Solving Problems and Improving Leadership – FAM

As my time as a FAM summer intern starts to come to an end, I have started to think about the ways in which the effectiveness of the company could be improved. As a whole, I believe that FAM is well run and efficient. They are able to do a lot with limited employees and resources in a surprisingly short amount of time, and it’s been amazing to be a part of that. However, there were some external circumstances that shifted the ways in which the organization operated that impacted the day-to-day routine that had worked so well in the past.

I had an unexpected shift in roles and responsibilities at my internship site as a result of the Supreme Court ruling on college athletes using their name, image, and likeness for brand deals and partnerships. At the start of my internship, my company was strictly in music management, so all of my tasks were centered around their current musical clients and their needs. However, because this ruling happened in the middle of my time there, FAM shifted quickly to try and get its foot in the door of the sports world. They created a new division of the company (Forward Athlete Management) and immediately started the research process and reached out to athletes on social media platforms. While I do believe that it was a good idea to try to capitalize on this possibility as soon as possible before the larger companies grab a hold of everyone, it happened so quickly that it wasn’t completely thought through.

One issue with this change was that all of the employees suddenly had double the daily responsibilities – they all had to balance their current projects with the music side of the company on top of working out the logistics of the new athlete division. As a result, I felt like it became hard to get a hold of people through Slack or text when we weren’t in designated Zoom meetings. In addition, there were a lot of projects that I would get assigned to by one employee, just to be told by someone else that they didn’t need it after I had finished. While it was helpful to get the experience that I did through those projects, I felt as if my time was not being used in the most productive way.

I think that in the future, one way to help minimize the confusion would be if the team created a running Google Doc (for example) with all of the music/sports projects that need doing for the day, week, etc. That way, interns/full-time employees could get assigned projects and consult the doc for more information (and then if something is no longer needed it can get removed in a place where everyone sees it). I think that if there was a centralized place to find all of the projects, there would be fewer instances of overlap/completed projects that are no longer needed or useful.

However, at the end of the day, I think it was awesome that I was able to work at a company during this time. The shift from strictly working in music to adding in sports showed me the overlap between the two areas, as well as how they differ. I think that overall, it gave me much better insight into what I do/do not want to do after graduation in terms of specific day-to-day details.