“It all begins with love”

——interview with Ann S Moore,Chairman and CEO of Time Inc.

Chaosun

China Economic Report

Time Inc. is one of the largest content companies in the world,with a portfolio of approximately 125 magazines,including some of the world's most popular powerful and trusted brands,for the chinese readers,such as Time, Fortune, People ect.

one out of every 2 American adults reads a Time Inc. magazine,and one out of every 10 who are online visites a company website.

Ann Moore is the first female Chairman and CEO of Time Inc. since it was founded and one of super business women in the world.As the only chinese participant of FORTUNE/U.S. State Department Mentoring Partnership,I luckily became Ann’s mentee.

It all begins with love

Ann is always with her charming smile and let me——her mentee from china to feel her life not only in her office：she brought me to the time 100 cocktail party,to the commitment of Newyork university, to help raise money for highschool students. I always hear people use "brilliant,wonderful"to describe her when I was in Timeinc.

when we talked of the olympic games in beijing ,she told me, "I have been here 30 years.I traveled all over the world,I have been to 11 olimpics and oscar. I had dinner with president Hujintao of China,I talked with president of the U.S. at Whitehouse. That's all started because I wanna do something I love."

Ann is the MBA of Harvard University in 1978,and one of the few girls in the class, but she was the graduate speaker. Most of her schoolmates went to the wall street after graduation, but she chose the lowest pay offer——come to Time Inc."the reason is so simple— I just love the magazines! this is really wonderful career, intellectually interesting. Our products are fabulous, and I am working with very very smart people."

 
In the first 10 years, Ann started her career in Sports Illunstrated as a young girl, which launched in 1954 as the first sports news magazine in U.S and also the most popular sports magazine in the world now. when she came to Sports Illunstrated, it's unusual for a woman work there. But she had a lot of fun there. Then around 1991,she got to move to the People magazine as publisher and president.It was not great time for People magazine but she spent 10 years running People magazine and she had a wonderful wonderful time. when she first got to people magazine they did a lot of “invented things”.“they published it on Monday but nobody in America shopped in grocery stores on Monday so they changed the publication day and kept the news fresh  and got much lift on sales and make a huge success.”

Broaden readers is the historical moment

when Ann was the president of People magazine, she met with a summit in her career. her office is also the founder of Time Inc.—Henry Luce's office,“It was the one of the most important moment in my career,I got the chance to prove my business brain.”

Gradually Ann move the company forward into diversification,she also launched a series of magazines targetting at the women readers,such Instyle, Realsimple. "I always jokingly say I am the one who launched most magazines in this company,even more than Henry Luce. one of the real benefits for more diverse we really saved the future of our company. we need diversity. we market at women readers is the historical moment of the company.

Back to 1980's people thought that they cannot make money if the readers were women.but the facts prove it wrong. "we will be in big trouble if we didnt add children and women's titles, cause in American family ,women buy everything while men dont have the habit of shopping. we are grateful we diverse our product line. People became the most profittable magazine in this planet." Ann smiles.

“To start a business is hard because you have to know your clients' needs, to know the difference.you got to know the business first then you can go and invent.”

“we launched Instyle which is our big beauty fashion magazine. we launched that because I noticed that a lot of women in TimeInc.are not reading any traditonal fashion magazine. They were not really relevent. they were cloth we didnt wear at the office.they never told you where to buy it when you saw it on the old fashion magazines. we decided we dont really care about the super models, we focus on celebity world. Instyle is completely different from any magazine in American Market place. we never show you a bag, a purse or a cloth or anything that we wont tell you how to buy it. please do the homework for the readers. It is hard work and a lot of fact checking as news magazines do. I thought the old women magazines are lazy until Instyle came by. It is the most profittable fashion magazine in America now.”

“Realsimple is another example. everybody made fun of it when we came out of the idea. It is the magazine about organizing? guess what, the average American woman spends 55 minutes a day just looking for things. we have too many things and we need to organize. If you ask an woman employee whether you wanna an extra week off or extra week payed, probably they will take the time off. Because time is the most precious commodity we have and we don't have any more. we are racing with 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. so here is the magazine we said we are going to organize you and give you an extra hour a day. This is a lesson to steal. This is an beatable promise to our readers .And again it is a huge hit. we already publish Real simple in Japan and south Africa too.”

To move the company into diversity era,Ann is called “launch queen”.

Make Time Inc.appear in any medium readers might choose

Since the 20 century, the growth of the internet and an array of other digital technologies has forced the company to rethink how it dose business. These new technologies are transforming the way people consume media, freeing them to read magazine articles on their computers or on an array of portable devices—often free of charge.

“To conquer this challenge, we got to do a lot of things”,says Ann,“It is clear from the consolidation of advertising agencies and the split of creative and media that the world of buying media has changed. The world of traditional media has to change to git in aligment with that, and it’s a process that we are going through. we need to be more marketing-oriented. we need to be much more user-friendly to our clients. if you want a multimedia platform package, we’ll give it to you. I have got a thousand brilliant print sales people who are going to be transformed into a thousand brilliant multimedia salespeople. I hope they enjoyed the transformation.”

Time Inc’s goal in this new environment is to become a provider of content that can appear in any medium readers might choose.“I want to get rid of work that we don't need anymore,and I want to then hire in areas where we are going to grow.”

“Just as Time Inc.is stronger and stronger because we have a balanced diversified portfolio. We will continue to look for strategic assets that may not be paper or traditonal magazines if they fit the portpolio and are poised for growth. This is what I believe: we are a content company. we creat and we edit, and we aggregate the best content out there. we can deliver to you, our reader, in whatever format you want it in the future-maybe not on paper.”

Being parents learns more than in the school

Even Ann is very successful in her career, she still think it donest mean everything. it means sacrifice and making good balance between career and family.“Not every woman wants to be the chairman.”

Ann has been married for 30 years and has a happy family. “No matter how busy we are, our family have supper on Saturday night. I love to cook for my husband, my son and my son’s friends. It is the funniest dinner to me, better than any place else.”

“One of the keys of being a great leader is to take care of yourself. you have to keep your energy up and find way to control your stress because people are counting on you. I have my own outlet and really enjoy quiet moment every morning. I would like to have 2 cups of coffee and read some newspaper. During the weekend ,I will go to my beach house ,I don't do anything but read, while my husband has his own airplane and he usually goes around by his airplane on the weekend.”

Ann told me it seems that she is surrounded by kids and babysits all the time. she has a son who graduated from Harvard university one year ago.“Parenting skills are really capable into working form and so sometimes I think I have not 120 magazines but kids. all your lessons you wanna teach your children are also good for working places: say please, do your homework, listen to your teacher, look both ways, speak up, always say thank you…those things are important in work place. From being parents I probably learn more as much as I learn from business school on how to lead people, how to keep the peace, how to get people to do things they normally might not wanna do ,how to influence people…one of the parents job is to shape the child, help them set up their own value system.”  

Make long-term goal of your life

I am looking for the conception of leadership from Ann, but her answer is totally different from my EMBA class. She told me leadership is complicated. people have to give up perfection. The most important thing for success is self assessment.“you really need to clearly understand who you are and what’s important to you. Isn’t the point of life to be happy?  ”

“I don't quite understand  people who will do things make them unhappy, take a job they don't like, work in a company without their own value. I know a lot of young people as my son’s age really struggling with the job they are taking. I think if you know who are you ,what’s important to you, you can get a better match with your career. For me, I just know I love to read magazine.”

Ann told me a little story ,“I once on the  ariplane with people from the other companies who are working on the speech or the paper, and I just picked up the Sports Illustrated special issue of the year, that’s my job and what I make a living. who is the smartest person on this plane?”

I asked Ann whether she feels pressure surrounded by smart people all the time, Ann told me it is self assessment problem again.“how much pressure can you take? I have a great compacity for pressure.”

I also asked since she is so successful whether she has had regret before. she said,“At the end of life, I don't have the regret to the past. you may have some curiosity about the choice you didn't pursue. but I don't have the curiosity.”Ann shared the secret of her success with me, one of the secret of her success is she only took what she can handle.“I know my capacity about the stress, I know my capacity with the complicated life. how important to know yourself, that’s the whole key. what’s you good at and your weakness. you should build your career with what you are good at and what you really enjoy doing.”

“I am in my 50’s now. one day I just woke up and found 30 years passed by. I am telling you and all the young people time speeds up and goes faster and faster. so don't take short term view, dont spend your life just doing short term things. making money is not hard in nowadays, making difference is harder. you cant believe how fast you can get there so you might start now and think about it.”

“My long term goal is to be happy, have a great family and a great career.”Ann smiles as always.