We have intuitively known for ages that the gateway to a 2.0 world – a world of participation and real partnership – is not merely the adoption of a new set of tools – but the mindset of the influencers in the organization. Now we know that this is an empirical fact.

In 2009 I was advising KETC, a public TV station in St Louis, as they tried a something truly novel. The Station had in its own market just completed a project funded by CPB, to see if it could use its Trust to convene the community to help each other get through the Mortgage Crisis. The challenge being that St Louis was locked down with fear and shame and it was all but impossible to find safe sources of help. The project was to find out who could be trusted and to help them set up a network of support and to connect this to the people. It forced the station to itself work across the silos and to connect TV with the web and with its outreach. The success of this experiment caused CPB to fund a much bigger test. 32 of the hardest hit markets in America were chosen. In each market CPB asked the TV and the Radio stations to partner and the entire group partnered as a group. Again the task was to reach into the community, to find those who could help, help them partner and to connect them to the people.

Here is a link to the full details of the project. We were in effect using the Mortgage Crisis as a Social Object.

View Facing the Mortgage Crisis, Participating Stations and Markets in a larger map
Here is a map of the scale of the work. If you expand it you will see the names of the stations.

So what happened? What happened is that some stations did brilliantly. Some did ok and others went through the motions. What was the difference? We found that the difference had nothing to do with any tools – we all used the same ones and we ll helped each other use them. No the Difference was mindset. The Mindset of the leadership of our a group of leaders at each station.

We were able to categorize the stations as you see in this chart. Here is more detail of what these categories mean. I offer it up because you can assess your own organization by using this screen.

Tier 1

• The station knows that they must shift their work patterns and focus on the external—they have a positive and open mindset

• They seek to shift their norms—despite what resources are available to make this shift

• Core beliefs inside the station have shifted and there is an emotional attachment between the station and the people they serve

• Communication is strong internally and externally

• Internal collaboration has become the norm, silos are minimized

• They are able to utilize all of their assets, leveraging the broadcast component and maximizing social and online media, community involvement and partnerships

• They listen first to their partners and their community, and they understand the value of these relationships in helping define a course of action for their work

• They are able to take direction from their community advisors and have a willingness to cede control of certain aspects to other organizations.

• Station leadership is strong and backs the work directly or makes certain that key staff are supported

• Relationship between TV and Radio is secure (where applicable).  Both organizations experience the benefits of working together to help their community

Tier 2

• Internal collaboration is emerging and is valued, silos are beginning to minimize

• They’ve made relative progress from where they started and very much want to make the leap, but don’t have the capacity, skill set, people or road map to shift their focus beyond the traditional work.

• They’re beginning to make the leap from station at the center to ceding control to partners

• They are exploring what social media and online can mean to their work

• Station leadership wants to make the leap to this new kind of work, but the shift is nascent

• Relationship between TV and Radio (where applicable) is improving

Tier 3

• They think they’ve done this before, but do not understand the nuances of why this work is different

• Staff work in silos, but collaborate ad hoc

• Still working through old processes/norms

• Station leadership is supportive, but invested in traditional work and won’t alter investments to new work

• Little or no collaboration between TV and Radio

Tier 4

• Regard this as just another project with funds attached—a beginning and an end—rather than a capacity builder

• Traditional approach with station at the center

• Unable to form meaningful and equal partnerships with community organizations—station is still very much in control

• Use social media very little and do not leverage multi-platform—broadcast is still only priority

• Station leadership regards this as business as usual

• Staff work in silos

These characteristics are meaningful—they are not simply an assessment of how the stations performed in this initiative.  The characteristics of the top performing stations help us understand how to make the shift to public media.  These characteristics are the key to making the case for the relevance and significance of public media in our communities and in our country.  This is the case for the sustainability of our industry.

MINDSET = IMPACT = SUSTAINABILITY

The evidence is clear—Tier 1 stations generated more external grant resources, dedicated more staff, forged more partnerships, hosted more discussions — on-air and online—produced more reports, and spurred more talk in their communities.  This in turn had big implications for community outcomes in terms of citizen resource utilization and other media attention—meaning more calls were generated to 211 in these communities and there was more media coverage beyond the station.