I’ve noticed an interesting trend over the past few years of working with newsrooms.
Often, I’ll meet with a team, and we’ll start talking about their daily newsletter product. They’ll tell me they’re determined to launch a daily newsletter that goes out at 6 a.m. I’ll ask why. Is this something their audience has been clamoring for?
And the answer is almost always the same: Our editor in chief or president gets all of their newsletters at 6 a.m., so that’s when we need to send our newsletter, too.
I’ve seen this happen over and over again. The highest-paid person in the room or the loudest voice in the room is the one that gets the most attention. It’s a natural reaction — they’re the boss, so their ideas must be the best ones.
But the hard thing is trying to get the team to dig a bit deeper. Bosses often have great ideas, but sometimes, because they have so much on their plate, they’re also disconnected from what their team knows or what readers want. So I’ll push my teams to ask other questions to make sure they’re taking the right next steps. What are readers telling you? What is your data telling you? What have you learned from previous product launches? And do you have the team to actually send an email at that hour? (After all, to send at 6 a.m. with the latest news probably means someone needs to be up to write and edit the email at 4 or 5 a.m.) Often, these signals point them towards a different outcome.
I’m not saying to ignore your boss entirely. But remember: Just because someone’s got the loudest voice in the room doesn’t mean they’re the only ones worth listening to.
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That photo comes via Jason Goodman and Unsplash.