The FedEx corporation celebrates its 35th anniversary this month. The company's sophisticated website is happy to let you in on the celebration with videos aplenty. They boast about the company's approaches to innovation, especially online, and provide a look at FedEx Labs, a place where employees can experiment with new ideas.

Don't you wish media organizations could brag about the same things? Cultures of innovation, savvy online strategies and R&D laboratories where smart people test wild ideas? Instead, they're inching toward transformation while simultaneously shedding staff and selling assets.

While that's underway, newsroom leaders are urging wary or weary employees to learn new skills and try new approaches to reporting, writing and delivering news. In short, to take risks.

And that's hard.

Employees are more likely to take risks when their managers share some important "Ts":

• Tools
• Training
• Time
• Trust

Let's talk about it -- just click on the SuperVision video, which includes advice from Anne Glover, AME/Features for Poynter's tampabay.com and St. Pete Times. In 2004, Anne led the team that developed tbt* Tampa Bay Times, the Times' free daily news and entertainment paper aimed at young adults. She's asked folks to take some risks - and has a simple, succinct philosophy:



Note: If you're receiving this via e-mail newsletter and have trouble viewing the video, please use the video player on the SuperVision page.

I'm sure you noticed Anne's delivery. She sounds fun to work with, doesn't she? But her levity doesn't mean she's cavalier about quality. She has copy editing in her blood and has written about duty and responsibility at the copy desk. In that essay, she advises, "Speak up, not under your breath. Change happens because someone sees something that could be different and offers a solution."

That's apparently the mindset at FedEx. Here's what the authors of "Winning through Innovation" write about the company:


Hmmm. Could it be that the journalism business needs a few more C students at the top?

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