Infallible

My takeaway from the Toyota situation is the trap that infallibility can be.

For a couple of decades Toyota has been praised for the results of its engineering and production systems. Writers, analysts and  business leaders of all stripes have examined Toyota's processes and philosophy in the hope of achieving similar results in their organization. Most fail.

But that amount of positive feedback can build a sense of being infallible, that ones engineering is failure-free, that your systems will detect every problem before it is a problem. It can breed a culture that has a hard time accepting that the process might be generating errors.

This is not to defend Toyota, as it is clear that they have some engineering issues to work out. There are allegations that choices were made that were good from the financial view, but not the best from the view of the customer or the public at large.

Toyota finds itself at a rare moment. It can open itself to close scrutiny not only by the public, the press and government, but also to itself. Every step in the process of design and manufacturing should be open to change, to work out problems. Where in the system do problems rise? Can anyone, regardless of rank, point out a problem, or must it "go through channels"? How quickly are problems declared problems, and are they solved?

We all have processes, and we all regrettably produce errors. How quick are you to identify the source of an error? How quickly is it fixed?

Stay busy.

Peter

Checklists

I have had a run of projects that have a surprising number of questions unanswered at the start- things that would become expensive changes down the line.

Every industry has it complexity, but there is just a dizzying number of options in a video edit. With the news that using a checklist cuts down on surgical deaths, I imagine that using a similar, standardized format can reduce confusion, delays, overruns, and most importantly, looking like you don't know what you are doing in front of the client.

A checklist would be doubly beneficial for the sales department, who are usually long on enthusiasm but short on technical knowledge. In the excitement of a new sale, it would be very easy to not ask the important questions that the technical staff will need to know. What format is the project being shot on? By who? What are the deliverables? When are they due? Who gives final approval?

This doesn't have to be a twenty page legally binding document- projects always change a bit from beginning to end. A simple one or two sheet summary of the important details will answer 95% of the questions, and will hopefully cut down on the email loops one gets sucked in to.

What would you put on your checklist?

Peter

SCOTUS and TV

Today's SCOTUS ruling that corporations and unions can inject as much money into political campaigns as they want has an upside for our industry: lots more political TV ads will be made, and millions more political TV spots will be purchased.

Since business has deep pockets and an ongoing interest in pending legislation, perhaps the "political cycle" income at TV stations will flatten as ads are bought year round and in non-election years, too.

I expect to see plenty of "Paid For By The Chamber Of Commerce" taglines in my future.

Peter

Caring

The client doesn't care about how hard you or I might find the jobs they give us.

They do care if they have asked us to do something that is expensive or time consuming, especially when there is a cheap or fast equivalent.

If you and your client have a good long-term relationship, you will tell them of the cheaper, faster alternative, and even if they don't choose it, telling them will cement your partnership.

If you have a bad relationship with the client, or view each job as an opportunity to squeeze as many dollars out of the client, you build up the easy and cheap to appear hard and expensive. You view the truly hard and expensive not as the opportunity to develop a new skill or be a hero to your client, but as another boat payment.

In business, bad relationships don't last long. If most of your relationships with clients are bad, neither will you.

Peter

Perspective

I am forever in awe of those who bring us images like this.

My work today seems unimportant in comparison.

Peter

Costs

Personally, I'm surprised The Prime Time Leno Experiment failed.

My assumption was that an hour of Leno was so much cheaper to produce than an hour of anything else, the total profit would be higher even if nobody watched it. I didn't factor in a station revolt.

The Leno Fail is good for everyone working in TV. It's a reminder that you can't just roll out anything and expect people to watch, and there is still demand for the scripted series- which means many more people will have work compared to a talk show.

I hear the laptops clacking away.

Peter

Maximum Annoyance

One of my local broadcast stations is in a retransmission fight with the local cable company. (I get my locals off of satellite, so I don't have a dog in this fight.) I was watching a football game in HD when I got a rude surprise.

The local station ran its crawl reminding us that if you were watching this program through cable, you might be losing access in a few days. Fine- that's their best weapon in this public war. But how they did it stunned me.

To run the crawl, master control had to switch the HD feed to SD. Every time. For 2 of every 10 minutes or so. In other words, A LOT.

That's where these public fights go bad- the collateral damage like me. Because I, an innocent bystander, got drug into the fight, I now think the station owners are:

A. Jerks.
B. Technical dorks for not having an HD crawl
C. Surprised that they haven't set up a direct feed to the cable company so they could isolate who sees the crawl.

This is customer service at its worst- making your user experience as bad as possible as leverage in bargaining.

The station will win this battle, they always do.

But they are losing the war for viewers with tactics like this.

Peter