7 Reasons Why Carol Bartz Is Right for Yahoo
Here are 7 reasons why 60-year-old Bartz is the one to fix Yahoo and clean up its mess.
1. The problem she fixed? Autodesk had a widespread culture of consensus, which bogged down the business. Yahoo has the same problems, so an encore won’t be that difficult.
3. In the 1990s, Autodesk saw many engineers leave, and Wall Street analysts wanted her to resign because the company was slow to adapt to the Internet . According to Business 2.0, she told the analysts, “You’d be happier if we were selling plastic-wrapped fruit baskets over the Internet?” She needs to do that again and tell Wall Street to shut up.
4. If she means what she writes, Yahoo engineers — still a strong cadre — are going to find a great leader in Bartz.
5. According to a 1992 New York Times profile, she is “direct and quick-witted, quick to laugh and willing to tease her way through tense situations.”
6. She is not shy about bringing down the hammer on her executive team if she isn’t happy with them. She is known to use foul language.
7. Bartz is known to take big bets.
Can you name someone else with similar qualities? Someone named….
Steve Jobs, perhaps?
The problems Yahoo faces are quite similar to those Apple faced when Steve returned. Groups paralysed by consensus, where decisions finally made were re-opened for re-discussion in the next inevitable meeting. Technical groups working on what they felt like, not what the company needed. Sloppy business practices. Senior managers worrying more about their organization than whether the company did well.
That last one was a big problem at Apple; there were senior managers who had a “we outwaited the last two CEOs, we’ll simply wait until you get dumped, too”. Against that kind of entrenched attitude, only one solution is useful: put a couple of heads on pikes outside the entrance to the main building. Steve did that — Bartz will need to. The rest will get the hint and go spend more time with their family, allowing her to hire in a fresh supply of people willing to work FOR her and towards her goals, not their own quotas and bonuses.
At a time when Dell was saying Apple should be shut down and the money handed to stockholders, Steve made those big bets. Need we compare circumstances today? Success rarely goes to the timid, and big bets may break you, but without them, you’ll never get rich. A key thing is for an execute to set direction, and then make sure that their reports understand and implement — and make decisions, and make sure they stay made.
I was thinking about that this weekend reading this in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11burger.html
specifically in terms of McDonald’s mission statement:
For instance, the company’s mission was changed from “being the world’s best quick-service restaurant” to being “our customers’ favorite place and way to eat,”
In so many places, mission statements are not only meaningless, they’re insane marketing speak. But in this case, it quickly and easily defines the goal. That means nothing if there’s no commitment to making the goal happen. They’re so often empty words. In McDonald’s case, it clearly set a standard for how other decisions around the company should be made.
Compare that with, say, the Yahoo mission statement under Terry Semel:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/01/technology/pluggedin_lashinsky_yahoo.fortune/index.htm
(such as it is; no wonder Yahoo under Semel imploded. Companies like that can’t be directionless, and can’t be faceless corporations. They have to have a personality, and the CEO generally defines that personality. Steve Jobs knows this, and plays it to a tee; of course, the new, improved mission statement of Jerry Yang wasn’t much better, and Jerry didn’t bother actually trying to get it implemented by his people and down the chain. I believe he believed that; he never insisted on it being company culture)
A good CEO has to be many things; they have to figure out what the company has to do; they have to communicate that to people who can implement it. They have to convince those people (and their reports down the org chart) to WANT to implement it, and even believe in it. Or else replace them with people who will. Nice is one thing; if you’re unwilling to stop being nice when needed, people will take advantage of that and run you over with a smile. Jerry’s biggest fault seems to be he was too nice in a position that sometimes has to be cutthroat.
Carol Bartz won’t have that problem. And she’s going to need to borrow Steve’s flamethrower. If it were me, I’d probably start by putting David Filo’s head on a stake out in front of corporate headquarters, or at least push him back into his turret where he can dink with machines and not actually deal with real company issues. If Bartz wants to know why, she should call the guys Yahoo bought Delicious from and ask a few questions about why Delicious 2.0 took so long. Fix that, and you fix a whole bunch of things at Yahoo.
Lots of good things happening here today. I’m sorry to see Decker leave — but I’m not surprised. She could have been part of the solution. Lots of pain left for Yahoo to deal with, it doesn’t end today. But at least there’s now hope that the tailspin has been levelled out, and that there’s time and competence to get the company back into good shape.
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