New GMs Must Be Prepared For Success. Why Aren’t Station Groups Helping Them?

Hank Price

Every time I see a new general manager announcement, and there have been quite a few lately, I wonder how prepared that person is for the job.

My first year as a general manager was a disaster. Like so many other first timers, I had worked my way up through the ranks and thought I knew everything about stations. Was I wrong.

It’s one thing to watch from the sidelines and criticize what seem like dumb decisions, but quite another to suddenly have the responsibility of making those decisions. New GMs go overnight from great confidence in a department they have mastered to a new world of confusing issues no one thought to tell them about.

All of that is complicated by the fear of revealing just how little they know about the intricacies of other departments. The last thing any new GM wants is to look dumb in front of their boss.

In addition to my personal learning curve, my first group head was a micro manager who insisted I be one, too. I tried to do it his way but attempting to make every important decision for every department, then checking with my boss for instructions, went against my grain. Even worse, the department heads became frustrated by my asserting so much control, not to mention the length of time it took to get answers.

This went on for more than a year until I got a fateful call from my group head, who said he was “hearing things about the station.” He planned to fly into town and meet me at the airport restaurant. The old joke, “Meet me at the airport and bring your car keys,” immediately popped to mind.

That meeting turned out to be career changing. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I told him things were not going well at all. I had lost the respect of the department heads. They realized I had been calling him about every important decision. If that was the kind of general manager he wanted, it wasn’t me.

I expected to be fired. Instead, he said “You have to fix this.” I said I would but not to expect any more daily calls about station decisions. I could see he didn’t like that answer, but to his credit he did not say no.

Over the following months things got a lot better. Of course, I kept my boss informed about the things he needed to know and discussed major decisions with him.

Even though we had very different management styles, the boss and I came to respect each other. He was a brilliant guy who taught me a lot about financial and budgeting skills. Still, I was surprised a few years later when he promoted me to a top-20 market.

One of the many things I learned from that experience was that bringing different skills to the table is a good thing. Because I was incapable of micromanaging a station, I realized that to be successful I would need to recruit the best people available for every department head position, then let them do their jobs. My primary role would be to keep people on track toward station goals while giving each frank and honest coaching. In short, my best route to success was to do everything in my power to help each of my direct reports be successful.

Of course, it’s not exactly that simple. General managers must be fully engaged and there are some decisions only they can make, but hiring the best people, then challenging them to achieve big things, is a pretty good recipe for success.

Having coached many new general managers over the years, I’ve found most go through a three-year cycle. The first year everything is new, and I get a lot of calls. In year two, things become familiar, and I get far fewer calls. By year three, the new GM is comfortable in the job and calls become rare.

I’ve also found that every new general manager makes pretty much the same mistakes, so it’s easy to help them avoid common potholes. There’s nothing special about this. A little coaching by any seasoned GM can go a long way. Unfortunately, that is not the industry norm.

Ours has always been a sink-or- swim business, so we have a long history of throwing people into new jobs with little or no preparation. Once in the position, they are expected to instantly know everything about running a station. Add to this the natural reticence of someone to admit they don’t understand all of what they are doing, and you have the potential for failure.

When you think about it, why are we throwing untrained people into the most important job in a television station? Why take that kind of chance with a multimillion-dollar profit center?

It amazes me that most companies don’t offer any internal training for their general managers, or department heads for that matter. Even a well-thought-out workshop run by experienced GMs in the same company would make a tremendous difference. Following that with ongoing one-on-one coaching could pay huge dividends.

Having seen so many new general managers derail over the years, I am convinced companies have an obligation to do more to train, develop and support new GMs. Doing so is simply good business.

Hank Price spent 30 years leading television stations for Hearst, CBS and Gannett while concurrently building a career in executive education. He is the author of Leading Local Television and two other books.