More on Yahoo Reorg: Sue Decker's Memo
We got the full internal memo Sue Decker sent this afternoon to the team, on Yahoo’s (Nsdq: YHOO) reorg..the full memo is here. See our earlier post on the reorg. Salient points from the memo:
– Jerry and I and the rest of the management team have been taking a close look at our business
– Coleman is leaving but will stay for the transition until Feb next year.
– We are placing responsibility for all of our
I read a nice quote recently in Robert Townsend's "Up The Organisation" that seems appropriate:
"I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation." – Petronius Arbiter, A.D. 60
Is the picture or the Arbiter quote above really appropriate here? Yahoo's suffered from a combination of lackluster management and Google brilliancies for several years now. They still have many great products and sites, a substantial search presence, huge internet traffic, and brilliant Web 2.0 development. At 20% of Google's market cap I think this spells "potential" for Yahoo, not the lack of it.
Recognizing that Yahoo's announcement is a business document designed for investors and the media, I must say that I cannot remember one bit of it. Too much…too boring. Yawn. For myself there is far too much disconnect between Yahoo's brand persona and its business persona. I am not saying that Yahoo's PR team should adopt Jon Stewart like irreverence, but is this the type of language that the company's investors really want to read? What happened to the fun forward looking company that seems bent on fading from my memory?