Originally published on July 01, 2005

Kimberly Cutchall

Clear Channel Radio
Executive VP/Employee Development

A little-known division of Clear Channel is Clear Channel University

A little-known division of Clear Channel is Clear Channel University, which specializes in the recruitment, training and development of Clear Channel employees. Leading this charge is Kimberly Cutchall, Exec. VP/Employee Development.

 

A veteran in the area of sales and sales training and management, Cutchall has her dream job. While remaining committed to the mission of the university, she will be taking a little time off soon, as she is about to give birth to her second child.

 

Getting into the business: "I was a college student interning at a television station here in Houston. I thought I wanted to be on-air. I went to the director of internships - this was the summer before my senior year - and said, 'I'm really bored.' She said, 'What do you really want to do?' I told her that I liked people, and she said, 'Sales - that's where you need to go.' So I switched over and finished my internship in sales, and I knew it was what I wanted to do.

 

"Everybody said, 'Go into radio because it's much more exciting than television.' I interviewed at the top three stations in Houston and was tenacious about only working for one of the top three. I was hired at KODA. I went with that station because of its training-and-development program."

 

Joining Clear Channel: "I started at Clear Channel in sales management - actually, in training, development and facilitation - in 1990 and fell in love with it. When I joined it was Entercom, but that lasted about a minute, because we spun to Bonneville, which spun to AM/FM Chancellor - Clear Channel, essentially. That was in '95, so I've been with the company for 10 years. I was in a sales management role with a boutique division at the time, Creative Resources, which focused on strategic planning and development for the top 10 markets in the company. I did that for about three years, and then the opportunity came with the university."

 

Joining Clear Channel University: "They were actually going to close the doors of the university, and I said, 'Wait a minute. That's my job.' I wanted to get into the training and development of account executives and sales managers because that's what I had been focusing on for most of my career. I was given a great opportunity by Dave Kroll, whom I was reporting to then. He sort of oversaw the university. Dave said, 'If you want to do it, that's great.'

 

"Then I met with John Hogan. John was hilarious. My first meeting with him, he really questioned the effectiveness of training, because we've all been in those bad training scenarios. He and I had a great, lively debate, and I said, 'I promise you, we'll do it differently.' I took the university over with a team of three people because everybody else had left, thinking the university was closing. Four years later, we are at almost 40 employees."

 

A description of the university: "We are the recruiting, selection and development division of Clear Channel. We focus on the three circles of human capital management: recruiting the right person, putting them in the right position and developing them. The philosophy is that you are in one of the three buckets at every moment of your life, with every single one of your employees: You're either recruiting them, or you're putting them in the right job, or you're developing them.

 

"We focus on employee development in every sense of the words. We do leadership training. We do new-hire training. We do advanced seller training. I have a coaching team that is deployed to the markets. We do over 75 workshops a year, and they vary between two and five days in length."

 

Additional programs: "We've got online training as well. We offer over 40 different online, computer-based training programs that are all proprietary to Clear Channel. We research and develop our own material. We have subject-matter experts both inside and outside the company. We research best practices and companies outside our industry that we can learn from - both what they are doing well and what they are not doing well - and then we make that information relevant to our employees."

 

Measuring success: "One way is employee engagement. Do you know what your staff turnover is? The No. 1 reason people leave companies is that they don't feel their manager is developing them or putting them in the right situation to do their best every day. Another measurement we look at is the practical application of what people learn in the classroom, but we're not so arrogant to say that someone got a $100,000 sale solely because of university, because that person brought talent to the table, they brought their own knowledge. But we might have given them a little boost.

 

"We wrap our arms around the markets that, from the top down, follow the philosophy we teach at the university, which is customer-focused selling, marketing partnerships and leadership vs. management. All of these are key areas that we look at as examples of success."

 

Biggest challenge: "The one that probably keeps me up at night is that I want us to be able to do more. There are all these employees, and I want our team to be able to more positively affect more people. The challenge is purely raw inventory of time and resources. We have grown our team exponentially at a time when radio has not had exponential growth, and that shows the commitment of John Hogan. He said, 'You can add more coaches, and if you need more resources, you've got them,' because he sees the importance of this resource. So the biggest challenge is just being able to handle the load."

 

State of radio: "This has been the year of transition. When I got into the business we didn't sell on quantity, we sold on quality. We only had eight commercials an hour, and you didn't do promotional announcements. We got into this other mode as an industry. Clear Channel has made the decision to say that we can't do it anymore and we have to change the rules. We have to get back to what's important to our consumers, both advertisers and listeners.

 

"The state of radio is clear for Clear Channel, in the sense that we know where we need to get. It's just a matter of getting everybody there. It was a little stormy making the change, but the clouds are parting, and people are saying this is the right thing and a good thing, and we're becoming clearer on how to do it. We're not out of the clouds, but we're getting there. People are starting to not just buy in to it intellectually. Emotionally, they are understanding that it's a great thing to do."

 

Something about Clear Channel that might surprise our readers: "That it is family-focused and one-on-one-focused. It would shock people to find out we've got access to the CEO of not only radio, but of the whole company, and that it's not this huge dome in the sky and a big, bad Darth Vader-like company. People like to paint us that way because it's easy. We're the big guy on the block. Everyone thinks we're the bully. But it's real people trying to do really great work; it's not this big corporate guy wearing a tie every day in this untouchable atmosphere. None of our senior management are like that."

 

Most influential individual: "Ellen Cavanaugh and Dusty Black, who hired me into the business, were so training- and development-focused, and that got me started on the right foot. John Hogan is a great influence in the sense of how we work together and what opportunities I am able to create in the company."

 

Career highlight: "The university is absolutely what I am most proud of. I pinch myself that I am given the opportunity to do what I do every day and to be surrounded by an unbelievable staff. They really are my second family. They're gifted, talented, passionate people who really believe in what we're doing. I'm most proud of the fact that we didn't know if the doors were going to stay open four years ago, and now we've developed this into a successful, effective program, and all we have in the future are other possibilities."

 

Career disappointment: "We're moving at such a fast pace now that it's hard to swallow everything we have on our plate. But I think the biggest disappointment is that I want to move faster. I want to double the curriculum."

 

Favorite radio format: "News/Talk, Hot AC, and I also love Triple A."

 

Favorite television show: "CNN is my once-a-night thing to recap the day, and Boston Legal."

 

Favorite song: "'At Last' by Etta James."

 

Favorite movie: "Primal Fear or Usual Suspects."

 

Favorite book: "I am reading Primal Leadership, and I'm getting a lot from it, both personally and professionally."

 

Favorite restaurant: "Mark's in Houston."

 

Beverage of choice: "When I'm not pregnant, it's great red wine. I have been on a little bit of a wine hiatus for the last nine months, so right now it's water."

 

Hobbies: "Pilates and yoga. My hobby is really my family. My husband, Michael, and I both work at such a frantic pace that we are very protective of our family time. So it's really about Michael and my son, Emerson, if I'm not exercising."

 

E-mail address: "kimberlycutchall@clearchannel.com."

 

Advice for broadcasters: "Get back to focusing on people. If we can do that both on the employee side and on the consumer side, meaning both listeners and advertisers, that will help our business. We are so processed and focused that we've gotten away from the absolute fundamental, our most prized property, which is our intellectual property.

 

"Broadcasters need to focus on what it's going to take to not only get great people in, but also to develop and invest in them. Find out what their hot buttons are on training and education, give them what they need in quality training and development, and show them that you're letting them live their strengths. That alone will help turn your business around or help you grow your business if you're already doing well. It's about focusing on the people."