From: JJ Johnston
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:03 PM
To: * CRVAN - Everyone
Subject: town hall follow-up
Today is a sad day, our last difficult day of this nature at Corus Radio in Vancouver. Our restructuring today has impacted on many of our colleagues.
Today is the second and the last phase of our restructuring that includes a format change at 730. It is unfortunate that we could not make MOJO work?this is a very good sounding radio station. We all tried as hard as we could to develop workable plans to keep this going, but in the end could not find ourselves in a position where we were anywhere close to the breakeven point. It would take years to get there and that would make it too tough on the rest of the cluster. I cannot tell you how much admiration I have for the MOJO staff who in the face of adversity kept on keeping on. Our people tried so hard at a very tough time and kept grinding out great radio. I have never seen anything like it in my career.
The staffers affected today are:
John Brady, Heather Foster, Kim Garcia, Bob Marjanovich, JP McConnell, John McKeachie, Natalie Mead, Jeff Paterson, Blake Price, Eric Stansfield, Jeff Taylor, Colin Whiteside, Julio Pastora and Wesla Wong.
While losing valuable employees is always difficult, we are grateful and appreciate their work and commitment to Corus Radio. All affected staff have been treated with dignity, respect and fair compensation packages during this difficult time. We have commissioned the services of a highly regarded out-placement firm to deal to help them deal with the stress of today and assist with future career planning.
There are some structural changes effective immediately:
? Ian Koenigfest will be the program director at our new AM station.
? Crosby McWilliam is the Promotion Director
? Carly Hebert will now move from Mojo promo to the same job at CFOX
? Rick Quinton, Stu Walters and Travis Goodman will be part of the new format
Our competitors in this market will make a big deal out of this but we must be strong. We need right now to show strength, courage and determination. This is the last chapter of the Black tower. This is the team moving forward?the bus is leaving the station and we are not looking back. We will all need to accept our accountabilities?We will have good town halls.
I just got back from headquarters where we presented very solid MBO plans developed by us all. They were very impressed by our thoughtful MBO plans that we developed as a team. We will present those plans at individual team meetings and in cluster form in the weeks to come. These plans are not only solid and thoughtful, they are realistic. Cost needed to be addressed and thus we found ourselves behind the 8 ball over and over again. We have been stuck in the spiral of delivering unrealistic revenue expectations which has left us all vulnerable. We are now at a more manageable cost level in our cluster that puts us into a place where we can deliver reasonable revenues and expectations to our company. Unfortunately this involved more restructuring including the AM 730 format flip.
We can move forward with our new plans and forge our own future. We are now in the zone that I talked about on April 4th.
This is the extent of the restructuring. I am absolutely hell bent that we will never have another day like this on my watch. Having said that, people do leave by their own volition or for performance reasons. My watch is not for ten minutes; I am here for a long time and a major personal goal for me is that we never, every have another day like this but I can?t do this myself. Reaching our potential can only happen if all of us are all doing our clearly defined jobs, if we are managing ourselves properly, if our managers are managing properly, if we are all contributing, if we are all working together as teammates, if we are all living the Corus values, if we are all engaged?if we can do these things, we will never every have another day like this?the days of waking up fired are over! Teamwork and partnership is now our future.
Our management is committed to partnership and development. The top two reasons people leave their jobs: 1/ They don?t like their managers.
2/ Managers do not deal with non-performance. They don?t deal with those who don?t pull their weight.
Those days are over?we have a management team that is committed to being the best they can be. They are committed to being your partner to work through problems together. In the future, the last resort will be someone leaving. Again, no longer will anyone wake up fired.
Through the MBO?s, the Navicom staff surveys, and the one on one?s (and I will continue the process till I am done), themes have developed. A major theme is a need for better internal communication in our building. This is a big roadblock. We have taken all that info and worked with the engineering and admin teams, and a team headed up by Chris Duncombe and Jan Evanski to deliver a plan that will sit on top of our operational key issues. ?How do we create an environment conducive to open honest communication to create internal service?. I have included this as an attachment.
I am asking that everyone rally around this issue. What are those things that have been bugging you that you have given up on? I am asking you to resurface them and deal with them. Talk to those people about these again, and to those people; please be receptive and respectful. Understand that we are all our own internal clients. Let?s work together to figure out and seal off these communication gaps. I am asking for you to take the time to help educate people on what you do and work together to eliminate those irritants that we have put up with over the years. No one should get bent out of shape and no one should recriminate. You are your own HR departments. Talk to the person that can help fix the problem instead of getting others involved. If you are uncomfortable with that your manager can help facilitate in a non-judgmental way, and without recrimination from anyone.
I am asking you all to commit to ?How do we create an environment conducive to open honest communication to create better internal service?. We will review regularly and strive for this will be better in 3 to 6 months.
We are on to a new chapter. You are all now aware of the format change on AM 730. We shared this with you because it was important to be transparent and make sure you are the first to know.
I will make mistakes, our managers will make mistakes and so will you. We will all learn from those mistakes and in some cases celebrate them. We will work very hard as a group in building trust, managing performance as teammates, and take our accountabilities to live the Corus values. Respect for each other is now the default position. Philippe Denichaud is a work renowned expert in Internal Communication and Trust building. He will be here on Monday June 19 and the 20th. Everyone will need to go through these half day sessions. Our managers will be going through two day sessions on the 21st and 22nd. We will have another note out on this in the next day or two.
In closing, the days of the Black Tower are over. I can?t ask or expect everyone to move forward today. I can ask that we do move forward.
If you would like to discuss anything that has happened today, please come by and see me. Larry will be here for today and tomorrow and your managers are here for you too. You can also use our Employee Assistance Program at 1-800-387-6000 and provide comment, feedback and questions to the Corus employee e-mail at
TunedIn@corusent.com.
Thanks and best e-gards
jj
Jim JJ Johnston
General Manager
Corus Radio Vancouver