North Stars: what 10 media strategies teach us about leadership

For thirty years, I worked inside media groups: Canal+, Paramount, TF1, Melody TV. I watched strategies born in meeting rooms, survive crises no one saw coming, or die at the first change of leadership.

When I launched the "North Stars" series on LinkedIn in March 2026, I wanted to answer a simple question: why do some media groups weather the storms while others, often bigger and better funded, collapse?

I sensed the answer before I began. But ten Fridays of publishing gave me a sharper picture than anything I had read in strategy books. It isn't size that protects you. Nor cash. Nor even talent. It's the clarity of the course.

The groups that survive are the ones where any employee can state the strategy in one sentence, and explain what the company gave up to hold to it. I called this a North Star: a strategic course so clear that it guides every hard decision, withstands changes of leadership, and forces you to say no to everything that isn't essential.

Across ten episodes, I dissected the North Stars of Disney, Netflix, Canal+, Apple, Warner Bros. Discovery, Spotify, Amazon and the BBC. A global success. A spectacular counter-example. A centenarian that hasn't changed a comma. And a 23-year-old founder who beat piracy by making it pointless.

What surprised me was the invisible common thread: each of these North Stars involved a painful sacrifice. Steve Jobs cut 70% of Apple's product line. Daniel Ek gave away for free the music the majors wanted to sell. Bob Iger put 71 billion dollars on the table to buy the franchises he didn't have.

The 5-Signal Test

I distilled these cases into a diagnostic tool: five questions to tell whether your organization has a North Star, or whether it's navigating blind.

Signal 1, Formulation. Can you state your strategic course in one sentence? If the answer requires a 40-slide PowerPoint, it isn't a North Star, it's a plan. The BBC did it in three words: Inform. Educate. Entertain. Since 1927. Seventeen Directors-General, two world wars, the invention of television, the internet, Netflix, not a comma has changed. The test is simple: if you run into an employee in the elevator and ask "where are we going?", does their answer match the CEO's?

Signal 2, Elimination. Has your course made you give up something in the last twelve months? Steve Jobs returns to Apple in 1997: he finds 40 versions of the Macintosh, printers, scanners. His first act is not to create, it's to stop. A 2×2 matrix, four products, 70% of the product line eliminated. A course that never forces you to say no is a slogan, not a strategy.

Signal 3, Surviving a change of leader. If you left your post tomorrow, would your successor keep the same course? Bob Iger leaves Disney in 2020; two years later, Disney calls him back because his successor had veered off course. The fact that Iger could return and pick up exactly the same strategy proves that Disney's North Star did not belong to a man, it belonged to the institution. If your North Star leaves with you, it's a personal conviction, not a corporate strategy.

Signal 4, Resource alignment. Do your three biggest investments of the year point in the same direction? Netflix puts every euro into borderless content. Amazon puts every dollar into Prime retention: streaming, sports, free delivery are not separate business units, they are facets of the same objective. In your organization, do your investments tell the same story, or does each department pursue its own objective?

Signal 5, Exclusive territory. Does your North Star point to ground your competitors cannot occupy? If three of your competitors could sign off on the same strategic sentence, it's a sector consensus, not a course. Spotify found its gap: universal access to music for the price of a coffee. Canal+ found its own: rather than take on Netflix over original content, become the super-aggregator that brings Netflix, Disney+ and the rest together under one roof. Exclusive territory isn't always spectacular. It is always defensible.

The scoring

5/5: you have a North Star. 3-4/5: you have a direction, not yet a course. 1-2/5: you're navigating blind, it's the most common score I see among the media groups I advise.

Ten episodes, ten lessons

The series ran through ten cases: Disney (own popular culture, a North Star isn't a mission statement, it's an acquisition criterion); Netflix (become HBO before HBO becomes Netflix, break free of your suppliers, even if it makes Wall Street howl); Canal+ (if you can't beat them, aggregate them, the most personal episode: I was there in 2004 when the order came down, "we focus on three subjects"); Apple (focus as a weapon, in 1997, Canal+ was worth three times more than Apple on the stock market); Warner Bros. Discovery (the counter-example: three mergers in 22 years, and always the same mistake, confusing a financial thesis with a strategic vision); Spotify (beat piracy by making it pointless); Amazon (content as a retention tool for a larger ecosystem); and the BBC (a century without changing a comma).

A merger without a shared North Star is not a strategy. It's a transaction.

And mine?

Several readers asked me for my own score. Here is my answer. The North Star of Dutoit Média: to become the voice people cite, invite and read on the transformation of media in France. This series was my way of following it.

Have I reached 5/5? Not yet. But I know my course, and I know what I gave up to hold to it: I did not build a generalist firm, I did not diversify into large-scale training, I did not try to speak about everything to everyone. I chose a territory, media strategy in France, and I stick to it.

The ten full episodes, the detailed cases and the data are available on LinkedIn.