The Best Job I Ever Had Was At CBS. Until It Wasn't.

What's happening at CBS today didn't start today.

In my view, it started more than forty years ago when CBS was sold to a conglomerate.

The sale changed more than ownership. It changed the questions being asked.

The best job I ever had was at CBS…until it wasn't.

Nancy getting promoted to Creative Director CBS Television in 1983

In the early 1980s, CBS was still the Tiffany Network. Working there felt like being part of something important. The people running the place understood television. They understood programming, affiliates, operations, audiences, and the complicated alchemy that turned ideas into shows and shows into loyal viewers.

Then everything changed.

The people who had spent decades building the network were gone. Departments were restructured. Longstanding assumptions disappeared. The ground shifted beneath our feet. From where I sat, it felt like a bloodbath.

What I was witnessing wasn't simply a round of layoffs. Businesses restructure all the time. What I was witnessing was a fundamental shift in how the company viewed itself.

CBS had always been a business. Ratings mattered. Revenue mattered. Profit mattered. But now a different lens seemed to be taking hold.

The people who understood television seemed to matter less. The people who understood finance seemed to matter more. The MBA became more valuable than the programmer. The spreadsheet became more persuasive than experience. The shareholder became more important than the viewer.

Nobody announced it that way, of course. They never do.

The language was more sophisticated. The rationale was more nuanced. The business case was compelling. But the message was unmistakable.

What disturbed me wasn't the restructuring itself. It was the growing realization that the people making the decisions seemed to understand the value of CBS without understanding what created that value in the first place. They clearly didn’t understand or even care why people turned to CBS in the first place.

How can you make decisions about a brand if you don't understand why people love it?

CBS wasn't valuable because of a balance sheet. It was valuable because generations of viewers trusted it.

They trusted the programming. They trusted the news division. They trusted the promise the network made every time they turned it on. Those things don't appear on a spreadsheet.Yet they are often the very things that create value over time.

I left shortly afterward. Not because I opposed change. Change is inevitable. I left because I no longer recognized the values driving the decisions.

At the time, I couldn't fully explain why. I just knew that something I loved no longer felt like the same place.

Nancy on location for CBS

Looking back, I realize there is another word for what was disappearing. Stewardship.

The people who built CBS understood something that couldn't be fully captured on a spreadsheet. They understood the audience. They understood the brand. They understood the trust that had been built over decades. They understood that value didn't begin with the numbers.The numbers were the result. That's stewardship.

A good steward asks…

How do I leave this better than I found it?

The spreadsheet asks a different question…

How do I maximize value while I'm here?

Both questions matter. But they do not lead to the same decisions.

Over the years, I watched the television industry continue to evolve. Some changes were necessary. Some were inevitable. Technology disrupted everything. Consumer behavior changed. Competition exploded.

But I never forgot what I witnessed at CBS because eventually I began seeing the same pattern elsewhere.

In healthcare.

In higher education.

In media.

In hospitality.

In government.

Different industries.

Same story.

What happens when institutions stop seeing themselves as a mission and start seeing themselves primarily as assets?

What happens when the people making decisions understand the value of something but no longer understand the source of that value?

These days, people often ask why trust in institutions seems to be eroding.

People can tolerate mistakes. People can tolerate disagreement. What they struggle to tolerate is the feeling that an institution no longer serves the purpose for which it was created.

Lately, I've found myself thinking about those days at CBS.

Not because I miss television (actually, I miss what it was.) Not because I miss the 1980s. But because I remember what it felt like when the questions changed.

At the time, it felt shocking.

Today, it feels familiar.

Different players.

Same script.

I've seen this movie before.

And I remember how it starts.