In 1998, says Mullen,
the Dudleys sold the Grand Rapids Fox station and another in Seattle. “Dick
Dudley asked me who among our suitors made the most sense,” he says. “We both
said, ‘Tribune.’ They’re a conservative Midwestern company with a philosophy
that was very consistent with ours. It puts values very high on the list of
management skills. A handshake is everything.” As it turned out, the
marriage of like-minded cultures worked. Mullen stayed with the acquiring
company, moved up the Tribune ladder, and is now president of its broadcast
division, charged with 26 stations in 22 markets. “We really haven’t changed the
corporate culture in any of the stations,” he says. “We try to get the right
people in place and leave them alone. We figure someone in a local community
will have a better handle on the situation than someone sitting in Chicago or
New York.” Mullen points out that turnover, often a good barometer of an
imploding culture, has been almost nil at his old station. Opposites
Attract
Brunswick, a $4.2 billion publicly traded company based in Lake
Forest, Ill., held to the same strategy last year when it acquired Navman, a $50
million marine and consumer electronics manufacturer from New Zealand. The
marriage of these two presented a potential clash of cultures—one company a
157-year-old Fortune 500 company with over 23,000 employees, and the other a
privately held electronics upstart still run by its founder. Would Brunswick
simply swallow Navman’s more entrepreneurial culture or do something more
creative? After all, here was a company from Down Under that had come from
virtually nowhere to dominate the Australian and New Zealand electronics
markets, and was making aggressive inroads in Europe and North America.
Brunswick, though it has been quietly reinventing itself, is seen as a fairly
conservative corporation, not known for radical business plans. Would this be
the corporate version of The Odd Couple?
|
