As we get closer to the 2020 Radio Ink Radio Wayne Awards, which will be held virtually on September 15th sponsored by Nielsen, we’ll be spotlighting many of our Radio Wayne finalists every day up until the event. Today we profile Cumulus Nashville Market Manager Allison Warren.
Allison is a 24-year veteran with 6 years D.O.S. experience and 6 years as a Market Manager.
Radio Ink: How has managing multiple stations changed since you first started doing it?
Allison: Managing multiple stations has certainly evolved since I started managing the Nashville cluster 5 years ago and most certainly has evolved from being a GSM/DOS over 2-3 stations. Initially when I joined Cumulus Nashville, I wanted to be involved with every person, process and decision making, but I have learned that finding and trusting the right leadership team to work with is paramount.
I quickly learned that often my over-involvement could slow the process and stifle creativity. Whereas meeting with team leads, outlining expectations, timelines, and goals empowered the leadership team to engage with their teams in a meaningful way and in turn when final ideas were presented the dialogues were more transparent, and actionable. Managing Managers of departments allowed me to be more involved with our team versus less.
The misconception is that if the management is not directly involved it is not as valuable or meaningful. I have found that the opposite is true. I have learned that our teams are passionate and relentless with execution when they have participated in the solutions and ideas. Creating space for team leads to ideate, execute, and reimagine from engineering and programming to promotions, sales and the business office is likely the most critical evolution since I began managing multiple stations.
Radio Ink: How has the COVID crisis changed how you manage and run stations?
Allison: Wow, there is a lot to say about management during times of unrest, and uncertainty. COVID-19 certainly changed a lot, but not that we had a business to run perhaps and still needed to execute and collaborate with one another. We were lucky to be extremely well informed and supported by Cumulus Senior Leadership (corporate team.)
Our teams have been working remotely since mid-March 2020, so since then I have had to work harder at interacting with our team virtually. Casual interactions in the break room, impromptu brainstorm sessions and training all had to reengineered virtually. There are a lot of virtual meetings, phone calls and IM’s.
Our on-air broadcasters and Engineers had to move quickly to maintain broadcast quality shows remotely. Engineers and IT service 22 remote broadcast ‘studios,’ plus our 5+ broadcast/production studios and tower sites. It can be a lot. I am grateful that our local team leads (department heads) are a solid group that have worked twice as hard to connect with their teams so that our cluster continues to feel like a unit, a family. That said, perfecting this is and will be a work in progress.
Radio Ink: How were you able to keep things positive during COVID-19?
Allison Warren: Being overtly positive those early days just did not seem genuine, so tried to have as many honest interactions with as many people on our roster. I tried to call or email every full-time employee to check-in on them and their families. It was important to be in the moment with my team.
Additionally, as a city and cluster we’d just moved through some pretty horrific tornadoes, we had raised significant money as a cluster for tornado victims, so out team had an air of resilience and strength that has carried them rough days. As we progressed through COVID-19, I tried to find, highlight, and share wins from each department. Little or big things that we could hang our hat on or hold onto. Our CEO Mary started doing weekly virtual town halls that were filled with examples from around the country of resilience, leadership and creativity that also helped keep our local market tethered to the company.
Check out our previous Radio Wayne profiles:
Entercom Regional VP Jeff Federmen
