I was the CEO of Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd. and I had the whole media enterprise to run. Because I was the newly appointed CEO and the youngest CEO in the history of this company, they expected me to be magical and do something really unique and show the investors that there choosing me as a CEO was their best move. So…
It’s my first day on the job and I got to meet everyone. I went out for fancy lunches and was talking about newspaper business with everyone. Soon I realized that my use of simple English isn’t really impressive, because usually CEOs are supposed to use terms like strategy, management, efficiency, motivation, performance, bandwidth, processes and all that…but I was doing simple-talk and not using any of those words. And even after I realized that I wasn’t talking the way every other CEO talks, I stuck to my way of speaking and was proud that (if not anything else) this is a unique thing I bring with me, that is, I am straight shooter. Then…
I setup a meeting to give a presentation and introduce my plans. So, I invited all the CXOs, Vice presidents and Investors to the meeting…(and I was feeling like Steve Jobs giving the iPhone keynote speech)…so, I started by saying that I have a 3 year road-map and I wish to start executing all the plans as per the road-map right from next month. Then I went on to tell them about:
1. How to change the online publishing and how to be a classier product online.
2. How not to concentrate only on the newspaper content but also on the customer’s experience reading the newspaper.
3. How to get area specific news accumulated and how to work in agile-fashioned teams to get things done quickly.
4. How to form a community of writers and encourage newspaper reading as a writer (all in all, read the paper like you wrote it).
5. A marketing campaign in the lines of where people read the newspaper and how to consume the news (we need to teach people how to consume news, they don’t know it yet)
But, for the first month, all I want from the top level management is to come up with a one-page write-up on the top 15 things they do in their divisions and that they cannot do without. I say this and I finish the meeting…in the end, I also say that I want to meet everyone exactly 1 month from now. Everyone agrees and there is some applause and nobody thinks there is anything magical about the new CEO (me, that is).
After one month of discussions, I tell everyone that what we are going to do with our product (newspaper and magazine, that is) is to not do a lot of things and not start doing new things. We have so many subscribers, lets finalize only 7 from the 15 things in the list. Let’s focus only on the most-important 7 things and bring the kind of excellence that isn’t there in any other product…and let’s just get rid of the other 8 things for the time being.
People understand my ideas and roll out totally amazing newspapers and magazines, and the company profits are mind-blowing. I am elated and humble…and then a mosquito bit me and I woke up. I was having an amazing dream, and these fucking mosquitoes spoilt it J. I am sure I would have done a lot more as a CEO if I had a few more hours of sleep; you see, I am just too psyched about leading media enterprises J.
PS: I’ll not forget this dream, it was good…I didn’t do anything ground breaking…but I got amazing results by telling my company to drop 50% of what they do on the daily basis and invest that time in doing the other crucial 50%.
