RSSThoughts on Steve Weitzner’s Move at CMP
When a CEO is “transitioned” from the role of CEO to another role within the company, this is often a face-saving move by both the company and the CEO when a parting of ways is imminent. Often the hallmark of this move is that the “transitioning” CEO ends up leaving the company within a year or so. We’ve seen that several times in B2B media in the past few years.
I don’t think this is that kind of move; I don’t think Weitzner is being “kicked upstairs.”
CMP/UBM is a very communicative company. Over the summer, when the company fired 200 of its 1,100 or so employees, Weitzner and Alix Raine, the corporate communicator at the company, called me and some of my colleagues at rival publications ahead of time to let us know what was happening and to let us know they’d be open to answering any questions we had. Though they put a positive spin on the story, they didn’t hesitate to acknowledge the negatives (premium content), that people were losing their jobs, and that that was not a pleasant prospect. It’s not my experience that CMP tries to hide things. It’s not David Levin’s (UBM CEO) way, it’s not Raine’s way, and, besides, UBM, being a publicly traded company in the UK, has a culture of disclosure.
That being said, there is a mystery here. If the company is making more money, as Levin said, and if the transition is going well, and if the move is mutually agreed upon and amicable, why not wait until there’s another executive in place ready to step into the role? It just seems a little too urgent. I think there is probably more here than has been written today, though I do believe the company is being fairly forthright in this case…I aim to find out next week at the ABM Top Management Meeting.
And, I’d like to add that I like Steve very much and that he’s been a great guide for me personally since I entered this industry. Every time I’ve reached out to him for advice–both about the industry and about my personal development–he’s been very helpful. And so, I wish him great luck in this next stage of his career; however, if his 23 year career at CMP is any indication, luck probably will have very little to do with it.
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He may be a great guy, but the press that covers media is giving him a bit of a pass. Here’s my concern. While he was CEO of a company with a boatload of print properties, he denigrated that aspect of the business. If I was running Information Week or CRN I wouldn’t be thrilled at having my CEO tell the world my print books are dying.
Worse, he painted a needlessly negative picture of the entire state of print. Do print right and you can be fine, as long as CEOs like Weitzner don’t tell the world to forget about print!!! Thanks Steve.
Steve’s comments became a self-fulfilling prophecy for CMP. Don’t tell me Network Computing will do better without a print component. Don’t tell me laying off hundreds of people is a strategic move and you are a visionary for doing so.
I think you may have a point here about a free pass. The communications efforts coming out of CMP are very good, and have given the company the luxury of getting ahead of some potentially very negative stories.
I’m not sure how the publishers of the books you mentioned felt at the time about Steve’s comments, but here’s how I see things with regards to CMP’s properties and print:
Ad pages were declining precipitously for them in certain categories, and the future didn’t look bright–to them. So they did what they felt they had to do and made major changes in the print titles. You say that if print is done “right”, things will be “fine”. Well, maybe they weren’t doing it right, and didn’t want to or didn’t know how. So they made alternative moves that seem, from what Levin said about increased earnings, to be paying off. There are many ways to skin a cat–and they chose that way.
But I think you have an especially good point about the self-fulfilling nature of negative comments about print. A lot of selling is marketing…perceptions. I’ve written about this issue much in this space. When a CEO of a company makes public declarations about the direction of the company, obviously clients listen and perhaps adjust their behavior/relationship with the company.