Fuel from Mary Carns and Halftank Studio
People ask me if I have ever been part of a digital transformation that actually worked and my answer is yes, decades ago, at the Boston Globe newspaper.
From 1995 to 2000, I worked at the Boston Globe. My first job there was training classified advertising reps on AdFast, a new program that let real estate agents and car dealers send in their ad copy electronically instead of calling or faxing it. I was excited about it. The reps were wary, and understandably so. I listened to their concerns, and in the end I learned a lot more from them than they learned from me.
That set the tone for how the Globe handled change while I was there. They did three things almost nobody does. First, they trained everyone, not just the early adopters. Second, they framed new tools as extending people's expertise instead of replacing it. Third, and most importantly, they changed while they were still strong and profitable, before a crisis forced their hand.
You could even track the modernization in the subsidized cafeteria. The day it started serving hummus was a BIG DEAL. The old timers couldn't pronounce it. The Globe kept trying the new thing anyway.
Then the ground started shifting. In the mid-2000s, the Globe lost Filene's, one of its biggest advertising clients, and Sears, another major advertiser, cut back as well. Filene's, a Boston institution since 1881, disappeared completely in 2006 when its stores were converted to Macy's. That didn't bring the Globe a new client. Macy's was already one, having taken over Filene's main rival, Jordan Marsh, a decade earlier. Two competing advertisers became one. No amount of good training could replace clients that big.
Then, in 2009, the bottom fell out. The New York Times Co., which owned the Globe, threatened to shut the paper down unless its unions agreed to $20 million in concessions. At one point, when the union rejected a deal, the company simply imposed a 23% wage cut. Nearly 200 veteran employees lost their lifetime job guarantees. The people who had learned the new tools and adapted early got the same ultimatum as everyone else.
Here's the part I keep coming back to: doing the right thing bought the Globe time. They survived when other papers didn't. But it didn't buy them immunity. The storm that hit the newspaper industry didn't care how well they'd trimmed their sails.
This issue's leadership question:
"What would you change now, while things are going well, if you knew the storm was coming no matter what?"
If you lead a team, the Globe's best decision was about timing. The training you invest in during good years is what your people will carry into the bad ones, whether they stay with you or not.
If you're not in charge, point the same question at yourself. You can't control the weather. You can control whether you know how to sail, and whether you own your own boat.
I told the longer version of this story on Medium, including what it was like to work full-time hours as an official "part timer."
Until next time,
Mary
P.S. BAD FIT is out now. The Globe story is one piece of a pattern the book traces: doing everything right and still losing the job. If the book has helped you see that pattern in your own career, an Amazon review is how it finds the next person who's been told they're "not a good fit" and needs to hear it isn't their fault.
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