Here’s a panel session you will not see programmed at NAB, or anywhere else in the satellite business this year, I promise: “Why 21st Century Professionals Need to Be Nice.” $100 bucks if you find anything close.
The reason you won’t hear it discussed is because those of us in the business simply do not think that you can capitalize on kindness. In fact, we often see kindness as a weakness. I certainly am skeptical, or was, for many years about being, by nature, a nice guy. In fact, I go back and forth on it all the time in my business dealings and relationships. Is it better to be tough, hard-assed and driving toward a goal at the expense of everything else? Or is there a place for collaboration, openness and genuine, goal-less dialogue as a means to resolve an issue or unleash progress?
I was going back and forth on this issue, and wondering if others were wrestling with it, until I had dinner in Riverside, California last week with Kristin Tillquist. Tillquist is the author of a new book titled, “Capitalizing on Kindness.” Now you can say to yourself, “OK, some suburban Californian ex-hippie author wrote a book about being nice. It has zip to do with me.”
Wrong. Kristin, a lawyer, happens to be the Chief of Staff to the Mayor of Riverside, California, Ron Loveridge. Mayor Loveridge, as many know, was the president of the national League of Cities last year. After going through some pretty hairy years and a real estate crash of epic proportions, Riverside today finds itself in the middle of a renaissance. It has a polished downtown, a new technology park loaded with young CEOs from every corner of the earth starting business and revitalized parks and new public swimming complex. It has a robust fiber network, 78% WiFi coverage and, soon, will be home to the first new medical school in California in the last 30 years. It is also a green machine with a homegrown utility which produces 70% of its energy from alternative sources, including solar power. It is home to an Intelsat teleport. It reaches way across the digital divide, and has pulled in gang members to run an e-waste computer recycling operation that refurbishes and funds the distribution of PCs to 4500 families, many of whom did not even own a computer before.
You don’t manage that type of revival by being a sweetheart or collaborating. Or do you? Well, in fact, the philosophy of Kristin’s book revolves around the power of dialogue and the suggestion that “ultimate power is the ability to produce the results you desire most and create value for the other person in the process.”
Yes, I go back and forth on this, but I have begun to realize that some of the most successful people in the satellite industry happen to be, well, nice people to deal with. Tough, fair and willing to tell it like it is in order to get to a clear, open dialogue.
It is coincidental that Riverside has a teleport run by one of the great companies in our business, Intelsat. But the ideas shared with Kristin apply, or should, to a conflict that you will hear something about in panels and booth conversations at NAB. It involved Intelsat and other satellite operators.
On March 23 the teleport industry issued an important satellite operator benchmark report. You can read about who did well and who needs to improve, in the view of teleport operators in the White Papers section of the World Teleport Association website (www.worldteleport.org). Overall, teleport operators gave lower marks to their satellite partners in “commercial” aspects than in operational, or technical ones. As a group, the primary recommendation for improvement was for satellite operators to take "an improved partnership approach to business" with teleports. Let me translate that for you: they want operators to be a bit kinder and more open to the needs of their businesses so that all can prosper. “Doing good is good for business,” says the Riverside-based author.
The issue of capacity management and pricing and the need –or the perceived need—to compete in the same channel goes to the very heart of this issue between the ground segment and the birds in the skies. Each operator handles it in a way that suits company strategy, its shareholders and accommodates its philosophy for customer relations. Is there a right or a wrong way to do it? The teleport industry leans toward the collaborative approach which, if we are to accept Ms. Tillquist’s research, does work most of the time. It is at the root of any business or industry that is built to last.
Over the course of the year in this “Back and Forth” column we will explore this issue in more depth with teleport and satellite operators, as well as neutral and not-so-neutral players in the game. What’s your view? Let me know by sending an email to LZacharilla@sspi.org
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Lou Zacharilla is the Director of Development of the Society of Satellite Professionals International (SSPI). He can be reached at: LZacharilla@sspi.org
