Cumulus Pres./CEO Mary Berner: 'How We Fixed Our Toxic Culture'

Mary Berner

CUMULUS MEDIA Pres./CEO MARY BERNER has penned a piece for CHIEF EXECUTIVE MAGAZINE. The article is entitled "How We Fixed Our Toxic Culture: The 'Culture Fix Playbook.'" 

BERNER wrote, "The well-worn quote that 'culture eats strategy for breakfast' has been proven time and again. And, in highly challenged businesses, a positive culture is the breakfast of champions—the high-octane fuel that makes success possible and, without it, failure is almost inevitable. But why do very few business turnaround plans include culture as a defined strategy?

"When I took on the challenge of turning around CUMULUS MEDIA in OCTOBER 2015, it was a company in free fall: four straight years of declines in radio listenership, four straight years of revenue declines, three straight years of EBITDA declines, and underperforming acquisitions which had saddled the company with an untenable debt load. We also had lousy systems, crumbling infrastructure, and unhappy employees who told us in surveys that the ‘dysfunctional,’ ‘toxic,’ and ‘lousy’ culture was the primary reason for the company’s poor performance.

"It was clear from the start that CUMULUS would not be saved by any of the traditional turnaround quick fixes. The company had already made meaningful cost reductions. With our heavy debt, any transformational M&A was also off the table. The market was not going to help -- we started the turnaround just as headwinds in the radio industry started to pick up speed. Fixing CUMULUS meant significantly improving basic business performance. The big unknown was whether our demoralized employees would step up to the plate.

"With almost 6,000 employees spread across radio stations in 90 markets, there had been almost no investment in rank-and-file employees, and turnover hovered around 50%. The company hadn’t given raises in over 10 years and some working conditions were almost unbelievable. I got a call a few days into my tenure complaining about the snakes that had fallen through the rotting ceiling in one of our offices. In contrast, top management received large and highly visible perks—travel on a private plane, hefty expense accounts and lavish offices."

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