Extra! Extra! Read who is going rogue! Photo-ocweekly.com
Sorry Sarah Palin, this one is not about you, but perhaps it is the sort of rogue course that you hope to set one day.
This story hits closer to home, right here in Oklahoma. In fact, it occurred during my time at The Oklahoman. But make no mistake, it is about going rogue. I did not know that I should have teamed with former Governor Palin for a book deal at the time. In fact, I was very upset at the term.
I was deemed a rogue manager. Why?
Because I stopped falsified circulation, at least that which fell within my purview.
Before going forward, you might ask, “Is there some self-vindication in this?”
My answer, “You betcha.” Oops, where did that come from?
But I share this here in the way of a personal struggle. You see, I’m not use to not getting bad systems, broken processes, and all manner of other confounding factors out in the open and fixed with due urgency. But after almost 4 years, nothing I had done had much impact upon some terrible practices.
After more than four years using what I had learned over the previous half century in the way of kaizen or continuous improvement and living through these initiatives dying a silent death in favor of the status quo--looking for contractors not smart enough to know that they were working for a nickel an hour; I challenged the system even more aggressively.
I called every new customer in the fourth of the state for which I was responsible on the day their subscription was scheduled to start and asked if they received their paper. This is generally considered a good practice in most managerial and customer service worlds. The problem was that when they said, “Yes, I got one but did not order it,” what I did was considered unacceptable. If I could not convince the person to subscribe, I would stop the subscription.
When this happens two or three times a day, it has little impact. When 80-100% of the people contacted say that they did not order it or that they told the guy on the phone no three times and hung up on him, then there is a trend. When this trend continues for months, there is a systemic problem.
Here is the longstanding truth about systems. They produce exactly what they are set up to do. That does not mean they produce what somebody wants them to do, it means you get what you get because that’s what the system produces. In this case, the system was producing falsified circulation. Nobody up the chain wanted to change that.
How does a newspaper company make money if people don’t pay for their subscriptions? Advertising makes over 80% of the revenue. The more circulation on the books, the more you can charge advertisers. So the individual who never ordered the paper or the one that the telemarketer told her it was free or the person signed up by a telemarketer who did not have a working phone, all count as paid circulation. There is something called the Audit Bureau of Circulation that is something of an honest broker in this process, but if you can live with a deceptive approach to growing circulation, fooling an auditor is small potatoes.
During this period, I stopped all of the bogus circulation that I encountered, reported it to my manager, his manager, and on a less frequent basis to the vice president of operations. The result of my 20 hour days to carve out a modicum of integrity in this organization was that the subscriptions were restarted, most of the time without even contacting the customer. This happened time and time again.
The problem is that—well other than the obvious one that when integrity goes out the window in a business protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution and that is thereby entrusted with policing its own ranks, these publications lose credibility and value in a free society; financially, The Oklahoman was placing an enormous burden on the backs of the independent contractors that delivered these papers. Fifty, one hundred, and sometimes more bogus starts on a single contractor’s routes were crushing them financially. The contractor could recover part of this cost eventually, if the paperwork wasn’t misplaced two or three times, and if he could even afford to stay in business long enough. When your profit for a paper route is $300 and there are $500 worth of charges for falsified starts, contractors go under.
Where did these bogus subscriptions come from? Contracted telemarketers. For years this was the drug of choice for boosting circulation without having to make a real sale. There was considerable deniability in this approach. The standard reply of senior managers was, “we took care of it as it was identified to us.” When a seasoned manager identifies alarming trends to the VP level, prudence demands something a bit more proactive.
The telemarketer would often just tell the customer that they were getting the paper for free and all they needed was the address. Some telemarketers went a little farther and signed up customers with disconnected telephones. Give them credit for boldness but not smarts. It is very hard to call a customer who does not have a working telephone, much less sell a subscription to one.
For years, the bogus subscription rate ran about 25-50%. When it consistently went above 50%, I started stopping the bogus starts as they occurred. Previously, many contractors considered all starts in good faith until they discovered otherwise or a junior manager uncovered the ruse. It was at this time that I was branded a rogue manager.
I could almost understand this falsification out of a sense of desperation if there was no other way. I would not condone it, but at least I could empathize with the senior company officers if it was crank up the bogus subscriptions or we are going under. But that was not the case.
Time after time I submitted proposals and case studies that showed:
· People will buy the product through legitimate sales approaches
· Subscribers that were treated with integrity from the beginning were more likely to renew their subscription.
· The right way made more money.
I thought that final point would have sold Satan himself, but it did not. The ability to manipulate the circulation numbers was obviously more attractive than making more money by treating the customer with the integrity and respect that he deserved.
I enjoyed working with many people at The Oklahoman, but eventually, I decided to leave. I knew that this was not the place for me. My talents were not producing a return that this organization wanted. I have always valued loyalty as a leadership trait, even to the point of speaking the truth in love regardless of the consequences. I could not be loyal and abide by these deceptive practices that took place in this environment. This was not my calling or my purpose in this life, and no amount of knowledge, skill, or ability that I poured into this place was going to change that.
As I consider the role that our struggles have in our lives as far as revealing our God-given purpose; I can clearly see that I was supposed to be doing something where I could provide my Master with a good return on investment and bless those around me. That would never come to fruition at The Oklahoman.
I really didn’t mind being dubbed a rogue manager. Peter tells us that we are strangers in the world and the more set apart I was from the ethos of The Oklahoman, the better. I know now with clarity and certainty that I did not want citizenship in that organization.
Going rogue was the best thing that I ever did!
Most experience becomes clearer in hindsight. This was no exception. My struggles—though unsuccessful in changing horrible company practices—changed me and caused me to seek more intently my God-given purpose in this world.
Take the 30 Day Challenge and live a life without regrets.
Comments
Tom,
I've always wondered if what The Oklahoman says about itself is actually true. Like, the organization proclaims itself, "The Nation's No. 1 Source For OU Sports Coverage."
Oh, really? Just because someone thought that up as a catchy slogan, is it true? Does the organization really have the best coverage? By whose standards? How is this verified?
Goes back to the issue you identified in your piece: Integrity.
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