that happens, supervisors often shift their allegiance back to their former co-workers, and opportunities for leadership development “down in the ranks” is effectively lost. 4. Using Performance Appraisals to Support Successful Performance is an eight-hour session on how to rate employee performance and how to use the company’s appraisal system. Most supervisors (and managers) dislike this part of their jobs and, as a result, tend to do this part of their jobs poorly. Given that people in the region are very sensitive to criticism (since, historically, criticism often led to loss of benefits or privileges), appraisal is a more emotionally charged process than in the West. Emphasis in the training should be on how to explain ratings or rankings without indicting employees, and on explaining precisely where and how performance was deficient. Is eight hours enough? Probably not, but if the training is repeated before each rating cycle, the process should become more effective over time. 5. Building Effective Work Groups should involve at least 20 hours of training, including some exercises. As the title suggests, effective work groups most often result from intentional effort on the part of the supervisor. What steps are involved in turning a collection of workers into an effective group? Supervisors who don’t know likely will be forced into the unpleasant role of compliance officerschasing performance and developing distant, if not adversarial, relations with their co-workers. This training should be augmented periodically with two- to four-hour “refresher” sessions that emphasize successes among local supervisors and managers. 6. Planning Work and Scheduling Resources needs to be a separate session of at least 20 hours, and participation by all managers and supervisors should be mandatory. In CEE, planning is held in such contempt that “selling” it requires special effort to emphasize
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that Western-style planning bears little or no resemblance to the Soviet concept of planning. It is a fact that even senior managers in the region tend to be indifferent to planning and seem not to understand some basic distinctions; i.e., that planning involves identifying necessary activities and ordering them in some logical manner, while scheduling is balancing resource availability with cost and quality requirements. Generally speaking, schedules drive budgets because the more quickly something must be done, the more it will cost. Further, when plans and schedules are used in a serious and professional manner, 20to 40-percent more work can be accomplished with the same resources. Of course, in the over-staffed and under-utilized workplaces common in the region, there will be resistance to this kind of scheduling, among managers as much as among workers. In some workplaces, in which planning is reactive and episodic (guessingat monthly sales projections, ordering materials, and building that many units) the entire culture of the organization might have to change to support planning at this level of detail. Without this kind of planning, however, organizations cannot become world-class competitors and won’t survive into the second decade of the 21st Century. 7. Project Management is the most important “work management” concept and training program, and is based on concepts and skills that were presented in the other courses and interventions. It is not inaccurate to say that the ability to manage projects is the most important managerial attribute. Project management, in this context, is a clerical function more than a technical one, and is rooted in the ability to move work and its component parts through the organization (and across functional boundaries) in the least amount of time and with minimum disruption to the ongoing work of others. Project management is a test of an organization’s capacity to substitute collaboration for coercion, to share technical and human resources in lieu of expensive redundancies, and to measure progress against plans and schedules so that managers and supervisors can respond promptly to variance data. 8. Other Training Courses, task- or function-specific, may be required to get optimum performance. Improving the interpersonal climate, building cooperative relationships across boundaries, and empowering people to perform cannot overcome a lack of knowledge or skill. As technology changes, as new systems and requirements
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come on-line, there will be periodic requirements for training that is important and cost effective. An important theorisdpractitioner not included in the short list previously provided is Leonard Nadler, who coined the term “Human Resource Development” and shaped the academic and professional discipline. What he had in mind was more than HRD has become. He did not envision HR as only another, more politically correct name for the old personnel function. What Nadler envisioned was an interdependency among managers and employees, in which employees are trained, developed, and nurtured to become the action people who implement corporate business strategies, are committed to the success of the corporation, and are stakeholders (if not actual stockholders) in the enterprise. The model presented here may not be exactly what Nadler would prescribe, but it does reflect a commitment to the concepts he named and shaped. The recommendations, above, represent an incorporation of the authors’ beliefs and concerns as modified for the needs of organizations and management in CEE early in the 21st Century.
CHAPTER 13
Agencies, Magazines, and Broadcast Publicity
In this chapter, we look at what has become a big part of the growth in sports public relations in the last 10 years: the agency side of sports. Additionally, this chapter looks at the sports publishing side of publicity, and the sports broadcasting publicity efforts. The agency side has many different aspects to it, so let’s begin by describing what the agency actually is. This is perhaps the place where all publicity work stemmed from. The very first publicists were press agents. Namely, they went out and were responsible for image creation, damage control, and positively representing their clients, who paid them a fee, in the public. Sports and entertainment have always been key components of this field, as we have discussed. The agency today is comprised of publicity and image experts. They are structured from the most senior staffers, many times they are partners in the business, just as they would be in a law or accounting firm. The partners run the business, oversee client relationships, and cultivate new business. Below the partner level, depending on the firm, can be account executives, vice presidents, managers, group directors, etc., all with the task of working on teams for clients to create publicity, handle crisis management, manage marketing partnerships, etc. The clients then pay fees to the firm, which can be on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, or be on retainer to the firm. Many times, firms will keep billable hours for a client’s work (this is especially true in a firm that is part of a public company), and in turn the amount of time is divided by client. For the most part, folks in an agency will rarely be working with just one client, and in many agencies a publicist will work alone. The time needed to effectively handle the full needs of a client is usually best served by the team, each with his or her own area of expertise. In today’s world, the rule of thumb for most managers and above levels of publicists is to 281
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divide their time evenly among maintaining the client base, overseeing accounts, and developing new business. Therefore, the social aspects of agency work—attending conferences, reading trade publications, developing relationships—is much more extensive than it would be on the client side. The biggest difference between agent and client is simple: The agency has the expertise that can show a client return on investment the client does not have in house. For that, there is a fee schedule. Here are some basic categories we will examine: • Large public relations and marketing agencies that deal with a myriad of sports and nonsports properties and find ways to marry them together. • The sports-specific agencies that concentrate more on the public relations side and touch on the other aspects of agency business. • Small groups that will work chiefly in one sport or in one aspect of the sports and entertainment world, like the sports television business. • Agencies or groups that represent a specific athlete and all of his or her business interests. • The entertainment representation agencies that have now started to grow into the sports area. The role of the agency covers many categories. Some agencies have chosen to specialize in a particular area of expertise or partner with consultants on a case-by-case basis to make themselves as all encompassing as possible when developing a pitch. In recent years, large companies have also been able to segment their work off more and more, dividing activities between large strategic agencies and boutique agencies that have a certain area of either geographic or demographic expertise. For example, company x may have a large agency, like a Burson-Marstellar, on retainer for crisis management across the board. However, if they are looking for event-specific work to launch or run a tennis tournament in Los Angeles, they may hire someone like Brener-Zwikel Associates, a well-respected Los Angelesbased firm that specializes in sports events, especially in the Los Angeles area. In recent years, companies and sports-related businesses have started to view this area of their business as they view other areas of revenue. Whereas 10 years ago, there was not a long-term vision for a sports practice or project, now there is. The goal is a wellplanned, well-executed strategic opportunity, just like consumer product marketing to any other core group would be. On the company
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side, the marketer looking for PR help can also fall into three groups as they plan their strategy. • They know the sport but are not sure of execution. • They have a strong brand and are trying to reach consumer x, which is a core sports audience. • They just acquired a sports-related property and are unsure of how to execute it through PR or exactly what the market should be. Their request to find an agency will vary depending on where their needs fall. Even with the acquisition of some of the larger agencies in recent years by holding companies like Omnicom and the Interpublic Group has probably streamlined the business approach and given some firms a little more option for economies of scale. However, each firm, with its unique area of expertise in their respective practice, still maintains a good part of its autonomy. In recent years, many firms with entertainment backgrounds have started to edge themselves into the sports world, especially on the athlete representation and event side. Very successful entertainment firms like Dan Klores Communications in New York are doing more and more sports-related work on a regional and national basis, leveraging the long-time success they have had in the entertainment industry as the model for luring sports-related business. Some of the key areas in which firms work with clients on the sports side include: • • • • •
maintaining business and cultivating new opportunities specific project implementation and development crisis management, media training, and counsel strategic placement and positioning industry expertise
Agencies also vary on how they drive revenue. Depending on the size and scope of the project, and the agency structure, there could be billing hourly, weekly, or monthly. The entity could have a firm on a retainer basis for specific counsel or projects as well. Depending on the size and scope of the work, agency rates can vary from a monthly fee in the low thousands to multimillion dollar, multiyear accounts. The ownership structure of the firm can also affect billable time. Public agencies tend to have very strict billing practices, while having very wide practice areas. Smaller, privately held agencies tend
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to be more flexible in billing, although they may not have anywhere near the level of expertise a major agency can have for a client. One of the biggest issues with selecting an agency is personal preference. This, after all, is a people business, and making you as the client feel comfortable and that your needs will be taken care of is the biggest issue. Let’s look at each group and find some examples of how an agency works in that setting.
Large Public Relations and Marketing Agencies that Deal with a Myriad of Sports and Nonsports Properties and Find Ways to Marry Them Together One of the buzzwords here is convergence. You have large companies that have pieces of business in different segments—the consumer side where they are trying to reach customers or bring in new business; they are trying to find added value for their employees; they are trying to show their backers and stockholders the value coming from their investment; and they are trying to find the company that can marry these opportunities together. Many will take the easy route and find a large agency that can service all these needs, and in many instances can do it globally or nationally.
Edelman Public Relations One of the first to see this need and still carry through with it today is Edelman, with their sports practice based in New York, where it has been since 1984. They have been able to deal with large, sometimes unwieldy sports properties like the USTA, the NFL, and the Olympics business, and well-respected brands looking to grow their sports business like Unilever, Claritin, Barilla, Wrigleys, and Astra Zeneca. In many cases, the sports marketing division will cross with other groups within the firm to produce value for clients. Consumer, Crisis, Diversity, Healthcare, and Corporate Reputation, for example, can bring a client to the Sports group such as Wrigley’s, and the sports group will be able to use its expertise to find a partner like the Williams Sisters for a promotion. It is that ability that makes the large firm very appealing to major companies. Spending the top dollar to pull in the top resources.
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Ketchum Public Relations Another major firm that has invested in a sports practice on a worldwide basis is Ketchum. Like Edelman, Ketchum has formed a sports practice designed to link all parts of its business, and it has resulted in successful partnerships with the NFL, college football, NASCAR, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, and the PGA among others. Ketchum’s worldwide offices have concentrated more on the grassroots level of sports sponsorship activation over the years, developing very effective bottom-line campaigns that show solid return on investment per dollar spent for clients. Developing internal communications programs and employee incentives, creating compelling media guides and collateral materials, and then driving those aspects to high-level media attention are what have made their work so successful over the years.
Hill & Knowlton Perhaps the leader in growth internationally in sports marketing and sponsorship is Hill & Knowlton. With a large push in Europe and the Far East, especially with the Olympics on the horizon, they have used all their international branding as a way to bring what were once thought of as “Western” ideals in sports public relations and marketing and shown how they can work amid the diverse culture of the Far East. The have also begun to take that success and re-brand their North American partnerships in a variety of ways, especially on the branding and crisis management side. The Hill & Knowlton sports practice is based in Chicago, but has had recent success helping moribund franchises like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Pittsburgh Pirates begin their turnaround with solid messaging and strong public relations efforts in the community and brand building efforts across the board.
The Sports-Specific Agencies that Concentrate More on the Public Relations Side and Touch on the Other Aspects of Agency Business There are boutique agencies that will specialize in any variety of topics—celebrity, health care, fashion and beauty, etc.—and sports
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is no different. However, with sports becoming a larger business and the crossover into mainstream consumer marketing, PR and brand activation even more important these days, the sports-specific agency has emerged. Many of these agencies are local, and deal with local properties. Many can also be considered startups or very small shops that are great places to start careers and learn about the public relations business. In many cases, these are agencies run by very savvy sports professionals who have been at teams or in larger agencies and have decided to take their business on their own for whatever reason. Some of them are even segmented into smaller areas, like sports apparel or sports television work taking the bulk of their time. Some concentrate on a particular sport like boxing. Also, with the need for certain “economies of scale,” some of these smaller agencies are combining their administrative needs to work together under the same roof and provide a slightly broader area of service to potential clients. The sports-specific agency is rarely the “agency of record” for large businesses. Because their expertise is usually for particular niche or project, that role will fall to a bigger or more diverse agency. Many times, these agencies are small to mid-sized, and if they are able to take on a long-term or larger scale client for a project like the Olympics, they will add consultants to balance out their team. We will look at two sports-specific agencies that have set the standard for this model.
Alan Taylor Communications Founded more than 20 years ago by Alan Taylor and Howard Dolgin, this New York based agency (with an office in Charlotte, North Carolina) has become the standard by which sports-specific PR firms are judged. The agency has grown with a core business that spread with referrals, and with a solid core of young professionals who were willing to grow the business as one. The agency took a strong leap forward when they acquired Mike Cohen Communications in the late 1980s after the company founder and industry trailblazer Mike Cohen (the former head of PR for NBC Sports) passed away very suddenly. The company’s philosophy is simple: hard work and passion underscore creativity, strategic thinking, and service. It is also a company that has not steered too far away from its core business of sports marketing, PR, and sponsorship from where it started.
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One of the reasons for Alan Taylor’s success is that the company uses a different business model than larger agencies. Billing is done by established rates for the project or the event (exclusive of expenses), so billable hours do not become a factor. The company is also still very much a mid-sized agency, so the hands-on approach the clients get from senior staff is balanced with junior staff members as well.
Brener Zwikel Associates Unlike Alan Taylor, Brener Zwikel, based in Los Angeles and with an office in New York, has taken the opposite approach when it comes to sports publicity success. The firm, founded by former Los Angeles Dodgers publicity professionals Steve Brener and Toby Zwikel, has focused almost all of its efforts on the event and strategic placement side of publicity. They began in 1990 with work picked up from the Dodgers relationships, and quickly used their strong sports ties to add events like being the agency of record for the Super Bowl and other NFL projects. Their relationships with the sports agency IMG led them to strong Southern California ties in golf and tennis, which led to a long-standing relationship promoting Showtime’s boxing events. Some other long-standing sports ties led them to working on programs with the “Rolaid’s Relief Man” award (given to baseball’s top relief pitcher), tying both baseball and the mentions of the sponsor, clients like Speedo, and most recently the “Mountain Dew” Extreme sports tour and the Crocs AVP Volleyball Tour. The firm has grown from 4 to 20 people since its inception, all with sports clients, handling publicity, event management, and credentialing with a long-standing tradition of strong media relations, solid pitching, placement, and hands-on planning. The size of their firm also has a great deal to do with the reason for their longstanding relationships—both Brener and Zwikel still manage each account, an oddity in today’s ever-growing sports publicity world.
Dan Klores Communications One of the firms that has really morphed from being a large entertainment firm into the sports world is New York-based Dan Klores Communications. The firm, which has been one of the elite celebrity PR firms for years, now has crossed over into sports, representing groups ranging from Arena Football to the U.S. Open to the International Fight League, along with a great amount of individual athletes. The
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Klores approach is to find the long-lead, big hit opportunities for sports partners they choose to work with, using their long-standing media connections made through the entertainment and business world and applying them in a very effective way with sports properties. The crossover opportunities are very effective for the sports event business, which is much more personality driven than a more established brand. The Klores work is also targeted toward the larger communities as opposed to hometown work, but they have also grown tremendously on the grassroots side as well.
Small Groups that Will Work Chiefly in One Sport or in One Aspect of the Sports and Entertainment World, Like the Sports Television Business This has become one of the key niches in the sports public relations and marketing world. The growth of segmented groups—be it die-hard tennis fans, the sports television industry, or the world of poker—has seen a recent boom in small companies dedicated to serving just that core audience and the sponsors and media that are dedicated to that beat. One of the best examples is the sports television trade world. As with industries like health care or mass communications, sports television is an industry unto itself. The growth or regional television, the digital cable world, the addition of online alternative and complimentary programming, all have created magazine and newspapers “beats” that cover the industry, along with specific sponsors that need extra exposure for their brands to both the consumers who watch the shows and the industry insiders who will purchase their products. Sports television reviewers are prominent in most marketplaces as well, so the need to service those writers is also a particular area of expertise. In many cases, these entities, like Comcast Sports Net, or Altitude TV in Colorado, or The Tennis Channel, or the Golf Channel, or CSTV (College Sports Television) will have an in-house publicity person to handle the day to day, and then will take on a firm or a consultant on the outside for project work like launching a new show or moving into a new geographic area. The area of expertise of this outside group is very focused and can be very successful. The contacts they have are well cultivated and the media delivered is easily measured. Many times, the firm or consultant will have such strong contacts that they are kept on retainer to keep them away from competition with similar needs. Reputation here is also
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key. Very rarely will these firms be found in a phone book or a directory. The amount of work they do will keep them very busy at key points of the year, and in these very tight markets, success will breed success.
Vince Wladlika Communications One of the most well respected and most quoted publicists in sports is former FOX Sports and Major League baseball publicist Vince Wladlika. Vince recently set off doing his own small consulting business, and has concentrated on the sports television industry, where he does work for Comcast Sports, Altitude TV in Denver, the YES Network in New York, Outdoor Life Network (now Versus), based in Stamford, Connecticut and other entities. His goal is simple: find manageable clients he knows he can work with and use his vast contacts to form strategic partnerships and create placement opportunities for them when needed. He sets his clients up on retainer so they know they are able to call on him when needed, or come in for advance planning sessions where he can use his 20 plus years of experience in television to their strategic advantage. His work has been nothing but successful, and his retainer work gives him a solid backdrop against which to choose other business. He is a one-man shop, but a very effective and successful one.
Agencies or Groups that Represent a Specific Athlete and All of His or Her Business Interests This is another area of growth as athletes, especially high-profile athletes, reach maturity and try to find new ways to build themselves as “brands.” For the most part, agency representation for an athlete lasts as long as his or her playing career. The agency business, largely based on commission, revolves around the “flavor of the month”—who is doing best with his or her on-field accomplishments at that time. The major agency representation firms will find ways to market their clients, especially their stars, during that window of opportunity that makes the most natural sense and try to drive maximum dollars for the agency and the client out of that relationship. Unfortunately, as we all know, that window is very short, and the area for publicity for an athlete with his or her off-field ventures can be much longer lasting for those who care to look at themselves as brands.
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More and more savvy athletes are learning from the success stories—Venus Williams, Tony Hawk, Michael Jordan, Cal Ripken— to find ways to grow themselves as “brands” and find elements both locally and nationally to sustain themselves beyond their playing days. Sometimes, it is a consortium of local athletes who are able to find ways to grow their presence as brands and find PR elements to make themselves more appealing. Sometimes, it is an athlete who sees the end of his playing days ahead and diversifies his interests for the next stage of his life. This person also involves him or herself in activities like charity foundations, Web sites, and other areas in which the agent may not be able to get maximum exposure for activities. It is usually a person with a strong familiarity with the athlete throughout his career. It used to be that these tasks fell on a family friend or long-time confidant, and in some cases that still does happen. However, many times now the savvy athlete is looking around at those who help others grow or who have had a series of successful opportunities in the sports and entertainment world, and goes to that person or those people for the growth of his or her next career. The effort that goes into this form of “agency” PR is usually very detailed and very personal. Hence, initially it is the person who can spend a great deal of one-on-one time with the athlete, developing interests, setting up meetings, and knowing where and what to pitch. It also takes a great deal of coordination with player sponsors, sometimes team and community activities, to make sure it is a positive experience for the athlete. Two examples follow. One of a lesser known athlete building a brand and using publicity; the second of a well-known athlete and the company that arose from the relationship.
Example 1 Jerome Williams had a very successful NBA playing career with the Detroit Pistons, Chicago Bulls, Toronto Raptors, and finally the New York Knicks. The Georgetown grad was never a star player in any of those markets, but he was always the publicity darling because of the way he played and the way he carried himself. During his career, Jerome created the “Junk Yard Dog” persona and made that into the offshoot for a series of opportunities both in business and in sports and entertain-
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ment that will continue well beyond his playing career. Jerome used a solid PR team, and one seasoned professional, to help launch these ventures and get him exposure outside of being thought as of just Jerome Williams, basketball player. The opportunities for publicity included pieces in places from Women’s Wear Daily (for a clothing line) to The Wall Street Journal (for his car detailing company), among others. He was not “Brand Jordan,” but he is an interesting businessperson who used sports PR to launch a new career.
Example 2 Cal Ripken is perhaps one of America’s most iconic baseball stars of the last 20 years. Still, as his career was ending in Baltimore, he realized he had all these new business interests in and out of the sport and his motivational techniques, he needed to tell people about. He had to find ways to build his brand beyond the sports pages and into the business world, not just in Baltimore but around the world and outside the sports pages. He enlisted the help of Orioles publicity man John Maroon for ideas while he was winding down his career, and the offsports stories began to grow, However, once his career ended, those ties to Maroon would have to end on a full-time basis, as John had other specific needs that his full-time job with the Orioles would require. However, Ripken created a position for John to run all his publicity and marketing needs through the auspices of “Ripken baseball.” He saw the need to have a savvy publicist grow that aspect of his new life, and found the right person to do it. Subsequently, as those businesses matured, John was able to start his own company and market his successes to other areas of sports and entertainment with new clients (“Maroon PR”), all the while keeping the Cal Ripken brand as a key part of business. The result has been a growth of a very powerful baseball “name” into a strong regional and national “brand” through the use of positive and strategic public publicity.
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The Entertainment Representation Agencies that Have Started to Grow into the Sports Area This is another area of growth, although it involves almost the opposite of the post-career player “branding” opportunity. This area has now become popular with athletes who are looking to expand their “brand” while they are still in the public eye every day. These publicists, like a Dan Klores in New York, will look to find media opportunities for athletes through film, movie, and television above what their normal media attention is. The goal here is to expose athletes to potential opportunities that will make them more mainstream and open doors for them with the media that will lead to bigger opportunities for them in areas like TV, perhaps fashion, or the restaurant industry. It gives the athlete exposure and the opportunity to network outside of what his or her normal circle is. This “glamour” area of publicity has given rise to more business in the mainstream of sports for these agencies. It exposes them to the marketing and publicity teams, solidifies their contacts with agents, and gives them an opportunity to create sports partnerships with some of their clients who have never had a sports presence.
Example Klores was a long-time agency for one of New York’s City’s greatest restaurants, Junior’s, which is based in Brooklyn. As Junior’s sought to expand its brand outside of its location in a main and well trafficked part of the city, it had the agency do outreach to former New Yorkers to tell their “Junior’s” story. Another hallmark part of the Junior’s tradition was cheesecake. Junior’s cheesecakes are legendary for their size, shape, and quality, and the stories about them being shipped around the world to ex-Brooklynites were well known. However, the Philadelphia 76ers in 1992 drafted a seven foot six rookie center named Shawn Bradley, out of Brigham Young University. Bradley was very athletic but was a beanpole, and had trouble keeping weight on his very tall frame through the rigors of an NBA workout. The team tried all sorts of plans, brought in Mr. Universe Lee Haney, solicited opinions from some of the world’s great doctors, to try to find ways to have Bradley bulk
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up so he could be a force in the NBA as a center. The Klores publicity staff read about Bradley’s problems and went to their client, Junior’s, to present Bradley with a year’s supply of cheesecake in hopes of getting exposure and helping him bulk up. The team presented the opportunity to Bradley, who was amenable to the idea, and the presentation took place in front of a large throng of TV in Philadelphia prior to a practice. Klores then sent the media updates throughout the course of the next few months, along with Bradley’s thoughts on the cheesecakes. Unfortunately, his weight did not increase and he went on to have a mediocre career, but the Junior’s brand was introduced to a new audience and exposed the Klores staff to more sports media than before. Since that point, the company has built a larger sports practice while maintaining a heavy lifestyle presence, but the Junior’s idea was a solid example of launching out and finding a connection to sports with a lifestyle firm.
Qualities for Working in The Agency Setting Now that we have looked at some agency examples and what the goals are, let’s look at the qualities needed to work in the agency setting.
Now Pitching The ability to pitch stories to media is probably the biggest piece the agency will look for those up-and-comers. Recognizing a story, knowing the media, finding your angle, and then communicating it clearly and effectively is the biggest challenge. The other part of the pitch on the agency level is familiarity with a client. Because you may have several different clients, it is important to be a quick study and know which areas of media will best work for the client. Remember that the client is looking to the agency as the expert in many cases. Therefore, you being able to identify the media outlets and then deliver is key.
The Network It remains a staple of the agency business to grow contacts and do a great deal of networking. Staying fresh, knowing trends through
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constant research, and going to your solid sources to know what long-lead pitches are out there are all keys to agency success. Maintaining a solid, broad-based media Rolodex and constantly updating and checking it will help make the agency experience a valuable one.
So What’s New? Another staple of the agency business is simply finding business. There is usually a good amount of “churn”—turnover—in the publicity business. Big reasons for churn usually have to do with budgets and expectations. The larger scale projects require larger budgets, and many times clients are not understanding or willing to invest the large money over extended periods to deliver effective results. The educated clients will, and the ones who realize the amount of services delivered can be solid partners. However, in the agency world there is always a distinct knowledge by the client of what the competition is doing or has gotten, and sometimes that “jealousy” will cause churn. Also, in this environment some clients come in on a project basis, and the time for the project simply runs out. Once that client is off the payroll of incoming money it is time to start over again, and usually in sports there is no secret as to when the cyclical period begins and ends. It goes with the season, or with the announced results of a campaign for a sponsor. As soon as that campaign ends, the agency review usually begins and the process to get new business or secure the old one begins again. Also adding to churn is the idea that clients tend to always look to see “what else is out there.” Much like buying a car, when it comes time to get a new one, most clients will do their homework and sample the field. The hope is to reassure the clients they have made a good choice, to find an untapped gem to start with, or to simply provide competition to lower costs without decreasing return on investment. The third issue is always the toughest for the agency, because the more equity you build in a client, the more you may be able to spend against it. Once the agency loses that book of business, the equity goes, too. Constant maintenance with the client, and the ability to sign multiyear deals are what gives agencies security. That is possible with many mid to larger agencies that have a growing or diverse practice. However, for the small guys that is difficult to secure.
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Play Many Positions Versatility at an agency is also key for the up and comer. Being able to pitch and learn about multiple clients, a strong writing background, the ability to participate actively in brainstorm sessions, understanding budgets, and even speaking a second language are all areas that make the agency staffer valuable. It is also important to know what you don’t know, and be able to change that. The education curve at an agency can be swift and steep, and being able to ask the right questions and solve problems, especially with a client or in a pitch, is extremely valuable.
You May Not Get Rich in Digging a Ditch For those starting out at the agency level, entry level is just that. The entry of the front door, or the clip file, or the mailroom may be where it starts. However, in today’s sports PR world, the move up can be very quick for those who are versatile. The need for new creative thought, especially from young people who are out there understanding trends like viral videos, the use of Myspace as a PR tool, and even how to download songs onto an iPod can be critical to the right agency pitch. Again, the more exposure you can get, the better opportunity you will have to move and grow. “Start fast” and “work cheap” are two slogans to use as you get rolling.
On Up the Ladder As you move and gain more experience, the barriers to entry for the mid-level move may be strong. It is important to look at the growth when you are looking at the agency level. These days, many small to mid-sized firms have seen the turnover at larger firms and are investing in the young people with classes, bringing in industry leaders to show how opportunities for growth exist. On the average, those rising in the industry change jobs every three or four years.
Don’t Just Know Sports Again, firms look for diversity. Even the smaller firms that are very niche into sports areas will look to acquire different types of clients from time to time to stay fresh. The more you know about the front page of the newspaper, along with the gossip and business sections, the more valuable you become. There may also be the day when you
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don’t want to work in sports anymore. The worse thing to do is to pigeonhole yourself as a “sports” person. When working with teams, leagues, or athletes, think of them as sports brands, and categorize them that way. It makes you more diverse and gives you an opportunity to grow your base.
Be Professional, Not a Fan One of the easiest things to do if you are working at an agency that has a solid sports roster is to get caught up in the on-field success of the athlete or the team. Just like working for a team in their front office, it is important to be able to divest yourself from the emotional attachment and treat it as a solid, professional opportunity. Especially at the agency level, the team is another client. Wins and losses in the PR area are much more important than how the team does on the field.
Come Early, Stay Late Just like those you know who succeed in sales and other opportunities, being able to identify business trends and applying them to what you do is essential in sports publicity. It sounds silly, but the easiest way to do it is by just plain hard work. The Web gives us the ability to do huge amounts of research on newspaper sites on our own before or after the workday. Search engines allow us to do quick backgrounders on a potential client. The more you can do on your own to show how to grow the business, the more valuable you become.
Don’t Take It Personally It is sports. It is what you love. It is your passion. However, it is a business, and those clients may get even more emotional about what’s in the paper—or what’s not—than most. Hence, the turnover on the client side for agencies may be higher than on the corporate side. With those changes come adjustments in staff and assignments. The important thing is to work hard, be fair for the client, and not worry about what we have no control over.
Expect the Unexpected As a member of an agency team, you must always be prepared for anything to go wrong. When planning events, have a contingency
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plan for poor weather or for a sudden news story to change the coverage of your client’s best efforts. If working with an athlete, expect him or her to sometimes be late or have car trouble. Don’t be surprised to see the product you are working with have some unexpected twists and turns along the way as well.
Example 1 How to make it stop? Long-time publicist Ira Silverman has worked for a host of big names in sports over the years with his company SMMG, including athletes like Jim Kelly, Hakeem Olajuwon, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, and many others. One of his staple events each year was handling the publicity for the International Auto Show at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. One year, the organizers gave SMMG the charge of finding some new angles to draw attention to the show, and the idea of honoring all the regional Soap Box Derby winners from around the country came up. Soap box derby cars are miniature cars made of wood without engines that are raced in competition around the country by young teens. They are downhill races, usually on a track. They assembled a “Race of Champions” in New York the Sunday prior to the opening of the Auto show, the first time these regional champions had even competed. The media coverage was outstanding as the race day approached. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani showed up to start the race, which was to take place on the downhill slope from 34th Street to 42nd Street on 11th Avenue in New York City. The streets were blocked off and a crowd assembled along the race route, with the winners to end on 42nd Street. Moments before the race was to begin, Silverman looked north along the route and saw a very clear problem. These cars are propelled by gravity at high speeds and do not turn, and at the end of the route was traffic running east and west along a very busy 42nd Street. The details of assembling the race and clearing the streets and garnering publicity were set. What was not figured out was how to make these cars stop without running through heavy traffic. A potential disaster was now at hand. Visions of teenagers in wooden cars meeting their demise on 42nd Street raced
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through Silverman’s head as he thought about ways to solve the problem. At that moment, a New York City mounted police officer saw the issue, and informed Silverman that the police horse barn, containing bales of hay, was only a few blocks away. The officer worked with Silverman to delay the race for an unknown reason, while the hay bales were set up at the end of the race route. The race went off without a hitch, with no fatalities, a new champion, and an unknowing problem avoided.
Example 2 A prominent sunglass designer worked with a publicity agency to have a mass unveiling of its latest version of sport sunglasses at a prominent location—the speedway in Homestead, Florida on a CART (open wheel racing) Race Day. Close to 100,000 people would receive these new sunglasses with a very sporty shade, and the image of all these pairs gleaming in the Florida sun as the race begins would be a visual to remember. The agency worked with the governing body, CART at the time, to arrange for the passing out of the sunglasses, reflective midnight black frames with black lenses, to everyone as they entered. They would come in a black pouch with the sponsor name on them, and an announcement would be made prior to the beginning of the race to all in attendance to take out their new shades and be part of this historical unveiling. The company also worked through PR to have the broadcaster, ABC, be aware of the promotion to get even more national attention. Every detail had been thought out. Notes would be placed in papers, media would receive the sunglasses, too, so no one would be left out of this moment. The only problem was in the packaging. The sunglasses had a special protection that turned them very dark in direct sunlight. The effect looked terrific, but the design limited some visual aspects for the person wearing them. It was discovered as they were being handed out that a small removable label had been placed by the manufacturer on the corner of each lens to give them some liability. The wording was never noticed by the
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publicity team or the marketing group of the sponsor until that minute. The phrase said “DO NOT WEAR WHILE DRIVING.” This was obviously an issue if they were being given out at an auto race. Luckily, the publicity head of the promotion was able to get to the distribution team before the race began and held up the passing out of the glasses. Instead, the fans received vouchers to pick up a pair upon leaving the raceway. Although the publicity effect was lost for the day with the visual, the embarrassment to the sponsor was corrected, and the crisis management that would have had to follow was averted.
In closing, the agency side of the sports publicity business has grown in leaps and bounds over the last 10 years. The need to show effective return on investment for sponsors, leagues, and even athletes has made this area critical in the growth of the business, and the opportunity for success in sports publicity very diverse. However, diversity does remain the key. For those getting involved in the business, the agency side will give you a good slice of what it is like to have professionalism in sports. It is right out of the corporate world. It teaches you how to work in a business setting, account for your time, and how to effective pitch and sell. As with the corporate world in other areas, it is results based. The return that comes in and the fact that the customer or client is always right weigh heavily on your ability to advance. The security factor in other areas of sports publicity is not always there, but the ability to experience the business world while still being involved in sports is, and is what makes it a worthwhile entry and growth point for many people.
Sports Television and Sports Magazine Publicity The next area to be addressed is the sports media publicity area, specifically television and the magazine area, which now will include the online version of sports sites, sports television, and the publicity opportunities that come from this fast-growing area. Some of the great publicists have emerged from the sports television area, especially at the network level. People like Mike Cohen, mentioned early in the book, pioneered the idea of taking the personalities behind the
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camera such as producers and directors, and telling the audience their story, which sometimes was as compelling as what went on in front of the camera. Using that style, television industry giants like Roone Arledge at ABC, and Chet Forte, Dick Ebersol, and Michael Weisman at NBC, all became known in the mainstream. With that growth in interest in television came a whole genre of sports writing to pitch ideas to. They were the sports television writers. Men and women who once covered regular sports beats like college football, basketball, and baseball now took on their own beat, the sports television industry. With that came the need for a larger publicity push as niche channels branched out and became full-fledged television networks, such as ESPN, Fox Sports, and most recently VERSUS, along with all the regional networks and the broadcast networks themselves. The sports magazine and Internet publicity side is similar to the television side, the key difference being the regular routine of the printing business vs. the immediacy of the television business. The television side is more event based, and the print side is more feature based, which gives the publicist a little more time to plan his or her pitches. The concepts here have been discussed throughout the book and remain the same. They include the ability to recognize a good story, successfully pitch the story to the right media, and build a consensus among those internally for what the best stories are. The difference here is that those media that specifically cover the television and print industry are also part of the pitch plan, which makes the TV and print side a bit broader from a business-tobusiness perspective. The print and television areas are industries unto themselves. Therefore, finding effective ways to pitch behindthe-scenes stories of a broadcast to publications like Multichannel News or Variety add to the opportunities available to these publicists. In many newspapers like the New York Post, The Boston Globe and USA Today is a steady group of influential media writers who also cover sports business now, and these writers can now create mainstream publicity opportunities for publications that did not exist before. The topics include increased circulation and ratings, new sponsor innovations, changes in reader or viewer interest in general, new technology in the marketplace, and how the media covers news stories, especially controversial ones like crimes.
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These writers, such as Bob Raissman in the Daily News, Michael Hiestand in USA Today, and Richard Sandomir in the New York Times cover the business side of the business of sports in addition to serving as watchdogs for how print and television create new media and opportunities for the viewers and readers to get their news and information. The difference with these writers is that rarely will they accept the traditional pitch. They try to present their stories as unbiased and in the view of the fan or the consumer. Therefore, working with them from a publicist side requires the ability to come up with a unique exclusive in terms of access or building a compelling story through raw data.
Example 1 Giving a media writer access to the behind-the-scenes working of a television production, especially a live television event. One of the better examples of successful publicity with this concept has been done in recent years by the New York based YES Network. Their publicity team has worked with a writer like a Richard Sandomir to set up access with their executives, like executive producer John Filipelli to give the fan an exclusive view into how a production comes together, why certain technology and camera angles are used, and how the business is run. By providing that inside access, the publicists are able to humanize and create story lines that are told in print, thus giving the fans more inside information about the broadcast than ever before. It also gives YES a better entrée to the media who cover the business, and when opportunities arise to cover topics in sports media their executives may be the first to be called upon. So, if there is a story the New York Times may be working on about the changes in Monday Night Football coverage, or how podcasts are changing viewer patterns, a YES Network opinion will probably have a better chance of being included. There is no real spin to the pitch to these writers in this case, but it is an example of how access in this unique environment leads to more coverage and better awareness of a brand.
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Example 2 On the print side, the use of publicity to promote a brand usually deals more with the granting of exclusives or excerpts. Ironically, an area in which these two media areas have been working together recently has been forged through the use of interactive partnerships. In some cases, like the example of the print of Sports Illustrated and the television power of CNN, or on the ESPN side where the writers for ESPN the Magazine also appear on the ESPN network, the ability to promote innovations and breaking news across platforms is best shown. The publicists for print publications can use the visual medium to tease a story and draw attention to what will appear in an upcoming issue.
Example 3 The subject of the Duke University alleged rape case was a prime story for coverage in 2006. ESPN had both the print side working on coverage and the broadcast side. While the day-today details were played out in real-time television and online worlds, the dedicated reporters who were assigned to cover the bigger long-term picture from the print side had their own goals and detailed objectives. This turned into a great crosspromotional opportunity for both groups. The publicists on the TV side were able to call upon the in-depth magazine coverage and use the writers as sources on opinions when key moments occurred in the trial, which drove interest in print for the detailed coverage. The print publicists were able to use the television side to get their writers daily visibility on a very large platform. Therefore, both brands got increased exposure in two different mediums.
Similar situations will occur with polling done by media. CNN and Sports Illustrated will work together to garner public opinion on a sports topic, such as the Barry Bonds steroid issue. They will be able to draw from a large audience that watches television and gets news and sports from online, and then use the magazine to
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summarize all the poll information in a print format, with much greater detail than the Web site or television can offer. It is the publicist’s job in this case to extract the data and then find additional media to drive interest in the story. Using the data from the final poll and offering that up to an Associated Press, for example, as evidence of what the public is thinking on this issue shows the larger scope publicists for media organizations can present. Now, there will always be the traditional publicity roles for these groups as well. They will include the weekly updating or telling of unique stories in their entity to the general public, such as when there is a new program or story or issue the entity is unveiling. The publicist here will also get to work with the subjects and their media outlets to tell the story and raise awareness. For example, if Runners World is doing a story on the business of the New York City Marathon, or a feature on a runner from Charlotte, North Carolina, they would work with the Marathon group or the hometown media to drive coverage. Or if Comcast Sports Net in Philadelphia is doing an in-depth profile on Donovan McNabb, they will work with the Eagles to make sure there is greater awareness through their media and through the NFL to ensure the piece gets greater coverage in a variety of outlets, ranging from beat writer notes columns to online stories. In closing, the agency side of the sports publicity business has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 10 years. The need to show effective return on investment for sponsors, leagues, and even athletes has made this area critical in the growth of the business, and the opportunity for success in sports publicity very diverse. However, diversity does remain the key. For those getting involved in the business, the agency side will give you a good slice of what it is like to have professionalism in sports. It is right out of the corporate world. It teaches you how to work in a business setting, account for your time, and how to effective pitch and sell. In the same way, the ability to work and pitch for media properties has also created new avenues for publicists. Although the traditional story telling does exist there as well, the opportunities to learn business and publishing and television press publicity make those positions unique and worthwhile, and are probably two of the biggest areas for future growth in the industry.
CHAPTER 14
Looking Ahead
Thus far, this book has looked at the past and present in sports publicity and how to best manage what exists now in the everchanging landscape. This chapter looks ahead at trends, sports, and opportunities that are now emerging, and how they fit into the publicist model both now and in the future. The topics we look at include • New media: Use of the Internet, blogs, microsites, Webcams, cell phone cameras, viral video, and social sites as publicity tools. • Controlled media: The process of breaking news on a home site, limiting and tailoring media coverage, tailoring video news releases, and media tours for use as news. • Emerging sports: The X-Games, Mixed Martial Arts, highschool athletics, poker, bass fishing, and the rest. • Marketing and PR: Making PR opportunities more viable through sales efforts. • Minority group PR: Taking advantage of emerging cultures in the United States. Many of these topics, although incorporated into different parts of the text thus far, are now becoming the areas of interest and expertise for the next era of publicists. However, it is very important to look at these growth areas with the eye on the past, and incorporate all the ideas discussed in this text along with them. With all these emerging areas the need for good writing, strong pitching skills, knowledge of the market, and intimate knowledge of your client remain tantamount. All those characteristics will continue to apply; they may just apply faster and in different formats than in the past. Let’s take a look at each. 305
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New Media This is easily the biggest area of growth for the publicist going forward. The use of new technology has given the publicist new client streams and publicity avenues. The new client streams include Web site developers, online commerce companies, cell phone carriers, and search engines all looking to use sports as the vehicle to reach their consumer. The new publicity areas for the traditional clients will see increased Web site use and unique content, the use of streaming video to tell their story, the use of broadband video and audio to provide real-time coverage for events, and the creation of viral videos to tell stories to a younger crowd in a shorter time frame. An important concept to keep in mind is that many times, traditional sports will lag behind popular culture in adapting to these new streams of publicity and opportunity. The traditional sports, especially in the United States, have a focus on two things: maintaining their fan base and running their events at hand. Only recently have traditional sports begun to embrace the advantages of new media as a publicity and revenue source. This has been done by the savvy marketers and publicists who have come into sports from outside entities. You now see traditional sports teams who have struggled to hold on to market share on television and with younger audiences hire professionals from outside the traditional sports footprint to develop their Web sites and create new streams of publicity and content for their fans.
Example MLB.COM: Perhaps one of the most traditional of all sports is baseball. The ability to hold onto tradition is one of the keys to baseball’s hold as the “National Pastime” in the United States. However, the lack of expanded leisure time to watch games (which now take in excess of three hours) and to play the game past little league has begun to erode the fan base. Major League Baseball has sought to effectively address that issue by creating an expanded version of mlb.com, their official Web site. By adding unique broadband content, such as enhanced video, talk shows, fantasy and rotisserie chats, the traditional sport has used the nontraditional means to grow. Furthermore, other entities like music and college basketball have seen mlb.com as a place to cultivate the key sports demo-
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graphic, and are partnering with them to identify key online sports and entertainment fans to grow and introduce their products to as well. The addition of expanded online communities will be next, so subgroups of minor league fans can talk to other subgroups in a forum created just for them.
For the publicist, this is the next version of where opportunities will come from. The volume of fans and advertisers accessing the broadband opportunities will make these sites must-visit places for celebrities, athletes, and products the publicist is pitching, just like a stop on a local news show or a live meet and greet with fans has been in the past.
The Blog The use of the blog as a media opportunity is also becoming more and more traditional. Whereas in the past, blogs were seen as crude ways for the daily rants and raves of fans, they are now used by entities such as newspapers and magazines to have their writers and columnists further expand upon coverage and thoughts that cannot be included in traditional media because of time and space. Pitching media blog writers to include content about a story is becoming as accepted now as trying to get notes into a paper. The same holds for the client blog. The use of having a name athlete or celebrity doing a blog these days to carefully craft a company or individual messages for publicity is an important skill in the publicity pitch.
Microsites Smaller, more heavy niche content sites to tell publicity stories are also becoming more accepted as part of a pitch plan. These video and content heavy sites are designed for the aficionado who wants to know more about the subject matter, and can lead to strong message board presence, which will also help grow a publicity plan.
Webcams and Cell Phone Cameras The use of higher quality video and still equipment by the publicist will also be an added bonus going forward for many publicity
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pushes. The ability for a publicist to work with a wider range of media and then have photos or video instantly sent from remote locations to larger media or a Web site will give added urgency to covering a story. The one downside to this form of added technology will revolve around the privacy of the high-profile client. The cell phone has become a tool of the paparazzi, as the amateur seeks to shoot celebrities in compromising positions in social settings for large dollars. Not only will the new technology be a plus for the publicist, it will also enter into the crisis communication plan as the years progress.
Viral Video Another area of increased publicity in the mainstream and now entering into sports is the viral video posting and creation. Now, instead of heavy cost, heavily produced, and then sent out publicity pieces, the publicists can put together quick hits using low-cost but high-quality video and instantly post the video on highly trafficked sites and search engines to generate publicity. Whether this will enter into the mainstream of traditional publicity in the near future is unclear at this time. However, pitches ranging from Heisman Trophy campaigns to the goings on at local minor league baseball games with promotions are becoming more and more common through the use of viral video creation.
Social Sites One of the fastest growing areas for sports publicity is the area of social sites to get messages and client information out. The creation of myspace, facebook, and ryze pages for athletes, teams, and properties is growing exponentially each day. In addition, larger sports entities around the world are creating their own online version of the social sites for their own fans and organizations to link to. This could perhaps be the biggest publicity opportunity going forward— using social sites to attract attention to your client, no matter what the size and scope of the accomplishment.
Still Photography Digital photography and the ability to immediately post photos to key media for publication is also an important area of growth for
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publicity. The ability to use tools like Photoshop to edit images, and the improved quality of cost-efficient digital cameras that can immediately drop images into press reports, local newspapers, and media campaigns will continue to grow in importance. With that comes a publicist’s increased knowledge of photography and what the media outlet will need in terms of quality imaging, all skills that can easily be obtained to make the pitch stronger and more effective. The ability to employ the use of photo houses, such as Getty Images, is also becoming more and more important in the digital age. Whereas years ago a wire service would be responsible for covering and then farming out images, specific companies designed to servicing media now can be the most effective way to tailor coverage and pitch. The photo houses work on a rights fee basis, and can also be the company archive for all images.
Controlled Media This growing area will be the source of continued debate going into the future. The ever-increasing scope of the media in a 24/7 environment, along with the sometimes irresponsible actions of the use of things like camera phones and unconfirmed sources by some members of the media, have led the client to look to more controlled ways of getting out the message.
Example In 2003, the Toronto Maple Leafs chose to break a legitimate new story about the changing of a coach on their own news site, as opposed to letting the media know first in a traditional way. This was seen as a way to drive traffic and content for the site and its subscribers, and was viewed with disdain by many of the media as packaging and censoring news. Many sites have used exclusive content in recent years to drive traffic, but rarely is it used to break hard news first. The ability to effectively control a message through the Web will be an interesting publicity tool going forward.
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The other area in which controlled media is becoming more prevalent is on the team side, where more and more entities are creating television, radio, and Web site packages to cover their team games.
Example 1 In New York, the Mets, Yankees, Rangers, and Knicks all have their own regional sports networks where they can essentially control programming and messaging to their fans. This is a very powerful and effective publicity tool for the teams, and is the key growth area for broadcast coverage.
Example 2 The creation of NBA TV and The NFL Network by those respective leagues has given the publicist an added in-house ability to create stories and content. The partner Web and radio pieces that go along with each entity will also enhance the controlled publicity messages going forward. With those controlled vehicles also comes the idea of tailoring and limiting coverage to events. The idea of preferential media treatment by publicists has always been part of the publicity game. As has been addressed in the text, the maintainence of relationships is key to success. However, in an effort to control messages and information, clients and entities can now seek to arbitrarily control physical access to events by members of the media. This game of favorites can be a dangerous one, with the backlash becoming a cut down of coverage among mainstream, large circulation media. However, some entities are seeing this as a potential boon to concentrated coverage to their controlled outlets like television, broadband, and general Web traffic. The amount of places to take publicity these days does not just reside with the local newspaper or television station, and in controlling access the entity today now has the ability to create demand through its core base of followers that can drive mainstream media to adhere to the policies it sets forth.
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Example 3 An NFL team does not like the editorial coverage a local newspaper is giving it as it looks to expand its stadium or increase its ticket prices. Therefore, that team decides to only allow two credentials to a weekly game, as opposed to the regular coverage of four writers. The result is that there is increased coverage on the team site with its own writers and messages, and the local newspaper gets less in terms of access to generate coverage. In time, the theory is that fans will go to the Web site more than to the local newspaper for its coverage, forcing the outlet to change its stance on how it deals with the team off the field. This is a hypothetical situation at this time, but could be an issue in the future as the issue of controlled media becomes more prevalent. The other advantage of controlled media is the inclusion of key sponsor messages and names in stories without risk of deletion, as opposed to taking chances with the writer including the facts and figures important to the organization. In recent years, the use of edited footage and canned stories given to media outlets for inclusion in regular newscasts has been met with more disdain and less use by national outlets such as CNN and FOX News. Many have recently even gone to the extent of running information on the screen that this is not network-shot footage. The editorial side can also remove sponsor mentions and images when used on air. The controlled media route going right to the consumer eliminates that problem.
While the value of relationships between the publicist and the media is still the priority, the use of the controlled media stance will become more of a debate going forward.
Emerging Sports They have been called niche sports in the past, but these sports now reach a concentrated core demographic many sponsors and publicists look to reach. These sports, which range from the XGames, to Mixed Martial Arts, poker, and bass fishing, provide enthusiasts with strong content via video and the Web, and a look at the great personalities and stories that partake in the contests.
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These sports and outlets are some of the cleanest areas of new publicity. They will provide to the publicists and the fan what traditional sports have provided in the past, but due to overexposure in the marketplace, may no longer be able to provide consistently. They provide strong grassroots stories, access to the fans, and a connection that is hard to establish with athletes who are known in the mainstream. The amount and success of these niche sports are to be determined. However, the use of technology has given these sports more staying power than previous incarnations. More importantly, many are really not offshoots of established entities and may not have a great deal of competition in the marketplace. In past years, the establishment of the American Basketball Association to combat the NBA, or the United States Football League or even the XFL to go against the NFL, was just adding to an existing marketplace and fan base. These sports are using publicity as a prime tool to grow a fan base that uses these sports as both a lifestyle tool (the fans are participants in the activity) and a spectator sport. In addition to the outlets themselves, the publicity opportunities for products and equipment that support the demographic and are used in the activity is also great. Products like Coca-Cola’s Vault brand and Glace’s Vitamin Water have used these sports to launch and gain market share, while skateboard sponsors and video game companies have used the sports to promote their product to an audience that is at the core of their marketing plans. Also factored into the idea of emerging sports are some very strong local opportunities that are now embracing technology as a way to reach their core audience. Areas like high-school federations and local newspapers now can make their stories, results, and campaigns available to a wider audience through new media, local access television, streaming audio, and advanced desktop publishing capability. What this does for the sports publicist is create campaigns to highlight these local athletes to a larger audience using these mediums, and identify sponsor publicity opportunities for a core market and grow that base like never before. The concern over exploitation of young athletes is always a potential issue, but the ability to tell quality stories and gain exposure for the school, the league, and the athlete in a professional way is a key to this growing publicity opportunity.
Marketing and PR The increased return on investment for those involved with publicity will lead to more mainstreaming of sports and marketing
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as joint areas of growth, as opposed to past instances where the two entities operated in silos apart from each other. The savvy integrated marketing techniques used by all entities looking for growth will use more and more publicity vehicles as key elements to their campaigns. On the team and collegiate level, marketing groups will use publicists more to uncover stories and unique elements about athletes that can be used in integrated campaigns. The dollar value assigned to all publicity that can be garnered by savvy publicists, long just the work of the agency, will now be realized more by groups on the team and collegiate level.
Example Adam Morrison, the highly regarded forward with the Charlotte Bobcats, is also a diabetic who takes regular shots of insulin. His new team will be able to use that through publicity to garner a new sponsor for insulin and diabetes awareness with a pharmaceutical company. This will take a good deal of savvy publicity from the team experts to make sure the campaign is fully integrated with team efforts and maximizing sponsor dollar value.
Capturing Emerging Ethnic Communities Another area for great growth on the publicity and sports marketing side going forward will be the ability to identify opportunities in the emerging ethnic communities. While we have talked about dealing with the media from various cultures and dealing with athletes both in the United States and abroad, using all the tools that are now emerging—elements like Internet radio in various languages, Web sites, ethnic newspapers in communities all around the United States, and working with sports marketing groups and teams to best identify these growing areas as viable targets for publicity and sales—is becoming more and more valuable in the workforce. Being able to find how the emerging Russian community will spend their discretionary dollars, and how you use effective sports PR to find the right tool to promote both American and multinational sports will be both challenging and will be a work in progress at this time. The best example of this success remains in soccer, where the heavy Latino
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influence has helped Major League Soccer grow in communities like Southern California. Having the Chivas USA team now playing in MLS, alongside the less-ethnically blended Los Angeles Galaxy (now with star David Beckham) has helped more Latino fans migrate to MLS and spend their discretionary dollar at matches. Whether that works effectively with Middle Eastern, Far Eastern or South Amercians now firmly entrenched and succeeding in the United States economic system is still to be proven, but it appears to be another area which sports PR will be able to move into in the coming years. If the effectiveness gained in sports PR with the audiences like the strong and well written African American and Latino press can translate to other ethnic groups emerging today, the opportunities can be endless. These key areas will be the subject of considerable growth and debate as the sports publicity industry continues to evolve in the coming years. Technology that was not available only a few years ago will now make the integrated and controlled approach to publicity even stronger than before. Factor in the growth of markets in sports outside North America, and the growth of women’s athletics in the coming years, and it appears the industry’s best years remain ahead. As long as the publicists continue to integrate the new ideas and use the strong skills of writing, listening, strategic planning, and effective pitching, the industry will grow and remain where it is in the marketplace. As said at the beginning of this book, it is the appetizer for athletes, sponsors, leagues, business partners, and media ventures. Without that great first taste, the meal behind it will not be as savory.
Appendix 1: The Press Release
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Appendix 1: The Press Release
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Appendix 1: The Press Release
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Appendix 1: The Press Release
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Appendix 2: The Media Advisory
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Appendix 3: Game Notes
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Appendix 4: Player Biographies
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Appendix 4: Player Biographies
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Appendix 4: Player Biographies
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Appendix 5: Unique and Special Event Publicity
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Appendix 5: Unique and Special Event Publicity
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Appendix 6: Media Seating Charts
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Appendix 6: Media Seating Charts
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Appendix 6: Media Seating Charts
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Appendix 7: CoSIDA Members
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College Sports Information Directors (CoSIDA) What is CoSIDA? CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) was founded in 1957. Previously, sports information directors, as a group, were a part of the American College Public Relations Association but most SIDs at those ACPRA meetings felt that a separate organization was needed. There were 102 members at the original meetings; since that time, CoSIDA has grown to more than 1800 members in the United States and Canada. The association is designed to help the SID at all levels. It is the desire of the members to have the profession take its rightful place on the decision-making levels of college athletics. Everything done is geared to this objective. Writing Organizations ASSOCIATED PRESS SPORTS EDITORS (APSE) JIM JENKS, APSE President Sports Editor, Philadelphia Inquirer (215) 854-4545 ARENA FOOTBALL WRITERS ASSOCIATION Mark Anderson Executive Director FOOTBALL WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 18652 Vista Del Sol Dallas, TX 75287 URL: www.fwaa.com Fax: (501) 375-4521
Appendix 7: CoSIDA Members
INTERNATIONAL TENNIS WRITERS ASSOCIATION Matt Cronin, President E-mail: [email protected] MET BASKETBALL WRITERS ASSOCIATION PO Box 172 White Plains, NY 10605 Fax: (914) 428-5608 NATIONAL COLLEGIATE BASEBALL WRITERS ASSOCIATION Bo Carter Big 12 Conference (214) 753-0102 TRACK AND FIELD WRITERS OF AMERICA PO Box 5401 San Mateo, CA 94402 Fax: (510) 593-5973 U.S. BASKETBALL WRITERS ASSOCIATION 1818 Chouteau Ave. St. Louis, MO 63103 URL: www.usbwa.com Phone: (314) 421-0339 Fax: (314) 421-3505 Key Networks, Magazines, Wire services ABC TELEVISION NETWORK 47 West 66th Street New York, NY 10023 (212) 456-4867 ASSOCIATED PRESS 50 Rockefeller Plaza New York, NY 10020 (212) 621-1630
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ATHLON SPORTS COMMUNICATIONS, INC. Suite 2000 220 25th Ave. North Nashville, TN 37203 URL: www.athlonsports.com Phone: (615) 327-0747 BASEBALL AMERICA PO Box 2089 Durham, NC 27702 (919) 682-9635 BASKETBALL TIMES Box 1269 Pinehurst, NC 28370 Fax: (910) 295-6566 BUSINESS WIRE/SPORTS WIRE 40 E. 52nd St., 14th Floor New York, NY 10022 URL: www.businesswire.com/sportslink Phone: (212) 752-9600 CBS SPORTS 25th Floor 51 W. 52nd Street New York, NY 10019 URL: www.cbs.sportsline.com Fax: (212) 975-4074 CBS SPORTSLINE USA, INC. 6340 NW Fifth Way Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309 Phone: (305) 351-2120 (x517) COACHING VOLLEYBALL Suite B 1227 Lake Plaza Drive Colorado Springs, CO 80906 URL: www.avca.org
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COLLEGE & PRO FOOTBALL NEWSWEEKLY COLLEGE BASKETBALL GUIDE 18 Industrial Park Drive Port Washington, NY 11050 Fax: (800) 368-7907 COLLEGIATE BASEBALL NEWSPAPER PO Box 50566 Tucson, AZ 85703 URL: www.baseballnews.com COMMUNITY COLLEGE WATER POLO POLL AND NEWSLETTER 28000 Marguerite Parkway Mission Viejo, CA 92692 Contact: Schuler Peter J. (805) 546-3211, [email protected] THE COURT REPORT PO Box 617 Alpharetta, GA 30009 CSTV 85 Tenth Avenue, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10011 Contact: Keith Marder (212) 342-8743, [email protected] DAVE CAMPBELL’S TEXAS FOOTBALL MAGAZINE Suite 2000 17300 Dallas Parkway Dallas, TX 75248 URL: www.texasfootball.com Contact: Barron David (713) 283-5558, [email protected] DON HANSEN’S NATIONAL WEEKLY FOOTBALL GAZETTE PO Box 305 Westmont, IL 60559-0305 URL: www.donhansen.com Fax: (630) 964-1105 Contact: Bourgart Tom (708) 456-6396, [email protected]
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EASTERN TRACK 141-40 84 Drive, 5L Briarwood, NY 11435 (718) 291-0489 ESPN ESPN Plaza Bristol, CT 06010 Phone: (860) 585-2000 Fax: (860) 585-2400 ESPN/SPORTSTICKER 600 Plaza Two Harborside Financial Center Jersey City, NJ 07311-3992 URL: www.sportsticker.com Phone: (201) 938-4537 ESPN the Magazine 19 E. 34th street, 7th Floor New York, NY 10016 Phone: (212) 515-1000 EUROPEAN STARS & STRIPES Suite 350 529 14th St., NW Washington, DC 20045-1301 URL: www.estripes.com Contact: Moores Sean (202) 761-1123, [email protected] FASTPITCH WORLD PO Box 4245 St. Charles, IL 60174 URL: www.fastpitchworld.com Phone: (630) 377-7917 FOOTBALL NEWS Suite 438 8033 NW 36th Street Miami, FL 33166 Contact: Cohen Andy (305) 594-0508
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GAMEPLAN’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL PREVIEW 113 E. Taft Road N. Syracuse, NY 13212 (315) 458-1287 GOLF WORLD 5520 Park Avenue Trumbull, CT 06611 URL: www.golfworld.com Phone: (203) 371-2145 Contact: Herrington Ryan (203) 761-5261, ryan.herrington@ golfworld.com HOCKEY DIGEST 990 Grove St. Evanston, IL 60201-4370 URL: www.centurysports.com Contact: O’Connor James (847) 491-6440 HOST COMMUNICATIONS 904 N. Broadway Lexington, KY 40505 URL: www.hostcommunications.com Contact: Baroncelli Craig (859) 226-4551, [email protected] INTERNATIONAL GYMNAST MAGAZINE 3214 Bart Conner Drive Norman, OK 73072 URL: www.intlgymnast.com Phone: (405) 364-5344 JEFFERSON-PILOT SPORTS One Julian Price Place Charlotte, NC 28208 URL: www.jpsports.com Contact: Rayburn James E. (704) 374-3780, [email protected]
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LACROSSE MAGAZINE 113 W. University Parkway Baltimore, MD 21210 URL: www.uslacrosse.org Phone: (410) 235-6882 MUTUAL RADIO SPORTS 1755 S. Jeff Davis Highway Arlington, VA 22202 (703) 413-8343 NBC SPORTS Room 1469E 30 Rockefeller Plaza New York, NY 10112 URL: www.nbc.com/sports Phone: (212) 664-2014 THE NCAA NEWS PO Box 6222 Indianapolis, KS 46206 URL: www.ncaa.org Contact: Brown Gary T. (317) 917-6130, [email protected] NEBRASKA SPORTS AMERICA 3610 Dodge St. Suite 210 Omaha, NE 68131 (800) 333-8544 ONE-ON-ONE SPORTS RADIO Suite 18 1935 Techny Rd. Northbrook, IL 60062 URL: www.1on1sports.com (847) 509-1661
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PUBLICITY POWER GROUP RAYCOM SPORTS Suite 200 2815 Coliseum Centre Drive Charlotte, NC 28217 URL: www.raycomsports.com Contact: Kay Frank (704) 378-4428, [email protected] REFEREE MAGAZINE PO Box 161 Franksville, WI 53126 URL: www.referee.com Contact: Arehart Jim, [email protected] SIRIUS SATELLITE RADIO 1221 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 URL: siriusradio.com Phone: (212) 584-5100 SOCCER AMERICA PO Box 23704 Oakland, CA 94623 URL: www.socceramerica.com Phone: (510) 420-3640 THE SPORTING NEWS Suite 200 10176 Corporate Square St. Louis, MO 63132 (314) 993-7711 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED 135 W. 50th Street New York, NY 10020 SPORTS NETWORK WIRESERVICE Suite 200 2200 Byberry Rd. Hatboro, PA 19040 URL: www.sportsnetwork.com Phone: (800) 583-5499
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STREET & SMITH’S SPORTS GROUP 342 Madison Ave. New York, NY 10017 (212) 880-8497 SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL DAILY 120 W. Morehead Street, Suite 220 Charlotte, NC 28202 URL: www.sportsbusinessjournal.com Phone: (704) 973-1500 SUN SPORTS 1000 Legion Place Suite 1600 Orlando, FL 32801 URL: www.SunSportsTV.com Fax: (407) 245-2571 THEPIT.COM Sixth Floor 245 Main Street White Plains, NY 10601 URL: www.thepit.com TRACK & FIELD NEWS 2570 El Camino Real No. 606 Mountain View, CA 94040 URL: www.trackandfieldnews.com Contact: Lilot Dan (650) 948-8188, edit@trackandfieldnews.com TURNER SPORTS 1 CNN Center 13 South Atlanta, GA 30303 (404) 827-3362 U.S. COLLEGE HOCKEY MAGAZINE 37 Trask Rd. Peabody, MA 01960 (508) 531-4311
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USA TODAY 7950 Jones Branch Drive McLean, VA 22108 URL: www.usatoday.com Phone: (703) 854-5610 USA WRESTLER 6155 Lehman Drive Colorado Springs, CO 80918 URL: www.themat.com VOLLEYBALL MAGAZINE 271 Pick Ave. Elmhurst, IL 60126 Contact: Miazga Mike (630) 359-3535, [email protected] WESTWOOD ONE/CBS RADIO SPORTS 524 West 57th St. Room 1E41 New York, NY 10019 URL: www.westwoodone.com Phone: (800) 755-8825 WOMEN’S BASKETBALL JOURNAL PO Box 99588 Raleigh, NC 27624-9588 URL: www.womensbball.com X-COUNTRY X-PRESS PO Box 750-994 Forest Hills, NY 11375 (718) 291-0489
Appendix 8: Sports Radio Stations
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Terrestrial Sports Radio Stations by State Alabama Bay Minette: WNSP (105.5 FM) Birmingham: WJOX (690 AM) Dothan: WOOF (560 AM) Montgomery: WMSP (740 AM) Tuscaloosa: WSPZ (1150 AM) Arizona Phoenix: KGME (550 AM) Tempe: KDUS (1060 AM) Tucson: KFFN (1490 AM) California Fresno: KCBL (1340 AM), KYNO (1300 AM) Lancaster: KAVL (610 AM) Los Angeles: KXTA (1150 AM) Modesto: KANM (970 AM) Monterey: KNRY (1240 AM) Pittsburg: KATD (990 AM) Sacramento: KHTK (1140 AM) San Francisco: KNBR (680 AM) Connecticut Hartford: WPOP (1410 AM) District of Columbia Washington: WTEM (980 AM) Florida Dade City: WDCF (1350 AM) Gainesville: WGGG (1230 AM) Immokalee: WGCQ (92.1 FM) Jacksonville: WBWL (600 AM), WNZS (930 AM) Key West: WKWF (1600 AM) Lake City: WDSR (1340 AM) Miami: WQAM (560 AM) Ocala: WMOP (900 AM)
Appendix 8: Sports Radio Stations
Pine Hills: WQTM (540 AM) Tallahassee: WNLS (1270 AM) Tampa: WDAE (620 AM) Georgia Atlanta: WQXI (790 AM) Hawaii Honolulu: KGU (760 AM) Idaho Nampa: KTIK (1340 AM) Illinois Chicago: WMVP (1000 AM) Springfield: WFMB (1450 AM) Wood River: KFNS (590 AM) Indiana Indianapolis: WNDE (1260 AM) Iowa Davenport: KJOC (1170 AM) Osceola: KJJC (107.1 FM) Kansas Wichita: KQAM (1480 AM) Kentucky Lexington: WLXG (1300 AM) Louisville: WTMT (620 AM), WWKY (790 AM) Louisiana Baton Rouge: WIBR (1300 AM) Lake Charles: KLCL (1470 AM) Maine Bangor: WZON (620 AM) Maryland Towson: WNST (1570 AM)
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Massachusetts Boston: WEEI (850 AM) Michigan Ann Arbor: WTKA (1050 AM) Bay City: WMAX (1440 AM) Detroit: WDFN (1130 AM) East Lansing: WVFN (730 AM) Flint: WTRX (1330 AM) Grand Rapids: WBBL (1340 AM) Lapeer: WLSP (1530 AM) Petoskey: WWKK (750 AM) Zeeland: WMFN (640 AM) Minnesota Minneapolis-St. Paul: KFAN (1130 AM) Mississippi Jackson: WSLI (930 AM) Missouri Troy: KZMM (100.7 FM) Montana Missoula: KGRZ (1450 AM) Nebraska Lincoln: KLMS (1480 AM) Nevada Las Vegas: KENO (1460 AM) New Mexico Los Ranchos De Albuquerque: KNML (610 AM) New York New York: WEPN (1050 AM), WFAN (660 AM) Rochester: WHTK (1280 AM) Syracuse: WHEN (620 AM) North Carolina Charlotte: WFNZ (610 AM)
Appendix 8: Sports Radio Stations
North Dakota Rugby: KZZJ (1450 AM) Ohio Columbus: WBNS (1460 AM) Ontario: WRGM (1440 AM) Toledo: WLQR (1470 AM) Oklahoma Bethany: KNTL (104.9 FM) Claremore: KTRT (1270 AM) Moore: WWLS (640 AM) Tulsa: KQLL (1430 AM) Woodward: KSIW (1450 AM) Oregon Salem: KSLM (1390 AM) Pennsylvania Allentown: WTKZ (1320 AM) Philadelphia WIP (610 AM) Pittsburgh: WEAE (1250 AM) York: WOYK (1350 AM) Rhode Island Providence: WSKO (790 AM) South Carolina Clemson: WCCP (104.9 FM) South Dakota Sioux Falls: KSFS (1520 AM) Tennessee Brentwood: WNSR (560 AM) Memphis: WHBQ (560 AM) Texas Amarillo: KPUR (1440 AM) Austin: KVET (1300 AM) Lubbock: KKAM (1340 AM) San Antonio: KTKR (760 AM)
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Utah Salt Lake City: KFNZ (1320 AM) Vermont Brattleboro: WTSA (1450 AM) Virginia Richmond: WRNL (910 AM) Washington Moses Lake North: KWIQ (1020 AM) Pasco: KFLD (870 AM) Seattle: KJR (950 AM) Tacoma: KHHO (850 AM) Vancouver: KFXX (910 AM) Wenatchee: KKRT (900 AM) Wisconsin Green Bay: WDUZ (1400 AM) Hallie: WOGO (680 AM) Lake Geneva: WAUX (1550 AM) Madison: WHIT (1550 AM) Superior: WDSM (710 AM) Tomahawk: WJJQ (810 AM) Waukesha: WAUK (1510 AM) Sports Radio Stations Available on the Web talkSPORT RadioIncontro 2KY SEN 1116 AM CFAC—The Fan 960 CFGO—Team 1200 CFMJ—MojoRadio CFRN—The Team 1260 CJCL—The FAN 590 CKGM—Team 990 CKST—Team 1040 KABZ—103.7 The Buzz KALL—Hot Ticket 700 KBME—The Sports Animal
London, United Kingdom Rome, Italy Sydney, Australia Sport 927 Melbourne, Australia Calgary, Alberta Ottawa, Ontario Toronto, Ontario Edmonton, Alberta Toronto, Ontario Montreal, Quebec Vancouver, British Columbia Little Rock, Arkansas Salt Lake City, Utah Houston, Texas
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KCSP KDBS—ESPN Radio 1410 KESN—ESPN Radio KESP—ESPN Radio KFAN KFNS KGME—Xtra Sports 910 KGSO KILT KJR AM KJRB—790 The Fan KKFN—950 The Fan KKML—The Sports Animal KLAC—Xtra Sports KNBR KSLG—ESPN KTCK—The Ticket KTCT—The Ticket KTGR—ESPN Radio KTIK—The Ticket KTKR—The Ticket KVET WAUK—ESPN Radio WAXY—790 The Ticket WBBL WBGG—Fox 970 WBNS—The Fan WCCP WCKY—1530 Homer WCNN—680 The Fan WCOS WDAE WDFN 1130 WEEI WEPN—1050 ESPN Radio WFAN—Sports Radio 66 WFNZ WFXJ WGR WHB WHOO WHTK—Hot Talk 1280
Kansas City, Missouri Alexandria, Louisiana Dallas, Texas Modesto, California Minneapolis, Minnesota St. Louis, Missouri Phoenix, Arizona Wichita, Kansas Houston, Texas Seattle, Washington Spokane, Washington Denver, Colorado Colorado Springs, Colorado Los Angeles, California San Francisco, California St. Louis, Missouri Dallas, Texas San Francisco, California Columbia, Missouri Boise, Idaho San Antonio, Texas Austin, Texas Milwaukee, Wisconsin Miami, Florida Grand Rapids, Michigan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Columbus, Ohio Clemson, South Carolina Cincinnati, Ohio Atlanta, Georgia Columbia, South Carolina Tampa, Florida Detroit, Michigan Boston, Massachusetts New York, New York New York, New York Charlotte, North Carolina Jacksonville, Florida Buffalo, New York Kansas City, Missouri Orlando, Florida Rochester, New York
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WIP WJOX—Jox 690 WKNR WMVP—AM1000 WNLS—1270 The Team WNSS—ESPN Radio WQAM WQSN WQTM—740 The Team WQXI—790 The Zone WSCR—670 The Score WSKO—The Score WTAR WTEM WTKA WTRX WTZN WXYT WWLS—Sports Animal WWTX WWXT WXLW—ESPN 950 WYNG—ESPN Radio 94.9 WZNZ WZON
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Birmingham, Alabama Cleveland, Ohio Chicago, Illinois Tallahassee, Florida Syracuse, New York Miami, Florida Kalamazoo, Michigan Orlando, Florida Atlanta, Georgia Chicago, Illinois Providence, Rhode Island Norfolk, Virginia Washington, DC Ann Arbor, Michigan Flint, Michigan Troy, Pennsylvania Detroit, Michigan Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Wilmington, Delaware Washington, DC Indianapolis, Indiana Evansville, Indiana Jacksonville, Florida Bangor, Maine
Appendix 9: Volunteer Opportunities
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Sports Volunteering Opportunities The following lists some key Web sites to look for volunteering opportunities. It is important when identifying places that the volunteer make it clear what he or she would like to get out of the opportunity. As has been said before, being able to ask questions and gain information is key in the process. Minor League Baseball: The prime resource tool to find a minor league team in your area is MILB.com. Most teams need volunteers for press room duties and operations. NASCAR: NASCAR has now set up its own way for fans to find ways to volunteer at events around the country, nascar.com/ foundation. The local tracks will also post volunteering information, but NASCAR is now working to streamline the opportunities as well. Special Olympics: Perhaps the greatest opportunity to both help and gain experience. The Special Olympics, from its worldwide events to all its local chapter events, presents a great amount of opportunity, both in the United States and around the world. The best place to begin is at /www.specialolympics.org. London 2012: The site to find out how to volunteer for all events leading up to the London games is www.volunteer2012.com. You will find events including pre-Olympic qualifying events, events by sport and the paraolympics as well. Vancouver 2010: The official site for all the information on Olympic, paraolympic, and pre-Olympic opportunities leading up to the 2010 games is www.vancouver2010.com/en. VolWeb.ca: VolWeb.ca is a web-based registration system designed to connect volunteers to event organizers across British Columbia to support events from local festivals to international sporting tournaments—such as the Grey Cup, the World Junior Hockey Championships, the Hyack Community Festival, and BC Games. VolWeb.ca helps individuals to build their volunteer resume, provides valuable communication links to volunteer resources and gives you access to online discussion boards and live Web meetings.
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Volunteering in Scotland: This site provides updated information for those wanting to volunteer for sporting events in the British Isles. sportscotland.org.uk/volunteering. Volunteerism on Long Island: For those who live in New York, the Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau has a site dedicated to volunteering at athletic events in the region, such as the Commerce Bank Championship–Senior PGA Champions Tour (800); the Hampton Classic Horse Show (200); and the New York State Games for the Physically Challenged (400) to name a few. The United States Golf Association has secured up to 4500 volunteers to support the U.S. Open Championship each year it has been held on Long Island. And, 1200 volunteers were used for the 1999 Empire State Games and 3000 were utilized to support the 1998 Goodwill Games on Long Island. http://www.licvb.com/. The St. Louis Sports Commission: Like many cities, St. Louis has become a hotbed for amateur events looking for assistance. All the updated information is at stlouissports.org/volunteer/index.php. Tennis and Golf: The easiest way to identify local sites, especially pro events and local championships needing assistance, is through usta.com (the official site of the United States Tennis Association) and usga.org (the official site for the United States Golf Association). There will be key links to all national championships and local events and information on how to get involved. Volunteer Match: A great site for finding events and attractions needing volunteers in your area is www.volunteermatch.org. Many organizations from around the world will provide the site with their basic information, requirements, and how to contact them. Women’s Sporting Events: Many local sporting events that involve charities (Race for the Cure, etc.) will enlist event volunteers from the Women’s Sports Foundation, www.womenssportsfoundation .org. The WSF also provides a great deal of information on getting involved in women’s athletic events specifically.
Index
A AAGBL (All-American Girl’s Professional Baseball League), 200 Abdel-Jalil, Ahmad, 267 Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, 268 ACES program, 151, 180 Advantage International, 188, 243 the agency side of sports athlete-specific agencies, 289–291 boutique (sports-specific) agencies, 285–288 careers in, qualities for successful, 293–297 churn, 294, 296 conclusion, 303 entertainment agencies in, 292–293 entertainment aspect, 283 introduction, 281–284 public relations agencies, 284–285 revenue drivers, 283–284 social side, 282 sports television industry, 288–289 Aggasi, Andre, 193 Aiello, Greg, 168–169 Alan Taylor Communications, 286–287 Albany Firebirds, 33 All-American program, 114
Allen, Jared, 168 Allen, Paul, 31 All-England Club, 278–279 American Express, 98, 146–147 Andande, J. A., 68 Anderson, Dave, 103 Angell, Roger, 69 anthologies of sports writing, 37, 69 Anthony, Earl, 159 Appel, Marty, 4–5 Arch Ward Award, 115 Arizona Diamondbacks, 190 Arizona Republic, 190 Armato, Leonard, 201 Armstrong, Lance, 159 Arrichitlo, Pete, 30 Arsenal, 264 Arsenio Hall Show (television), 89 Aschenbrenner, Joyce, 4 athletes, individual athlete-specific agencies, 289–291 non-American, 276–278 the player personnel crisis, 258–260 the sex symbol issue, 193 superstars, dealing with, 130–134 athletes in individual sports, publicity model. See also specific sports advance publicity and coordination, 150–151
371
372 agents and sponsors of, 144–145 circuit publicity, 152, 154 comments, 162 consensus building in, 149–150 creating exposure points, 149–153 flexibility, importance when working with, 146–149 international and cultural differences, 147–148 local media involvement, 152 repeating media events, 151–152 sponsor visibility and recognition, 152, 153 team model compared, 143–144, 148, 150–153 women’s sports, 200–201 Atlanta Braves, 21 ATP, media access policies, 180 ATP Tour, 278–279 Auburn University, 102–103 auto racing, circuit publicity model, 157–159 AVP Crocs Tour, 161, 193, 194, 201, 287 B Bachman, Rachel, 192–193 Bacon’s, 64 Baker, Jacinth, 245 Balasteri, Peter, 48 Baltimore Colts, 13 Baltimore Ravens, 244–245 Baranek, Tony, 266–269 Barshall, Beth, 67–68 baseball, women’s, 200–201 basic form, writing the, 41–44 basketball, women’s, 201 Baum, Barry, 252–253 BBC, 275–276 Belichick, Bill, 170 Bell, Bert, 226 Benner, David, xv
Index Berke, Art, 33 Best American Sportswriting (Stoudt), 37, 69 Bias, Len, 243–244 Billick, Brian, 245 Bismarck Hotel, 114 Bithorn, Hiram, 263 Blazejewski Mark “Blaze”, 100 blogs, 47–48, 62, 86–87, 307 Bloomberg, Michael, 236 Blue Hens, 10 Blue Jackets, 238–239 Boivin, Paola, 190 Bolno, Zack, 31 Bostic, Jim, 206 Boston Bruins, 239 Boston Celtics, 30, 243 Boston College, 96 Botta, Chris, 34 bowling, circuit publicity model, 159–160 boxing, circuit publicity model, 161 Boyle, Kevin, 104–106 Bradley, Shawn, 292–293 Branca, Ralph, 225 branding, managing and implementing, 188, 252–254, 289–290 BrandWeek, 36 Breland, Mark, 7 Brener, Steve, 287–288 Brener-Zwikel Associates, 282, 287–288 Brennan, Christine, 193 Breslin, Jimmy, 46, 68 Brittanie Cecil Memorial Fund, 238–239 Bronx Bombers, 8 Brooklyn Dodgers, 15, 225, 264 Brooks, Bob, 104 Bryant, Don “Fox”, 98 Bryant, Paul “Bear”, 115
Index Budlight Pro Beach Volleyball League, 201 Burke, Gregg, 103 Burson-Marstellar, 282 Burtt, Steve, 100 Byrne, Kevin, 245–246 C CAA (Creative Artists), 145 Calgary Flames, 238–239 Camacho, Hector “Macho”, 7 Camby, Marcus, 131 careers in sports publicity, basic skills reading, 35–39 speaking, 54–56. see also writing, basics of careers in sports publicity, first steps. See also sports reporters asking for help, 27–28 examples, 28–34 internships, 23–25 other areas in the industry, 26–27 résumé tips, 27 volunteering, 19–23 careers in sports publicity, success elements a diverse knowledge and skills base, 4, 5 have fun, xiii match the story to the media, 6 networking/relationship building, xii, 5–6, 10 passion, xii professionalism, xiii versatility, xi willingness to learn, xiii careers in sports publicity, sucess elements ability to find the story, 13, 15, 25–26, 97–98 credibility, 11, 15, 60 a diverse knowledge and skills base, 25–26, 295–296
373 expecting the unexpected, 12, 296–297 know or learn your audience, 22, 43, 46, 59–63, 71, 108 networking/relationship building, 19, 54–56, 63, 64–65, 99, 293–294 professionalism, 15, 16, 101, 120–121, 124–126, 296 versatility, 13, 295 willingness to learn, 295 work hard, 296 CART Race Day, 298–299 Castro, Fidel, 11–12 Cecil, Brittanie, 238–239 cell phone cameras, 307–308 The Championships, Wimbledon, 234 Charlotte Bobcats, 313 Chastain, Brandi, 196 Checketts, Dave, 192 Cheeks, Maurice, 74 Chicago Cubs, 29, 239, 255 Chicago Daily Southtown, 266 Chicago White Sox, 31, 255 Chivas USA, 314 Cigar (horse), 72–73 circuit publicity model, 154–162 “City Slickers” (film), xv Clarke, Tom, 68 Clemente, Roberto, 11, 277 Cleveland Browns, 255 Cleveland Indians, 8, 74–75 clip files, 60, 77–78, 80–81, 100 CNN, 302, 311 Cohane, Tim, 5 Cohen, Mike “Inky”, 6, 285, 299–300 Cohn and Wolfe, 88 Colangelo, Ron, 29 college athletics publicity departments. See also Sports Information Director budget limitations, 109
374 examples, 98, 100, 102–104 history, 111, 113–115 media days, 178 media guides, 106–108 media management, 99, 180 the pitch, 100 questionnaires value to, 97–98 revenue increases associated with, 96–97, 102 sales and marketing, 110 schedule cards and posters, 106–107 special and unique events, creating, 99–100 staff, recognizing asset value of, 98–99 statistics focus, 104–106 successes, publicizing, 100 technology in, 109 College of the Holy Cross, 103 Colorado Silver Bullets, 201 columnists, building relationships with, 68–69, 127 Comcast Sports Net, 303 Condon, John, 6–7 Condron, Bob, 167 conference calls, 85 Coogan, James, 111 Cornell, Bob, 7–8 Cosell, Howard, 9 CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America), 110–115 Covitz, Randy, 167–170 Cox, John, 114 credentialing, 134–136, 175, 278 crisis management communication in, 230–232 the corporate crisis, 246–258 coverage of financial matters, 251–254 examples, 297–299 the family crisis, 240–243
Index the fans, 238–240 guidelines, 230–233 for layoffs, downsizing, and corporate restructuring, 250–251 for leadership changes, 255–258 the on-field crisis, 237–240 the physical plant crisis, 233–237 planning for, 230–231 the player personnel crisis, 258–260 teams, buying and selling, 254–255 weather related, 235–237 Croke, Ed, 15 Crouch, Eric, 89 Crystal, Billy, xv Cuban, Marc, 109 Cummings, David, 31 Cuttone, Charley, 29 cycling, circuit publicity model, 160 D Dan Klores Communications, 283, 287 Davenport, Lindsay, 86, 273 David Letterman (television), 86, 129 Davis, Al, 11 Deford, Frank, 271 Delta Devils, 13 Denver Broncos, 170 Denver Nuggets, 131 DePaul University Blue Demons, 104 Derek, Bo, 74 Detroit Lions, 89, 170 Detroit Pistons, 239 Dick Young, 9 Dina Shore LPGA, 189 Disney, 172–173
375
Index Dobek, Matt, 29 Dolgin, Howard, 286 Dorsett, Tony, 4 Dougherty, Larry, 49 Drisell, Charles “Lefty”, 243 Druzin, Randi, 190–192 Dudek, Joe, 103 Duke University, 302 Durant, Della, 10 Dye, Pat, 102–103 E Edelman, 284 editors, building relationships with, 69–71, 126 Edwards, Blake, 74 Edwards, Herm, 171 Einstein, Albert, 227 Elfin, David, 168, 170, 171 Elias Sports Bureau, 138, 164 English Premier League, 264 Enron, 254 Erving, Julius, 90 Eskl, Norb, 29 ESPN, 172–173, 274, 302 ESPN.com, sports business column, 36 ESPN the Magazine, 38, 100, 302 Esquire, 37 Eurosport, 274 events management, 106 F fact checking, 81–82, 108 fact sheets, basics of writing, 51–54 Fairfield University, 49 the fans, 144, 264 Favorito, Joseph, 28 Favre, Brett, 170 feature stories, basics of writing, 46–47 Federer, Roger, 272 Fentress, Lee, 243
Fie, Julie, 62 figure skating, circuit publicity model, 161–162 Filipelli, John, 301 Filipiak, Steve, 102 Finley, Steve, 190 FIRST Serve program, 151, 180 Fishel, Bob, 8–9 Florida Marlins, 277 Flutie, Doug, 96 Flutie Factor, 96 Flynn, Chuck, 111 Football Writers Association of America, 115 Fordham University, 90, 100, 223 Formula One racing, 157–159 Fort Myers News-Press, 191 Foudy, Julie, 196 FOX News, 311 Fox Sports network, 274 French Open, 148 Furman, Andy, 104 G Gaedel, Eddie, 8 Gamboa, Tom, 239 game notes, 51–54, 138 Garcia-Ruiz, Emilio, 169 Garlick, Tom, 90 Garner, John, 103 Gathers, Hank, 223 Genzale, Jenny, 265 Genzale, John, 265 George Mason University, 97 Getty Images, 287–288 Ghouleh, Mahmood, 267–269 Gifford, Frank, 15 Giuliani, Rudy, 297 Glass, Joel, 31 Golden State Warriors, 131 Goldstein, Joey, 3, 9–10, 209 golf, circuit publicity model, 156–157
376 Goodell, Roger, 169, 171 “Good Guys in Sports” (The Sporting News), 69, 79 Gordon, Jeff, 158 Gould, Andy, 33 GQ, 37, 73, 79, 195 Graf, Steffi, 193 Grand Slams of tennis, 278–279 gravedigger journalism, 46, 68 Green, Dennis, 167 Green Bay Packers, 170 Greenberg, Mel, 198 Griffith, Melanie, 25–26 H Halim, Sanabel, 269 Halim, Soad, 269 Hallock, Wiles, 113–115 Hamm, Mia, 196, 197 Haney, Lee, 292 Hanlon, Pat, 15 Harrington, Joey, 89 Havana Sugar Kings, 11–12 Haverbeck, Mary Jo, 10 The Hawk, 102–103 Heffner, Hugh, 114 Heinz, W. C., 69 Heisman award, 16, 89, 103 Hendricks, John, 196 Hewitt, Lleyton, 145 Hiestand, Michael, 301 Hill, Grant, 132 Hill & Knowlton, 285 Himmelberg, Michele, 191 Hingis, Martina, 72–73, 195, 272 HIPAA laws, 207, 224, 237 Hipp, Isiah Moses, 98 Hollywood Stars, 11 horse racing, circuit publicity model, 161–162 Houston, Whitney, xv Houston Rockets, 31, 239, 276 Hudson Valley Renegades, 23 “Hunger on Hold” (Baranek),
Index 266–269 Hurley, Peter, 21 Hurricane Katrina, 235–236 Hyland, Colleen, 269 Hyung-Taik, Lee, 148 I IFL (International Fight League), 60, 160–161 IMG, 145, 188, 287 Indiana Pacers, 239 Indianapolis Colts, 133, 255 Indiana University, 109 individual professional sports. See athletes in individual sports, publicity model Indy Car racing, 157–159 injuries in the press, 207–208, 224, 237–238 International Auto Show, 297–298 international sports reporting. See sports reporting in the global landscape Internet. See also Web sites college athletics publicity departments use of, 108 digital photography, 308–309 e-mail communications, 140 finding advocates via, 197–198 for individual sport athletes publicity, 153 live sports on the, 109 microsites, 307 mlb.com, 306–307 “NFL exercises football message control” (Covitz), 167–170 non-American media, 276 Olympics model of post-game video, 169 the pitch and the, 59, 62–65, 86–87 placing stories on the, 57–58
Index
377
press conferences and, 210 social sites, 308 viral video, 308 web cams, 307–308 internships, 23–25 Interpublic Group, 283 Invinceable (film), 173 Iona College Gaels, 100 Irfan, Kareem, 268 Irsay family, 255 “Is Tennis Dead” (Jenkins), 195
Kiseda, Bert, 12 Klores, Dan, 283, 287, 292–293 Knight, Tony, 191 Knutsen, Espen, 238–239 Kopett, Leonard, 1–2 Kornheiser, Tony, 68 Kournikova, Anna, 193, 195 Kowalski, Peter, 29, 156 Krugman, Meredith, 243–244 Kuhn, Bowie, 191 Kulick, Kelly, 160
J Jacobs, Mike, 277 Jake Wade Award, 115 Jamilosa, Robyn, 31 Jenkins, Sally, 195 Jenkins, Sanford, 223 Jenks, Jim, 168 Jenner, Bruce, 88 Jeter, Derek, 224 Jewish Heritage Day, 277 Jim Thorpe Award, 103 Joel, Billy, 249 Joey Heisman campaign, 89 Johnson and Johnson, 188 Jordan, Lester, 114, 115 Jordan, Marie, 21 Jordan, Michael, 243, 261 Joseph, Johnathan, 171 Junior’s, 292–293
L Lackey, Andrew, 168 Ladies League Baseball, 201 Ladies Pro Baseball, 201 Lady Lions, 10 Landis, Floyd, 153 Lardner, Ring, 47 Larson, Ric, 256–257 LaSalle University, 223 Lasorda, Tommy, 223 Laughlan, Paul, 102–103 Layden, Scott, xi Leaf, Ryan, 90 league publicity offices, responsibilities. See also professional team sports publicity departments awards, balloting and reception, 165 branding, managing and implementing, 171–173 the business side, 172–173 championships and special events, 175–177 college level, 178 dispute resolution, 164 governance, 165–166 Internet strategy, 177 media management, 166, 173–175, 178–181 overview, 163–164 policy setting, 165–172 publications, 177
K Kansas City Chiefs, 170 Kansas City Royals, 239 The Kansas City Star, 167–170 Katz, Harold, 94 Kaze, Irv, 11 Kennedy, John F., 68, 226 Kennedy, Pat, 100 Ketchum, 285 Kid Gloves program, 7 King, Billie Jean, 184, 197 King, Bob, 31 King, Dick, 33
378 statistics, records, and rules, 164–166, 172–173 Lefton, Terry, 64 Lewis, Marvin, 171 Lewis, Ray, 244–246 The Lexington Dispatch, 31 Life Magazine, 128 Limbaugh, Rush, 28 Lockbaum, Gordie, 103 locker room access, 148, 189–192, 278–279 Lollar, Richard, 245 long-lead feature pieces, 73, 79–83, 127–128 Lopiano, Donna, 197 Los Angeles Angels, 11 Los Angeles Dodgers, 287 Los Angeles Galaxy, 314 Los Angeles Rams, 14 Los Angeles Sparks, 189 Los Angeles Times, 273–274 Louisville, University of, 49 Loyola Marymount University, 223 LPBT (Ladies Professional Bowlers Tour), 200 LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association), 156–157, 180, 195–196, 200 LPGA Tour, 185, 193 Ludtke, Melissa, 191, 193 Luis, Nelson, 29–30 Lupica, Mike, 68, 271 Lurie, Jeffrey, 205 M Madden 2005 NFL (video game), 246 Madison, Oscar, xv Maduro, Bobby, 11 magazines, 38, 73, 79–83, 302–303. See also specific magazines Magill, Tess, 25–26 Manchester United, 264
Index Mann, Ted, 115 Manning, Eli, 133 Mara family, 15 Marino, Dan, 4 Maroon, John, 291 Martinez, Conchita, 78, 195 Martinez, Ramiro, 11–12 Martz, Mike, 170 Maryland, University of, 243 Matsui, Hideki, 276 Maxwell, Vernon, 239 McAlpin, Tim, 266–269 McAnn, Thom, 62–63 McDonough, Jim, 268 McEnroe, John, 277 McGrane, Bert, 115 McGuire, Bart, 257 McNabb, Donovan, 205, 303 media advisory, basics of writing, 44–45 media days, collegiate level, 178 media guides basics of writing, 48–51 college athletics publicity departments, 106–108 information sources, 64 NBA, 177 WTA and Ric Larson hiring, 256–257 media outlets, types of, 64 media relations. See also sports reporters charging for access to athletes, 159 columnists, 68–69, 127 credentialing and, 134–136, 175, 278 editors, 69–71, 126 face-to-face, 64–66 friendship in, 125–126 going “off the record”, 119–120 going on background, 120 hometowns and small towns, 77, 86, 127, 131, 153
Index prioritizing for, 126–127 prioritizing in, 125–126 producers, 70–71 professionalism in, 124–126 reporters, 70 soundbites, 121, 126 technology’s role in, 63–66 Up and Down the Ladder effect, 66–67 media seating, 175 media training, 122–125 Memphis, University of, 90 Miami Heat, 277 Michigan, University of, 131 Mike Cohen Communications, 285 Miller, Craig, 32–33 Minaya, Omar, 43 Minnesota Vikings, 191 Mirza, Sania, 194 MISL (Major Indoor Soccer League), 175 MLB (major league baseball), 178 MLB Productions, 172–173 MLS (Major League Soccer), 314 MMA (mixed martial arts), circuit publicity model, 160–161 Modell, Art, 245, 255 Monday, Rick, 239 Monmouth College, 104–106 Montana, Joe, 61, 224 Moran, Malcolm, 32 Morris, Jim, 173 Morris, John, 10, 29 Morrison, Adam, 313 “Mountain Dew” Extreme sports tour, 287 MSNBC, 59 Murray, Jim, 69 N Namath, Joe, xv naming rights, 253–254
379 NASCAR, 150–151, 153, 157–159, 181 National Directory of Collegiate Athletics, 64 The National Sports Daily, 271 NBA (National Basketball Association), 172–173, 177, 178 NBA “blue” book, 64 NBA Developmental league, 177 NBA Entertainment, 172–173 NBA Guide, 165 NBA Register, 165 NBA TV, 310 Nebraska, University of, 98 New England Patriots, 171, 189–190, 191–192 New Jersey Nets, 252–253 New Orleans Saints, 235–236 Newsday, 32 newspapers, 38–39, 269–273. See also specific newspapers newswires, 72 New York Apples, 5 New York Giants, 15, 32, 225 New York Jets, 226 New York Knicks, xiv, 90, 128, 145, 192 New York Mets, 277 New York Rangers, 225–226 The New York Times, 273–274 The New York Times Magazine, 37 New York Yankees, 5, 11, 276 NFL (National Football League), 174, 178–179, 226 NFL “black” book, 64 “NFL exercises football message control” (Covitz), 167–170 NFL Films, 172–173 The NFL Network, 310 NHL (National Hockey League), 176, 178, 238–239
380 niche marketing, 57–58, 72, 78, 127, 189 Nixon, Richard, 115 Now Pitching for the Yankees (Appel), 5 O Oboikowitch, Jim, 29 O’Brien, Dan, 88–89 O’Connor, Ian, 271 Octagon, 145, 188 The Odd Couple (television), 50 O’Keefe, Dean, 30 Olajuwon, Akeem, 268 Olson, Lisa, 189–192 Olympics, 88–89, 264, 278 Olympics model of post-game video, 169 O’Malley, Walter, 264 Omnicom, 283 O’Neal, Deltha, 171 open wheel racing, 157–159 Oral Roberts University, 104 Oregon, University of, 89 O’Reilly, Terry, 239 Orlando Magic, 132 Osborne, Tom, 98 Owens, Terrell, 205 P Pallance, Jack, xv Papa, Bob, ix Papale, Vince, 173 Parcells, Bill, 170 Parseghian, Ara, 16 Patrick, Danica, 158, 160 Paul, Bob, 113, 115 PBA (Pro Bowlers Association), 67–68, 159–160 Pendleton, Terry, 190 Petraglia, Johnny, 159 PGA (Professional Golfers Association), 156–157, 180, 277–278
Index PGA Championship, 148, 157 PGA Masters Tour, 148 PGA of America, 157, 277–278 PGA Tour, 157, 185–186, 256 Phelan, Gerald, 96 Philadelphia Daily News, 198 Philadelphia Eagles, 90, 173, 205 Philadelphia Flyers, 34 Philadelphia 76ers, 12, 74, 94, 292–293 Philadelphia Stars, Bell and Bulldogs, 13 Philadelphia Warriors, 12 Phoenix Suns, 62 photography digital, advantages of, 109, 308–309 photo opportunities at press conferences, 205, 213 the pitch and, 72–73, 76 Pilot Pen, 85–86 the pitch the agency side of, 293 backup plans, 72 clip files, 60, 77–78, 100 college athletics publicity departments, 100 defining the angle, 71 follow up, 78–79 in the global landscape, 263–264 long-lead feature pieces, 73, 79– 83, 127–128 long shots, 74 marketing, 57–58, 72, 77–78 the media, identifying and cultivating, 63–75 notes form, 86–87 the personal aspect in, 64–65, 77 planning for, 126 in professional team sports, 126 quick form, 84–87
Index research element, 59–61 rules of, 58 special and unique events form, 87–91, 99–100 staying focused, 75 the subject in, 59–63 tailoring, 71–72 television news shows, 79–83 timeline, 61 using photographs, 72, 76, 109 using technology successfully, 62–64, 84–87 the pitch kit, 75–77 the pitch letter, 77 Pitino, Rick, 28 Pittsburgh Pirates, 11, 277, 285 Pittsburgh Steelers, 255 Playboy Magazine, 69, 114 Playmakers (ESPN), 172–173 Plymouth State University, 103 Pollock, Harvey, 12–13 Portland Trail Blazers, 192 Powers, Ross, 145, 153 press agents, 2–3 press conferences for bad news, 224–225 break-up sessions following, 221–222 discussing injuries at, 207–208, 224, 237 food and drinks, 213–214 gifts and take-aways, 214, 216 the long lead (planned) event, 203–204 overcommunication, 227 photo opportunities at, 205, 213 press kits, 214–215 q and a, 220–221 for record breakers, 225 the scrummage, 223 spontaneous announcements, 222–226 transcriptions, 217–218
381 video files, 217–218 what creates success, 211–218 when to hold, 209–211 where to hold, 208–209 who should be involved, 218–221 why to hold, 204–208 press release, basics of writing, 40–44 Price, Lara, 31–32 producers, building relationships, 70–71 professional team sports publicity departments. See also league publicity offices, responsibilities the business side of, 138–141, 246–248 circuit publicity model compared, 154 the coach, including in, 133 community involvement, 173–174, 177 consensus building role, 173 the customer in, 121–122 game operations role, 136 individual publicity model compared, 150–154 introduction, 117–118 media relations, 122, 125–130, 134–136, 175 media training by, 122–125 national and visiting broadcasters, 128 non-American media, 174 publications regulation, 137–138 public relations aspect, 121–122 rightsholders in, 129, 133 security, enforcing, 134–135 special and unique events, 132, 172–173 superstars, dealing with, 130–134
382 team spokesperson role, 118–121 television booking responsibility, 129–130 women’s sports, 200–201 Prophet, Chuck, 13 publicists, 1–4, 7–10, 23 publicity, goal of, 91 publicity agencies. See the agency side of sports public relations, basic skills of, 22 public relations departments, early vs. current functions of, 2 PWBA (Professional Women’s Bowling Association), 200 Q quotations, 42–43, 45, 138 R radio sports broadcasting in hometowns and small towns, 177 Internet for, 310 non-American media, 274–276, 313 radio stations categorizing and cultivating for coverage by, 70–71, 126–127 crisis broadcasting, 237 promotion using, 109, 129, 144 Raissman, Bob, 301 Ramsdell, Jay, 32 Ratner, Bruce, 252–253 reading anthologies, 37, 69 for background, 69 role in the pitch, 64–65 the what, where, and why of, 35–39
Index Reavis High School Rams, 267–268 on record press release, 40 Reed, Willis (“The Captain”), 44 Reese, Merrill, 34 Reid, Andy, 205 Reilly, Rick, 68, 69 Reiss, Geoff, 31 Rice, Grantland, 47 Richter, Mike, 225–226 Riggs, Bobby, 184, 185 rights holders, 83, 129, 133, 175–176, 277 Ripken, Carl, 291 The Rise and Fall of The Press (Kopett), 1–2 Roberts, Julia, 73 Robinson, David, 73 Rodale publications, 37 Roddick, Andy, 146–147 “Rolaid’s Relief Man” award, 287 The Rookie (film), 173 Rooney, Tim, xv Rooney family, 255 Rote, Kyle, 15 Rozelle, Alvin “Pete”, 14, 171, 226 Rudd, “Unswerving” Irving, 3, 14–15 Runners World, 303 Runnin Rebels, 4 Ruth, Babe, 16–17 Ryder Cup, 277–278 S Sampras, Pete, 148 San Antonio Spurs, 73, 236 San Diego Chargers, 11 Sandomir, Richard, 301 Sanford, Otis, 169 satellite media tours, 84 Schemmel, Jerry, 32 Schoenberg, Dan, xv
Index Schoenfeld, Bruce, 78 Schultz, Dave, 29 Schumaker, Michael, 159 Schumer, Charles, 209 Scott, Gene, 59 the scrummage, 223 sexism, 189–195, 272–273 Shiebler, George, 111 Shirley, Paul, 62 Silverman, Ira, 297–298 Simmons, Lionel, 223 Slapshots, 29 Slide, Kelly, Slide (Appel), 5 Slippery Rock University, 102 Smith, Dave, 88–89 Smith, Don, 15 Smith, Gary, 69 Smith, Red, 9, 69 Smith, Tim, 269 SMMG, 297–298 Soap Box Derby, 297–298 soccer, women’s, 202 softball, women’s, 202 Sorenstam, Annika, 195, 197 speaking. See also the pitch in English and in other languages, 54–56, 263 as the team spokesperson, 119–121 The Sporting News, 79, 165 Sports Business Daily, 36 Sports Business Journal, 36, 64 The Sports Fact Book, 64 Sports Illustrated, 38, 98, 103, 190–192, 195, 246, 302 Sports Information Director. See also college athletics publicity departments assets, 98–99 elements of, 93–95 event management, 106
383 professional organizations, 110 responsibilities, 95–101, 104–108 statistics on, 95–96 Sports Nippon, 273 sports publications interactive partnerships, 302–303 league level, 177 long-lead feature pieces, 73, 79–83 reading for success, 36–38 rules for success, 108 sports publicity controlled media, 309–311 for emergent sports, 311–314 future of, 306–315 the global landscape, 56, 263–264 history, 1–3 for minority groups, 313–314 new media in, 306–309 pioneers in, 4–17, 111, 113–115, 299–300 political correctness in, 187–195 purpose of, xi, xiv sports reporters. See also careers in sports publicity, first steps; media relations building relationships with, 67– 68, 70 gender equity in locker room access, 189–192 incentives, gifts and take-aways, 214, 216, 273–276 non-American media, 272 pioneers, 300 sports reporting in the global landscape. See also specific events hometown heroes, value of, 263
384 incentives, 273–276 the local media in, 269–275 multi-lingual requirements, 274–275 nationalism and the social contract, 264–266 non-American athletes, 276–278 sexism in, 193–194, 272–273 social change effected by, 193–194, 262, 266–269 understanding cultures and customs for, 56, 262–263, 277–278, 313–314 Stabley, Fred W., Sr., 111, 115 Stagg High School Chargers, 266–269 Steadman, John, 69 Steele, Bob, 169–170 Steinbrenner, George, 5, 11 stereotyping, non-American athletes, 277 Stern, David, 196 Stevenson, Alexandra, 153 Stewart, Connie, 115 Stewart, Tony, 158 St. Johns Redmen, 104 St. Joseph’s University, 49 St. Joseph’s University Hawks, 102–103 St. Louis Browns, 8 St. Louis Cardinals, 190 Stockton, John, 89 Stokes, Maurice, 209 Stoudt, Glenn, 37 St. Peter’s College, 104–106 the subject in the pitch, 59–63 Sussman, Marjorie, 114 Swoopes, Sheryl, 197 T Tagliabue, Paul, 171 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 29, 191
Index Tampa Bay Devil Rays, 173, 285 Tarkanian, Jerry, 4 Tarkenton, Fran, 15 Taylor, Alan, 286 Taylor, Zack, 8 Team Marketing Report, 36 team sports. See college athletics publicity departments; professional team sports publicity departments technology, using successfully, 63–66, 84–87, 109. See also sports publicity: future of television regional sports networks, 310–311 sports on non-American, 274–278 television sports publicity the agency side, 288–289 booking the professional athlete, 89, 129–130 changes in, 300–301 controlled media, 310–311 cross-promotional opportunities, 302–303 history, 299–300 media writers and, 300–301 news shows, 79–83 pioneers in, 6 the pitch, 79–84 prioritizing for, 126 10 (film), 74 tennis, circuit publicity model, 154–156 Tennis Week, 59 Testaverde, Vinny, 226 Theismann, Joe, 16 Thome, Jim, 74–75 Thom McAnn theory, 62–63 Thompson, Daley, 88 Thomson, Bobby, 225 Title IX, 183, 185 Today Show (television), 86
Index Todd, Richard, 223 The Tonight Show (television), 129 Toronto Maple Leafs, 309 Tour de France, 159 track and field, circuit publicity model, 161 transcription writing, basics of, 48 Triche, Arthur, 29 Turner, Dawn, 32 TWA, 207 Twiss, Jeff, 30–31 Tyson, Mike, 7 U Ultimate Fighting Championship, 161 Umbria, Italy, 265 unique events, 87–91, 99–100, 132 United States Basketball Writers Association, 115 University of Louisville, 49 University of Maryland, 243 University of Memphis, 90 University of Michigan, 131 University of Nebraska, 98 University of Oregon, 89 USA Today, 36, 59, 67–68, 100 USGA (United States Golf Association), 156–157, 277–278 USTA (United States Tennis Association ), 155–156, 277 Utah Jazz, 89 V Valdiserri, Roger, 15–16 Valvano, Jim, 100 Vanity Fair, 37 Veeck, Bill, 8 Veeck As In Wreck (Veeck), 8 Veeck family, 255
385 Vermeil, Dick, 171 video pitch concept, 83–84 Villanova University, 254 Vince Lombardi, 5 Vince Wladlika communications, 289 viral video, 295, 306, 308 Virginia Slims Tour, 184 Vista, Nick, 111, 113–115 volleyball circuit publicity model, 161 women’s, 201 volunteering, 19–23 W Wade, Virginia, 185 Wahl, Larry, xv Wallace, Chris, 33–34 Wall Street Journal, Weekend Section, 36–37 Walsh, Christy, 16–17 Wanamaker, John, 94 Ward, Arch, 111 Ward, Charlie, 192 Washington Nationals, 277 Webber, Chris, 131 Webber, Dick, 159 Webber, Pete, 67–68 Web sites. See also Internet blogs, 47–48, 62, 86–87, 307 building content for, 40 the notes pitch and, 86–87 posting injury information on, 238 team-specific, 309–310 using addresses in publications, 108 West, Ned, 113 Westchester Golden Apples, 206 The Westchester Journal News, 30 West Palm Beach Expos, 29
386 Whitaker, Jack, 103 White, Reggie, 192 Whitted, Corey, 23 Widmer, Mario, 272 Wie, Michelle, 160, 185, 195 Wiegmann, Casey, 170 William Morris agency, 145 Williams, DeAngelo, 90 Williams, Jay, 49 Williams, Jerome, 290–291 Williams, Serena, 193, 197 Williams, Venus, 195, 273 Wimbledon, 85–86, 148, 234, 265, 278–279 Winchell, Walter, 2 Wine Spectator Magazine, 78, 195 Wladlika, Vince, 289 WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association), 185, 186, 195–197, 202 Womack, Tony, 190 “Women Reporters in the Men’s Locker Room: Rugged Terrain” (Druzin), 190–192 Women’s Professional Fastpitch, 202 women’s sports cultural and social traditions and, 193–194 finding advocates for, 197–198 finding the story, 186–187 history, 184–185, 200–203 individual professional vs. team sports, 200–201 introduction, 183–184 non-American media coverage, 193–194, 272–273 participation opportunities, 199–200 prize money, 200
Index the sex symbol issue, 193 sexual diversity and equality, 187–195 WTA/LPGA case study, 195–196 WUSA/WNBA case study, 195–197 Women’s Sports Foundation, 197 Women’s World Cup, 194, 202 Woods, Randy, 223 Woods, Tiger, 156 Worcester, Anne, 85–86, 188, 256–257 Working Girl (film), 25–26 World Cup, 2006, 265 WPVA (Women’s Professional Volleyball Association), 201 Wright, David, 43 writing, basics of blogs, 47–48 distribution methods, 40–41 the facts, 43, 45, 47, 108, 137–138 fact sheets, 51–54 feature story, 46–47 game notes, 51–54, 138 grammar, 43, 47 the lead, 42 media advisory, 44–45 media guides, 48–51, 107–108 names and nicknames, 44 note taking, 45 press release, 40–45 the questionnaire, 97–98 questions role in, 45 quotations, 42–43, 45 rules for publication success, 108 schedule cards and posters, 107
387
Index style guides, 44 transcription writing, 48 WTA, 180, 193, 195–196, 272 WTA Tour, 188, 200, 256–257, 278–279 WUSA, 185, 195–197, 202
Y Yao Ming, 276–277 YES Network, 301 Yormark, Brett, 252–253 Z Zwikel, Toby, 287–288
