On the rise

Smart Business Los Angeles, Jan 2009 by Cottrill, Mike

Upon first take, Jose Royo seems too cool to be a self-described geek.

Born in Spain, Royo has simply merged a hint of his native accent into the natural hip of Southern California style.

But he's also the first to admit his natural draw to the nuts and bolts of technology - his first job was modeling IBM's first generation of PCs at a trade show in Madrid at age 14 - and its constant adaptations. As such, he's found a home as CEO for Ascent Media Corp., the world's largest provider of integrated global services for the creation, management and distribution of media content.

In a world where the technology used to print this magazine is just about obsolete by the time you pick it up, Ascent Media is facing shorter deadlines and expectations to have work done in mere hours.

"We used to have months to do certain activities," Royo says. "We now only have, in some instances, hours, days and, at most, weeks."

That means Royo spends every day trying to keep his 3,500 employees spread across the world nimble enough to jump on the next technology while still putting out today's product.

"You sort of stop and wonder and say, 'OK, this is what we do today. Given these changes, the business models that are emerging, the global nature of the industry and the technology changes that we're all experiencing, how can we be relevant and continue to have the business with the high profile?"' he says.

So Royo uses some of his cool to overcome his geekiness. He constantly touches base with his employees at all levels and cuts out the jargon, describing for them very clearly where the company needs to go and how they can help. As he mixes in new technology experts with his existing staff, he works to quell egos and keep everyone focused on Ascent Media's success.

Here is how Royo keeps a $672.3 million company ahead of the curve.

Touch base with employees

To keep his company adaptable, Royo starts at the bottom, laying out his vision and then touching base with ground-level employees to talk industry trends.

"That's the first step to that process: Laying out that broad vision and then engaging with people to collect their knowledge," Royo says. "The process of including people and collecting their input is important in being able to get their support."

Royo isn't best buds with 3,500 employees, but he starts the engagement process with quarterly trips to every facility and keeps in contact with every region's senior manager via weekly meetings.

"It gives you a better feel of what's going on in each individual facility and the services they provide but also the opportunity for people to feel like they may know you to sort of provide input and feedback," Royo says.

And when Royo makes his visits, he takes time to visit with different levels of employees in a no-agenda setting just to see what topics are on their minds.

"I ask the head of a given facility to choose 10 or 15 employees, and I go and have breakfast or lunch with them with no particular agenda," he says. "It's just, I'm here to listen and learn, and so what do you want to talk about - and those tend to be very productive. And there's a cultural aspect to it, in London what it usually means is take a bunch of people to the pub."

Of course, four visits a year and a few pints isn't enough for you to say you're a man or a woman of the people. You need multiple touch points, including some that regularly engage employees on current issues. When Royo first came aboard at Ascent Media, one of the first things he did was create a blog on the company's intranet. He posts a few times a week, and his goal is to mix it with corporate updates and down-to-earth things meant to stir up ideas.

"The postings can be specific. For example, we had an employee who was critically injured in the MTA train accident, and I gave people updates on how things were going after going to visit him at the hospital," Royo says. "Or they can be very strategic. (In October 2008), in the face of all these economic challenges, I wrote a long note about what I think the implications are for Ascent, where we are in terms of our financial position and asking people to think out of the box."

Similarly, Royo says you have to constantly maintain your e-mail. He knows that you get inundated with more e-mails than you can fully respond to in a day. He does, too. In fact, he estimates he gets nearly 400 a day.

"Everybody is very busy, and we all need to make sure we carve out some time to actually do some work," he says. "Sometimes late at night, after I put the kids to bed, I spend some quality time going through and making sure I'm being responsive."

To be clear, Royo is not telling you to stop your life to answer every e-mail. Being responsive means getting to the issues of the e-mails effectively. When he gets 25 e-mails about the same thing, he knows there is an opportunity to show he's on top of it by responding through a public outlet.

"There are times when you're getting a lot of issues about something, and that's when the blog or some of the e-mail communication becomes important and/or setting up a specific meeting to address these concerns that have been raised by a number of people," he says. "And then there are a lot of things you need to learn how to delegate, so hit forward, send it to somebody, and tell them, 'Can you run with this one?"