Even today, I find it takes an extra boost of energy to go up to someone new. It’s far easier to say, “Next time,” and quietly exit the room. But what a missed opportunity to connect and learn.
Once I began to force myself to interact with the world, I began to gain more faith and confidence in myself. I believed that there was always a “better way” to do things. And that became my mantra, my mission: the quest for better. It gave me the courage to act in spite of my awkwardness and fear.
At heart, I’m an explorer. So I’ve learned to use my natural curiosity as my guide. It’s the camouflage that covers the insecurity of not knowing. It means constantly looking outward, constantly pushing myself to ask the next question.
What I was learning was the skill called social courage, a concept that originated in the literature of “Positive Psychology,” which studies the strengths that allow individuals and groups to thrive. New York Times columnist David Brooks offered a memorable take on the idea a few years ago: “In today’s loosely networked world, people with social courage have amazing value,” he wrote. “Everyone goes to conferences and meets people, but some people invite six people to lunch afterward and follow up with four carefully tended friendships forevermore. Then they spend their lives connecting people across networks. People with social courage are extroverted in issuing invitations, but introverted in conversation—willing to listen 70% of the time.”
The idea has an almost religious sensibility to me. It emphasizes the importance of listening and caring. But more important, it speaks to the value of developing social courage as a habit, a muscle you can strengthen. It is not something innate that you are born with, but something you can consciously develop. The way to build social courage is by practicing social courage.
My Return to NBC and the Advantages of White Space
From the moment I trusted my instincts to return to NBC from CBS, I loved my new job as vice president of News Media Relations. I’d made the leap, even though I couldn’t articulate why, having spent a couple of good years after leaving Turner at CBS, the number one rated network. There, I had been a director of East Coast entertainment publicity, overseeing a bigger team of publicists and the media campaigns we pitched for mostly Hollywood-based celebrities, like young George Clooney in the one-season wonder The Hat Squad or emerging ingénue Halle Barry in a Roots sequel. I distinguished myself by injecting creativity into our campaigns in small ways (a box of cereal being stabbed by a fake knife distributed to reporters to interest them in an upcoming “serial killer” series, for example) and in bigger ones (like star-studded movie screenings). Mostly I deepened my skills in communications, especially in messaging and in selling ideas to reporters to write stories about us. But I wasn’t intellectually charged by the entertainment topics. To me, to work in network news at that time was to believe you were at the center of the universe. It was almost an addiction. Your life followed the rhythm of the news cycle. That’s what excited me. That was at the heart of my return.
Even with NBC in disaster mode, I realized the job was about diving into the fog and seeing opportunity where others see only confusion. Some people hate the idea of not having a clear path forward, of not knowing where to go. I am someone who loves wallowing in possibility, where I cannot see all the answers. I often use the term “fog flyer” to describe the excitement and fear I feel navigating ambiguity. And that’s what I felt at NBC.
For me, post-crash NBC News turned out to be a start-up on a huge scale. It offered the kind of opportunity I call white space: a positive void on which you can project nothing but possibility. When I arrived, the mood at NBC News was hopeful, but just barely. So many people had been fired or had left because of the turmoil.
The department I took over was basically empty, providing me the opportunity to create a new team and be part of the reinvented newsroom that newly hired News president Andrew Lack was building.
It was the ultimate opportunity.
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Andy Lack was a natty dresser, except that his thinning, dark hair was always wildly askew. He was a daredevil of a journalist, someone who earlier in his career had the temerity to take on the venerable 60 Minutes by launching 48 Hours, an act that won him general acclaim but also scorn among the traditionalists for being a petulant disrupter (the reason behind many of the calls trying to persuade me not to work with him). Andy’s booming voice gave us all the sense that something good could happen—from questioning the accepted approach to encouraging diverse ideas, pushing people out of their comfort zones, and creating a sense of urgency around producing something new and better.
It was here that I and the team I convened literally from nothing—Alex Constantinople, John Bianchi, and Heidi Pokorny—bonded together in a mission for what could be, for turning that white space into something meaningful. We were constantly plotting and planning new ways to rid ourselves of our underdog status.
Steve Friedman, a bombastic and colorful Today Show producer who walked around the Today Show offices swinging a big baseball bat as a sign of intimidation, conceived and led the rebirth of the show’s brilliant glass-walled “Window on the World” studio, originally built in the 1950s.
When Window on the World was ready, our PR team put all our energy into selling its premiere. We focused on every detail, from handcrafted invitations for our “coming out party” to major news articles. Window on the World became a statement of openness and transparency, of community—the kinds of things we take for granted now.
Late-night talk show hosts did stand-up jokes about the Window. Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel appeared with the Window in editorial cartoons. People even planned their vacations, proposals, and retirements for Window exposure. We weren’t just back—we were culturally relevant. I showed the early shades of the marketer I would become as I pushed NBC News to target new audience segments for viewership. I didn’t have time to ask if an idea was okay. We were making it up as we went along.
Then there was the launch of MSNBC, which made the Today Window on the World launch look like an off-Broadway production. The creation of a new breed of cable network that partnered GE and Microsoft was a big deal. We generated an onslaught of content, stories, and amplification that starts slow and then gets so loud you can’t ignore it. It helped that two of America’s biggest companies were coming together to create the first potential competitor to CNN. But we went beyond even those expectations, and our team was recognized inside NBC and beyond for our good work.
What I remember most was the camaraderie that came with having nothing to lose but wanting nothing more than to win. Our PR team members were constantly pushing one another to get better, to do more. We spent weeks on a project we called “Witness to History” to retarget news to students. We didn’t have a budget and never got one, but it didn’t matter. Not all of our ideas got green-lit; the fun was in the coming together and the improvisation. It happened in tense moments, too. During any crisis or major news story (from the Oklahoma City bombing to the O. J. Simpson case) our team sat together in a makeshift media “war room,” usually a conference room with four TVs, each tuned into a different news network. There we chronicled every minute of coverage in a race to declare NBC’s firsts and exclusives versus the other news networks. We took the wins seriously and fought with media reporters to get duly recognized. Alternately joking, cursing, and laughing, we were “all in” at those moments—certainly I was, the frenetic race to win bringing out my competitive spirit.
And I loved working with Andy. He was a mercurial character; like in the nursery rhyme, when he was good, he was very good, and when he was bad, he was horrid. He wore his energetic spirit on his finely tailored sleeves. There was a “hail-fellow-well-met” quality to Andy. He also loved new ideas and encouraged me to try things. He never treated our team like we were “just” the PR department. In our regular editorial and staff meetings he’d ask, �
�What does PR think? What new ideas do you have for us?” He’d roll up his sleeves and help us write copy—he had started his career as an adman—or brainstorm campaign ideas with us. It sent a strong message that we were a valued part of the team.
Andy backed us when the journalists didn’t want to be pushed to do PR (which I thought ironic for people whose livelihood was interviewing others). Once, believing that NBC News needed to be more relevant with younger viewers, we developed a significant outreach campign, coming up with creative ideas to pitch to consumer media that normally didn’t cover television news. When we landed a big Interview magazine Q&A between Tom Brokaw and Shaquille O’Neal, Brokaw called me and said, “What are you all doing? My publicist is acting like a dog in heat—she won’t leave me alone. Why do I have to do this?” Keep going, Andy said. (And eventually, Tom did, too.)
Job Crafting
I often tell people looking for career advice, “Take the job that no one else wants.” Or the job where you see potential beyond what others see. This has been a key to my career—crafting additional projects and responsibilities that help the company while giving me room to grow and find joy. With lower expectations about the role from others, you have more room to experiment. When I worked briefly for a cable television trade association as a project coordinator, I launched a newsletter to keep members informed. It expanded the role, and me. With the public access television job, I started my own local community news show, taping it in the evenings after work. It fulfilled my interests in reporting and gave the channel more content.
Researchers Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton call such efforts “job crafting.” Job crafting offers people a way to actively shape their jobs to fit their needs, values, and preferences. With job crafting, they found, you shape your job to give your work additional meaning. What I like about this is that it reinforces the notion that you can use your skills—especially your imagination—to make work something special. And uniquely yours.
I know this to be true: in nearly every job there is room for trying new things, for adding projects, for customizing the job your way.
Here are some things to consider as you craft new parts of your job:
Can you make the case that what you are doing will impact the business?
Does it cost more? If so, start small to prove its impact. Establish where best to get the resources (i.e., interns, after-work volunteers).
Are you prepared to spend time off the clock to seed the new work?
Is someone else already doing it? Instead of grabbing someone else’s work, focus on the unclaimed areas of opportunity. Every business has them.
Convene a few colleagues over lunch and ask for input and help.
FOR MANAGERS: What are you doing to encourage self-directed work on your team? I believe in giving your team some degree of freedom to craft jobs that make them happier and more engaged, within the realm of what you have to do. Here is what I say to the teams I work with: “I don’t know how long we will be working together—I hope for a long time. But my commitment to you is that you should be able to do the best work of your career here. You need to find time and capacity to do the things you love within the goals of our team.”
Seed this idea. See what happens.
To this day, it was one of the best jobs I ever had. And it was one of the freest places I have ever worked. We created our own energy. We had a mission and a charismatic leader, and we created our story and made it happen.
That assignment was my entrepreneurial awakening—proof that I could be a change-maker in an organization. And it was one of my first lessons in grabbing the job that no one else wants and making it my own.
No Is Not Yet
Successful agitators for change are like prize-fighters who keep on getting hit but won’t go down. The hits never stop, because new ideas never become less threatening. So you have to learn how to take a punch and keep coming back for more.
Two years into my return to NBC, the SVP of corporate communications for all of NBC, Judy Smith—who would later become the inspiration for the Kerry Washington character in Scandal—left the company. Most of us weren’t surprised; she had come in from politics and seemed eager to work in Hollywood.
I saw myself as next in line. A big promotion, I was convinced, was my due. And then…nothing happened. For months the position stayed open, with no one even mentioning it to me. But I didn’t step up either. I hesitated to promote myself for her job because of my lack of confidence. I had left NBC earlier because I felt my voice hadn’t been heard; what would happen if I were ignored again? So I stewed silently.
I don’t embrace a confrontational mentality, but a drumbeat of indignation was growing inside me at that time. Anger can be a useful provocation for action, but you can’t live there. Tenacity is a better long-term game plan. At opportune moments, you must relentlessly push yourself forward, demanding that your achievements be acknowledged.
And so, six months after Judy left, I made my way determinedly into the office of our head of HR, Ed Scanlon.
Tall and lean, Ed had been at NBC since my first tenure. He had an apt nickname in the DC bureau. Whenever he came to town, people would run through the halls saying, “The Grim Reaper is coming!” He had the power to hire and fire, and people tried to avoid him.
As he swiveled to face me, I screwed up my courage and told him in as professional a voice as I could muster that I’d like to be considered for the job. Inside, I felt small. But Ed didn’t miss a beat. “Well,” he said. “Bob Wright and I thought of you, but you are a young mother. This job requires a lot of travel. We thought it wouldn’t work for you.”
I could have killed him. I was furious at the two of them for thinking they knew what was best for me and angry at myself for not stepping up earlier to make my interests known. But I learned something that day that I have never forgotten. Managers aren’t mind readers. They won’t know what you aspire to do unless you tell them. It doesn’t mean you will necessarily get the opportunity, but at least you will both know where you stand.
Luckily, I didn’t kill Ed. And I got the job.
My point isn’t that in a world of self-promoters it’s important to showcase your skills—though that’s true. My real point is that, as an agent of change, it is not just your job but your duty to push change forward—whether to better utilize your skills or to promote a new idea. Put yourself out there, with passion. And persevere. No skill in the world can overcome a lack of perseverance.
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In my new job working directly for Bob Wright as the head of communications across all of NBC—from news to sports and entertainment—my role was much broader than at NBC News. I was now a peer of News president Andy Lack and other major players, like legendary producer Dick Ebersol. I had a seat at the “big kids’ table.”
Working for Bob brought its own lessons. Bob was an idea machine—some of them absolutely horrible, some of them brilliant insights into the future—and he was always putting them out there. His ideas led NBC to acquire CNBC and then Universal.
In my new position, I oversaw the NBC Page program, made famous by the Kenneth Ellen Parcell character on 30 Rock, and I was thrust into a series of communications situations that expanded my leadership skills—and put me on the front line of a number of crises.
Frankly, I didn’t excel at the persuasion arts back then. I’m not a natural-born salesperson, at least in the “give me the order now” way. But I did excel at listening and self-control. When I heard rejection in the other person’s voice, I reacted to it as muted encouragement. Through persistence I became persistent. Habits of behavior precede habits of the mind.
My efforts to persist evolved into a concept I call “No = Not Yet,” something that crystallized for me while I was working under Bob. In 1998, I pitched Bo
b a new start-up business at NBC that I thought might take off. It wasn’t going to transform the world, but I thought it could connect us more deeply with our viewers. And I was passionate about it. The idea was to create an NBC Experience Store on the ground floor of NBC’s 30 Rock Manhattan headquarters, with huge display windows inspired by the Window on the World studio.
The projected return on investment was decent, but not strong enough to make it a surefire bet. And so my idea was turned down; the CFO called it economically ill-advised. I started to think it might be a dumb idea. But my “quiet courage” voice urged me on. It told me to reach higher, leap wider, move faster. It told me to try again. So I sought the advice of others who could help me make the proposal better. I reached out to advisors who had helped the NBA launch its Fifth Avenue store. However, my second attempt was shot down as well. By this time I could “see” the store, its features, the colorful merchandise. It had to become real. I wasn’t ready to give up.
It was my third attempt to sell the idea to Bob that was the charm (or the curse): I got the green light! Bob approved the budget and agreed to our request of a launch team, including set designers, technicians, and a big news director to make the experience truly unique. To quote Bob, “You make it so darn hard to say ‘No’—and I really tried.”
The NBC Experience Store didn’t dramatically impact NBC’s bottom line, but it did delight tourists for eighteen years. And it helped me overcome my natural disinclination to put myself out there and to persevere.
As I would see over and over again in my career, learning how to withstand disappointment is critical for anyone who hopes to effect change in an organization. Disappointment, delays, obstacles, recalcitrance, and resistance—they are inevitable in fomenting change. It is in how you handle yourself during the constant tussle between the thrill of a new idea and its adoption that the real work lies.
Imagine It Forward Page 4
