Illustration by Sylvia Asuncion-Crabb

 

Change is hard. Leading others through major organizational changes that you are also experiencing is even harder.

There’s a framework that Table Stakes organizations come back to again and again to help them navigate those tough waters — the Formula for Change developed by Eric Abramson of Columbia Business School:

Change = D x V x P

  • D is the dissatisfaction with the current state (this dissatisfaction or motivation, for a more positive spin, is unique to each person — as a leader, your dissatisfaction may not be the same as your team members’)
  • V is a clear, shared vision of the future
  • P is a process that provides a way forward and clears obstacles

This formula states that for change to occur, you must have all three components.

If you imagine a failed change effort you’ve experienced, you can probably pinpoint which of these three components was missing. Did the change effort not seem like a priority to you? Those leading the change efforts hadn’t done enough to understand each person’s motivations at work or didn’t understand that workplace culture is experienced differently by each person. Did the change seem to lack purpose or an overall goal? That is a case of no clear vision, or perhaps there was a vision but it wasn’t clearly communicated. Did the change suffer from poor execution? That effort lacked process or leadership didn’t clear obstacles in your way to make the change possible.

Applying the formula to individual efforts — along with the related long-term strategies of building up a supportive and healthy workplace culture, communicating effectively and prioritizing and building capacity — can help you manage and lead people well through change.

Workplace culture

illustration of a question markWhat it means

A healthy workplace culture — one where people feel heard and supported, with structures in place for sharing ideas and working together — is important for every news organization, and especially those undergoing major change.

In healthy and resilient workplaces, people experience psychological safety, meaning they feel safe sharing ideas and surfacing problems. They also feel a sense of belonging.

Fostering belonging in your organization helps improve innovation and performance and decreases turnover. A 2019 survey by BetterUp found that job performance increased by 56% and turnover risk declined by 50% when employees felt like they belonged.

illustration of an eye looking through a magnifying glassWhat it looks like in practice

  • LAist, a Poynter Table Stakes participant, applied many Performance Driven Change tools, used in Table Stakes and the Media Transformation Challenge, to drive systemic change in diversity, equity and inclusion. In the summer of 2020, LAist formed a DEI task force to assess where the organization was in terms of DEI and to make recommendations to top leaders and the board of trustees. By combining these tools with the frameworks of engaged journalism, the task force was able to understand the different ways belonging was experienced by staff and propose 44 recommendations, all of which were approved, to improve overall workplace culture. These action items included adopting hiring boards for all positions, overhauling the onboarding process for new employees, protecting training times for employees each month and relaunching an internal leadership program.
  • The Oklahoman, a Major Market Table Stakes alumnus, prioritized improving its workplace culture as it worked toward its digital transformation goals. These efforts included pandemic-era outdoor opportunities to bring remote staff together, such as softball and kickball teams and a barbecue. These opportunities allowed news and sports staffs to mingle, and for editors to get to know reporters they don’t usually work with. They also used recognition, such as highlighting work in a Gannett-wide weekly newsletter, to motivate staff.
  • Recognizing the importance of belonging and healthy workplace culture, dozens of Table Stakes alumni gathered in Minneapolis to evaluate their organizations and surface solutions at an API Local News Summit in July 2024. Journalists and outside experts discussed psychological safety, working across generations and being values-driven leaders, all in service of improving their cultures. Years earlier, during their participation in the Major Market Table Stakes, several news organizations invited the American Press Institute’s then-newsroom learning manager, Amy Kovac-Ashley, to visit their newsrooms to conduct cultural assessments, which addressed staff’s feelings about a range of issues including diversity, recognition, generational tensions, strategic vision and day-to-day responsibilities.

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Communication and buy-in

illustration of a question markWhat it means

Communication is key to a successful digital transformation strategy. The vision and goals must be clear, and everyone must understand how they can contribute to those new goals.

In the Table Stakes programs, the core strategic team is encouraged to “go public,” to share its goals with everyone in the organization. This open communication is key for:

  • Getting more people “on the bus” and involved in the digital transformation efforts
  • Creating channels for feedback and accountability
  • Helping people see how they are connected to your goals
  • Building trust

This initial communication and ongoing updates are where many teams falter. They might have used jargon that felt exclusionary to those not on the planning team. Others didn’t give enough thought to the audience or venue for making such an announcement. Some were off on the timing — they either shared too soon, before they had specific goals or ways for people to contribute, or they waited too late, not leaving room for feedback and iteration. And many failed to develop a plan for ongoing communication, thinking that sharing a vision was a one-and-done exercise.

As you think about buy-in and ongoing communication, ask yourself these questions:

  • How does your news organization best receive information?
  • What roles and experiences are represented on your planning team? How might those gaps affect your perception of effective communication?
  • How are you collecting feedback and iterating?
  • How are you sharing progress and celebrating successes along the way?

illustration of an eye looking through a magnifying glassWhat this looks like in practice

  • The UNC Table Stakes program uses the metaphor of “who’s on your bus” — and an exercise where participants took time to actually draw their buses —  to help think through the supporters and detractors of change efforts and to consider how they can bring more staff and stakeholders along. As program director Erica Beshears Perel wrote, “Buses take a team of people on a journey. Someone has to drive. Folks climb off and on. Internal and external factors can speed or slow the journey, and sometimes, the bus — the engine of change — breaks down.” Through the exercise, some teams found no one was driving their “bus.” Another had a driver, but not many passengers. Teams revisited the drawings later in the session, finding many buses had acquired drivers and needed repairs.
  • The Salt Lake Tribune, a Major Market Table Stakes participant, found that seeking feedback at various stages of a major workflow overhaul and iterating based on what they learned was key to getting the newsroom on board for the change. The project team involved people in various roles making sure the new planning tool and audience-focused workflow addressed dissatisfaction across responsibilities, and making sure decisions were not top-down. Since rolling out the workflow and audience-centric approach, the Tribune has seen an increase in median pageviews and a decline in stories that get fewer than 1,000 pageviews.

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Prioritization and capacity building

illustration of a question markWhat it means

Digital transformation opens a whole world of new possible tasks and priorities, and a slate of new skills you and your team will need to master.

Therefore, your digital transformation plan must prioritize acquiring new skills, enhancing your personal and organizational capacity, and letting go of certain practices to accommodate new priorities.

A “less is more” approach, especially when it comes to addressing a problem or taking on a project, tends to go against our instincts. Researchers have found that most people solve problems by adding instead of subtracting things — for example, when an incoming university president solicited ideas for improvements, only 11 percent involved getting rid of something.

To take on new responsibilities, you’ll need to subtract some things, allowing you and your staff the time needed to learn, practice and apply new digital skills.

illustration of an eye looking through a magnifying glassWhat it looks like in practice

  • The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a Major Market Table Stakes participant, created a stop-doing list that it kept continuously updated with activities that didn’t contribute to its audience-centric strategy. The Journal Sentinel’s list became an anti-to-do list, allowing them to eliminate unnecessary tasks so they had more capacity to focus on new efforts. Many items on the list were related to digital work — manually posting to Twitter, managing several Facebook pages and producing a weekly Facebook Live show — but a close look at analytics showed those things weren’t helping the team reach its digital audience and subscriber goals.
  • The Stop-Doing List became a popular concept across the Table Stakes programs, inspiring other organizations to commit to giving up tactics and strategies that weren’t helping them reach their new goals, including:
    • The Chattanooga Times Free Press, a Poynter Table Stakes alumnus, set up a stop-doing team of five who were familiar with newsroom analytics. The team identified topics that weren’t driving traffic and started experimenting with topics they believed would attract readers. “Remember when, Chattanooga?,” a nostalgia photo feature inspired by the Columbus Dispatch’s work, replaced the weekly auto column, and they discontinued a weekly Facebook Live show, putting their efforts toward more engaging food content, which they have expanded into a subscriber-only food newsletter.
    • Blue Ridge Public Radio’s stop-doing efforts focused on how they worked together. The UNC Table Stakes alum shortened staff meetings from one hour each week to a monthly one-hour strategic “Town Hall” and limited other meetings to just key stakeholders. Rather than having everyone be in charge of their digital transformation, they adopted the DACI method to designate specific roles (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed).
    • At Triad City Beat, a UNC Table Stakes alumnus, publisher Brian Clarey stopped writing his weekly metro column — something he’d been doing since 2001! — because it fell in the easy-to-do, low-value box. That freed up his time for more high-value activities, including applying for grants to support TCB’s journalism. The alt-weekly also reduced its print frequency to every other week, cutting its biggest expense in half and freeing up valuable time for the editorial staff to publish more stories on the website.
  • The Seattle Times, a Major Market Table Stakes alumnus, has a long-running mentorship program that contributes to professional development and boosts staff engagement. One-third to just over half of the newsroom has taken part in a 6-month cycle over the past three years. A committee takes great care in matching mentors and mentees based on skills-sharing and goals. In one example, photographer Amanda “Mindy” Ray signed up as a mentee to improve her writing skills. Her mentor, food writer Jackie Varriano, encouraged Ray to write a story for the Times on a family cookbook project she was working on. In addition to this one-on-one bonding and skills-sharing, the program offers brown bags on requested topics such as career paths in the newsroom, time management and organization, and interviewing reluctant sources.

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The digital transformation guide from the American Press Institute

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