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Public Broadcasting Service |
Revenue: $350 million
IT Chief: Andre Mendes
Business colleague: Gwen Wood, VP, Distribution Services & Operations Management
Working together: 3 years
IT/business challenge: Transforming a broadcast operation from tape-based to fully digitized with limited staff, budget and resources.
Upshot: Close alignment of IT and operations keeps projects on track.
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How do you address or deal with those pressures?
Wood: I think if we had a more disciplined and structured process for defining the problem together, it would really help. It's putting the knowledge of the IT engineers, who know the solutions, together with the operations people, in a formalized process. But it's very tedious. Sometimes we're too strung out. I may be managing a $150 million satellite project, but when we get off track it's not because anybody wants to get off track. It's because we may not have enough resources.
Mendes: Or the deadlines may be unreasonable.
Wood: Right, but it's also that a process is not being followed. The functional things are not being discussed. Broadcast engineers and IT people can't come back and say, "What do you think about this?" I think the tensions happen, not because of these people, but because of a lack of resources. From an operational standpoint, my group and I always think about the exceptions. I'll say to Andre, "Sure, this is a great system, but what about this? What about that!?" Andre and I joke about this all the time. See, if we screw up, it screws up an entire network. So there's a lot of high visibility over a mess-up. I'm looking to Andre to give me some tools that make that process efficient, [but] it's got to be flawless.
How long have you two worked together? How did you develop such a close partnership?
Mendes: I was first here for three years [1998-2001] as the CIO, but didn't have responsibility for broadcast engineering back then, so there were a lot less points of contact with Gwen. [He returned to PBS in 2002 in an expanded role.] But even before I came back, we'd always had a good personal relationship. We make each other laugh.
Wood: And we cry on each other's shoulders.
Mendes: Now, we don't always agree. Make no mistake. There are certain issues on which we fundamentally disagree. But Gwen knows before I go into that meeting with our [chief operating officer] where I stand on that issue. It's just that I don't agree with her on this particular issue. But I'm not going to tell her that I agree with her on that, and then go behind her back.
Where do you run into these fundamental disagreements?
Mendes: I tend to be extremely optimistic about the technology's ability to resolve the problem.
Wood: But I'm a hand-wringer. You have to show me the performance metrics! And we have to think a little differently. I'll say to Andre -- on this Broadview ERP thing, for example -- "Hey, you say it's going to do all these great things, but I'm really nervous about this. Promise me I can give you 20 programs that are odd -- really oddball in some way -- and they'll flow through this wonderful system that you have brought to us." And he says, "OK." And he'll do it.
Mendes: Actually, they gave us 62! (They both laugh.) It's an interesting thing, too, that the same type of interaction I have with Gwen is what I find with some of my people in IT. I have some of my staff that, when I tell them "I think we should do this," their first answer is always "No." I say, "Why?" Because of a security issue. So I say, "OK, let's talk through that." And we drill through the entire thing, and we find a way of doing it. The same thing has happened with operations, between my group and Gwen's.
How often during the week do you meet or talk?
Mendes: I would say it's very rare if we go three days without talking to each other. With everything that's going on, we have to be in touch.
Wood: Sometimes one of my staff will ask me, "Do you and Andre really talk?" And I'll tell them "Yeah, we're like a married couple. I feel comfortable in talking to him. If I'm mad at him, I can say so."
Mendes: And I get messages that my people want to get delivered to Gwen and her operations people, too. It's not all smooth all the time.
What have you learned from each other?
Mendes: I've found that a lot of the stuff I've learned from Gwen, I've channeled through the column I write [for TV Technology magazine, a trade journal for the broadcasting industry]. It's about realizing how the people who are working on defining requirements and new processes may [be working on] something that turns out to be their job loss. You gotta acknowledge that, the pressure that they're under. It's not all about the technology. A lot of that, I think, I got from Gwen.
Wood: As an operations person, I love a challenge, I love a satellite failure. It's the adrenaline surge. I'm reactive. What I've learned from Andre is that you can get as much joy and satisfaction from looking ahead and dreaming, rather than just reacting to the bad things that happened. He is forward-thinking. He's five years ahead.
With all that's going on, are you doing anything differently in managing your staffs?
Wood: I brought in a consultant to help with change management. We have an open forum now every week with my group, and during the second half-hour of a previously one-hour management meeting, you can drop in and ask any question you want. Or you can write it on a board anonymously. It can be about BroadView, the big [headquarters] move, whatever. Sometimes I have to tell people "I don't know, but I'll tell you when I do know." That's helped enormously.
Mendes: We have a big weekly staff meeting at the beginning of the week, where I get updated about all the different fires going on with all the different projects. Then the rest of the week, I'm trying to put out those fires directly with those people and with the clients that are being affected by them -- people like Gwen, or people in her group. There's just so much to do, so many projects simultaneously, and so few staff.
How does the public service mission of PBS affect how you view your jobs?
Mendes: There's something about this job -- and I've never felt it anywhere else -- it's the reaction you get when people ask where you work and you say "PBS." The reaction is always the same. "Oh, that's fantastic! That's all my family watches!" they say. Of course, if all of these people were telling the truth, no one else in broadcasting would survive. (Gwen laughs.)
Wood: It really is about the mission. That sustains us through a lot of trials and tribulations. I was up in New York right after Sept. 11, talking to a woman whose 11-year-old son reverted back to watching all his favorite childhood shows on PBS for weeks afterward. When I told her I run the operations at PBS and thanked her for telling me her story, she said, "What you do is important." I will never forget that.
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