By Prior Beharry
FORMER Managing Director of Guardian Media Limited (GML) Grenfell Kissoon has passed away.
He died on Wednesday night. He was 79. He would have been 80 next Thursday on Independence Day.
Kissoon worked as a media executive for decades and was best known for his work in the media arm of the ANSA McAL group. He was appointed chairman of the GML board on September 1, 2013.
He was the media sector head of Trinidad Broadcasting Company (TBC), the predecessor of GML and managing director of Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT).
After working at CNMG, he again served on the boards of GML and its parent company ANSA McAL in the years before his death.
Veteran broadcast and print journalist Andy Johnson described Kissoon as a professional thinker and a leader in the way he did things.
Johnson said, “He was the essence of what management was meant to be.”
He remembered that Kissoon never had a pen in his pocket and asked to borrow one when he wanted to make a note.
Johnson said he was grateful to enjoy Kissoon’s confidence and was instrumental in developing his management and leadership capacity to the extent that Kissoon made him both head of news and programming at TBC. He said Kissoon told him he could do it.
He said he made a lot of enemies since he wasn’t from broadcast and also acted for Kissoon as managing director of TBC when he went on vacation.
Johnson then became editor of the Guardian as TBC was transitioning into GML to incorporate print and electronic media under one roof in the late 1990s.
He said Kissoon was unsparing in putting his confidence in people and chose Johnson and then Guardian editor-in-chief Lennox Grant to attend board meetings with him.
Johnson said Kissoon had a clarity of thought, was no-nonsense and was smooth and clinical in his decision-making without raising his voice.
He said Kissoon made decisions on criteria and not on personality.
Former sports editor at the Guardian Valentino Singh said that Kissoon had first interviewed him at state-owned TTT and told him that he was going to turn it around in the late 1980s.
When Singh became sports editor at the Guardian, Kissoon came to the organisation and asked him if he had remembered the interview at TTT and told him that he had turned that company around.
He said Kissoon stated that he was going to “cut the fat” at the Guardian and he did including by dismantling the security services at the company that was too large. Singh said he made some enemies as he could be considered a numbers person.
Singh said they both followed each other careers.
He said, “He came to see me and told me he too followed my career and came to tell me he was there to make things better (at the Guardian). He did make things better. He dealt with figures and people didn’t like him for that.”
Singh said Kissoon would recognise potential as he had made Dominic Kalipersad, known more as a television presenter, editor-in-chief of the Guardian.
He also recalled that he was also the editor responsible for the daily paper under Kissoon.
Singh said such was Kissoon’s potential that even when he retired from GML and went into another organisation, the owners of the GML would bring him back.
Kalipersad, who became editor-in-chief of the Guardian under Kissoon, said he brought a multifaceted approach to his management style to create a motivated work environment.
He said Kissoon’s approach helped to bring profitability to the media companies he led.
Kalipersad remembers Kissoon merging the Trinidad Publishing and Broadcasting Company Limited and the TBC into one company and changed the Guardian newspaper from a broadsheet to a ‘broadloid’ that he called the G-size.
He said Kissoon also expanded GML into cable broadcasting and then national free-to-air with CNC 3.
Kalipersad said, “He helped steer the company’s transition to a modern digital era integrated media entity.”
Former design consultant at the Guardian Kevan Gibbs described Kissoon as a mentor to him, both at the business level and as an operator in the newsroom, when he entered the media.
He said, “He was always willing to share his knowledge and to test you with responsibility. The media profession is at a loss without him.”
Ken Ali, former editor of the Guardian and chief executive officer of CNMG under Kissoon, described him as “one of the Caribbean’s finest human resources experts, with an affinity for growing talent and enhancing bottom lines.”
He called it “the people factor,” Ali said.
This transformed into his book The People Factor in Enterprise Management a thorough guide to motivating workers and achieving the best-ever results, he said.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Ali said, “Grenfell Kissoon was one of the hostages at Maraval Road (TTT) during the 1990 bloody insurrection.
“When the dust cleared, Kissoon took two days off, and then returned to his office.
“‘I didn’t need any more time than that,’ he once told me.
“It was a measure of the man – gritty, focused, and committed.
“Some detainees were derailed and traumatised for the remainder of their lives.
“For Grenfell, it was a blip in a lengthy and illustrious career, in which he managed change in the sugar cane industry, and in both the State and private sector media business.
“In the final two decades, he was a principal human resource, corporate professional and inside man at the top floor of the Ansa McAl conglomerate.”
Kissoon’s Linkedin account stated:
Grenfell Kissoon is a Management Consultant,a Certified Mediator, and a Certified Executive Coach. Prior to his retirement from full-time employment, he was CEO of three major Media Companies, Guardian Media Ltd, Trinidad Broadcasting Co., and T.T.T.; Manager Management Controls at Caroni 1975 Ltd,and a Human Resource Administrator at 2 Companies over a 10-year period.
He has been on the Board of Directors of several Companies,the most recent of which were Ansa McAL Ltd and Guardian Media Limited. He was also Chairman of CNMG,and Chairman of the Divisional Boards of GML–CNC3,TBC, and the Guardian. Kissoon is on the roster of mediators of the Dispute Resolution Centre ,and The High Court for Court Annexed Mediation Pilot Project 2013.
Kissoon was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of Guardian Media Limited,a multi media company, encompassing CNC3 television, the Guardian newspaper,and 6 radio frequencies on 1st September,2013.
