How would you describe HR? I ask. We call it personnel, Coleridge points out. I have an incredibly good personnel director called Susannah Amoore. She used to be managing editor at The Economist, he adds.
Coleridge likes to appoint people from the line to the service functions. His approach to HR is enviably straightforward and clearly successful. He has bad memories of overly bureaucratic HR from his days at the National Magazine Company, publisher of such magazines as Marie Claire and Harpers & Queen. There was a huge HR department. It seemed as if there were about 20 of them. The current number is around 10 for 571 staff. Cond Nast, which has about 550 employees in the UK, has only three personnel staff.
Coleridge does not want his HR team to worry about such things as assessments or outward bound courses. He recalls HR at National Magazines: They spent a tremendous amount of time assessing [staff] with very complicated forms which were quite Pravda-like and never, I think, really achieved very much. Its amusing, he adds, to see that the companies that ask their HR experts to organise outward bound courses are usually the ones on the skids. Warming to his theme he laughs, At Cond Nast we are not very good at dressing everyone up in Arctic clothes and making them march across the polar ice cap.
Its hard to find anyone who is critical of Coleridge even among his rivals. Terry Mansfield, managing director of the National Magazine Company, gave Coleridge his first big break as editor of Harpers & Queen. But even he has to admit that Coleridge is an exceptionally good managing director. Though he competes against me, I do admire him. He is also very well mannered, Mansfield adds intriguingly.
It is also difficult to dispute that Coleridge is excellent at his job. According to some reports, Cond Nasts UK magazine division had been making an operating loss in 1991 of close to 2 million before Coleridges appointment as managing director. By 1998 one press report estimated the division was bringing in profits of over 9 million. Recent innovations have included the development of a contract magazine and internet division, headed by former Sunday Express editor Sue Douglas, and the launch of Glamour magazine last year in the UK in handbag size format. Glamour has exceeded all expectations. With a UK circulation of 414,453, it is now neck and neck with traditional market leader Cosmopolitan in terms of UK sales.
Coleridges father, David, a former Lloyds of London chairman and related to the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, sent Nicholas to Eton, and it was here no doubt and at Trinity College, Cambridge that he honed his celebrated social skills. Similar to his Eton-educated friends Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Telegraph, and shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin, Coleridge oozes charm.
He may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth but make no mistake, it must be hard work being Nicholas Coleridge. His cheerful energy seems relentless. Kimberly Fortier, publisher of The Spectator magazine, was Cond Nasts communications director in the UK during the 80s and 90s. She says, Coleridge is a terrific boss, a life affirming boss, very enthusiastic, scrupulously polite. He is never demotivating and always very motivating.
But there is a steel to Coleridges personality that may elude many people. During the interview he suddenly says, Many people dont think so, but I am very competitive, before going on to reveal his taste for battle. Magazine publishing is like trench warfare, he says, you never win for good. But sometimes you can push forward some way, then the enemy starts to pound your position with more free gifts, promotion and marketing. Then youre pushed back a little bit, then you have to push forward again. Its like a lifetime battle.
It doesnt take a genius to see that you need a great deal of guts and determination to climb from the position of cub reporter on the Falmouth Packet in Cornwall to boss of Cond Nast (UK) in 15 years. Even friends like Fortier admit that he has the necessary ruthlessness to compete in a very tough business. People who know him suggest that his next move might be to edit a national newspaper or run Cond Nast in the US, or to turn his current passion for writing thrillers into a full-time profession.
But to return to the question of HR at Cond Nast if it is not about assessments or outdoor training, then what is it about? At the end of the interview after the tape had been turned off, Coleridge was looking a little concerned. He felt he had not told me enough about Amoore. She acts as a sort of wailing wall, he says, so that employees who are tired and emotional from the work and the clash of strong personalities can talk to someone in relative confidence. She advises people who might be thinking of leaving to go on holiday and wait till they get back. That deputy editor job might not seem so bad when they return from a holiday.
Perhaps the most important HR issue for a company like Cond Nast is how to attract and keep the biggest stars in the editing and publishing world. Coleridge considers this to be his responsibility and prefers not to rely on head-hunters. I certainly see it as my job to know who the good editors are and I spend a lot of time making sure that I always have someone in mind if a current editor were to leave or fall under the wheels of a limousine.
It is not all that hard to attract candidates. Cond Nast is for many the dream company to work for. Coleridge says that they get about 600 letters every week from graduates and newspaper staff. Editors, on average, stay at Cond Nast for 12 years, though some have stayed for 20 to 30 years. Robert Harling recently retired at the age of 82 after editing House & Garden magazine since the war.
The company also wins its fair share of awards. At the Periodical Publishers Association Awards in May it picked up three of the consumer category awards: publisher of the year for Glamour; writer of the year for GQ; and designer of the year for House & Garden.
But what makes an editor a star? First, Coleridge believes, they must have a strong instinct for the title. But that is not enough. He likens the glossy magazine business to show business and argues that star editors are able to project their magazines outward. There is a good and bad thing about this company, he adds. The bad thing is that if anyone sneezes, its in Londoners Diary [in the Evening Standard] within minutes. For example, when he sent a memo around the company announcing that smoking would be banned within three months, The memo had not even been taken around the building when the Daily Telegraph and Londoners Diary phoned me.
The upside, though, is that Cond Nast gets fantastic press for the magazines that is really disproportionate to our size. And that is partly due to the editors, says Coleridge. I like editors who can be to some extent public figures because I think magazines are an extension of show business. Editors also have to be able to get on with and manage the hottest writers and photographers, like Mario Testino, for example.
Does he pay more for stars? We pay considerably more than our competitors. But we need people who are prepared to work very passionately and want to stay here.
Coleridge has not made many mistakes on new hires, but one well-publicised misjudgment was the appointment of James Brown, the former editor of Loaded magazine to edit GQ. Fortier recalls that Browns behaviour was too bad even for GQ. Hed throw up in the publishers bin and not apologise.
Brown was fired after he published an article in which field marshal Rommel was named as one of the snappiest dressers of the 20th century. Some commentators claimed at the time that Cond Nasts owner, Si Newhouse, who was a member of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, put pressure on Coleridge to fire Brown.
Brown is very talented, Coleridge believes, but did not give his best to GQ. He suggests that Brown needed to grow up. I think he was amazed by the grown-up atmosphere and the fact that he was left to get on with running his magazine, he explains. He was a little like a boy in a sweetshop, realising that people did not spend all day telling him what to do or checking that he was there.
So what attracts talent and keeps it? First, and most obviously, the magazines themselves do the work. It is, says Coleridge, like the last stop on the tube for many. They get to work on the magazine they have dreamed about. Second, Coleridge says, it helps that the company is neither too small nor too big. That makes it an attractive place to work.
He describes in loving terms how each magazine has its own way of life: On the Vogue floor there tends to be very fashionable on the whole very beautiful long-legged fashion editors and people who are very well dressed in a cool and modern way. And they want to be at Vogue often its what they have always wanted. On the Tatler floor they tend to be much more social, more party-minded people. It has a slight county feel to it as well as a kind of Notting Hill edge.
The GQ floor is the only one where its predominantly men. There you expect to see pin-ups of babes, people playing darts and the sports channel will be on. At House & Garden, as youd predict, there are lots of people whose parents live in old rectories. They are very, very responsible, very passionate about fabric and wallpaper and have a more settled view of the world than GQ. World of Interiors is much more arty. Its like going to the Central St Martins College of Art and Design or to Chelsea Art College.
Coleridge has, by this point, become extremely animated and excited. He has an absolute passion for all the different cultures and magazines. I love the variety. I love being able to go from floor to floor and I have quite different relationships with the different magazines. He goes on to talk about his latest success, the launch of Glamour, where the people are young and sassy and Traveller magazine where there is more of an intellectual quality. Coleridge pauses and says, But there is a Cond Nast point of view.
It is hard to see exactly what that might be. It is, Coleridge seems to suggest, a certain way of treating people. The magazines attract bright people and give them a chance, he points out, to write for themselves and their peer group. The company has a sophisticated approach to people. When pressed, he explains, We dont have tannoy systems around the building telling you things all the time. Regular meetings are discouraged. Coleridge talks to about 50 different people every day but he never fills his diary with pre-arranged meetings. He says his door is usually open and hed not expect anyone to have to wait more than a couple of hours to see him. We try to have an adult, non-red tape policy where things can be achieved quickly its based on common sense.
Fortier says that people are attracted to Cond Nast because its fun and its different. The company also has a very grown-up attitude towards women who take maternity leave, she adds. They are never made to feel that they are not welcome when they come back. This approach is clearly important for a company where the bulk of its employees are female. But it is still impressive in the world of publishing which tends to be fairly backward in such areas. Fortier recalls at least one senior female employee who turned down another job offer with twice the pay because she had been treated so well on return from maternity leave.
Coleridge himself is a very important reason why talented people want to come to Cond Nast and stay there. He is very visible. He likes to walk around the building and tries to talk to feature editors, deputy editors and other staff, not just editors. He also has an apparent ability to soothe strong egos. Part of this is due to his charm and enthusiasm for the people he works with.
He says, I think that its quite well understood here that I cant bear internal politics. Im absolutely allergic to it and I particularly dont like it when people I like dont get on. He relates a story about a turf war between two of his stars. I asked them both to come for a drink in my office and I said, I think you are both fantastically good at your job and I like you both immensely. But this cant go on. If you cant work this out, Im going to toss a coin and one of you will be heads and one tails, and well see who leaves.
I said, As far as Im concerned Id much rather you both stay for the next 25 years but you cant put me in this position where I have to keep backing one of you against the other. Its quite absurd. If you met each other socially you would like each other and be the greatest of friends and its quite ridiculous to be in this position. He adds his punch line with a wry smile, Theyre both still here.
Typical Coleridge, this ability to win over hugely strong personalities, in a highly volatile industry. It is surely this that lies at the heart of his success.
Nicholas Coleridges latest novel, Godchildren, is published by Orion, 2002
