THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506250045
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
SOURCE: Cole C. Campbell, Editor
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Producing a newspaper every day is a huge, collaborative effort, from the moment news breaks until the paper rolls off the presses, into the trucks and out to your doorstep or neighborhood news rack.
Within the newsroom alone, it takes many minds and hands to produce a daily news report supple enough to suit a variety of readers with equally varied expectations of what a newspaper should be.
To make the newspaper better and better, even as we confront economic and societal shifts, The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star are engaged in a management and cultural revolution.
You may be experiencing the same kinds of changes where you work; many organizations in Hampton Roads are trying new approaches.
At the newspaper, we are in revolt against a command-and-control management system in which decisions are passed up to the boss or the boss's boss or the boss's boss's boss or the boss of all bosses, somewhere in the cloud-encrusted heights of a corporate Olympus.
A command-and-control system doesn't work well in times of turbulent change. Leaders at the pinnacle have the best view of the overall battlefield; usually they can see farther into the distance. But they are far removed from much of the actual work and often from the customers who pay for that work to be done.
Meanwhile, the front-line troops can become frustrated with how long it takes for a decision to be made, or confused by the conflicting messages that echo between the levels of hierarchy, or dependent upon someone else's judgment, or needlessly combative in arguing for an idea or in scrapping for resources.
In our case, the leaders at the pinnacle have challenged the folks at the front lines - and at every station in between - to learn a new, team-based management system. In this system, front-line troops make decisions, within their areas of experience and expertise, that will help the company achieve its overall objectives.
The hope is that such decisions will be quicker, better-suited to the work and grounded in an understanding of customers. And the expectation is that such a system will lead to more efficiency and responsiveness so that you readers and advertisers who pay for our work will get the best value for your money.
For such a system to work, everyone at the newspaper has to be headed in the same direction and use a common method for making thoughtful decisions that inspire their colleagues' confidence.
Everyone must learn new ways of listening to customers for feedback, of saying thank-you to each other, of measuring progress toward concrete goals.
Senior leaders must let go of lots of decisions so they can spend time on strategy. Front-line troops must start making lots of decisions - once delegated upward - because they can make them better, combining new skills and techniques with their own knowledge and insight.
The newsroom has been working in teams for two years. But formal training in the theory and practice of team management began only in the past few weeks for our front lines - reporters, photographers, graphic artists, copy editors, page designers and administrative staff.
Most newsroom folks look at this revolution with the same pragmatic skepticism we bring to our news reporting, to test the value and validity of what we're told so that we can act on solid understanding. Some of us are struggling with the training materials or with personal preoccupations about what ought to be fixed around here and who ought to fix it.
Change is hard. In time, we will master this new way of doing business, and we will tap fully into the revolutionary power of teamwork - to constantly make this paper more useful and valuable to you. by CNB