Time Warner’s dismissal of Jack Griffin as the head of its magazine division Time Inc. is a cautionary tale about egotism in creative organisations. The lesson is that creatives are expected to be like that but business-side executives are not.
Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner’s chief executive, was admirably clear about why he asked Mr Griffin to step down. Mr Griffin was upsetting a lot of people in an organisation where executives are expected to rub along with editorial types.
There are various off-the-record summaries of what happened in the FT, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal today. Mr Griffin seems to have arrived at Time Inc as a hard-charging macho executive who took no prisoners, held meetings at 7.30am, and employed a lot of consultants.
His biggest mistake, however, was to want his name up in lights. The FT reports:
Some industry veterans inside and outside the company were particularly irked by his insistence that all Time Inc publications run mastheads featuring his name at the top, claiming that the decision would cost the group millions of dollars from advertising that could have been sold in the same space.
Mr Griffin’s defence seems to be that Time Inc is an old-fashioned place with entrenched fiefs and he upset people by trying to modernise it. As a helpful “person close to” him explains in the Journal:
“Jack’s exit had nothing to do with management style and everything to do with the question of whether Time is manageable so long as entrenched interests fiercely resist the change necessary to position the organization for the future.”
That may be so but if you are a revolutionary surrounded by revanchists, it’s wise not to hand them a bazooka to use against you.
