A New CEO Needed to Reinvigorate an Organization and Leadership Team

Opportunity

It’s a fact of business: without innovation or aligned leadership, growth stagnates. One upstart media organization known to shake up the status quo was experiencing just that — and hired an outside CEO to fix it.

While leaders on the business side saw the need to capitalize on the changes in how people consume news — and create new revenue streams in the process — the old-school newsroom leadership was resistant to change. Complicating matters, some leaders on both sides were more concerned with their own priorities than driving the organization forward.

Solution

We realized neither side could achieve their goals without the other’s help. To bridge the divide, we kicked things off with a leadership alignment session where key players agreed to focus on five initiatives. They identified factors that may prevent success, who was responsible for solutioning for each initiative, and what they would need to be successful. Within each initiative, we helped the team identify key steps and results for both the customer and the company. They also agreed upon the need to improve culture through shared communication and language.

Impact

One year later, the organization recognizes that those tough conversations were worth it. The CEO notes that while some leaders were ultimately unable to buy into the new vision and left on their own accord, most have rallied around the company’s new-found alignment.

The CEO used our learnings to more effectively align the leadership team, balancing driving new revenue streams with producing the news the organization is known for. To achieve this, a Chief Product Officer from a product-based company was brought on and was elevated within the organization to the same level as the Editor-In-Chief. This created a more balanced organization and better alignment between the two key divisions.

This work was key in navigating a tumultuous news year in 2020. Thanks to better leadership alignment, the organization has remained stable — and has even grown in key areas — despite outside challenges.