(Vickey Williams)

There were more calls for culture change in media companies at last week's Capital Conference, the joint convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Newspaper Association of America.

Each of the CEOs from three companies that snatched success from the jaws of failure talked about how essential it was to engage the workforce in changing the way they did business. Talking about their roads to transformation, Stephanie Burns of Dow Corning; Philip J. Faraci of Eastman Kodak Company and A.G. Lafley of Proctor & Gamble drew a capacity crowd of editors and publishers.

Lafley was running a division of P&G in 2000 when he was tapped for the top job in a historic powerhouse of a company that had missed its earnings projection for the first time since World War II, with stock prices on the decline. He cited four deliberate choices that powered P&G's transformation:

1. "Put the customer at the center of everything"


2. Focus on sustainable, organic growth at a reasonable level


3. Make innovation a critical strategic choice and define it more broadly


4. Find new business models and cost structures

"We asked all employees to get into the game," Lafley said. And in words that were probably music to the ears of the journalists in the room, P&G committed to "hold onto core values but change everything else." He described today's culture as "More collaborative, more curious and more courageous."

The call for overhauling the way we do business inside the business was familiar. It was the Readership Institute's Impact Study that first alerted publishers and editors to what a lousy state newspapers are in when it comes to workplace culture. Overwhelmingly, newspapers presented a profile of a place where tradition means everything and change would come hard. Impact, now 7 years old, and the subsequent New Readers Study in 2004 continue to hold insight on many of the internal issues that make it hard for traditional print media organizations to work their way out of the dilemma they find themselves in today.

Burns cited a familiar scenario that precipitated Dow Corning finding itself a few years ago with flat revenue and overbuilt capacity at its plants. To use his terminology, a successful run to that point had fueled an arrogance that kept leaders from recognizing the changes needed. They realized they hadn't put the customer first, Burns said, and had failed to listen across all the consumer segments of this primarily business-to-business enterprise.

"We took a step back and asked employees to get involved in assessing customer needs... what was core and critical to keep and what should change. Engaging them was key because they became our ambassadors."

She cited as an example requests for an Internet-only ordering system, with virtually no human intervention or customer support, to serve the pure price buyers. This segment wanted bulk materials at low cost; a Sam's Club model, she said.

In finding a solution, innovation didn't come in new products, but in everything else around designing such a service - IT support, financial systems and vision, Burns said. Dow engaged in rapid prototyping and delivered in seven months. In exploring an unfamiliar value proposition, "Test quickly or you'll over-engineer," she said.

Because changing culture in a company in a mature industry usually entails breaking down old hierarchical management structures for greater flow of communication and ideas - as would certainly be required in most newspapers - executives often mistakenly think that means handing over the reins and converting to a commune-like existence. Burns addressed the point.

To drive culture change, she said, you have to bring people along. Leadership may not have full clarity on the direction, but only a general vision of where the company is going. They must share the plan openly, broadly and repeatedly. For those who insist on hanging back, Burns said, "Let them off at the first stop, pick up new people, keep moving."

But perhaps resonating most strongly with this audience was Faraci's story about Kodak's restructuring. (Complete with a showing of the company's tongue-in-cheek Winds of Change video that was a viral hit online early last year.) As recently as 1999, the film business was still growing. Facing even more underutilization than Dow, he said, Kodak had to accelerate depreciation and take write-offs even as its executives realized the company needed to invest more in technology.

When film sales took a nosedive at the start of this century, Kodak had to assess core capabilities. The company that invented the first digital camera in 1975 but essentially put aside that discovery due to its strength in film decided to place all bets on its knowledge of material science and digital technology.

Today the company's employee base, at about 25,000, is just over a third of what it was during its heyday. Film still represents about a third of sales - though still in decline - as does commercial printing. But technology investments are paying off, Faraci said. It's nearly impossible today to share a digital photo, online or otherwise, without touching a Kodak product.

In another conference session led by Jim Chisholm of iMedia Advisory Services, where he gave a preview of his forecast on the future of the newspaper industry through 2016, the call for change was more blunt. "Culture in newsrooms is still to be resolved," he said. "We are a content and service machine, not a divine right." In short, Chisholm expects most newspapers will capitalize on their local foundations and survive, with mobile technology improvements presenting a fertile field for opportunity, but also bring in a third less revenue as compared to 2007. Expect to hear more when his analysis is complete June 1.

Like Chisholm, many publishers seem to peg the culture issue first and foremost a newsroom problem. Newsrooms are due a portion of the burden, and changing practices there present particular difficulties. But RI's research showed ownership of the problem would be more accurately attributed across and throughout newspapers.

If journalists' unwillingness to change tends to center on a strong desire to continue in their traditions, the data showed there's also a more than healthy amount of the same stance in advertising departments. To be specific, journalists tend to be stymied by their perfectionism but that style is high among advertising staffs as well. People on the revenue side can also exhibit more internal competition or conformity than one would expect to see in a "more collaborative, more curious and more courageous" environment such as P&G's Lafley described. In fact, all departments and slices of newspapers except the executive team tested out as lacking a constructive culture style. The worrisome message that sends for today: Standing still.

"Change the jobs and culture will follow" is a slightly faddish statement I've heard voiced occasionally over the past year or so, including in conversations at this conference. That seems to me the equivalent of brute force. Engagement is the more constructive route, and clearly the one prescribed by the CEO panel. People who work in news organizations have the energy and the smarts to innovate, I'm convinced, but because of hierarchy, don't think they're expected or invited to contribute to the conversation.

A newspaper that has taken a very deliberate approach to changing newsroom operations is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Shawn McIntosh, director of culture and change, was on another ASNE panel that took up doing serious journalism in a digital age. I've heard McIntosh speak several times about that newspaper's attempt to motivate employees to focus on content that is more attuned to today's consumer wants and needs. Unfortunately last week, a fixation continued with her title instead of the workforce reorganization, described in this AJC video, that sparked it.

An article on this topic with enduring value is Peggy Kuhr's interview with the Institute's Mary Nesbitt and researcher Rob Cooke. See especially the prophetic answer Cooke offered when Kuhr, now dean of journalism at the University of Montana, asked if he were an editor how he might respond to the findings on culture. I checked back this week with Cooke, an authority on workforce culture across industries, to ask if his ensuing studies in news organizations in the nearly seven years since have changed his opinions.

"I believe that most, if not all, of the comments offered during the 2001 interview regarding the organizational cultures of newspapers still apply," Cooke said in an email. "However, the situation today is likely to be more difficult than it was seven years ago. Organizations with defensive cultures tend to respond to negative changes in their business environments in passive or aggressive ways. This tendency runs counter to and complicates efforts to launch and sustain cultural change initiatives - despite the fact that the need for such initiatives is probably greater now than ever for newspapers."

In a conversation at the airport, a publisher I respect talked with regret about having to oversee cutbacks without truly remaking the structure and operations. I think many are in that position this year, feeling unable to make the time to thoughtfully re-deploy those who are left.

What should be happening instead?

1. Leadership sets an audience strategy around which specific market segments - or better still, consumer experiences, as entries on this blog by every one of my RI colleagues have endorsed for years - the newspaper will seek to serve across its various platforms. And they may be different in print and online.


2. Leadership over-communicates (that is, to the point people are sick of hearing it) the message above.


3. Leadership educates full staff on business realities, provides for staff a first glimpse of what success will looks like in the new world, invites engagement on reassessing the operation.


4. Jobs and roles reassessed, new models tried with the understanding that course corrections will be necessary.


5. The above four points are done under an umbrella recommitment to customer focus and interaction.


6. Tough calls are made on what to stop doing, today and forever, because it no longer constitutes the best use of resources.

The steps above should be done with input from employees and consumers, but the onus is on leadership to set the direction. The last bullet will be the toughest to accomplish, but is also the most essential.


By Vickey Williams (Vickey-Williams@Northwestern.edu)
Vickey Williams is director of the Media Management Center's Digital Workforce Initiative.