I saw an amazing thing on Sunday.

Hundreds of millionaire professionals willingly gave up a tool of their trade and replaced it with something that on any other day, in any other circumstance, would subject them to ridicule and harassment from their co-workers.

They wore pink.

Sunday was a special Mother’s Day at all 15 ballparks across the country as Major League Baseball joined forces to raise money for breast cancer research. The players demonstrated their support by wearing pink wrist bands and using pink bats. Some wore pink batting helmets and pink caps.

Think about it this way, if someone had tried to get major league ballplayers to wear pink just for the sake of wearing pink it would have never happened.

But wearing pink wasn’t the point. Mom was the point. Sister, wife, daughter, grandmother was the point. Therefore, it happened.

The legendary Steve Brown puts it this way,

“Almost anything of any importance is a side benefit of something else. If you’re searching for happiness, for instance, you probably won’t find it. But if you’re doing something else (like serving others), happiness comes along.”

If you are clear in communicating your station’s “big idea”, then which tools to use, which “pink bat” in other words, can be chosen based upon how effective a tool it is, not based upon someone’s personal agenda for pink bats.

I recommend that you first decide your station’s strategy, then choose the tactics based upon which are most effective for executing that strategy.

“At the center of every human soul is the intense longing to be closer to God; an idea that can empathize with that is powerful.”

Hugh MacLeod

So, what’s “the big idea” behind your radio station? Is that idea something that is in the center of every human soul? Or are you trying to force people to use a pink bat?