Work Matters

San Jose Mercury Story on Yahoo!

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supermoxie

in

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.

Comments

4 responses to “San Jose Mercury Story on Yahoo!”

  1. Frederic Lucas-Conwell Avatar
    Frederic Lucas-Conwell

    Thanks for your two last posts, emphasizing how tough it can be to be up there in CEO’s and VP’s seats and how easier it is to criticize than effectively do the job. Most of the time you are left alone to take most critical decisions. The one on people at CEO level are the most decisive, the most subjective and political, and the least assisted.

    Reply
  2. Frederic Lucas-Conwell Avatar
    Frederic Lucas-Conwell

    Thanks for your two last posts, emphasizing how tough it can be to be up there in CEO’s and VP’s seats and how easier it is to criticize than effectively do the job. Most of the time you are left alone to take most critical decisions. The one on people at CEO level are the most decisive, the most subjective and political, and the least assisted.

    Reply
  3. dblwyo Avatar
    dblwyo

    Here,here. I’ve yet to find a worker who tried to envision taking responsibility for resources, allocations and outcome. Like a platoon commander they just assume if you pray into the microphone supplies show up. On the bigger issues you address in these two posts what Yahoo has lacked is command authority – direction, leadership, accountability and encouragement. No way accuses the USMC of lacking a centralized or wimpy org structure but in fact they’ve devolve enormous decision-making authority (& responsibility) downto the Squad Leader (a 19yr old corporal often ! And he’s betting lives). Bart’z re-og isn’t necessarily central or de-centralized per se. What it needs to do is set clear directions and allocate resources and then break those pieces down to more granular guidelines for each division, dept, property and workgroup. And hold each “cell” responsible for results vs resources; including a portion of x-cell coordination (which follow automatically from the proper design of goals, measures and controls). She also needs to de-tox a virulent pathological corporate culture that puts personal gain above team. This is a perfect test case of arrest, recovery, re-build and then transform. Her biggest danger is the sociopaths in middle management (evidence available on request 🙂 )

    Reply
  4. dblwyo Avatar
    dblwyo

    Here,here. I’ve yet to find a worker who tried to envision taking responsibility for resources, allocations and outcome. Like a platoon commander they just assume if you pray into the microphone supplies show up. On the bigger issues you address in these two posts what Yahoo has lacked is command authority – direction, leadership, accountability and encouragement. No way accuses the USMC of lacking a centralized or wimpy org structure but in fact they’ve devolve enormous decision-making authority (& responsibility) downto the Squad Leader (a 19yr old corporal often ! And he’s betting lives). Bart’z re-og isn’t necessarily central or de-centralized per se. What it needs to do is set clear directions and allocate resources and then break those pieces down to more granular guidelines for each division, dept, property and workgroup. And hold each “cell” responsible for results vs resources; including a portion of x-cell coordination (which follow automatically from the proper design of goals, measures and controls). She also needs to de-tox a virulent pathological corporate culture that puts personal gain above team. This is a perfect test case of arrest, recovery, re-build and then transform. Her biggest danger is the sociopaths in middle management (evidence available on request 🙂 )

    Reply

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