An Archive Blog by Bob Sutton

San Jose Mercury Story on Yahoo!

This morning's San Jose Mercury has a story that quotes the post I wrote here pretty extensively.  I think it is a pretty accurate and represents they situation fairly, as I know it.  It is called Major Yahoo! Reorganization Looms.  I do have a comment about one of the people interviewed for the story:

Jeffrey Lindsay, an
analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, said Bartz should "put in a very
old-school reorganization, strip out a bit of costs, and probably take
out some of the least productive senior officers."

"It's probably not the best reorganization you could do, but it will have a very positive impact," Lindsay said

My question to Mr. Lindsay is, OK, what would be the best reorganization that Bartz could do?  I want to hear your magical ideas about that plan — it sounds like you can't come-up with any better ideas either.  Management and leadership are often a lot easier to talk about and write about than to actually do, and I do my share of complaining about bad management too.  But every executive I know will tell how tough it is out there right now, and coming-up with a "new school reorganization" is probably a lot harder than it looks — in fact, I have no idea what that would look like and wonder if Mr. Lindsay can tell us.