Happy Monday War & Peaceniks. Ready for mutiny on The Leader Ship‽
If you read this space on the regular, you’ll note my repeated use of the phrase “the Media Apocalypse.” While some have questioned if my repeated of use of this rhetorical alarm bell is hyperbolic, there seems to be a general sense of consensus across the information-attention industrial complex that the modern Media business is at an important and existential crossroads.
Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost across entertainment and tech, with tens of thousands of more on the way. Old Media is slashing heads and costs. In the ten last months, Disney has swapped CEO Bobs and canned thousands of employees. The once drunken-monkey spending Netflix is now cutting programming costs, while their shareholders reject the paychecks of their CEOs. Snap is free fall and Twitter has been set on fire. Real-life Waystar, Fox, is grappling with a Talent vs C-Suite civil war, and a series of drastic losses in court. Even the Big Tech Death Stars have stumbled of late, with Apple reporting job cuts and disappointing sales of the mighty iPhone and Amazon losing money on the core business that made them. NBCU has been hit by yet another sexual misconduct scandal (now at half dozen in the last six years by my last count). If you missed the draw-dropping palace intrigue at CNN and Disco Bros as profiled in The Atlantic, please click here immediately (after you’re done reading this of course). And then there’s the acrimonious writers strike which has ground Hollywood to a halter stop.
A big question I get asked, especially by those not in the show biz: How the fuck did we get here? The answer is surprisingly uncomplicated.
While old Media margins (and executives) were high, few dared to rock boats by investing in a real long-term future. Last decade, while Netflix was disrupting the industry, Cable Companies refused to match their offers for streaming rights, and so traditional Media happily handed them over, for short-term gains, to the very company that would destroy their business model. By the time they realized what was happening, they had become so addicted to the licensing revenues, they simply couldn’t quit them. Then they finally jumped into the streaming themselves, chasing their disrupters down the rabbit hole, buoyed by the “good fortune” of a pandemic that kept everyone at home. During the last three pandemic years, nearly all of Media’s elite fooled themselves into thinking the buying, subscribing, and content consumption of lockdown would last forever, hiring and spending like mad, not realizing they were driving at breakneck speed toward a very tall cliff, in a car without breaks (or steering, or gas).
But then, another question arises: How did these powerful (nearly 100%) men all miss the warning signs? How did an entire industry go blind, in exactly the same way, at exactly the same time.
Once again, the answer is surprisingly uncomplicated…
We are not just going through a Media Apocalypse, we’re in the middle of a global management shitstorm.
“In a McKinsey study of more than 52,000 managers and employees, leaders rated themselves as better than their employees did. This included 86% of leaders who believed they model the improvements they want employees to make, while another 77% of leaders believed they inspire action.
Compare these self-perceptions to a Gallup poll which showed that 82% of managers and executives are seen as lacking in leadership skills by their employees. Termed “self-enhancement bias,” these numbers show that a surprising number of leaders suffer from inflated views of their own abilities.”
The cliche that “power corrupts” is only overused because it happens to be true. In his seminal book, The Power Paradox, UC Berkeley professor Dacher Keltner shows that as most people gain power in an organization, the less likely they are to listen to others, and the more likely they are to abuse that power, in order to gain more. That’s because, in most cases, managers get promoted into their roles due to success at something else, or because “it was their turn,” or due to their proficiency at cutthroat office politics, or from relentlessly pushing their direct reports to meet arbitrary metrics… and not because they have proven demonstrable talent for management.
After interviewing 27 million employees in 2.5 million work units, Gallup found that only 10% of people actually possess the specific talents necessary to be good at managing teams of people. They also found that just 18% of our current managers have those talents, meaning 82% of managers do not. Data shows that 50% of all employees report leaving a job specifically to get away from a bad manager. Bad management costs our global industries hundreds of billions of dollars in lost time, lost revenues, and wasted money.
Which begs yet another question: How do companies keep hiring, and promoting, people who are bad at managing other people? Sorry for repeating myself, but the answer is epically uncomplicated.
In many/most cases, powerful managers, especially in the Media-Entertainment-Tech enterprise zone, hire people exactly like themselves. In most of these instances, that means wealthy, white, older men, who tend to believe in their own innate infallibility, who interrupt and overrule direct reports, and who create fear-based cultures where questioning their authority gets one put on a corporate ice-flow to nowhere.
“The leadership battle often turns leaders into either tone-deaf bosses, at best, or abusive bullies, at worst. Consequently, significant data on workplace bullying report widespread verbal abuse, shouting, berating others, and the creation of a climate of intimidation.
Studies show that people in positions of corporate power are three times more likely than lower level employees to interrupt coworkers, multitask during meetings, raise their voices, and say insulting things. Not surprisingly, the result of all these factors is toxic workplaces in which both leaders and their reports feel despondent, underappreciated, and mistreated.”
- FORBES
I have personally spoken to dozens of smart, tenured executives who have tried to offer their bosses alternative courses for their businesses - once - and were warned not to do so again. I have seen respected members of Big Media executive teams hold their tongues rather than question the wisdom of the manager at the helm - of their team, of their division, of their company. Rather than risk rocking the boat, or losing their bonus, many simply start looking for new gigs, just to escape the toxicity without burning bridges.
Which gets me to the main point of this piece: It’s time for us to question everything.
I have a long and annoying habit of asking “why?” about each and every decision my bosses have made. At times it has made me unpopular amongst senior management, and more than once it’s gotten me fired. And until recently, I completely understood why many (if not most) employees and managers inside Big Media resist doing the same. The money is good. The perks are awesome. The industry is sexy. The stock options are attractive.
But with more than 200,000 job cuts in the last 18 months across Media and tech, while the rest of the economy continues to add jobs, it’s time to wake up and make our own damn coffee. No jobs are secure in our sector anymore. More importantly, it has become incredibly clear: The 68% old, 84% white, and 95% male “leaders” running our industry do not have all the answers our ecosystem is looking for. And most do not even understand how to manage the talented teams they oversee. Those of us not running these companies may not have the answers either, but very often we do have the right questions.
Why are we only cutting right now, and not investing in the future? Why isn’t there anyone who’s different than you in the room when these decisions get made? Why do we think that trying to replicate last decade’s model is going to work in this decade? Why is everyone on the exec team from the same eight colleges? Why - when all available data shows that a higher share of women have actual leadership talent than men - are women 51% of our population but just 6% of our CEOs?
I work with a lot of people now at liberty, or soon facing it, because of ill-founded decisions made at the top of the org chart, who are finding it hard finding new gigs, due to decisions made in the C-Suites of the industry’s other org charts. Holding our tongues is no longer a guarantee that the boat won’t get rocked anyway. No, you may not change anything by speaking up. But if enough of of us do, maybe, just maybe, we can get some new thinking at these helms, and find a way to navigate our way to the other side of the Media Apocalypse.
Go read that CNN Meltdown piece in The Atlantic now. Then ask yourself - and your bosses - the questions above. Then, please, for all our sakes, start questioning everything.
On June 26, I’ll be holding my next webinar, where I will question everything I can in one hour. The webinar details are below my sign off. If you see it, thanks for being a premium Peacenik! If you don’t, please consider it!
Have a great week.
ESHAP
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