10 years of press crises & IS transformation

Podcast with Christophe Godin

Christophe Godin has over 30 years' experience in the press sector, is a Transition CIO and a member of the Infortive Community.

It has weathered all the waves of change and perpetual structural crisis in this sector:

• the arrival of free newspapers
• the irruption of GAFAM
• uberization
• downsizing
• managerial neglect.

Listening to this episode will help you better understand crisis management.

In his interview he discusses :

1. The press context: a stack of crises and information systems
2. Feedback on our work in the Press sector
3. Feedback from other business sectors

Enjoy!

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The press context: a stack of crises and information systems

The 2000s were marked by successive crises and changes in business models for press groups, most of them violent transformations. For a long time, these press groups benefited from subsidies to stay afloat, which led to a dependence on a certain "comfort" that may have been a brake on innovation. GAFAM and the digital revolution have had a major impact on the sector. This has led to a questioning and decline of established models. Investors have stepped in, resulting in a different language and arbitrations that are often poorly perceived by in-house teams.

"In those years, we had to speak the same language as the shareholder, in search of economic performance. Talk about roadmaps, budgets, prioritizations...Have this discourse that gives perspective and the means to arbitrate to management."

IT teams suffered from this permanent crisis syndrome:

"Teams are suffering in these organizations. The need for support has not necessarily been taken into account with teams that have been in place for over 10 years on average."

It was necessary to start again with modern solutions that were easier to manage:

"Sometimes it's good to wipe the slate clean and start again with modern, more innovative solutions that are easier to manage!"

Feedback on our work in the Press sector

In a restructuring context, there are three key phases in the process:

• ‍Thefirst: amazement‍

My company is bought out: a world collapses. Christophe Godin sees this stage as a great "depressive" phase.

• ‍Thesecond: awareness

‍Thisstage requires being as close as possible to the teams, Christophe advises. Working together with the HR department, we can then turn discussions into concrete proposals for support, training and skills assessment for each individual. We try to preserve jobs.

• ‍Thethird: reconstruction‍

The Transition CIO identified a remaining team with whom he rebuilt the structure, following the roadmap proposed by senior management. Although this step is sometimes viewed with suspicion, a series of tools were used to re-energize the team: training, promotion, redefinition of positions and salary increases.

At this stage, the CIO is listening to the new shareholder: expressing the need, analyzing the trajectory... General management, on the other hand, has to deal with the cultural challenges of merging several press titles, each with its own particularities and strong identities. As Christophe Godin reminds us:

"These are first and foremost issues for general management and editorial management. Once the path has been mapped out and the new shareholder's project has been accepted, we can start working on methods and tools. IT can then play its part."

Christophe describes the CIO as a "modest craftsman", a player who accompanies the company and supports it in its strategy. It's a job that requires both education and transparency. The CIO's role is to enable business units and management to make the right choices for their own transformation. The CIO's mission is then to help them formalize their plans, and act as a link with the entire IT ecosystem. He reminds us:

"The interim manager doesn't come in by chance. He doesn't come in when everything is going well. He comes in because there are major difficulties, there are points that are hurting, and general management is clearly aware of them. We've already reached a question mark."

The Transition Manager must act swiftly in these situations, and provide senior management with all the information they need to make a decision. He ensures that the business divisions are involved in the strategy presented to the Executive Committee.

Christophe uses the 3X5 approach:

• 5 days to understand the organization
• 5 weeks to propose solutions
• and 5 months to implement the first actions.

He points out,however, that he comes to missions with knowledge of transformation, not business expertise, and that business arbitration must be done by the business. The CIO and his PMO or application manager must offer a cross-functional vision of all projects, in order to propose a scenario for arbitrating IT investments in line with short- and long-term strategic priorities.

"I'm agnostic on these structural choices of general management. I refuse to make choices. I try to shed light on them by presenting the advantages and disadvantages, but not to let my personal choices show."

Feedback from other business sectors

The press is not the only field to have encountered this type of problem in terms of loss of meaning, difficulty in rethinking work and sudden regroupings. Christophe, who has also worked in the territorial public sector and the banking-insurance sector, observes similar difficulties in these sectors, particularly with regard to the management of complex Information Systems that have been developed over the years to meet the growing needs of users. These information systems, which can be highly innovative, rely on in-house skills, the number of which has dwindled, making it difficult to manage their evolution.

Christophe also highlights the dissonance between the evolution of the digital society and corporate practices, which often puts in-house teams in difficult situations due to a lack of training and insufficient staff to meet the challenges of digitization.

"I see that, in the final analysis, the experience of company takeovers, mergers and acquisitions is creating major technical difficulties, turning IS into a kind of "bête noire" that you can't really talk to. The step we need to take today is to simplify these organizations and systems. We need to make them more transparent, and give decision-makers back the metrics they need to avoid the successive crises that cost organizations dearly".

To remedy this situation, Christophe advocates the introduction of project governance in companies, a lever he frequently uses during his transition assignments:

"Introducing project governance into companies helps to federate the businesses, preach the good word, and bring in processes and tools. I generally introduce it as a POC, within IT teams when they are not involved in this project dynamic. Then we extend them to the operational departments by identifying referents of people who are somewhat interested in project mode. This acts as a link between general management, which is sometimes a little far removed from the realities, and its activity, which is then formalized with indicators, which also helps with arbitration."

In conclusion, the expertise of a Transition CIO who knows how to intervene and support General Management and teams in these transformations is vital in these contexts.