Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Business speech: Translating a memo into English

Mark Morneau, Corporate's vice president for information technology, disclosed in a memo today that USA Today IT staffers will now report to him.

But here's how he put it:

"With the continued interest toward standardization and consolidation within the Gannett business and the success our teams have had in partnering to deliver enterprise-level initiatives, we have decided we can further strengthen our collective capabilities by having John Palmisano and the USA Today Information Technology Department report to me."

Apparently, there's a chance some people will lose their jobs:

"I do expect our management team will work together to determine how best to align Gannett IT application and technical resources with our company’s strategies and with the Gannett Division IT executives’ needs."

And everyone affected better like it:

"We hope and expect that this reporting change will be seen as a positive step in further strengthening Gannett’s Enterprise IT capability and aligning ourselves with Gannett’s strategic vision."

[Image: Amazon]

7 comments:

  1. Interesting that Gannett IT has taken over USA TODAY IT, but not USCP IT functions.

    Can't help but wonder at the sheer dumbness of this awkward organizational structure in a company trying to position itself as one that is digitally capable.

    What a freakin' mess.

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  2. Gracia sucks as CEO11/16/2011 6:36 PM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  3. 6:36 I remove comments that refer to people as morons.

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  4. Jim...you moron. If it's appropriate I think it should stay. There are people who actually deserve it.

    This is a test...this is only a test. If it were an actual moron emergency you would have been directed to someone in Gannett management.

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  5. Mark is a good guy. He cares about the job that he does and cares about the people that work for him.

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  6. Corporate IT is already over USCP IT, sort of. Each paper's local IT of course reports up to the local OC, but they are basically led by the IT Group VPs (except the South group, who doesn't have a VP, but instead is led by a corporate IT person). The IT Group VPs have conference calls with corporate IT staffers weekly. They need to consolidate this more, as local IT staff is so thin most places that they can't handle the day-to-day stuff, let alone big projects.
    USAT IT was separate, and it made sense because they didn't have anything in common with USCP IT. Until they put in NewsGate, pretty much all their systems were local to USAT. Now with NewsGate (which has support that reports up through John Palmisano), there's something that is shared with USCP. So this move makes complete sense.

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  7. Sort of! Yes sir, we are ready to take that hill. Sort of.

    That's the dumb part.

    What's even dumber? There is no CIO and perhaps even more importantly, no CTO. Why not? Because the dollar-oriented C-suite does not know that unique and remarkable talent is necessary to position Gannett to be a true digital player.

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Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

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