The Consensus Builder
by K.C. Neel -- Multichannel News, 10/12/2008 8:00:00 PM
In this story:
Strong instincts
NUTS-and-bolts executive
Michael Willner hung around broadcast studios when he was a kid and even studied broadcast TV in college, but he knew he wanted to get into the cable business.
“I knew that cable was the future and I decided early on that I wanted to get into a business moving forward, rather than one of the past,” Willner said. “I thought public access would change the world. I thought HBO and MTV had no chance. Just goes to show you what I knew.”
Willner was the program director for Vision Cable in Fort Lee, N.J. It would be the first of two companies he's worked for since he joined the business in 1974. He quickly realized that programming wasn't where his strongest skills resided. He moved into management and became the system manager at 25 years of age.
“I had no idea I was management material,” Willner said. “It was definitely on-the-job training.”
Willner may have not thought he had the skills to manage a cable system but others sure did. He served two consecutive terms as chairman of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and currently sits on its executive committee. He has served as chairman of CablePAC since 2000. Willner was elected chairman of the Cable Center's board of directors in 2007. He also serves on the executive committee of CableLabs, as well as the boards of C-SPAN and the Walter Kaitz Foundation.
He is a member of the executive committee of Boston University's College of Communications and was awarded the college's 2000 Distinguished Alumnus Award. He is also the 2004 recipient of the NCTA's Vanguard Award for Distinguished Leadership, the trade group's highest honor.
Strong instincts
“Michael has sound judgment and good opinions,” said Advance/Newhouse Communications CEO Bob Miron, only the second man in the cable business that Willner worked for before going out on his own to form Insight Communications. The other was Sid Knafel, who ran Vision Cable. The two of them started Insight in 1985.
“Michael worked for me after we bought Vision,” Miron said. “Then, he decided to go out and become an entrepreneur. Our loss was the industry's gain. He is a consensus-builder. It's hard for small operators to do that successfully. But he managed to gain the respect of the larger operators and convinced them to come together on issues that would have been difficult for any other leader.”
To be sure, Willner was instrumental in getting 11 publicly held cable companies to uniformly report their financial results to Wall Street analysts so the industry could better represent itself to investors, said Landmark Communications CEO Decker Anstrom, a former NCTA CEO. At the time, Wall Street was concerned about the cable industry's accounting methods. Willner, then the NCTA's chairman, was able to convince the major operators to come together and provide results in a way that was consistent and transparent.
“One of Michael's strongest attributes is his ability to focus on an issue,” Anstrom said. “He sets a goal and is relentless until he achieves his goal. Now, of course, he's able to do it with grace and humor, which makes it look easy. And it also helps him succeed at those goals.
“When you get into how companies report to Wall Street, that can be tricky business. But Michael was able to get them to work together. It was impressive.”
Willner said bringing the entire industry together on issues can be a daunting task. In his typically modest style, he credited his self-deprecating sense of humor for his success. But after being pressed, he said he tried to step back and look at the big picture.
“I realized that to maintain long-term interest by investors, we needed to be prepared for some sacrifices,” Willner said regarding the unified financial-reporting project. “Quite frankly, a lot of people worked very hard on that issue. I can't take credit for the whole thing.”
Still, Anstrom said Willner's ability to lead has been apparent from the beginning and clearly comes from who he is, rather than which company he works for or owns.
“Michael's not leading from a platform of the biggest or most powerful company in the industry,” Anstrom said. “And his systems are generally in small and midsize markets. But he understands the industry well and, coupled with his natural leadership skills, he has been quite effective. People listen and respect him. And he has earned that respect every step of the way.”
Willner is also a fundamentally decent person, Amstrom added. “He has a terrific sense of humor, he's friendly, he doesn't brush you off, he's honest and he's trustworthy,” he said. “Never have I had a conversation with him that I didn't think he'd fulfill whatever he said he'd do. That's why he is good at consensus-building and why he is such a natural leader.”
He has also gained the respect of executives who run companies much larger than Insight because of the way he runs that company and his past successes, according to executives. Customers identify with him as well. Willner recently launched his own blog, called “Michael's Insight” as a way to communicate directly with customers.
“I have created this blog and will use a part of my day to write about what is going on in the world of cable,” he posted on the blog. “I hope to discuss the things that we at Insight Communications and others in the cable industry deal with in bringing you your cable, Internet and phone services. And I hope to hear back from you about what you are thinking of us. We all can learn from one another by communicating points of views in a free and open exchange.”
Willner runs a state-of-the-art, quality business, Anstrom said, noting that he doesn't know any other CEOs who are taking the time to write a blog aimed at customers.
NUTS-and-bolts executive
“He's learned the business from the ground up,” Anstrom said. “And he has a lot of substance. Besides that, he's always trying new stuff. Take the blogging he is doing. He's not afraid of trying new things.”
His ability to laugh at himself has led to a secondary career — that of a leading man in a series of Insight TV ads in which he plays himself. In one ad, the camera follows Willner as he goes door to door to determine whether the company is meeting customers' needs. His efforts to provide extraordinary customer service find him attempting to fix a car engine, cooking chili, feeding a crying baby and washing a dog.
“I've always tried to keep my sense of humor, especially about myself, which has worked pretty well for me,” Willner said. “If you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?”
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