Open Exchange: Beyond the Boardroom with Jonathan Tisch

Bridgehampton, NY
Season 2, Episode 5

GUEST: Ann Moore, CEO, Time Inc.
HOST: Jonathan Tisch

JONATHAN TISCH: Ann, it's sort of a murky day here in Bridgehampton but your setting is so gorgeous. --and whats interesting is that the females, the women, in your family all sort of took a very deliberate career path, nursing school

ANN MOORE: Oh, yes.

TISCH: --University of Pennsylvania

MOORE: Right.

TISCH: --but you said I want to do something different.

MOORE: Well, I was the oldest grandchild of 30 and I was

TISCH: Big family.

MOORE: I was the first one in my- in the family not to go to the University of Pennsylvania but what were the choices back then? Were talking about my mothers generation where women really the choice was do you want to be a nurse or do you want to be a teacher and I just didnt pass the test to be either one so I ended up going to Vanderbilt which was hard to explain to my Pennsylvania born grandmother. I was just so determined to go to a coed university and there werent that many choices back in the 60s. The ivies and my state school didnt go coed until the 70s. So I went to Vanderbilt where I found a private school that was completely coed. It was great.

TISCH: But at Vandy you start out as a math major and then switched to political science.

MOORE: Yes. Well, that was because I wasnt quite sure how I was going to get a job as a math major and once you get to kind of theoretical math I was puzzled as to really-- I wasnt going to be a scientist or an engineer and I- truthfully I graduated from Vanderbilt not knowing you could get an MBA. I switched to political science, one, because I was interested in politics since I grew up outside of Washington, D.C., but two, I thought thats what I needed to do to go to law school. My goal was to go to law school because I thought if you really wanted a job I would have had to have gone to medical school or law school.

TISCH: Was your family at this point a little bit more supportive of not going to nursing?

MOORE: Sure. I went to Boston and I got a job. I worked for Houghton Miflin, the educational publisher, and I worked in art and production and I loved it and I- thats where I really figured it all out. So goodbye law school and oh, I would have made a really bad lawyer, Jonathan. Im so glad I saw the light. And I ended up going to Harvard Business School.

TISCH: You graduated from there in 1978.

MOORE: Uh huh.

TISCH: During these early years of college, did you have a mentor?

MOORE: Well, I worked for a woman actually. Pat Tomo[ph?] was her name at Houghton Miflin and she was the first woman that I ever really knew in business and Pat ran the art and production departments of Houghton Miflin and she and her husband, Henry, who ran the educational- the college editorial department, they were really role models for me and thats really where I got the idea to go to business school. And so I left Pat and went back to school and then I did a really unusual thing that is once I got into Harvard Business School I didnt take a traditional career path out of Harvard. Everybody else was going of course-- This was the go go years, I got out in 78, and everybody in my class of course was going into either consulting or investment banking.

TISCH: Wall Street.

MOORE: Yes. They all went to Wall Street and I knew Id have to come to New York because my husband- I was married then, Donovan had already gone down to help start 20/20 and much to everybodys complete shock I took an offer, the lowest offer on the table, from Time, Incorporated.

TISCH: When you were at Harvard Business School, having women in the classroom was still somewhat of an experiment, so much so that there werent even rest facilities for you and your classmates. There were temporary signs over the mens room that said Ladies Room.

MOORE: It never bothered me that they didnt- they hadnt built ladies rooms at Harvard but it was that temporary sign that got me every day, in cardboard and it was kind of taped up there and it was a daily reminder that maybe this experiment of letting us in was just a test. Right? And it was the signs that I wanted blown up and made permanent and yes, I did make my first contribution targeted to a real ladies room in Aldrich Hall and I feel proud every time I go back and I see that they are there now.

TISCH: Did you realize that this was not going to be temporary, that this was a movement that was going to take over the business world?

MOORE: Well, and thank goodness that it was a movement that-- It changed forever. Right? That glass ceiling is glass. Thats the beauty of it. It only takes one brave man to pull a woman up through it before it shatters and one of my pet peeves, Jonathan, is everybodys always talking about the good old days. Well, you cant fool me. I was there. They werent all that good. Okay? Theyre better now that business has embraced everybody and I wouldnt go back to the good old days when there were only eight of us.

TISCH: Are you still in touch with the other seven?

MOORE: Some of them absolutely.

TISCH: Have they gone on to similar positions and

MOORE: Theyve gone on to do completely different things. Everybodys doing something different and Im amazed at how many people have already retired because I think Im just hitting my stride here.

TISCH: Very much so.

MOORE: One of the things that worries me is if you look at the research, two things: Only 7% of Americans say they want their children to become CEOs, boys and girls. Thats too low. We need to do something about elevating the stature of business careers again and Im very troubled by a Simmons C200 study that said when you ask our teenage girls do you want to work, yes is the answer, do you want a career in business, only 9% of them want to follow. Thats way too low.

TISCH: But you were there right at the beginning and you did your time at Harvard and then you were getting ready to graduate and at that point corporate America is waking up saying God, there are some really bright women who are coming out of

MOORE: Lots of offers.

TISCH: --some really good schools and you took the lowest paying job.

MOORE: Yes, true. I took the lowest paying job on the table. People thought I was crazy.

TISCH: What was your first salary?

MOORE: Oh, $21,000 a year I think.

TISCH: With a Harvard MBA.

MOORE: People thought I was crazy but they did not- I did not look so crazy at my 25th reunion.

TISCH: What was the draw? Was it Time? Was it Publishing World?

MOORE: It was Sports Illustrated truthfully. I subscribed to Sports Illustrated at Vanderbilt and my subscription came addressed to Mister and I thought somebody needs to go work there and fix this. Right? I would have done anything to work at Sports Illustrated and I- thats- and I did end up there.

TISCH: The first job was in finance?

MOORE: Well, you had to. You came in to corporate finance. This is the old days. We all came in. You had a year to kind of shop around and remember Time, Inc., back then was just six magazines, a little cable- pay cable thing we started called HBO, and we had just bought ATC, the cable company, so we were just getting into cable and pay cable and almost everybody else went into HBO cable and I opted to go after my year in finance into magazines and I ended up at Sports Illustrated, my dream job.

TISCH: What was the time at Sports Illustrated like? It gave you the chance to learn every aspect of the business.

MOORE: Every aspect. I went into consumer marketing first. I ended up-- By 19- lets see, 83, right before the LA Olympics, I ended back at Sports Illustrated as the general manager and associate publisher and so I probably spent about 10 years in total at the SI franchise and you wouldnt trade a day in those 10 years.

TISCH: Were the early years tough for a woman?

MOORE: Probably, but whose path up the pyramid is easy? I counsel people today first of all, do the job of self assessment, who are you and what matters to you? And I knew what mattered to me and I chose the right fit and I also think you got to have patience. Power accrues to those who produce results and I did a lot of great work in my 28 years up the corporate ladder and I had a lot of fun along the way. You cant-- Dont discount that. I look at the young kids today trying to find a job and a career and I always tell them to have some fun. It goes by so quickly.

TISCH: During the decade at Sports Illustrated, were there some invaluable lessons that you learned that you were able to then transfer to the rest of your career at Time?

MOORE: I learned the basics of how to run a magazine, what the business formula looks like, how to take care of clients. Nobody does it better than Sports Illustrated. It was a wonderful training ground for me and it didnt feel like work all those years. I moved to People magazine in 1991 and sometimes I think I moved there because nobody else wanted the job. Everybody was afraid of People magazine because it was big at the time and a lot of people thought it couldnt get bigger but they were so wrong. We tripled the profits of People magazine in the years I was there and it was just doing the fundamentals. Right? And by the way, everything starts with the reader. The reader is number one because if you satisfy the reader you have something to sell to your advertising clients and you have a great return to show your shareholder so thats what I really learned. It starts with the reader. Thats the lesson I learned at Sports Illustrated and I carried that through to People and thats why People is probably the most profitable magazine in the world.

TISCH: But your reader changed. When you were at Sports Illustrated it was probably

MOORE: Yes. Correct. Right.

TISCH: --male oriented. You switched to People which becomes female

MOORE: Right. Yes.

TISCH: Was that difficult for you to understand and work in that transition?

MOORE: It was an opportunity for me because we hadnt recognized even as late as 1991 that it was a woman reader at People. We still were calling it a dual audience magazine and it was liberating when I got there because I could say Im a proud People reader lets make this socially acceptable to come out of the closet here, and once you realized that you were targeting a woman reader you could make a lot of different decisions. For example, we came out on a Monday and Im- I changed the production schedule to come out on a Friday because thats when I knew the- how exciting it was to get a make ready[ph?] early and I knew most of my readers really read their People on a weekend as a treat. So by coming out with a news magazine on Friday it was just three days fresher and that gave us a 20% lift in sales right there just by changing the time. We do a really great job at People magazine. Im so-- Im proud of the-- We apply the same journalistic standards to People magazine that we apply to Time magazine so if you read it in People its true.

TISCH: Youre in competition with us in Entertainment Weekly and the Star and the ones that are coming over from the UK. Do you feel like youve given birth in a sense to this whole dynamic genre that has become so competitive?

MOORE: Oh, absolutely. Well, People was the original personality magazine but it still is the king of the hill. Theres nothing that comes even remotely close because remember People magazine isnt just about celebrity news at all. In fact, the non celebrity news stories in People are really an important part of its core competency and why people are completely addicted to it so thatll never change and all of that competition is good for people. Theyll hate me to say that to you on camera but I believe competition is good.

TISCH: You were the boss of one magazine at that point. People magazine obviously was huge. Today as chairman and CEO, youre responsible for 150. Is that the right number?

MOORE: About 149 right now.

TISCH: Is it harder for you now because youve got 150 children instead of one?

MOORE: Well, no, because you build a great team. This is not an individual game we play. Gone are the days a heroic leader can carry an organization this complicated on his or her back. You have to have a huge team of people. We have 13- almost 13,000 employes at Time, Inc., today so yes, weve gone from six magazines to 149 in the 28 years Ive been there but were a much bigger organization and I have a fabulous management team and weve clustered the magazines together in the last two years, which we have to do. We have to organize ourselves differently because of the complexity of just the sheer numbers of what we do now.

TISCH: Now with 149 titles, do you have a favorite magazine?

MOORE: Oh, I knew you were going to-- Youre not supposed to ask me that.

TISCH: Dont use the line its like picking a favorite child.

MOORE: It is. Its like a favorite child

TISCH: Whats your favorite magazine, Ann Moore?

MOORE: I dont-- I cant answer that, Jonathan. I read all of them. I read all of our magazines. I have to read all-- I dont feel right unless Ive read all our weeklies.

TISCH: During your time at People, did you have a favorite cover?

MOORE: A favorite cover-- Well, its interesting. Theres a difference between best selling covers and favorite covers and the first thing I did when I got to People in 1991 is I knew that we needed to do something meaningful especially with Hollywood because you cant just go with your hand out. So I asked for the list of favorite covers and on the top of it- youll never believe what was the most favorite issue. It was the death of Gilda Radner and thats why we launched Gildas Club with Gene Wilder

TISCH: Youve honored me at Gildas Club

MOORE: Yes. Thank you very much. Because getting cancer is a pretty lonely thing and cancer patients need a social support network. The second favorite cover we had run up to that point in the early 90s was the story of Elizabeth Glaser. It was one of the first stories about AIDS that just touched. We have 40 million readers a week at People and for them to rank those two covers as the most beloved covers they had ever read really was the blueprint I used to figure out what was going to be our charitable[ph?] platforms back then. The magazine business is a beautiful business because its got two revenue streams. You-- First of all, youve got a really strong consumer revenue stream. People pay you in advance for the magazines they love. And then youve got the advertising shift. Right? We have a really flat or declining situation in some print ad categories as people are shifting over and trying to figure out how to spend their media dollars. So these are challenging times but the fog is kind of lifting and weve had a lot of big wins this year especially by migrating our print products over to the web.

TISCH: While youre dealing with the brave new world and tremendous opportunities you also have to face the reality that has also been written that your most powerful name, the name thats on the front door, Time magazine, could be obsolete in some point in the world.

MOORE: Right. Well, I dont believe that. What our editors do so brilliantly for you, a reader, is they take all the information in the world and they edit it down. Arent you going to need this more, not less, in an age of too much information?

TISCH: But I can turn on my TV and get it instantaneously. I can get headlines on my Blackberry. Am I always going to want to pick up a physical copy of Time?

MOORE: No, maybe not, but youll get that Blackberry alert from Time magazine absolutely or a Sports Illustrated if you need the scores.

TISCH: Can you see the day that were not physically holding the magazine in our hand?

MOORE: Yes, absolutely, but thats a pretty long way away because, as I said, reading scores, I track them religiously. Reading is alive and well. Its a welcome break from the kind of hectic life you lead but you need the information we gather not just on paper anymore. Thats clear.

TISCH: Can you do something about the subscription cards falling in your lap when you read the magazine?

MOORE: Those are profitable, Jonathan.

TISCH: I understand but theyre annoying.

MOORE: As long as theyre profitable theyre going to continue to be there absolutely.

TISCH: Theyre going to fall in my lap? Theyre going to come tumbling out of the magazine?

MOORE: You may not be subscribing that way but lots of people do.

TISCH: Whats your management style? How do you manage the day?

MOORE: Well, first of all, I think the biggest challenge is one of time management. Right? I think these CEO jobs are not hard but boy, are they a time management nightmare so you have to be really organized and youve got to be disciplined and you have to delegate and my job now is just to kind of set the direction and keep the machine running. I think the only hard job I had is finding the right people and putting them in the right jobs. Everything else I do is pretty simple. Theres always been competition for talent. There always will be competition for talent. So finding the talent, holding the talent, motivating them, thats the only tough job.

TISCH: Youve commented when youve given speeches that universities and to graduating classes, dont be so fast to leave the bottom of the pyramid.

MOORE: Dont be in a hurry.

TISCH: Dont be in a hurry because it gets a little tough up there.

MOORE: Oh, well

TISCH: The air is thin at the top.

MOORE: The air is thin at the top. It can be lonely at the top and you really have to work hard to cultivate an environment where you can hear bad news. I think the biggest mistake a lot of CEOs make is they dont like- want to hear bad news so when you wake up one day and you havent heard any bad news then your business is in real trouble. You need to cultivate a community of people that feel free to speak their mind, to have a fair fight and to resolve conflict because conflict is inevitable and conflict is- its healthy just like competition is healthy. And it helps when you really love the business and you feel as passionate about it even 28 years later. I still love the magazine business. It is just a thrill I- because I feel like what we do, Jonathan, is really- its important. We really do matter. Its not about-- Its not just about making money. Its about making a difference in the world.

TISCH: When you were in the corporate finance department that first year did you ever in your wildest dreams think that youd be the chair and the CEO?

MOORE: No. Andrew Heiskell was the chairman and I remember. You knew Andrew Heiskell, right, over 6 feet tall, such an imposing figure. I was new to New York. The picture of the chairman and- of Time, Inc., at the time was Andrew Heiskell and so I never aspired but you know what? I would have been successful in my own mind had I not achieved the corner office. Thats not what I came for.

TISCH: After almost three decades at Time, you are viewed as one of the great business leaders in the country but you always end up on the Top Females in Business list and hopefully well get to a point where youre just viewed as Ann Moore, CEO of

MOORE: A normal CEO. Well, maybe, but theres something nice about celebrating the smaller sorority Im part of right now. We get a lot of-- Thats a big franchise for Fortune magazine right. Next to the Fortune 500, I believe the Worlds Most Powerful Womens list that Fortune- I guess it must be in our fifth or sixth year of doing so, is very- its a big franchise for us and why is it in the 28 years Ive been out of Harvard, the business school, its still not at parity gender wise. The medical school is and the law school is. Why isnt the business school? We have not communicated to the young women of America how much fun these jobs are and how important their brain power is to keeping our business community and the economy moving. And sometimes I joke about this but I was trying to really understand why young people feel this way and I think one of the things is theyve read too much Dilbert. They think what you and I do for a living is in a cubicle and that its uncreative and stifling and they- theyre really individuals and they believe Dilbert too much. I love Dilbert but its a parody on business. Its not the reality.

TISCH: Youve started to expand overseas and books like People in espanol have been highly successful and if you look at the future demographics obviously were dealing with a lot of Latins, the huge expansion coming out of Asia, India. Are those your future readers?

MOORE: We have been expanding, particularly some of the womens service books around the world. Instel[ph?] has 10 editions now, real simple even, and its fifth year already has two or three. I dont know that youre going to see Time magazine in China any time soon because we have this problem of censorship and it is a news magazine so we really cant go there. In fact, Time was banned for many years because it was a Time reporter who discovered the SARS virus. That ban has been lifted but we still cant publish freely in some parts of the world. We made a big bet in buying IPC a number of years ago so were the largest magazine publisher in the UK and just in this year we bought the third largest magazine publisher in Mexico. This to me is the real test of Time, Inc.: Are we prepared to be an international company? There is the ownership rules in India in our category so in the publishing category there are a lot of governments that dont want foreign ownership of the press so youve got to kind of maneuver through those rules and they vary tremendously country to country so we certainly-- Were having the Fortune Global Forum just by chance in India this next year. We were in Beijing last May and so yes, just like every other industry we certainly have our eye on China and India. Entertainment in news will travel and we have the web to thank for that. Right? I dont see how those old archaic censorship and ownership rules are going to last so yes, well be there. Its a-- Its an interesting time I think. Its exciting. I have always-- Im really-- The part of the business that I love the most is new product development so

TISCH: Will you be sad when you start to see some of your books migrate totally to a digital format?

MOORE: Ill miss that but Im 56 years old and I love-- Well, whats-- I read so much and for me the pleasure of reading is the quiet and I- we dont have that format yet to replace paper to give you the same sensation of reading. Its certainly looming in the future so I- in my lifetime Im not going to see paper disappear, Jonathan. I-- Im sure of it. I can see the trends. Now you--

TISCH: The challenges are enormous.

MOORE: Right.

TISCH: The New York Times announced that they have to go to a smaller format. Theyre reducing the size

MOORE: Trim size, right. Well, thats because theyre trying to save in paper and in my case you have seen the same. Youre going to see an eighth of an inch. Youre not even going to notice it come off the end

TISCH: But I assume youre going to save a lot of money.

MOORE: Im going to save money on not only paper but postage so the digital world holds some really big up side. Im hoping that maybe someday youll have a printer in your home and youll just push a button and youll still might want to print it on paper.

TISCH: I will definitely want to do that. I dont know if my kids are going to quite get there.

MOORE: I read two newspapers in the morning and I just feel- I feel out of sorts so Im still a big- you and I are still big newspaper readers. They have a much more eminent danger to them, the newspaper business, than the magazine business does because its a different experience and you dont go to the web though to read. Thats what our-- Nobody reads on the web, even long memos. Dont you see people in the offices? You print them out. So you go to the web for immediate information or a solution or to shop but you dont go to the web to read and so reading is alive and well in America and will remain healthy certainly for the rest of my lifetime.

TISCH: Youve actually been quoted as saying we CEOs are in such a privileged position, were not completing our assignments if we dont use that for the greater good of society.

MOORE: Our schools and our medical care and our communities are nonprofits. They need us to back fill for them. That falls squarely on the shoulders of business leaders because theres nobody else that has the resources. We are privileged people and I hope that Ive passed that down to my sons.

TISCH: One of the first things you did as a CEO was you did this yard sale and you got everybody at Time to

MOORE: Right, clean out their offices, right, because you know what? We have too much and Im a- I am a- while I have no trouble spending in- where I need to I cant tolerate the waste. You and I have too much, Jonathan. The instability of the world is because there is too big a growing gap between the haves and the have nots and isnt it obvious that we have to level that? One of the secrets of my success is Ive picked my chairmen wisely. Youve interviewed my current chairman, Dick Parsons. I think Dick completely understands his responsibility and he imposes it even on me and I impose it down the line and we have a lot of work to do to stabilize the world and to close the gap. Ive had the privilege of being in brainstorming sessions on almost any problem you can think of in the world. I dont care if its poverty or starvation or AIDS or- and you- it comes back. How do you solve the worlds problems. Right? It all comes back to the same starting point every session Ive been in. Lets restore the health of public education. Thats going to go a long way to solving the worlds problems and so I concentrate a lot and I focus Time, Inc., on how do we pitch in and help public education.

TISCH: Are there any things that you might think about lying in bed at night, saying I wish I had done it differently?

MOORE: I dont have any regrets which is, by the way, very common when-- Most sociologists tell you at the end of your life people very rarely regret the paths theyve taken which is nice. They have some curiosity about the paths not taken and so I figure Ill be retiring from Time, Inc., or were going to lead long lives and so the question I always ask, and I really believe this, youve got to make a plan for the second phase of your life. Im so frustrated by seeing people sail out of corporate America with not a life plan because theyve still going to-, well, youve got another 20 good years where you could make a contribution so what do I think about? I think about what am I going to do next, once I retire from Time, Inc., at the end of my corporate career, what will I do next, because I know that Im going to do something else.

TISCH: Do you want to give us a hint?

MOORE: Well, itll have to do with a nonprofit or education. Wouldnt it be grand to be a teacher. Maybe Ill go back to where I

TISCH: Where your family thought you were going to go

MOORE: Where my family thought I was going to go.

TISCH: --40 years ago when you

MOORE: They knew Id never be a nurse. Right? I didnt have the temperament to take care of people but I think I would have made a great teacher.

TISCH: Thank you very much.

MOORE: Thank you. This was fun.