As we enter 2025, the ever-changing fundraising and media landscape is sure to accelerate, and the need for innovation will become more crucial than ever. All of us in public media are at a critical juncture facing the threat to continued federal funding with shrinking broadcast audiences and declining new member numbers. We need to grow revenue and donor support, so we can't risk the status quo with our fundraising practices anymore. Our ability to adapt, test and innovate will be essential. But that said, innovation is no longer a luxury in public media fundraising. Rather, it’s a necessity for our system’s future sustainability. 

And what’s encouraging is that none of us are in this alone. Public media as a system is uniquely positioned to come together around testing so as a collective, we can absorb some of that risk together. 

The Importance of Creating Innovation-Friendly Cultures

Leading innovation requires creating a place – a context, an environment – where people are willing and able to do the hard work that innovative problem solving requires. So how do you do that and where do you start? In this 2-part blog series we’re going to share some common barriers that organizations face in building an innovative mindset and culture. 

The “I Know Best” Mindset 

The first barrier is what I like to call the “I know best” mindset. The organization’s culture may incline toward assumed certainties taking precedence over exploring the unknown. Experiential expertise is no longer an unassailable value but could become a potential obstacle to innovation. The fear of being wrong or not succeeding keeps you from challenging prior assumptions, trying new approaches or thinking outside the box. This barrier equates to a rigidly fixed mindset where one’s skills and thought process becomes immovable and resistant to tentative fluidity. 

The breakthrough mindset to this barrier? Adopting a perspective of “I don’t know for sure and I’m curious why.” A culture of discovery is very similar to a growth mindset in that you’re eager to learn and are driven by curiosity. Asking questions is encouraged and exchanging ideas is essential. You learn rapidly and practice blameless problem-solving. What it really comes down to in a culture of discovery is this: getting comfortable (and curious) with going out of your comfort zone. 

Take for example the national virtual event pilot that CDP partnered with GBH to provide to public media organizations over a year ago. This test focused on building new ways to engage with audiences digitally and centered on a virtual wine tasting that allowed participants to learn the basics of wine tasting while sipping along with Rick Steves and a sommelier. And we at CDP had to make some shifts in our mindset as we approached this testing opportunity. 

If we had stayed in a culture of knowing, this opportunity would have been dead in the water. CDP had tested a similar model in 2021 with mixed results that proved challenging to scale while generating adequate station value. Remaining in that “I know best” mindset, we might have even observed that the pandemic had lessened to a great degree. How relevant would virtual events be in that environment? Switching to a discovery mindset, we were able to look at the situation through a new lens, one of curiosity to say: “Masterclass resonates with many people, could this too?” In addition, we had to ask ourselves how we could simplify the offer, so it scaled easily and brought value to stations. We knew we needed to take the lessons learned from the 2021 event to help guide a new path forward. 

Perfectionism 

Another barrier that prevents an innovative-friendly culture is perfectionism. When the goal is to deliver something perfectly, then usually, nothing gets delivered at all. Perfection becomes stagnation. An organizational culture that lets pursuit of the perfect become the enemy of the good can become risk averse and suffer from missed opportunities by waiting too long to act. 

The breakthrough to perfectionism is speed. In an organizational culture that embraces progress above perfection, you make decisions despite ambiguity. You admit mistakes openly and share learnings widely. You are flexible and try to easily adapt, tackling tough decisions head-on without long delays. And I’d be remiss not to mention the importance of using data in a culture of speed to guide your intuition and inform your choices. 

There was no room for perfection when you look at the speed with which we had to move to make the national virtual event pilot happen. The entire pilot, from concept to event, happened in less than 6 months. GBH approached us with the idea in September, by October we held a launch-webinar to stations and in November stations had to commit. With just over a month for stations to promote and then submit final lists for fulfillment before the event, it was no easy feat to pull off. There were challenges — unexpected ones at that — like inventory issues we ran into with the wine vendor. But if we had waited until we could plan every single detail to launch an entirely flawless service, stations wouldn’t have gotten the added revenue boost this opportunity provided at calendar-year end (read the CDP Labs case study to find out the final results). Moving with speed means there’s less time or space to worry about failure. 

Testing is all about optimizing and learning, iterating and evaluating, acting instead of always planning your way forward. By embracing a culture that prioritizes learning and quick progress, we can better navigate uncertainties with agility and seize opportunities that drive growth and innovation. 

Don't miss out on part 2 of 'Overcoming Innovation Barriers' by my colleague, Frank Auer. Discover two more critical barriers and how to overcome them here.