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/
