A call for leadership: Newspaper execs deserve the blame for not changing the culture

NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
Last week’s report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism uncovered some much needed data for making sense of the search for a new newspaper business model. But it also demonstrates how some leaders misunderstand the role they play in leading their cultures into the new reality of digital media. Here’s an excerpt:

“Probably the most difficult thing is to change a corporate culture because you don’t really have the power to do it,” noted one executive. “You can change CEOs, executive VPs, digital VPs. You can wave this magic wand all you want. But at the end of the day, the troops in the field hunker down. From our company, and I would venture for other organizations as well, the most difficult thing to do is change it.”

Changing a culture is not a top-down or bottom-up proposition: It’s a dance between leaders and their organizations. Edgar Schein, one of the foremost researchers of organizational culture and leadership, notes that mature organizations often struggle to live up to the ideals and vision of their founders. Think HP post Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, Walmart after Sam Walton.
It’s up to subsequent generations of leaders to forge a vision of the future within the context of the existing culture. Lofty speeches about the need to be “digital first” are not enough: Leaders must examine their own actions carefully to determine what they reward and what they punish, what the day-to-day routines of their organization reflect, and how best to create an environment in which open and constant communication is a priority. They must develop concrete reward systems that encourage risk and help employees make digital duties as much a part of their routines as the traditional.
In our research of news organizations, in study after study, we have repeatedly found this to be the case. One daily newspaper of less than 50,000 circulation we studied struggled with the change to a web-first organization because, though its leaders acknowledged the importance of the new medium, they did not reinforce that desire through their reward and accountability systems. Print revenue and circulation remained the benchmarks of success, not digital revenue or pageviews. As a result, newsroom staffers struggled to develop the kind of online content needed to expand the web audience.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/03/a-call-for-leadership-newspaper-execs-deserve-the-blame-for-not-changing-the-culture/