INTERVIEW

VIEW Interview

INTER AOL’s Armstrong

An Interview with Tim Armstrong, Chief Executive Offi cer, AOL Inc.

One of the things I’ve learned over the What is driving growth? course of my career so far is that opportunities AOL is a classic turnaround story. We had are only opportunities when other people don’t a declining historic business and a fairly short see them. list of very focused activities we thought would AOL seemed like an incredible opportu- grow the company in the future. nity – it was a global brand, hundreds of mil- From the turnaround standpoint, one of Tim Armstrong lions of people use different AOL properties, the most helpful things we did was to set a and the Internet is the most important trend in timeline right when we took over – we said we EDITORS’ NOTE Prior to joining AOL, Tim our lifetime. What everybody else saw as a re- were going to give ourselves three years or less Armstrong spent almost a decade at Google, ally damaged and declining company, I saw as to get back to revenue and profi t growth. where he served as President of Google’s the start of a long race that could be very suc- We put that date out there without know- Americas Operations and Senior Vice President cessful over time. That is what got me out of my ing exactly how we would get there but it gave of Google Inc., as well as serving on the compa- chair at Google and over to AOL. us a timeframe to focus on, and we ended up ny’s global operating committee. He started in his What message did you deliver to getting there in a little over two and a half years. career by co-founding a newspaper in Boston, your people early on and did you fi nd that The historic businesses weren’t going to Massachusetts before moving into the Internet there was a thirst for change? catapult us to that turnaround so we had to de- industry, where he has worked as a team mem- The first message I gave the company, velop new strategies. ber, investor, or co-founder at numerous com- which was probably unusual, was that every- How is the development of mobile im- panies, including Starwave (sold to Disney / thing that was going to happen at the company pacting the business? ESPN / ABC Internet Ventures), Snowball (IPO), was going to be talked about among ourselves Mobile is important for two reasons: there Associated Content (sold to Yahoo), and Patch before it was read or seen elsewhere. are an additional three billion people getting (sold to AOL). Armstrong serves on the board I told them they might not like the message attached to the Internet via mobile, so we’re of The Priceline Group, Inc., The Paley Center and I might not like it, and we might not like going to have double the number of consumers for Media, the New York regional board of what we have to do, but that I could guarantee in the world attached to the Internet. Teach for America, the Waterside Charter that we were going to build an organization The second opportunity is that mobile School in Stamford, Connecticut, as Chairman of trust because we’re going to make things is essentially about the machines in peo- Emeritus for the Ad Council, and as a trustee transparent and direct overall. I said they could ples’ hands – we’ll have six or seven billion for the United States Olympic & Paralympic tell me anything and I would do the same with people using powerful machines. The uni- Foundation. He also acts as an advisor to the them, but they would never be in a situation verse will double in size and individuals will McChrystal Group, a leadership consulting where I wasn’t upfront with them and that I continue to utilize increasingly powerful ma- fi rm driven by former Commander of the Joint expected the same in return. chines. The industrial revolution put ma- Special Operations Command, General Stan Where are you today on this journey chines into every business; the information McChrystal. Additionally, he is the Chairman and has it been what you expected? age put computers in every business; and this of the IAB Education Foundation. Armstrong We’re still early in the journey because, at true machine revolution is putting a machine was honored by the Ad Council with their 60th an industry level, the Internet is 20 years old but into everyone’s pockets. Annual Public Service Award in 2013. He is a much has changed, and with mobile coming on The result is an increase in productivity graduate of Connecticut College. now, we skipped back a few innings – mobile and creativity, and that will lead to economic is still at the pre-game level, and that is exciting. changes that are going to dwarf the Internet. COMPANY BRIEF AOL Inc. (corp.aol.com) is The journey so far has been what I ex- Will what we think of today as a com- a leading global media technology company pected. The night before I started at AOL, I puter still be relevant? headquartered in New York City and operat- talked to a few other business leaders and the In the same way that people today have ing in over 20 countries worldwide. Today, consensus was that this is a burn-the-bridge mo- a desktop operating system, my guess is that AOL serves over 500 million consumers every ment, meaning that once I go into AOL, I can’t they will have a human operating system that month across the globe, and maintains part- go back out. I had to burn the bridge behind me will be customized for them that will essentially nerships with thousands of the world’s leading mentally and just move forward. That ended up manage every single piece of their lives. The companies. AOL owns, builds, and operates being the most meaningful advice I was given ability to have a software platform that every global media brands and provides technol- for the journey. AOL is a big company with a individual consumer can stand on 24 hours a ogy and services to over 10,000 other brands big brand, and we have to be able to compete day is much more pervasive and different than and media companies. AOL was acquired by in the world moving forward – we can’t look having a software platform on a desktop. Verizon for $4.4 billion dollars on May 12, backwards. As a leader, I can’t leave and this is I think mobile will end up overtaking all 2015. something the company and I locked into. We the other formats, though they will be around. have been doing very diffi cult things over the Mobile will just end up being the largest driver What excited you about the opportunity at past fi ve or six years, and it has been very chal- because the operating system is built for a party AOL? lenging but very rewarding. of one. 10 LEADERS POSTED WITH PERMISSION. COPYRIGHT © 2016 LEADERS MAGAZINE, INC. VOLUME 39, NUMBER 3 How hard is it to be innovative and main- Our growth strategy is part organic and tain an entrepreneurial feel when you’ve part acquisitions and partnerships. First and grown to this size? foremost, our entire company starts and ends There are two ways to look at it at AOL: with talent – internal talent, external talent, and one way is to realize that we have to compete talent from partnerships. We’ve done a really overall against Facebook, Google, and other re- good job attracting that talent so far. The major- ally large companies – that means we have to ity of the turnaround of the company has been innovate really quickly. strategy-led but has been executed by the talent The second way to look at it is to look we have at the company. behind us, where there are millions of compa- We’re massively reliant on growing our tal- The best thing we nies in the world that don’t have digital, don’t ent overall to grow the company. The proper- have the Internet, and don’t have mobile. We’re ties are important, the brands are important, the can do to enhance a fairly good sized company that touches 700 partners we have are important, and the M&A million consumers a month right now that has aspect is important, but the underlying premise mobile, Internet, and video. of all of that starts and ends with our focus on our culture is to How do we compete against companies talent. like Amazon? We’re smaller so we can innovate How important is the investment in quickly – we have had to use our speed and training and your focus on culture? have an impact by size as a competitive advantage. There is a tre- We have a few sayings inside the company: mendous amount of economic opportunity for one is that we’re building a company without helping other people. all the companies that haven’t made the transi- walls. One of the things we talk about con- tion to mobile and other areas of the Internet cerning our culture is that the 6,000 people at yet, and that is still the majority of the world. AOL will never be able to overtake the creative Is advertising still relevant today? minds of the six billion people in the world. The advertising industry has gotten lazy This means we need to think about how we with consumers and proactive with technology. can let as many people work with us as possible The laziness with consumers comes from and bring the walls down. not completely respecting the nuclear interac- Four people sitting in a conference room tion between one ad and one consumer. today have a very hard time taking on the world, The industry has gotten very focused on whereas if we can get our four people together year on Monster Help Day, all 6,000 of our em- why software can come in and how program- with the 1,400 or 14 million people who are ployees are invited to go out to their communi- matic advertising and targeting can be enhanced interested in a category and really work with ties and get paid by our company to volunteer with software. them to really understand that category, they for other organizations. The same amount of energy that keeps go- can make a real difference. Our culture has to The best thing we can do to enhance our ing into software needs to go into the creative start and fi nish with the fact that we’re going to culture is to have an impact by helping other process for advertising that is personalized, be a company without walls. people. Doing that has taught us a lot of lessons meant for mobile, and ready to go to six billion The second piece is that talent today is at- about how we can help ourselves, and why we people – that requires a totally different scale of tracted to doing something meaningful and should have other people help us. creative process than what the ad industry has solving big problems. It is attracted to open We are very proud of one of AOL’s most historically undertaken. and transparent cultures, and it’s attracted to an important initiatives, which involves us begin- Is growth with the properties today every-position-matters mentality. We treat every ning to take the global lead in women’s leader- mostly organic or will there be a focus on single seat here like it matters. Training is criti- ship with our Makers brand, which is the largest acquisitions? cally important but it has to be directly tied to collection of women’s leadership stories. what is happening outside of our company. We We have also done an amazing job as a spend a lot of time thinking about how we train company in terms of getting in front of diversity without walls at the company. Sometimes, we issues. should train ourselves; sometimes, we should Do innovation and disruption go to- have an open fl ow of people come in from gether in some way? the outside who might have totally different Disruption and innovation are tied to- viewpoints. gether, but disrupting or innovating just for the One of the most impactful things we have sake of saying you’re doing it isn’t smart. The done was to work with General Stan McChrystal disruption we hope to cause has to be for a of the McChrystal Group, when we had a team purpose. We’re massively of Navy Seals in here for a year. They bring a A strategy is more than just not being totally different mentality to the table than our okay with failure. It’s choosing a point we Internet teams do overall. want to get to and recognizing we will have reliant on growing As we work with other talent-based orga- both successes and failures along the way nizations, we invite other groups to our offi ces there. If we can’t point to the exact place our talent overall to or take our teams to see people in other orga- we’re going, then that’s a dangerous road. It’s nizations, such as the NFL. We also work very okay to fail as long as we’re failing en route closely with some of Hollywood’s most creative to something specifi c. grow the company. people. In the technology space, we work with If I was talking to some of those who a group of technology thought leaders. We’re have worked with you, and asked about also working with the new Cornell campus in your style, what would they say? New York City. They would say I’m really passionate over- How important is it to have purpose- all. I’m hyper-creative, and left to my own de- driven brands? vices, I get involved deeply in things in ways We have brands here that are the most im- that are sometimes positive and that, at times, portant brands in their category. I need to be extricated out of. We designed a program called Monster As a leader, I’ve learned that it’s more im- Help Day, which we started when our company portant for me to focus on the input rather than was in its worst state and needed help. Every the output.• VOLUME 39, NUMBER 3 POSTED WITH PERMISSION. COPYRIGHT © 2016 LEADERS MAGAZINE, INC. LEADERS 11