Comments on: Watching a Talent Management Strategy Destruct in Front of Our Eyes

By: Meg Bear

Meg Bear — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:40:10 +0000

great observation Jason. I was also thinking about this today. I somehow do not like to watch complete meltdowns. After awhile it just seems overkill to me.

I do hope that they find this as an opportunity to let in some new ideas and grow some internal talent. That would certainly be the silver lining.

By: Colin Kingsbury

Colin Kingsbury — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:10:40 +0000

“Many of the executives at Yahoo came from one of their acquired companies. These individuals have made lots of money and are idea creators not managers.”

Makes me wonder if that isn’t a good part of the problem right there. When I look at Yahoo, I see a few core properties like mail, news, finance, and groups that are very clearly Yahoo. Then I see a smorgasbord of side dishes like Flickr and Delicious which for all intents and purposes might as well be separate companies.

It’s interesting to note that one of the key reasons Flickr users shrieked at the prosspect of acquisition by MS was the fear that Redmond would integrate Flickr much more aggressively than Yahoo had done.

To the extent that it takes an unusual passion, intensity, and vision to create those kinds of companies, I would expect their founders to be fairly strong advocates of maintaining independent brands and identities. Perhaps this was a deliberate decision on Yahoo’s part–maximize the value of the portfolio by maximizing the value of each piece on its own without regard to integration, particularly on the user side.

If so, would it be too soon to declare that strategy a failure?

The flip side of this is perhaps that the same passion and intensity which brought us Flickr and Delicious were not brought to coming together to build a bigger and better Yahoo.

By: nilofc

nilofc — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:22:00 +0000

Clearly, it is the breakdown of the Microsoft deal. The Microsoft deal would have been better for everybody. Now, Yahoo is pushing for a deal with Google.

Some people would like to keep on fighting to the end, merging with a likely force to topple the enemy is a great strategy. But merging with your supposed enemy….I don’t think so.

Yahoo!…might as well be…Piyooo!

By: Gopi Padakandla

Gopi Padakandla — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:45:48 +0000

Good information and insight Jason.

It doesn’t take a lot to see the importance of basics in business – need for clear business strategy, and its linkages to performance drivers and talent. Hopefully, Yahoo now knows what it takes to win as a company and turn the things around.

By: Jason Corsello

Jason Corsello — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:40:02 +0000

TechCrunch now lists over 100 execs that have left the company since Jan 2007…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/21/updated-yahoo-exec-tracker-114-execs-left-since-january-2007/

Yahoo’s pain is now starting to make sense. Seems like anyone that walked in the door during 2005-2006 got a VP tag. I can’t imagine what that org chart looks like…