Wild Bill

Unlearning is the key to successful innovation.

I wish to have these words tattooed across my forehead so that I never forget them. That is what I learnt during my two year long career as a journalist in ‘our Great News Channel’.  It’s a really simple two step process. First, you list all the assumptions people have about a story. Then, you break them all.

It was my boss, the editor of Our Great News Channel who taught me these things.  It was him who set the core value of my writing both in journalism and creative writing. “Content is king”. He used to remand all his staff from time to time. Get your hands on great content and present it in an entertaining manner because infotainment is the best means to keep your audience hooked in information age.

He was a boss with brilliant ideas and very liberal way of leadership. When I looked at his ideas and his ability to build networks of knowledgeable people, a nickname just popped into my head. This man understood that networks hold the secrets to the eternal fountain of information. Hence I nicknamed him after one of the greatest spy masters in modern history

Wild Bill.

Despite his nickname, Wild Bill is actually a wise, mild mannered gentleman who, till date, desperately struggles to find and train talented staff. He however finds himself leading teams consisting mostly of average individuals and the situation is pathetic! There is no other way you can explain the plight of a person who once ran the powerful Entertainment Society of Goa but today leads a small local Marathi newspaper.

When I got my first job at the news channel, Wild Bill was its editor. (He later went to a newspaper which is referred to in this blog as ‘The Daily Devil’.).  He had a fundamental belief that our channel had a reasonably intelligent audience who wanted ‘infotainment’ and not just entertainment. You had to make the people think.  

However, when he joined the newspaper, the same person was now saying “it was not our job to enlighten or educate the readers. “ Keep an eye on the markets and take a neutral political stance and give the readers what they want to read.

It seem to me like deviation from once own standards. I directly confronted Wild Bill about it. He listened to my complaints with the unyielding patience of a Buddhist monk and later laid out his logic.

“The target of Marathi newspaper is mostly average rural people who are relatively unexposed to global content.  The  Marathi reader base is slowly shrinking due to the growing influence of English and we must do what we can to hold the readers that we have.”

However, Bill’s creativity ensured that the newspaper had some exclusive content. He introduced a special page named KG2College in the newspaper to cover only academic news and events and issued orders to make significant alterations to usual page designs on major  international observances-a decision that truly reflected his globalized persona. On 11 September 2012, most other papers had a small memorial news of of 9/11 but Wild Bills global news page featured the outline of New York with an analysis of how the American mindset had changed 11 years after the attack 

Wild Bill is a wise and creative leader but his reluctance to assert himself makes it difficult for him to control people. I had seen this closely in Our Great News Channel. True to his gentlemanly nature, Bill never raised his voice.  The high level staff obeyed Bill out of respect for his qualities but the lower rung,  took undue advantage of his lenient nature.  It was the assistant news editor to whom the job of controlling the erring staff fell. She is a stern young lady who will sue me if I dare write a word about her. Wild Bill had an eye for talented people and he knew their rightful places.but he could not control them.

Things would have worked better for Bill had his staff understood that his liberal leadership would enable the staff to learn, innovate and create. Wild Bill fought the decision of the management to block social networking sites thinking that social media will help detect breaking news at the earliest. How many people in his staff used the social media for exactly that is a matter of speculation.  I spent every minute of my free time watching documentaries on Youtube and reading business and leadership related articles from Twitter feeds which one year later make up the content of this very article.

Happy as I was about his liberal way of leadership, I was very disappointed by Bill’s complete lack of aggression and ambition. In his 20 years as a journalist, Bill had served many top newspapers in Maharashtra  and Goa but never thought of starting his own organization in this business. I believe that  his integrity , his inability to procure finances in dubious ways must be responsible for this.

Thanks to my addiction to Twitter and Youtube, I suggested Bill that he make his newspaper staff use Twitter to detect breaking news. “It’s a wonderful idea” he said “ but I will need a team of little more sophisticated people with a little more time on their hands.” Next I suggested appointing an ‘innovations officer’ to fuel better ideas to his paper. (What I was really doing is trying to create a vacancy for myself in the paper so I could get back to observing and learning from him). He struck me down with just one word-finance.  Only huge corporations could afford such luxuries. His was a small local newspaper. I should keep my feet on the ground.

In his long time as journalist and editor, Bill has seen various kinds of people and has negotiated with various kinds of newspaper and channel management. That experience has drilled into him the habit of always speaking politically correct words even in casual conversations.  The only facial expression he is capable of is a smile of amusement or reassurance. That smile is generally followed by a short sentence effective enough to motivate his staff. Then he just hands back the staff to the shouting assistant editor for exploitation.

I find Wild Bills liberal and encouraging leadership so much appealing that I think I am incapable of working with strict bosses. I hate watching Wild Bill always in service of different organizations despite being so innovative himself. Every time I have watched his ideas being struck down by the management, it has strengthened my resolve to start my own organization and do what I want. 

There is a hit song called Wake Up Sid which urges spoilt youth to wake up and do something creative. I want to write a new song dedicated to Wild Bill. It is called ‘Wake up Bill’

Wake up Bill

Get some attitude

Wake up Bill

Quit this servitude

Create, innovate

Implement

What you ideate!

Wake up Bill,

liberate!!

Nothing to lose

But your chains

Nothing to use

But your brains

Wake up Bill,

Dream on

Towards freedom

Walk on