Naked in the Boardroom by Robin Wolaner

Author:Robin Wolaner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A FIRESIDE BOOK
Published: 2005-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

NAKED TRUTH #43

Don’t take a job on the rebound, like a boyfriend whose main appeal Is his difference from the predecessor who just broke your heart.

When I sold my interest in Parenting to Time I was named a vice president of magazine development; I oversaw launches such as Vibe and Martha Stewart Living while still running Parenting. Perhaps success went to my head, because I then made the worst mistake of my career so far: accepting a “promotion” to run a company in which I had almost no interest, for which I had almost no affinity, and which necessitated a spirit-breaking commute and my removal from the start-up activities on which I thrived. In hopes that you will never do something as dumb, here’s where I erred, and what I learned.

At the time I sold my interest in Parenting to Time, they had just purchased Sunset Publishing. I was not considered as a potential CEO for it, which made sense and hurt my feelings simultaneously.

The CEO they hired for Sunset never fit into the Time Inc. mold, at least not the mold of the nineties. I had tried to welcome him to the fold by inviting him to lunch soon after he started; he brought his vice president of corporate communications with him. When a group of California publishers became active in the ultimately successful effort to overturn a sales tax that discriminated against publishers based in our state, I tried to get his interest, as Sunset was the iconic California magazine; he sent the same vice president. Despite our lack of rapport, I empathized: He had a tough job. Not unlike attending an ex-boyfriend’s wedding, I was still piqued at the fact that I hadn’t been considered for the position, but it sure didn’t look like fun. Time Inc. had paid dearly for Sunset, which had been run—as many family businesses are—at a breakeven, with the Lane family keeping on many long-service employees at a staffing level about double what comparable publishing companies had. At the time of the acquisition, Time offered lavish retirement packages to those who volunteered for them, with the result that many of the people who remained with the company did so because they had no other employment opportunities or were comfortable in their routines. Many of those who left did so because they could pocket the package and go on to something else. This is not a recipe for a vibrant staff. Moreover, California was in a fairly severe recession, so much of what Sunset had been built on—the leading edge of Western consumption, the fast growth of the California economy—was missing, at least temporarily.

My last encounter with Sunset’s CEO was perhaps the oddest. We had a Time Inc. Ventures (TIV) meeting in L.A., and for the first time, TIV CEO Bob Miller—boss of both the Sunset CEO and me—decided to bring his glamorous wife, Kelly Harmon, to dinner. We met at Spago, and she was as stunning in person as on television. As

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