Innovation Leadership Forum content

2 3 L E A D E R S H I P I N S I G H T S S E R I E S L E A D E R S H I P I N S I G H T S S E R I E S Leaders Insights Series The new monthly Leaders Insight Series features 1:1 interviews with your peers from the Innovation Leaders Forum. Interview topics include leadership, building agile teams, creating a culture of innovation, accelerating change, embracing failure, skills acquisition and managing digital disruption. This month we feature Damian Cronan, CTO of Nine Publishing. Nine is a leading Australian, publicly-listed media company, with holdings in radio and television broadcasting, newspaper publications and digital media. Its media assets include Nine Network, radio broadcaster Macquarie Media, subscription video platform Stan and majority investments in the Domain Group and CarAdvice. The Nine Publishing division covers major newspaper mastheads such as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, digital properties that include nine.com.au, 9Honey and Pedestrian.TV. Given the Sydney Morning Herald is 188 years old (older than the New York Times) and The Age is 165 years old, we thought it would be interesting to learn more about how a CTO in a company with such heritage views leadership and the management of driving accelerated technology transformation. About Nine Publishing Through change we grow, through growth we learn, and through learning and discovery we realise a greater good, even if there are setbacks. How do you view disruption in the media industry? How do you lead your teams through periods of change and encourage them to embrace disruption? Disruption can be a source of great creativity because you have a rare license to pursue opportunities and do things that other businesses would only dream of. One of the reasons I personally work in media is because media has no barriers to entry and it's a low regulation environment. People external to Nine Publishing see it as 'you're a traditional publisher, you're being disrupted' but we see it as 'no, the landscape is changing – how quickly can we change to be a disruptee?' We don't want to see ourselves as in competition with the ABC or News Ltd, we want to be in competition with the most nimble of media start-ups on the market, because that's where the future competition is. So if you accept the idea that there's a business with an existential threat and that technology is one of the potential things that could be exploited to save that business, then what greater opportunity is there than to contribute to that transformation as a technologist. The idea that change is a thing that starts and stops in 2019 is a poor mental model for change. Change is now a constant and a perpetual presence. So modern business, particularly in industries like media, is constantly shifting and being asked to embrace change. Change today is a very human problem, it's not a technology problem. My personal approach to this is we just need to talk to staff on the level, consider their needs openly and be transparent about our motivations for the type of change and what we're trying to achieve with it. Most people are incredibly resilient if they're given the context and the thinking behind why we need to do something, or how we need to evolve or change direction. Growth mindsets are key as well. No-one's expecting a faultless performance, but if you prepare your staff with fundamental tenets of resilience in the culture, and the sense that change is a constant - through change we grow, through growth we learn, and through learning and discovery we realise a greater good - then the authenticity of the communication carries people along with it, even if there are setbacks.

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