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The Conference Board Review® Article
Openers
By Matthew Budman
Remembering Al
1934-2008
A.J. Vogl didn't found this magazine, but he might as well have: Over his eighteen-year tenure, its pages took on his personality, reflecting his aesthetic tastes, his judgments of what readers would find compelling, his very voice.
The magazine — indeed, the world — will carry on without him, but nothing will be the same.
Al came to The Conference Board Review — then called Across the Board — in 1990, after editing several national magazines, including American Film, M.D., Sales & Marketing Management, Medical Economics, and Next. This wasn't an easy assignment, balancing the independence of an opinion journal with the caution inherent in an organization publication, and he fought to instill and maintain an irreverence and liveliness.
He quickly introduced features that became the magazine's most-read: Openers, Soundings, and, more substantially, a full-length Q&A with a notable executive or author. His first, in March 1990, was with Harvard corporate-governance expert Jay Lorsch, and he went on to sit down with the likes of Derek Bok, Stephen Carter, C.K. Prahalad (twice), Andrew Stern, and a host of top executives (Larry Bossidy, Sandy Weill, Max DePree, Edward Brennan, Ricardo Semler), corporate critics (William Greider, Kevin Phillips, Jeremy Rifkin), governance experts (Nell Minow and Robert Monks, Lucian Bebchuk, Charles Elson), visionaries (Margaret Wheatley, John Naisbitt, Charles Handy), and management gurus (Michael Porter, Henry Mintzberg, Jim Collins, Warren Bennis). He interviewed figures such as Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap and reengineering advocates Michael Hammer and James Champy just before they made a giant splash in the business world; for the January/February 2005 issue, he met with Walter Wriston for his last major interview before his death.
The focus was always on ideas; other periodicals could fill pages with puffy, stage-managed CEO interviews, but not Al's magazine. Authors were surprised that he had taken the trouble to read their books cover to cover and prepare thoughtful questions, but he would have been bored to simply go through the motions. Readers, he reasoned, would have found the results dull as well.
(In keeping with the spirit and diversity of Al's interviews, this issue features three full-length Q&As: Associate editor Vadim Liberman spoke with U.K. publisher Felix Dennis, and I spent time with U.S. Army Chief of Staff George Casey and MIT business guru Peter Senge.)
Al brought that sense of restless inquiry to the feature stories he wrote as well, consulting dozens of books and articles and authorities while researching and writing pieces on "corporate soul" and the corporate-social-responsibility movement. For the article that turned out to be his last, he buckled down to read Atlas Shrugged, giving the staff periodic updates on his progress, and then, to flesh out his impressions, tracked down business-minded enthusiasts of Ayn Rand.
In the office, Al offered what amounted to a master class in editing, particularly in identifying the kernel of a provocative article in what appeared to be a mass of unreadable prose. And he mentored a devoted staff of writers, copy editors, art directors, and photo editors, most of whom have gone on to do interesting work and who not only fondly recall their years working with Al but stayed in touch.
He also made a striking impression on those who never had the privilege of working directly with or for him; just hearing that whiskey-and-soda rumble on his voice-mail recording ("The man himself isn't here right now . . .") left a mark. Always dignified and consummately classy, Al sometimes seemed like a character out of a 1940s noir movie, sporting fedora, bowtie, and, in summer, seersucker. His sense of authority gave this magazine a profile and presence far outstripping its size. And Al never lost interest in pushing forward, in the new, both at work and at home. He took up improvisational jazz piano in his 50s, was an enthusiast of film and dogs and music and theater, and devoured books and magazines and three newspapers, lugging home a daily briefcase of Metro-North reading material. He typically concluded Monday-morning staff meetings by recommending just-watched DVDs and distributing Lucy Kellaway columns clipped from the Financial Times. While he kept much of his private life private — especially his pre-Conference Board years — he let the lines blur occasionally: A few of us worked with his jazz-biographer wife Linda on her books, his son Tim has been a longtime reader of the magazine, and his daughter Katrina — born right around the time of Al's arrival, meaning that we got to watch her grow up, a year at a time, on Take Our Daughters to Work days — served as a cover model for a 2000 feature on negotiation.
Al was deeply involved in his upstate New York community; he had a rich home life, close friends, and rewarding hobbies — he kept drafts of a mystery novel, starring a piano-playing private eye, in a desk drawer, one of at least five novels he wrote over the years. But he never expressed much interest in retirement, except as an in-the-distant-future hypothetical — as Linda puts it, "Work was his life." When he officially departed The Conference Board, in February, many co-workers were startled to learn that he was 73 — he always seemed much younger. His June 14 death, of cancer, was a far greater shock.
Vadim Liberman, creative director Serena Spiezio, and I worked alongside Al for eight, nine, and fifteen years, respectively, and absorbed all we could of his wisdom and experience and humanity. Upon his retirement, he pronounced himself pleased to leave the magazine "in good hands" and confident that we would move forward and thrive, better and stronger. And while you'll see some changes, large and small, to TCB Review in the months to come, we'll continue striving to adhere to Al's spirit of restless inquiry.
Granted, it hasn't been — and it won't be — easy trying to maintain Al's standards for the magazine. Even after a lifetime of writing and editing, he never grew complacent about the finished product. A few weeks ago, he allowed that he approved of our May/June cover design but gently opined that one of the feature stories "could have used a harder edit."
It figures. Al always thought articles, even his own, could use a harder edit, a little more tightening, one more close look. And he was usually right. He set the bar high.
Matthew Budman
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