Page 58 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

48 HBR Leader’s Handbook

“This concept has to be both market-driven and sustainable. We can’t
fritter away resources on a one-shot idea,” Kerger told Rotenberg. But upon
reflection, the PBS CEO began to see some broader potential: “Media land-
scapes were changing because of digital—and this was particularly true for
children’s media. I urged Lesli to team up with Ira Rubenstein, head of our
digital group, and to collaborate on shaping a strategy.”
Working together, Rotenberg and Rubenstein began to see the ben-
efits of choosing a more multiplatform approach. Their excitement grew
as team members brainstormed ways to integrate educational games with
television programming, based on research that proved children’s learning
accelerates when they play games and video connected to the same curric-
ulum goals. They started to pull in other PBS functions, too (technology,
member relations, etc.), including Renard Jenkins of engineering, to ex-
pand their innovative thinking and to make the operational details more
concrete.
As this expanded team marshaled more specifics for a new children’s
channel, Kerger became its coach. The CEO kept the pressure on, but also
reinforced the team’s collaborative problem-solving approach, help- ing
members learn from each other’s expertise. In this way, they tackled
technical problems like extending the reach of regular broadcast program-
ming, while also developing pedagogical ideas at the intersection of digital
and broadcast. They also brainstormed different ways to minimize costs.
When Kerger set a goal for the number of PBS stations that had to commit
to the new service for it to be sustainable, the strategy team began to reg-
ularly engage local leaders. Those discussions helped the team shape the
outlines of the new programming service, while also assessing implications
for building and maintaining the channel.
Through research and ongoing discussions with member stations, the
strategy team members developed options for answering Kerger’s initial
questions. They then worked to narrow those down to their final answers,
which resulted in the following:

• There was indeed a quantifiable market opportunity in communi-
ties for a new 24/7 PBS KIDS channel offering the organization’s