March 28, 2024

Keith Olbermann Pushing for a Return to ESPN

But as one door closes, another has been quietly approached. At various times over the last year, Olbermann and his representatives have expressed interest in his return to the employer that made him famous: ESPN.

Olbermann’s expressions of interest included dinner at New York’s Four Seasons Restaurant with John Skipper, ESPN’s president.

“Keith Olbermann, both personally and through a couple people I know, reached out to say, ‘Gee, I would love to have dinner,’ ” Skipper said. “I agreed to dinner with Keith because I assumed he’d be provocative and witty and fun to have dinner with, and he was indeed lots of fun. We talked sports and politics, and we had a nice chat. He is very interesting.

“Clearly he was looking to see if there was an entry point to come back.”

Olbermann declined to discuss the details of the conversation.

“I had the privilege to spend some time with John Skipper,” he said. “His vision and charm were readily apparent, and judging by his leadership, his family name was prophetic.”

In the months since that dinner, Olbermann’s representatives have campaigned at ESPN for possible opportunities, according to a senior executive at the network and someone directly involved with Olbermann’s efforts. Both people asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the discussions.

Olbermann worked at ESPN from 1992 to 1997. A pivotal force in starting ESPN Radio, he became best known as one of the most prominent and popular anchors in the network’s history, co-hosting “SportsCenter” with Dan Patrick. Olbermann briefly left Patrick’s side to help start ESPN2 but soon returned to ESPN. There, he and Patrick reunited and continued hosting the 11 p.m. “SportsCenter” until his contract expired in 1997. Olbermann opted to leave sports altogether and signed on for a politically themed talk show on MSNBC.

Some at ESPN were glad to see him go; he was considered the network’s most controversial personality. Olbermann’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports was not disputed, nor were his writing skills or on-air talent. But over time, he managed to alienate a sizable group in the company, who found him exasperating to work with.

Patrick said he would not be surprised if Olbermann returned to ESPN.

“You can never say never,” said Patrick, who now hosts NBC’s “Football Night in America,” as well as a popular syndicated sports-talk show. “What I can say is that if he does return, I won’t be back there with him doing ‘SportsCenter,’ I can promise you that.”

For now, Skipper indicated that a return for Olbermann was not imminent.

“After the dinner, at that point, there was no real appropriate place for Keith to come back, nor did I feel like I was prepared to bring him back,” Skipper said.

“We don’t have a policy that says we won’t bring somebody back. We’re running a great business, and when we think we can get quality content, there’s no such thing as a condemned list. That said, this is not an easy place to get back into. There are not that many successful examples of people who have come back, in part because it’s like water filling a vacuum. When somebody leaves, somebody else fills their place.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/sports/keith-olbermann-expresses-interest-in-return-to-espn.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Sports Briefing | Boxing: Merchant Ends Run on HBO


Opinion »

Townies: Cinder Block New York City

What happens when you stop moving? The city grows around you.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/sports/merchant-ends-run-on-hbo.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Corner Office: Peter Löscher : The Trust That Makes a Team Click

Q. Do you remember the first time you were in a leadership position?

A. I was captain of the volleyball team in high school and then in college.

Q. And did that role come pretty naturally to you?

A. Yes. It came naturally because, at the end of the day, it’s about fostering the best performance from the people on the team. It’s less a question of how you train and your physical conditioning. The difference between a good team and a great team is usually mind-set. When you watch great games in sports, you see there’s a moment, all of a sudden, when the team clicks. It’s something that’s always caught my attention — why and how that happens with teams.

Q. And how do you make those moments happen?

A. When you’re in business, I think the underlying principle is trust. How do you establish within a team a blind trust so that each person plays for the other? Business is about lining up a leadership team or a group of people and you rally them behind a cause or a certain direction. But the underlying strength is the trust within the team — so that you actually are no longer just playing individually at your best, but you’re also trying to understand what you can do to make the team better. And for me a defining moment in this regard was when I arrived for the first time in the United States, and had my first leadership role running a whole company.

Q. Tell me more about that.

A. It was an agricultural group, and I had the responsibility to lead a team that stretched from Mexico to Canada. There were three different entities but one leadership team. So all of a sudden I find myself in cultural situations where I start to recognize that even though two people are speaking English, there’s a distinct cultural difference. So the challenge was how to lead a diverse team, and this was always one of my interests.

My forefathers are from Italy, my parents are Austrian, my wife is Spanish, two of our children are American and the third is Spanish, so I have the United Nations at home. You have to adapt to a diverse environment and appreciate the diversity.

My career has allowed me to hone this skill. I’ve worked in Asia. I’ve worked in Europe. I’ve worked in the U.S. When you start to run a global business you must appreciate the different environments you’re operating in and then try to combine them. When I arrived at Siemens, the global leadership team was mostly Germans with a certain cultural background, with a certain experience. Now we have a much more diverse team. The last thing you want as a leader is to have clones of yourself.

Q. Any other lessons learned from starting so many new jobs as you’ve moved around?

A. The most important thing is, when you arrive somewhere new, that you come in without a preset agenda. I didn’t join Siemens with a leadership team in mind. I’m just the 12th C.E.O. in the history of the company, which was founded in 1847. So the culture of the company was actually formed over a long period of time, through longevity of leadership. So for me the important thing was to come in and say Siemens doesn’t need a revolution. We will go for an evolution but with speed, speed, speed.

And I said I need 100 days. Obviously the first expectations are: What are the first decisions? What will he do? I said I need 100 days because I want to talk to as many people as possible, and go around the world so that I really understand what is on people’s minds, what the issues are. I went from China to India to Japan to Brazil to the U.S. Slowly but surely the agenda was formed, and then you move forward, and you work closely with your leadership team and all the changes that we have initiated.

And then I went through a complete assessment program for the top 100 positions. We benchmarked everybody against outside candidates, and it was a totally open process. You have to think about how you develop an agenda together with your team, and how you build trust. And one element of building trust is transparency.

Q. You did this benchmarking assessment, but certainly chemistry with you is part of it, too.

A. Absolutely. This was very important. At the end of the day, there must be chemistry, there must be a sense that this is the team that I want to create, with people who believe in its totality. Because you can have a great team of superstars, but it’s by no means certain that they will actually be a great team.

Q. How do you hire for key leadership positions in your organization?

A. The most important thing is to look for diversity in your career path. I will look for passion, because I think that’s a very important element.

Q. And how do you get at that?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=029f8989594933d905f2793f6af0e5f5

Corner Office: Kathy Button Bell: Endurance on the Field, and at Work

Q. What were some important lessons you’ve learned through the years?

A. I learned a lot being a commodities trader. Trading teaches you a lot of lessons.  It’s like life, because things come and go really quickly, and really bad things and really great things happen. I learned you have to get over the bad things quickly because you have to stay present in the moment to make the next choice. 

That lesson of getting over things, especially as a woman in business, is super-helpful, so you don’t linger on things and you don’t lie in bed at night awake worrying about stuff.  You move on to things that you can make better. If you look at employees or bosses, the best ones have great energy and are good at applying it fast enough to solve problems. 

Q.  What about earlier in life — high school, college?  Were you in leadership roles there? 

A. I went to a high school that let you be a great leader.  I was in a terrific group of women.  There were only 19 girls in my class, and I got 15 varsity letters in sports.  One of my best friends and I were captains of the basketball team.  We won 33 consecutive games.  

Then I went to Princeton and played varsity field hockey. And I actually played lacrosse my freshman year.  I hadn’t played before but made the J.V. team.  I played varsity field hockey, and my second year there, the U.S. Olympic coach became our coach.  That taught me everything about myself, about how hard you can work at something, how you can die trying.  I would have done anything for that woman.  She inspired us to do stuff that was impossible. 

Q. And looking back, what was it about her leadership style?   

A. She just knew how to inspire you to do more.  The thing she always tried to teach me to do is not say I’m sorry.  I was so painfully polite, and if I missed a pass or something I’d apologize.  She said, “You need to get over that.”  She was kind and tough, which are maybe the two best things that a boss could be. 

I think everybody benefits from having played sports.  It makes you a good sharer, for one thing, in lots of ways.  And it makes you more empathetic in general.  I love to see sports in a résumé.  A woman who works for me right now was a Harvard swimmer, and I can tell that every time I talk to her about something.  She’s an endurance athlete.  She’s tough in a pinch.  She will get it done.  And I respect that enormously. 

 It’s your middle that you depend on — the hard part of you, the tough part in the middle that goes: “Oh, I can stand up in that storm.  That’s O.K.”   

Q. Do you think people can get those qualities just as much from being in an orchestra, or in a dance troupe? 

 A. There’s something about how hard sports are physically that’s helpful. I travel a lot internationally. I do think it’s an endurance sport.  I don’t know how you do that without the energy it takes to do the other things.  And you have to have energy so you can think smart when you’re tired.  Some people just lie down and just die when they’re tired.  I always say travel is a callus.  And you get better and better and better and better at it.  I think the travel thing is a big deal, and I think it separates people.     

Q. What were some other big influences on the way you lead and manage?

A. At Converse, I had a fabulous boss.  She solved problems the moment they happened.  I mean, you weren’t even finished with your sentence, and she was picking up the phone starting to solve it, because it just seems those little problems can all of a sudden balloon into something.  The faster you deal with them, the more you nip them in the bud.

 By the same token, you prioritize better as you get older, and you realize that time can also be your friend. Some things actually simply will go away, and you have to get smarter and smarter to know which ones are which.  I think I do a much better job of saying: “You know what?  Let that sit.” 

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=875b686072971890658a1925a6d293f4