HEARTS and MINDS Complex Set of Intertwined Changes in How Organisations Are Led, Structured and Staffed, and in How People in Them Think, Act and Take Decisions
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News organisations have been on a digital transformation journey for two decades. Strategies and business models are now mostly clear, but progress is slow and successful digital pivots an anomaly. Having a strategy is not the same as achieving it: implementation means moving from rational plans to the messy realities of human action, to a AND MINDS HEARTS complex set of intertwined changes in how organisations are led, structured and staffed, and in how people in them think, act and take decisions. HEARTS AND MINDS: Taking the central themes of Leadership, Culture, Gens Y and Z, Diversity, HARNESSING LEADERSHIP, Equity and Inclusion, and New talent, Roles and Structures, this book draws on over a hundred interviews to lay out how internal organisations need to be reshaped. It explores the central challenges, and presents best practice CULTURE, AND TALENT TO approaches for each element, to ensure hearts and minds are truly harnessed to really go digital. REALLY GO DIGITAL Lucy is a brilliant thought leader, and understands the synergies and complexities of LUCY KUENG digital transformation, and specifically what’s at the heart of it all. ANDREW MORSE, EVP AND CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, CNN WORLDWIDE Once again, Lucy Kueng gives us deep insight into the most important drivers for the ongoing digital transformation in the newsrooms. The importance of leadership, culture and talent cannot be overestimated, and she combines her own research and practical experience in a brilliant way. It’s a must-read for anyone working in the media industry. SIV JUVIK TVEITNES, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, NEWS MEDIA, SCHIBSTED This is not an instruction manual for wannabe leaders. Rather, it is a quite remarkable mirror that Lucy Kueng is holding up to newsrooms around the world. By staring into it, whether you like it or not, you will see yourself, your colleagues, and your organisation in pin-sharp high-definition, in amongst the detritus of your daily demands. The question is: what will you do about it? JAMES MITCHINSON, EDITOR, THE YORKSHIRE POST Professor Lucy Kueng is Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute, University of Oxford and an international expert on mastering digital transformation. She advises leading companies worldwide and keynotes frequently at international conferences. She is Board Member of the NZZ Media Group, and has served on the board of SRG SSR, LUCY KUENG and of VIZRT, the media tech provider. She has held professorships at the University of Oslo, the Institute of Media and Entertainment New York (IESE), and the University of Jönköping. Previous books include Going Digital: A Roadmap for Digital Transformation; Innovators in Digital News; Strategic Management in the Media (winner of the AEMJM Media Management Book Award); Inside the BBC and CNN; and When Innovation Fails to Disrupt: the Case of BBC News Online. She holds a PhD and Habilitation from the University of St Gallen and an MBA from City Business School/Ashridge. ISBN 978-1-907384-83-7 With support from: 9 781907 384837 HEARTS AND MINDS HARNESSING LEADERSHIP, CULTURE, AND TALENT TO REALLY GO DIGITAL HEARTS AND MINDS HARNESSING LEADERSHIP, CULTURE, AND TALENT TO REALLY GO DIGITAL LUCY KUENG Published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, 13 Norham Gardens, Oxford, OX2 6PS Tel: 01865 611080 http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk Published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, 13 Norham Gardens, Oxford, OX2 6PS Tel: 01865 611080 http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk Typeset by Messenger Marketing http://www.messengermarketing.co.uk/ Printed by the Medical Informatics Unit, NDCLS, University of Oxford Tel: 01865 222746 Text © Lucy Kueng All additional material © Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism The moral rights of the author have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or disseminated or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise used in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission, except for permitted fair dealing under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © RISJ October 2020 ISBN: 978-1-907384-73-8 eISBN: 978-1-907384-83-7 Cover: photo by Richard Jaimes on Unsplash Published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism with the support of the Google News Initiative. Contents About the Author vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction ix ‘Time to put as much energy into transforming the organisation as we do into transforming the product’ 1. Leadership 1 Low ego and listening: ‘the expectation of leadership has radically changed’ 2. Culture 15 ‘You can’t just talk a culture into the consciousness of your employees’ 3. Gens Y and Z 27 ‘These are different generations bred in a different way’ 4. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 35 ‘It’s hard, and it needs to get done’ 5. New Talent, New Roles, and New Structures 49 Reshaping the inner organisation to match digital ambitions Conclusions 63 Mastering the colliding imperatives of digital transformation, diversity and inclusion, Gens Y and Z, and COVID-19 Interviewees 69 Bibliography 72 v About the Author Professor Lucy Kueng is Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute, University of Oxford and an international expert on mastering digital transformation. She advises leading companies worldwide and keynotes frequently at international conferences. She is Board Member of the NZZ Media Group, and has served on the board of SRG SSR, and of VIZRT, the media tech provider. She has held professorships at the University of Oslo, the Institute of Media and Entertainment New York (IESE), and the University of Jönköping. Previous books include Going Digital: A Roadmap for Digital Transformation; Innovators in Digital News; Strategic Management in the Media (winner of the AEMJM Media Management Book Award); Inside the BBC and CNN; and When Innovation Fails to Disrupt: the Case of BBC News Online. She holds a PhD and Habilitation from the University of St Gallen and an MBA from City Business School/Ashridge. vi Acknowledgements This publication would not have been possible without the support and contributions of a great many individuals – all of whom have extremely busy lives. I am grateful to all of them. First, I would like to thank the many interviewees who made time to talk, often with great candour. Their openness to delve into the realities of digital transition made the research discussions for this project some of the most interesting I have ever had. Huge thanks also to Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, for his support for this work and many stimulating discussions as it evolved. His commitment to bridging the gap between theory and practice, and to generating research of value to the industry, is unique and allows an extraordinary transformation process to be captured and analysed in real time. Also at the Reuters Institute, my thanks go to Louise Allcock, Rebecca Edwards, Philippa Garson, Kate Hanneford-Smith, Christina Koster, Matthew Leake, Alex Reid, and Eduardo Suárez – always professional and always a pleasure to work with. Right at the start of this project I held four focus groups (in London, Stockholm, and Oslo) which were decisive in terms of shaping the course of the research. Jane Barrett, Jørgen Heid, Johan Lindén, Katie Lloyd, and Inga Thordar were instrumental in setting these up, and in some cases hosting these, and this is appreciated. Personal thanks go to Gebi and Hira Maya, and finally to Jill – always a wonderful host in Oxford, and it turns out, an inspired editor. vii Introduction ‘Time to put as much energy into transforming the organisation as we do into transforming the product’ We have been ignoring it. We’ve been focused on chasing this year’s cool thing … and not on what (we) need to do at a deeper level. And that means that all management is pointing in the wrong direction. The New York Times has done the industry a disservice. They have made the challenge of moving a business from legacy to digital look easy (put up an early paywall, launch podcasts, hire one army of Pulitzer-prize-worthy millennial journalists, and another of product people, and have the top team spend every Friday afternoon on strategy). But a full digital pivot is an anomaly, and successful examples, while they have important things to teach, are far from simple. To bastardise Tolstoy, each legacy organisation that has pulled off a digital transformation has done it in its own way. Their success is the product of a unique combination of factors, highly context-dependent, hard to reproduce, and difficult to deconstruct at third hand. Critically, it is as much about internal changes to the fabric of the organisation, to culture, leadership, talent, to micro changes in how people make decisions and interact on a daily basis, as about the high-profile moves. The goal of this research is to poke below the top-line, well-publicised strategic moves to understand how the ‘innards’ of organisations are changing or need to change to master the digital pivot. Such outward shifts in strategy, business models, competencies, and top individuals are relatively easy to discern, and widely covered in the business press and at industry conferences. Yet underneath these lies a complex set of supporting ix HEARTS AND MINDS: HARNESSING LEADERSHIP, CULTURE, AND TALENT TO REALLY GO DIGITAL and intertwined changes in how organisations are led, structured, and staffed, and in how people working in them think and act, in how their roles are designed and situated. These changes are subtle and hard to track.