What seven corporate bosses taught NBC’s Bonnie Hammer about how to navigate change

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Only 60% of women are satisfied with their jobs, AI researcher Fei-Fei Li reportedly founded her own startup, and longtime TV exec Bonnie Hammer knows how to navigate change. Have a terrific Tuesday!

- Ch-ch-changes. In her 40-year career in TV, Bonnie Hammer made it through seven corporate takeovers—and came out on the other side with “a better job each time,” she writes in her new book. Decades as a leader in the tumultuous media business taught Hammer how to navigate change, lessons she shares in 15 Lies Women Are Told at Work…and the Truth We Need to Succeed, out today.

Called the “Queen of cable TV,” Hammer is known for turning the USA and SyFy networks into profit centers behind shows like Suits and Psych and later leading NBC’s cable division to record profits. In her time at these networks, she operated under bosses at Paramount, Time Inc., Viacom, Seagram, GE, and Comcast. Today, she's vice chair of NBCUniversal.

The key to surviving frequent corporate takeovers was taking a moment to understand the nature of each change, she told me. “What will the tone be? What are the expectations?” Hammer says she asked herself each time. “It’s beyond reading the room—it’s reading the culture.” That requires reading body language, being flexible, and knowing when to compromise.

There will be new rules, and understanding them is critical. “Who has the power? Are they more impressed with ingenuity or the bottom line? Do they love creativity and get content or do they only care about money?”

As a manager, the next step is communicating these changes to teams. “You want to put it in a way that doesn’t scare them or threaten them, but helps motivate them to do what their job is and be as creative as they can—but also understand that how they’re going to be judged may be a little different,” she says.

Even so, some change will be difficult. In her book, Hammer writes of a common experience: being passed over for a promotion. In her case, she lost out on a job leading broadcast for NBC in 2007; the role went to “a guy 20 years younger with a quarter of my experience.” She later found out it was because her cable networks were making so much money, the company was scared moving her would risk the cash cow. “Guys just kind of muscle through it,” she says of being passed over. “But women take it very seriously. They personalize it instead of saying, ‘I didn’t get this. What can I get?' Or 'What should I do next?’”

The constant through Hammer’s career, and her memoir, is change. Today’s media industry, she says, isn’t more tumultuous than it has been in the past; each change only seems like it’s worse than what's come before, she says. “How you approach change is what matters,” she says. “Not that there is change.”

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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