How the Watch is Made
Kip
Welcome to Examining Competence. These articles use people I know to illustrate traits that occur in one kind of seriously high-functioning person. The stories though are ordered along my timeline, and with a bit of organization to convey the points. So you may want to step back to the beginning, or you’ll have a kind of Star Wars/Marvel movie thing happening that you might not want.
Over fourteen years at UNC-TV, I watched and learned. I was also mentored. By Carl, who I wrote about earlier. But also by one of the great people I’ve been privileged to know. Kip Campbell was a different order of person than most of us. I lack the ability to convey Kip well. This will not do him justice.
I met Kip near the close of his career. But let me frame him through a scattershot view of that career. He started barely out of High School, as a communication technician specialist in the Vietnam war. When he returned home, he dedicated himself to public service in new ways. First with Vermont Public Television. Always eager to learn through his entire life, he rapidly advanced in knowledge and went up what passed for a “ladder” in Public Television. Eventually he came to UNC-TV because the ladder ran out of rungs in Vermont and he still had more to offer.
Once here, he and some other driven engineers built a statewide network out of a couple of small college stations. People often think of what they watch as a television “station,” but I’ve described before that our (and other) state or regional public television “networks” are comprised of connected stations that can cover large areas. It adds immense complexity and new and different types of Engineering to tie it all together and bring up the level of operations to more than a single station could achieve.
When I met Kip, he had recently been removed as head of Engineering, and Carl was in that job. It took me a long time to learn about that, and what had happened. Years later, piecing the story together, what I understand is that Kip was pressed by those above him to make a management decision he considered wrong and harmful. Kip refused.
Courage of conviction is a hallmark of competence, and Kip had that in spades. When I met him, Kip had been replaced as Director of Engineering, but because he was deeply respected by all, and was a mountain of Competence, he was not fired. Instead he was designated “Director of Special Projects” and given the work of converting UNC-TV to digital. He valued and appreciated his replacement, supported him in every way, and displayed the ego-less drive for service that marks a Competent person. Carl and Kip’s friendship and collegiality set the tone for many of us.
This position change turned out to be such a good thing for both Kip and the organization that in hindsight I have to wonder whether Kip didn’t “engineer” his own “demotion.” The job couldn’t have been more tailor made for him. I only ever knew him in that role. In fact, later in my own career I followed Kip’s example of happily shifting into a job with no direct reports rather than continuing up with bigger CIO jobs. Sometimes a lower-status job is an alternate winning condition.
Kip didn’t waver. He saw the hurricane of Digital Television coming, and he made it into an opportunity. He handled the greatest technical challenge to the television industry (save creating it in the first place) with genius, confidence, and humor. When giant new designs are needed, people up to their eyeballs in operational work aren’t the best choice to do them. Many TV enterprises used consultants. I’m certain good consultants exist (I’ve met at least a handful) but they are not cheap, and they do not have the intimate familiarity with an organization that in-house staff do. Others had expensive consultants, and suffered for it. We had Kip.
In a previous article I described two “buckets” of IT people, but those buckets fit anyone in technology, even television Engineers. Some people stick with the familiar, others are open to the new. The industry lost so many of the first crew during the digital conversion. It offered as much growth for the rest as anyone could want. Kip wanted all of the growth. Kip is my model for using curiosity as the right reaction to change. No one loved technology more than Kip or was more excited by a new “toy” for the facility.
Kip insisted on doing things well. With incipient change to the industry, he didn’t want to spit-and-baling-wire together a new studio and origination facility. He knew we’d only have the “rebuild or go dark” leverage once, and that it would need to last a long time. He and Carl knew we had to go for broke, and the proposal was a moon-shot. Kip justified it up, down, and sideways. At the time, the University system was pursuing unprecedented higher-education bond legislation to build, expand, and upkeep facilities. Our funding got rolled into that.
The work; political, technical, and social was incredible. Moving career “feet-of-clay” administrators to action. Articulating to everyone from viewers to staff to Trustees, to legislators the deep need and visionary opportunity. Kip never liked being on air, but he conceded to appearing in some spots educating people about digital television. I’ve been a project manager for many years, and what I learned watching Kip was remarkable. The massive project to get funding came before the actual project could even start. Only a truly Competent person could manage all Kip did. We were fortunate to have more than one of those folks. Kip carried the design work for studio and origination, and was there to support our brilliant transmission Engineers as well. Which would have been enough for anyone without also, along with Carl and many others, having to persuade an entire state and some skinflint legislators to pony up to keep the network in existence.
Kip’s ability to “manage up” (and sideways) was impressive. Not manipulative. Just honest. Finding the points of aligned goals, showing a vision of what could exist. Inspiring courage. Kip did that for all sorts of people. When I knew him he had zero direct reports…and almost anyone in the organization would do what he asked or suggested. Project Managers operate by influence, they typically have no authority. Kip didn’t manage anyone, but he managed everyone.
It was often said that if you asked Kip what time it was, he would explain how to make a watch. He loved the work and wanted to share it. He always believed you were capable of more and could join him knowing difficult things if you wanted to. The monumental amount of detailed information he could keep in his head was staggering. When I say that he designed our studio and origination facilities, I mean he designed them down to the last wire and rack shelf. He fully understood every component, its functions, and how it fit into the whole.
It is rare to find a person who has such keen technical skill while also having a remarkable degree of interest, understanding, and care for other people as Kip did.
For example, Kip was a longtime Mason. That membership was a point of his identity, and a thoroughgoing commitment. I know that he held some rather senior offices. Kip was deeply bothered by the segregation present in his fraternal organization where race should play no part. So he conspired with a couple of other senior colleagues, and started a new lodge. One intentionally diverse. This was years before we knew to “raise the marginalized voices” or “let the affected people lead” he knew it instinctively. He talked with his brethren in lodges composed of POC. He heard, he surfaced their voices, he worked with them to make change, he never claimed credit and he and the others working together succeeded.
He spent years working the system and using his influence, and he finally made real, profound change. Kip spoke to me at times (only in abstract terms appropriate for a non-Mason) about the issue, how he was approaching it, and I know that it was one of his most proud successes to have that lodge recognized.
Another thing Kip dedicated himself to was service to people with disabilities. Long before we had “Universal Design Principles” or ubiquitous accommodations, Kip dedicated “off” time to technical work and support of a service that would read newspapers and other things over the radio. He didn’t just grudgingly implement Closed Caption requirements, he drove the industry on it. He was scrupulous about it. He evangelized it. Kip in his late years had some hearing difficulty himself, but he wasn’t the sort of person who only solves his own problems. He empathized, analyzed, and stretched minds and resources to make his organization a leader in serving everyone.
Kip’s contribution to UNC-TV is extremely difficult to measure. If we had not made the timely conversion to digital, or had done it badly, we would have shrunk to nothing, as happened to many Public Television entities at that time. Instead, he designed, he worked with vendors who were selling vaporware (products that had marketing materials and not much else) to get them to build better or at least build something. He fought the internal push to cut corners and scrimp in order to build something big and lasting. Go Big or Go Home. Kip had a vision, and he brought others with him.
In order to create a sense of urgency early enough for it to matter, Kip sourced a big crate of Y2K countdown clocks, reset them to the date of the Digital Conversion, put some new labels on them, and put them on the desks of every UNC-TV executive and Board of Trustees member, and offered them to key stakeholders at every turn. A present reminder that we could either leap into the future, or get sucked under.
We did get that funding. Kip did design and build what was likely the best facility in Public Television when the switch was finally cut over. But-for Kip, UNC-TV might have been a pass-through disappointment showing only PBS programs rather than serving the state fully, or might not have continued to serve the whole state, or might not have existed at all. Instead we produced beautiful HD of this amazing state, we led the industry. Kip did that by knowing not only his own “business” (Engineering) but also everyone else’s (politics, people, management, design, vendor relationships).
I’m writing this as if he was alone. He was not. Carl led the political charge and kept the train on the rails, getting resources and directing them. Another brilliant Transmission Engineer, Wayne, designed the digital transmission system and managed the unfathomable complexity of spectrum allocation as well as actual building of new towers, installing of transmitters, and moving of antennas and equipment. And every single person in the organization put their heart into making it all happen.
Understand, It wasn’t one cutover for us, it was dozens, or possibly hundreds. From analog to digital in almost every part of the operation over years, from temporary digital frequencies to “permanent” ones, from 4:3 to 16:9, from tape to “storage,” from “forgiving” video to HD that shows every blemish. All with the entire industry unsure how any of this was going to work until the day it actually did. Kip made all of that possible, starting with his courage of conviction. He made the place larger and better because he decided that’s how it would be, and he successfully sold that vision to millions of viewers, hundreds of legislators, and all of our staff. His courage of conviction made big things happen for millions of people.
Note
Kip retired not long after seeing his masterpiece completed and functioning. He moved back to Vermont and enjoyed his family for some time. He passed away a few years ago. Hoping to inspire young Engineers to follow Kip’s footsteps with a career in public service, a scholarship fund was established at North Carolina State University through the Engineering Foundation. If you choose to donate, please specify the “Kip Campbell Scholarship Fund.”