"In early 2020 hromadske reached a crisis point. Despite many successes achieved over 7 years of existence the organization was struggling motivation was low, staff turnover was high, previously set goals seemed irrelevant or unrealistic. The path forward was unclear. From March to September 2020 hromadske embarked on a journey to recreate its organizational structure, operations, planning and team management, the revenue model … basically everything related to setting and realizing goals. Such transformations are rare in the media industry. Big changes in how things are done can be perceived as an admission of past mistakes or failures something that doesn’t sit well for many managers in our image conscious industry. More importantly, media transformations over focus on the visible part the journalism. But problems in editorial are often a symptom of deeper issues. hromadske decided to “pop the hood” and dig into the organization’s engine starting from the basics. The present document aims to provide a preliminary template for other media contemplating radical change, that we hope will be further developed by other media organizations going through similar issues. It lays out the challenges we faced, what we did to resolve them, and the lessons we learned along the way. We hope it will provide some insights and guidance." (Page 1)
1 Executive Summary, 3
2 Hromadske Background, 4
3 Transformation Support, 5
4 WHERE IT STARTED: INITIAL CHALLENGES, 6
Change in leadership -- Budgetary crisis -- Compelxity everywhere -- Human resources crisis -- Chasing grants at any cost -- No culture of fact-based decision-making -- COVID-19 hit at the start of transformation
5 WHAT WAS DONE: KEY ELEMENTS OF THE TRANSFORMATION PROGRAM, 13
Aggressive cost-cutting -- Simplified functional organization structure -- Feedback and other HR tools -Using OKRs (Objectives and Key results) to focus on results -- Improve audience definition and brand positioning -- Leveraging brand, analytics and product development to boost site performance -- Developing YouTube as a "digital challenger TV" -- Delivering non-donor revenues
6 LEARNINGS AND INSIGHTS, 24
Don't eat the elephant in one piece -- Use time wisely - it's your greates resource -- Overcommunicate -- Perfect is the enemy of the good -- Don't underestimate the difficulty of change -- No plan survices contact with the enemy