The Cable Center said Tuesday (January 11) that it has named industry veteran Diane Christman president and CEO, replacing Jana Henthorn, who retired in December. 

Christman worked with Henthorn to create the organization's five-year strategic planning initiative, Vision 2025, which will shape its offerings to further support innovation and intrapreneurship, symposia and thought leadership.   

“Diane is a bold leader and born connector who will bring big ideas to her new role as president and CEO of The Cable Center,” said Michael Willner, chairman of The Cable Center board and CEO of Penthera Partners, in a press release. “She understands how to create, cultivate, and maintain strategic relationships and partnerships that allow organizations to thrive. Diane is the natural choice for this moment in the evolution of the connectivity industry and The Cable Center.” 

Christman joined The Cable Center in 2006 as VP, marketing and development. She was promoted to senior VP, programs and development in 2009 and senior vice president, development and chief program officer in 2019. Since she joined the organization, Christman has developed and implemented many of its experiential programs, academic partnerships, events, and work to curate its collection of entrepreneurial accounts and objects.

“I am energized and ready to serve as The Cable Center’s new president and CEO,” Christman said in a press release. “It’s an honor to empower our industry’s innovators through our programs and experiences and inspire their work to drive change within their organizations.”

Christman will lead an effort to advance The Cable Center in the next phase of its Vision 2025 strategic plan. “We represent and reflect an industry made up of visionaries and doers,” Christman said. “Now is the time for big ideas. In 2022, we will innovate and evolve our organization in concert with our industry with an array of compelling offerings.”

The Vision 2025 initiative includes expanding The Cable Center’s Intrapreneurship Academy and creating a vibrant community for resource and idea-sharing. As president and CEO, Christman will advance the implementation of Vision 2025 in collaboration with The Cable Center team and board after co-leading the effort in 2020 and 2021.  ■ 

 The pandemic has changed everything — the way we socialize, celebrate, communicate and how we work. 

In the content and connectivity industry, the challenge was twofold: to quickly equip a remote workforce and ensure that people worldwide stayed connected. Proudly, the industry rose to the challenge, exhibiting agility and innovation in a time of crisis. But now that seas are starting to calm, what will organizations continue to do to ride the wave of change?

I talked to industry learning and development experts Diana Monk, VP of learning solutions at Charter Communications; Martha Soehren, former chief talent development officer at Comcast and current executive development adviser and coach; and Allyson Crawford, VP of talent management at WOW! Internet, Cable & Phone, so they could share their thoughts on how the pandemic has changed workplace practices, behaviors and culture. 

Spoiler alert: Even change caused by a global crisis can create opportunities for the future.

Trust, Freedom Speed Innovation  

While most organizations like to say they grant their employees the freedom to innovate, this principle wasn’t really tested until the pandemic caused a sudden and dramatic shift in the way people work. Leaders had no choice but to allow people at all levels to do what they needed to do to get their work done. 

Rather than the feared outcome of remote workers becoming disengaged and unproductive, the new flexibility increased engagement and productivity. “There were a couple of factors that felt very prominent during the pandemic, and one of those was how we built a trust factor that people would get the work done, that they would do what they needed to do,” Soehren said. “And the second of those was that we gave people the freedom to create a new way of working, a new way of being productive, a new way of interacting and I think that those capabilities will help us immensely moving forward in a more intrapreneurial world.”

The Need for Agility Activated Culture Change  

Large industry organizations tend to have bureaucratic cultures, which means big change happens slowly. At the start of the pandemic, organizations needed to adapt extremely quickly, so decision hierarchies and lengthy processes were thrown to the wind — with surprising results.

“It’s amazing to reflect on how quickly we were able to move some employees — for example, our call center agents to their homes,” Monk said. “I was talking with some members of our IT team, and they said, ‘If someone had put a project plan in front of us and said how long will it take you to move your call centers to 50% at home and 50% in the office, the answer would’ve been somewhere around nine months.’ We did it in less than two weeks because we had to. The lesson on the need for agility there is pretty strong.”  

Empowered, Engaged Employees

If employees are given the freedom to try new things without fear of reprisal, the result is greater engagement. Some organizations have realized the benefits of this shift and are planning to build greater agility into their cultural touchstones moving forward. 

“We’re making decisions more quickly,” Crawford said. “It’s exciting. We’re seeing engagement increasing. We’re empowering our employees, our leaders, to make decisions at a different level.” Added Crawford, “I think the real gift of the pandemic is we’re seeing a lot more generation of ideas by even our frontline employees because we’re asking for more opinions.” 

Cultivating leaders from within and engaging high performers are essential to holding on to top talent. Engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organization, and this is especially important in the new competitive employment market.

The pandemic has been a crash course in the need for organizations to demonstrate agility and empower employees. Now, our job is to take what we’ve learned and use it to ride the wave of change — lest we risk going under. 

The Cable Center CEO Jana Henthorn said Tuesday that she will retire at the end of the year, ending a 17-year run at the industry organization.  A replacement has not yet been named.

Henthorn joined the Cable Center in 2004 after serving as VP of affiliate sales for A+E Television Networks and earlier, as VP of operations and service fulfillment for Jones Intercable. She became CEO of The Cable Center in 2016.  During her tenure as CEO, Henthorn made strides in helping the industry think tank expand its offerings and cultivate and inspire new leaders, forming the Intrapreneurship Academy in 2017 and creating the Cable Center’s 5-year strategic plan in 2021. 

According to the Cable Center, as of July, the Intrapreneurship Academy has graduated more than 150 industry intrapreneurs from 30 different industry organizations and has expanded its curriculum into four, value-driving courses: Driving Innovation; Leading with Agility; Leading with Agility: Executive Intensive; and Leveraging Customer Experience.  

“Upon becoming CEO, Jana spearheaded the next evolution for The Cable Center, ushering in the era of intrapreneurship and innovation. Jana’s legacy will be her creative, compassionate leadership and impact on our industry’s future leaders through the Intrapreneurship Academy,” said Cable Center board chairman and CEO of Penthera Partners Michael Willner. “The Cable Center’s total assets are at the highest point in the past decade and beyond, and we are positioned for continued growth and success. It has been such a pleasure to collaborate with Jana. She is truly a trailblazer.”

During her watch, Henthorn also advanced the Center’s mission of honoring and celebrating the industry’s many entrepreneurs and founders, sharing their stories and expertise through programs like the Barco Library and Hauser Oral and Video History Project; the Cable Center Customer Centric Consortium (C5); the Edward Breen Technical Archives, and the Mavericks Lecture Series.

“The Cable Center has achieved tremendous growth and success over the last few years. I am extremely proud of all our programs, and the development and launch of our newest program, Intrapreneurship Academy,” Henthorn said in a press release. “Grit, determination, and hard work are the principles upon which our great industry was founded, and I believe that we have been entrusted with the responsibility to inspire the next era of innovation.

“I want to thank my industry colleagues, our wonderful board of directors, our esteemed honorary board of directors, our Cable Center ambassadors, our generous donors, and my many mentors and guides along the way," she continued. "I am incredibly proud of my dedicated Cable Center team of collaborators and ambassadors. We have been able to accomplish so much together due to the collective support, agility, enthusiasm, and diligence of our staff.”

Henthorn will continue as CEO of the Cable Center through the end of the year. Upon her retirement, she will remain on the board of directors as the immediate past president. The board has begun the process of naming her successor.

The Cable Center unveiled its five-year plan Jan. 19, including the expansion of its Intrapreneurship Academy, in an effort to bolster its brand and role as members evolve into connectivity companies.  

The Cable Center said its team has been working for the past year with 34 industry leaders and experts on all facets of its business plan -- from brand to finance to program development -- and now is focused on implementation, including continuing to host industry conferences, panel discussions, events like the Cable Hall of Fame and maintaining a strong link with academia.

“Through this detailed work, we know affinity for The Cable Center runs deep among cable veterans and there is continued desire to modernize and advance our industry innovation story,” The Cable Center CEO Jana Henthorn said in a press release. “We take our responsibility to uphold and preserve our industry’s legacy seriously. By drawing on our depth of knowledge around the achievements of the original entrepreneurs, we enable and inspire a new generation of connectivity industry innovators.”

The Cable Center is addressing that shift toward connectivity, especially amid the COVID-19 crisis, through the expansion of the Intrapreneurship Academy. Citing a 2020 McKinsey Survey of corporate executives, where 85% of those asked said they were concerned that the pandemic would have a lasting impact on customer needs, but only 21% had the expertise, resources, and commitment to successfully pursue new growth -- the Center believes a beefed up academy can help.

The Cable Center said it will relaunch the Intrapreneurship Academy brand and its website, while also expanding its course offerings. The Center also will provide a community to share resources and ideas, publish data and information on intrapreneurship, agility, and the customer experience (CX); and tap top industry leaders as course speakers and mentors.

“The connectivity industry is ever-expanding. As our industry evolves, so does The Cable Center,” said Chris Lammers, chief operating officer of CableLabs and member for The Cable Center Board of Directors Executive Committee, in a press release. “They are making the right choices to keep pace with change and to develop our greatest source of innovation – our people.”

Formerly known as one stand-alone course, Intrapreneurship Academy now includes two courses, with more on the horizon. According to The Cable Center, 164 leaders have graduated from the flagship course Driving Intrapreneurship (formerly known as Intrapreneurship Academy) and this spring will launch Leading With Agility, a course designed to help seasoned and emerging leaders develop skills during a period of unplanned change and unexpected opportunity. Their premier CX course is also scheduled to launch in late 2021.

Liberty Global has been an enthusiastic backer of the Intrapreneurship program and also helped shape the Center’s five-year plan. In a press release, Liberty Global SVP and chief people officer Amy Blair, also a member of the Center’s board of directors, said the company has invested in the Academy since its inception in 2017, and looks forward to the future.  

“We have seen firsthand the extraordinary benefits of Intrapreneurship Academy for our participants and how the approach complements what we do at Liberty Global,” Blair said in the release. “Our people have honed their skills to think more innovatively and to contribute in new ways. We are excited to continue our partnership.”

As the director of the field support center for Mediacom Communications, the fifth-largest cable operator in the U.S., I was approached by my boss to participate in a leadership training program with a colleague. I immediately jumped onto my computer to learn more about The Cable Center's Intrapreneurship Academy — also known as “IA” — to see what I was getting myself into.

To my surprise, the educational program was designed to provide mid-tier cable-industry executives with the leadership skills and mindset to become intrapreneurs — to envision and affect change and to innovate within their own organization. Recently, I had been battling an “if It ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality with some colleagues, so the timing could not have been better.

Embracing Change

Hearing phrases like this inside an organization can create a culture that makes many individuals fearful of change. Some of my own team members were reluctant to express their ideas or make recommendations for improvement. Through an ideation session facilitated by IA and our class curriculum, I was able to immediately improve communications with my own team and reduce the negativity that was discouraging innovation. During our ideation session, one associate that doesn’t normally express her opinions proved it was her day to shine and opened up to us. I was so pleased that IA had enabled me to create a forum for our team where she was comfortable enough to share her ideas.

By working with the dean and other participants, I learned to push myself to think more broadly, which opened my eyes to other perspectives. I gained more confidence and mastered negotiation tips to go back to the drawing board and confront the people that were resistant to the “transformation” I envisioned and wanted to see implemented.

My goal for my IA class project was to demonstrate how I could maximize manpower. I needed to ensure all our customers were getting the help, problem-solving and courteous service each and every time they asked for support. That meant my entire team had to be available whenever and wherever — even if budgets were tight or not available. 

”I no longer wanted to work in just my silo; I was inspired to connect.” 

Life after the program also changed for me, as I became more aware of the needs and challenges of other departments within my organization. I no longer wanted to work in just my silo; I was inspired to connect. I reached out to the training department and was simply blown away that by having a better understanding of what they were doing — and why — equipped me to position my Workforce Management solution in a whole new light.

Expecting the Unexpected

Based on my findings, I was able to work through and present a budget strategy. It wasn’t rocket science, but it made all the difference in the world. I requested a budget for the unexpected, like the field work that comes due to weather, or other delays that could be estimated based on historical data. Thanks to IA, I successfully changed the way budgets were allocated to cover field work for “pinches” that arose from delays and increased the number of satisfied Mediacom customers.

The advice I would give to other intrapreneurs is to trust yourself, open your eyes, listen to those around you and keep pushing for what you believe in. If you’re looking for a worthwhile training program, and an amazing support system, I highly recommend the Intrapreneurship Academy.

Lagwana Tyler is director, field support center at Mediacom Communications and a participant in The Cable Center’s Intrapreneurship Academy, which consists of two days of on-site training at The Cable Center in Denver, followed by six weeks of online classroom instruction, and concluding with a two-day capstone back at The Cable Center. Classes are held throughout the year. For more information and to register, visitwww.intrapreneurshipacademy.org.