Why our newsrooms need "Mavericks at Work"

I'm on a mission to read 5 books on my 10-day holiday break. The first I picked up was the much-acclaimed new release "Mavericks at Work" (Amazon link, authors' website).

The book is written by William C. Taylor and Polly G. LaBarre, two authors with a Fast Company magazine pedigree. Their mission is to highlight people and companies who are breaking the mold in their respective industries and share the lessons they've learned over the years. It's not new literary ground, but the stories are great and the lessons are many.

I've taken pages of notes in my journal, but here are a couple of good bullet-points I'll lift out as ideas for our newsrooms.

• You don't win by playing by the rules of the game, but by setting the rules of the game. You've probably heard this before, but it's true. And this is a great source of hope for any business (such as a newsroom) that is currently playing from behind. Whether you're winning or losing, the greatest chance for to shake things up lies in your ability to innovate your product. Frankly, it's the greatest chance for survival for all of us, to get right down to it.
  
  
• Don't think about the competition. Think about your customers. How much time do we spend poring over Nielsen overnights, and now LPM/Demos? How many decisions do we make about our news content by trying to decipher a message in last night's numbers? But what we should be doing more is finding ways to get feedback from our viewers directly. When was the last time you had a conversation with your viewers, and how did that go? Do they like what you're doing? What stories do they want to see? What do they like most/least about your product? Do you have a system to process this kind of feedback to make bigger decisions about the way your newsroom does news?
  
  
• If your business were to go away tomorrow, would you customers miss you? It's a bit of a morbid question, but you better be asking it. A more specific question (and hopeful) question is, "What would your customers miss the most?" Do you have unique content that your customers can't get anywhere else? If not, you need it, and now's the time to be thinking of it.
  

I won't crib too much from the book, but here are a few more of the best messages.

• Be the benchmark.
  
• Don't be afraid to reject customers that don't match your core values. This is very much against a broadcaster's way of thinking. We love everyone, right? But at some point, you ought to think about picking your ground and going with the customers who'll meet you there.
  
• The company with the smartest customers wins. How are you making your customers smarter?
  

"Mavericks at Work" is a must-read for anyone (like me) who thinks the status quo is a dead-end road, even in businesses as long-standing as television and news.