I know Joe (well, knew, we haven't talked in a few years), but he's a great hustler (in the best sense of the word). Frankly, Yahoo needs someone who doesn't have experience running a $20B company. All the CEOs since Yang have run the company in to the ground.
Key among Yahoo's bad decisions: let's abandon search and become a 'media' company (based on 30 year old concepts of 'media' from a 'media' insider, all of which were rapidly becoming obsolete even 10 years ago).
Failing to get the internal groups to cooperate. Yes, it's hard. So what? That's what a CEO's job should be - do the hard stuff. The example about "well, integration wasn't on Flickr's roadmap'. Probably 110% true, but so what? Yahoo bought Flickr. Flickr's roadmap should have been Yahoo's roadmap, and Yahoo needed a coherent roadmap.
It's been so disheartening to see Yahoo move from an innovative company to "the place companies get acquired then die at".
Yahoo needs someone like Joe far more than it needs another Silicon Valley "insider board member" type. Yahoo's had a decade plus of "business types" who were going to "turn things around" and all that typical business BS. It's time for a real change. Not saying Joe specifically, but they need an outsider. I fear the shareholders are just too timid to demand real change.
The only place I'd disagree with Joe on in his list is the '100% autonomy' bits. It's the "100% autonomy" which got Yahoo in to problems, with no department being forced to integrate with another. I suspect with the right people in place, "100% autonomous decisions" may still mesh nicely with a focus on across the board integrated experiences, but I'd still want that to be a priority.
Key among Yahoo's bad decisions: let's abandon search and become a 'media' company (based on 30 year old concepts of 'media' from a 'media' insider, all of which were rapidly becoming obsolete even 10 years ago).
Failing to get the internal groups to cooperate. Yes, it's hard. So what? That's what a CEO's job should be - do the hard stuff. The example about "well, integration wasn't on Flickr's roadmap'. Probably 110% true, but so what? Yahoo bought Flickr. Flickr's roadmap should have been Yahoo's roadmap, and Yahoo needed a coherent roadmap.
It's been so disheartening to see Yahoo move from an innovative company to "the place companies get acquired then die at".
Yahoo needs someone like Joe far more than it needs another Silicon Valley "insider board member" type. Yahoo's had a decade plus of "business types" who were going to "turn things around" and all that typical business BS. It's time for a real change. Not saying Joe specifically, but they need an outsider. I fear the shareholders are just too timid to demand real change.
The only place I'd disagree with Joe on in his list is the '100% autonomy' bits. It's the "100% autonomy" which got Yahoo in to problems, with no department being forced to integrate with another. I suspect with the right people in place, "100% autonomous decisions" may still mesh nicely with a focus on across the board integrated experiences, but I'd still want that to be a priority.