Navigating Disruption: Managing Change in Media Companies

Executive Summary

The media industry is undergoing a structural transition. Featured snippets and AI-generated summaries have already driven sharp declines in click-through rates, with outlets like Business Insider and The Washington Post seeing nearly a 50% drop in Google-driven traffic (WARC). As traffic from legacy discovery platforms collapses (“Google Zero”), media organizations face an urgent need to shift from volume-based advertising models to ecosystems built on loyalty, utility, and direct audience value. Traditional metrics like impressions and pageviews no longer reflect relevance or revenue. To hit revenue targets, companies must pivot their business model from reach to resonance, from noise to relevance, and their operations from fragmented silos to integrated, insight-driven systems.

We have had the privilege of working with an industry leader, demonstrating what this transformation looks like in practice. The organization has activated innovation across the company. 

What we have learned, tools and talent are necessary but insufficient without new ways of working. Companies that empower intrapreneurs, individuals who sense shifts and market trends, test ideas, and coach others, are best positioned to weather the disruption and build what comes next. 

Media companies must make innovation a core organizational capability. 

The New Context for Media Organizations

The media landscape is experiencing a tectonic shift and it is coming from more than one direction:

AI Overlay and Natural Language Search:  It is impossible to overstate the speed of change in user search behavior.  We are in a rapid transformation of where people are searching for information and how they are interacting with responses. We have not yet seen the full impact of the change. Leaders are exploring diversified revenue streams including branded content, events, partnerships, and creator collaboration.

AI and Automation: AI is transforming how work gets done. Generative tools are seen as a threat to editorial integrity and content creation. Knowledge synthesis is becoming more accessible, internal tools are lowering costs of operating and dramatically accelerating production cycles. Repetitive tasks, from data entry to report generation and project tracking, are being offloaded to AI agents.

Structures have Changed: The rise of creator-led media challenges traditional org structures. At the same time we are seeing a rebundling of brands as large companies acquire talent and platforms that have proven their staying power with an audience. 

The Structural Change Underway

Google's rollout of AI Overviews is rapidly redefining the business model of the internet. In 2024, Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief at The Verge, coined the term Google Zero to describe a scenario where search engines no longer direct traffic to publishers. Instead, they deliver answers natively powered by AI. This is  not a tweak to the algorithm; it's a complete rewrite of the business model of the internet. Google delayed the rollout as long as possible, knowing they were about to disrupt their own business model. Leaders in Media have anticipated change, but the current speed and scale is precipitous. 

Business Model Transformation is Not New

It’s tempting to think of business model disruption as an internet phenomenon. But it’s happened before.

When General Motors introduced consumer financing, it upended the auto industry, not with technological innovation, but with a business model change. Ford’s business model was based on creating efficiency to reliably drive down price. In 1919 GM partnered with J.P. Morgan, to create GMAC and for the first time the consumer could finance a car. With this, GM unlocked a whole new business model of aspiration. It expanded the market and changed consumer behavior (Harvard Business School).  AI has not only changed the means of production, it is changing the business model. 

Production Transformation

When something new emerges, it is an opportunity for those who are primed to learn. In 1940, Henry J. Kaiser promised President Roosevelt that he could build Liberty ships at an unprecedented pace, even though he had never built a single ship before (Wikipedia). The first Liberty Ship was completed in 1941 and over the next year, Kaiser shortened the time of production from 197 days for each ship to 14 days. He succeeded by reimagining the shipbuilding process;  borrowing from Ford’s assembly line model, replacing riveting with welding, prefabricating ship sections, and training a new workforce. 

Innovation Everywhere, Not Just at the Top

In this example, innovation came from the top.  In today’s rapidly changing ecosystem, everything is changing. Organizations need paths for opportunities to be derisked and validated quickly.. 

That’s where intrapreneurs come in, people inside an organization who see opportunities and take action. They’re not confined to titles. They’re defined by mindset. But to work effectively, they need shared resources and a shared system. 

Core Challenge: Future Readiness

Opportunity Management: Scenarios, pipelines, and stagegates

Without a shared framework for identifying and evaluating emerging opportunities, strategy becomes a series of reactions rather than a cohesive direction. The number of innovations required to make it through this shift is staggering.  Nearly every workflow, channel and strategy is changing.  For organizations with shared services and differentiated brands there is an increased risk of duplicative investments, nevermind managing adoption and spend. 

Key ways opportunity management fails:

• Wild west approach where the loudest voice wins
• Treating innovation as a temporary activity rather than an ongoing process 
• Lack of coordination across the organization so multiple people are addressing the same problem with no communication

Innovation: Business model reinvention + workflow transformation

To remain competitive, media companies must simultaneously innovate their business models and optimize operational workflows. Neglecting strategic adoption of new revenue opportunities and the effective integration of AI across the organization is no longer viable. But that means we need to be clear - are we optimizing the old business model or experimenting with the new one. Both are important but they require distinct approaches. 

Key ways innovation fails:

• Treating AI as solely cost-cutting tool or a task manager instead of a catalyst for expanded capacity and workflow redesign
• Siloed structures that fragment decision-making, collaborative learning and execution
• Lack of a shared process for testing and validating and quantifiable, relevant metrics

Culture: Leadership, collaboration, and resilience

Culture is not merely an HR issue, it's an operational issue. Culture determines how well organizations adapt to external disruption. Siloed teams with misaligned incentives will struggle to collaborate or respond coherently to fast-moving change. 

• Lack of psychological safety stifles both honesty and experimentation
• Absence of definition of who we are and how we work together erodes both work process and brand promise
• “Stay in your lane” orientation disincentivizes authenticity and intrapreneurship

The LUMAN Theory of Change

LUMAN helps media organizations lead change from the inside out. Our approach is built on three pillars:

1. Cultural Coherence: Create real value together

Create a shared understanding of who we need to be as an organization and how we will work together to thrive.  Just like an external brand, culture can be consciously designed and shaped. Together we establish a new model of leadership and incentivized behaviors. 

• Facilitate identity alignment: Who are we becoming as an organization in the AI era?
• Translate values into cultural principles that guide innovation.
• Build the capacity to navigate difficult conversations while fostering psychological safety and developing the rigor required excellence at velocity.

2. Innovation: Build internal capacity

Innovation is not the ability to be creative. It is the ability to identify possibility and bring it through a structured process of validation into launch or redesign. In the past, innovation was relegated to isolated departments, and now must be the job of the entire organization. To manage this new world, organizations need a shared language and a shared process.  

• Innovation framework: Establish a unified language for organizational communication and idea maturity assessment.
• Risk Reduction: Implement a feasibility testing process to validate opportunities for business value.

• Intrapreneurial Mindset: Foster a culture and process where employees can identify and act on opportunities regardless of their role in the organization.

3. Opportunity Management: Act on emergent signalsnbsp;

Effective opportunity management requires an innovation pipeline - a structured approach to generate, evaluate, and track solutions. Ideally, organizations are planning for multiple scenarios to maintain strategic agility. 

• Position internal functions as trusted advisors to the business.
• Build a shared Pipeline: Support business units in aligning experimentation.

Develop the muscle of identifying signals and building scenarios.

It's rough out there. I am here to listen. www.calendly.com/tirza