Different Teams, Different Cultures

One of the most interesting things I have noticed during my internship so far, is the difference between different departments at NPM. In my first blog post, “NPR, the non-profit vs. NPM, the for-profit”, I wrote about the cultural differences between NPM and NPR. I’ve noticed similar differences between the individual teams at NPM.

After seeing the differences between NPR and NPM my first week, noticing differences between the different departments within NPM that are responsible for different things was not surprising. The finance team operates in a slightly more professional, formal way than the other teams at NPM, most likely because all of its team members have come from large business management companies that have lead them to follow a more structured protocol and most likely had more formal policies and a more professional culture than is necessary at a smaller sales company, especially one working within a relaxed company such as NPR. The marketing and creative teams have a much more casual cultures than the finance team does.

Out of the other teams at NPM, the teams that work on building the advertising and creatives for NPM and their sponsors have the most laid-back cultures. Since the responsibilities of these teams allow them to be slightly creative with what they produce, their team cultures can afford to be less formal than the finance team that has more rules and specific outlined work. In between the creative and finance teams with their work culture formality are the operations and sales teams.

What is so interesting about the culture of the sales teams, is that the cultures differ based on the type of selling that is being done. NPM has two sides, the national sponsorship side that sells advertisements on NPR’s shows at a national level, and a SPOT side that sells advertising for NPR’s member stations on a regional level. The national sponsorship sales team is much bigger than the SPOT sales team, which may play a part in having more structure in the national sponsorship team than the SPOT team but it also may come from their sales goals. Since the national sponsorship team sells sponsorship opportunities for the NPR shows, they have more pressure to fill all of the advertising spots so the shows can continue being produced. Their sales are often much higher than those of the SPOT team because they are received nationally on the shows, instead of regionally on different radio stations. With a bigger team, bigger sales and more pressure to sell all of the programs, the national sponsorship needs a more formal power structure and a less relaxed environment.

While all of the teams work very well together at NPM and more broadly NPR, because of their different sizes and responsibilities, there are clear differences in the cultures of each individual team.