'Breaking silos comes naturally to journalists'

Having had, until a few months ago, the privilege of running a media company as CEO for five years and at the same time serving as Editor of its English newspaper and digital properties, it struck me recently that it's worth reflecting on how one role affected the other, and on what leadership lessons could be drawn from the experience.

To understand that, it's essential to get what running a newsroom entails, and what makes the contents of the newsroom -- essentially its journalists -- tick.
And then, to look at how this varies or aligns with the motivations and characteristics of the rest of the business units -- ad sales, circulation, digital and so on.
Let's start by looking at the newsroom. A little bit of reflection yields the following about my tribe, usual caveats about exceptions apply:

1. Journalists have a strong bullshit detector
2. They hate jargon
3. They understand people and motivations instinctively
4. They are curious, and interested to learn new things
5. They are always interesting company
6. They effortlessly break silos
7. They have skills they don't realise they have
8. They use their gut in hiring decisions
9. They can be cynical, or suffer from righteous indignation
10. They have a phobia of boredom and routine
11. They abhor paperwork and documentation

Having been a journalist for 25 years when I took the CEO job, I carried the newsroom into the boardroom, and then leveraged (or learned to temper) these characteristics when on the corporate side of the building. It was an interesting ride, to say the least.

How did the years as a journalist help? Points 1-8 above were positives. Journalist CEOs of media companies understand when they are being spun, and it repels them, which is a good thing. A visceral dislike of jargon -- common to newsrooms across the world -- makes them strip it out of any of their presentations/company emails it may have crept into, which are all the clearer because of that. Dilbert, that poor victim of corporatespeak, wouldn't have had a reason to exist if all communication bore in mind the principles of journalism.

Understanding people and what makes them tick is the single key attribute for leaders of large teams, and here a background in reporting on, and interviewing, individuals of every stripe clearly helps. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it triggers learning, the single biggest attraction of the CEO role for me.

Breaking silos comes naturally to journalists -- it's a poor bureau chief who needs her/his editor's help to speak to another team lead. Newsrooms are (or should be) flat, wall-less structures where a reporter covering one beat walks across to a reporter covering another with a proposal to collaborate. Or a video editor talks directly to a feature writer without their bosses exchanging mails. This sort of silo-free approach is invaluable when transplanted into a corporate environment.

Journalists have skills they don't realise they had -- witness the numbers of them who have made successful second careers in other professions. A lot of their later-life success is owed to the years in the newsroom, where they learn to assimilate, weed out, prioritise and produce (hopefully high quality) output, often at great speed. This is useful on the corporate side where multifarious challenges can come your way, from a surge in input costs to an involved discussion with the Union. How nimble can you be? Can you inject a bit of flexibility into the rest of the organisation?

Using your gut in hiring decisions is something that works well if you've applied that other part of your anatomy -- your brain -- to winnow the candidates down to a shortlist. Again, and this can go both ways, there is sometimes a tendency to hire the more 'interesting' of two equally qualified candidates. Mind you, if your interviewees figure this out, there may be attempts to game you: a sudden surge in candidates who escaped being shot in Naxal areas, or those who studied by the light of a street-lamp after a meal of gruel and aced their IIT entrance exams, for example. A good HR head, and I had one, can rein you in when needed.

Points 9-11 you need to be aware of, and work to counter. There's no room for cynicism in a high-performance culture you want to build on the corporate side, and righteous indignation can cause its own problems. Save that for headlines on the political pages. You are bound to run into routine and documentation on the corporate side -- you need to get with the agenda quickly because inattention is not an option.

How do motivations in the newsroom align with those in the rest of the business? Ad Sales are similarly driven by deadlines and targets. Circulation is all about process and running a tight ship, not dissimilar from a good news operation. Digital feeds off the newsroom's output and can serve to provide periodic reality checks about the way content is being consumed in the wide world out there, sometimes a chastening experience.

You can draw lessons from running newsrooms (where you maintain a state of continued urgency and hammer home the need to try new things) into all these operations.

Ditto in communicating with the organisation, where clarity and authenticity, hallmarks of good writing, trump corporate speak any day.

More generally, decades spent in newsrooms are a splendid training for a lot of what life may throw at you. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.