Turn: Yahoo's "Peanut Butter Declaration"

Author: Brad garlinghouse | Translator: lalaice (blog) | published on: 12-16, 16: 05 this week

A widely circulated article by Yahoo's senior vice president, Brad garlinghouse, pointed out that Yahoo splits its resources too far, like the thin layer of peanut butter on the bread, there is no focus. The full text is as follows: 

Three and a half years ago, I joined Yahoo !. I always believe that large companies have unique opportunities. An exciting team will take over Yahoo !) .

There are many Proud memories of this journey. I am also very happy to be an employee of the company and have witnessed these major changes. The great success we have achieved also revealed to us the fact that unprecedented user volume, unprecedented user participation rate, and unprecedented profit margin have been achieved.

I am very satisfied with Yahoo's purple blood flowing in my body every day. Like many colleagues here, I love this company very much.

However, this is not always the case. An article published last Wednesday (October 11) in the New York Times is undoubtedly a spur to our long-standing deception. Although this article lacks specific examples, the conclusion is pertinent and reminds us to promote our early actions. I agree with many Yahoo! People. Thanks also to the reminder, he made us understand that the measure of anyone is not how many times he/she has fallen to the bottom, but the courage and determination of him/her to overcome the difficulties. Now we are faced with the same problem.

Every one of us has to work hard.

We must face up to our own problems and external challenges, and make decisions at the same time. We are facing, or seize, this opportunity to our shareholders, Wall Street, advertisers, partners, employees (present and future) our users also provide a strong and clear message. They all eagerly hope that we can be aware of our problems and develop specific strategic solutions for the company's future transformation. Our current speed and efficiency are far from enough to reach the other side of success. Short-term minor repairs and minor supplements are not enough to break us out of this mess.

I think the company's leadership has also discussed these challenges many times. I want to put forward my own views on the current situation and possible solutions, and try to solve some problems, not just put forward them.

 

Problems to be addressed:

We are not focused enough.

There are too many things we want to do. We have long been aware of this problem and have been arguing repeatedly, but we are reluctant to make fundamental changes. To put it bluntly, we are afraid of being surpassed. We are passive, and the strategy we execute cannot end with one. We are independent from each other and lack communication. When we really want to discuss something, we often argue with each other for what ownership, strategy, and tactics, and leave behind the strategic cooperation that really needs to be discussed clearly.

We are used to inviting leaders from outside, which leads to different opinions on strategy interpretation and lack of persistence from beginning to end.

Our strategy is like the spread of thin peanut butter betting on a large number of opportunities. The result is that we have invested in many projects, but none of them are particularly focused.

I hate peanut butter. Everyone should.

 

We lack clear ownership and accountability 

Yahoo! As a large redundant organization. Our current organizational structure, which should be recognized as a good starting point, has become a bureaucratic organization. Many people share similar responsibilities and responsibilities. This not only reduces our work efficiency, but also puts the company at unnecessary operation costs.

Another point is, who owns a product, service, or function in the company? So many people are responsible for products, markets, projects, cooperation strategies, and financial operations. In fact, no one is responsible for this. This makes the decision-making constantly report upwards rather than solving the problem. It is not conducive to employees breaking the regular rules and jumping out of the framework to carry out innovation activities.

The reason why Chinese and foreign field players (baseball terms) and left field players (baseball terms) have a clear division of duties is also derived from this truth. If the two take a ball at the same time, they will either hit it together or miss the ball. On the contrary, we watched others keep chasing the "ball", but we were only Nonono. for fear of hitting with others, we missed the "ball.

 

Lack of decisive decisions

Due to a series of unclear ownership, our decision-making can neither be decided nor be a good opportunity. The vague vision and lack of clear property rights lead us to a lack of overall macro perspectives and the lack of insights from leaders. We are blocked by Constant Troubles and decisions. As a result, we gradually suffer from our own analytical barriers.

Excessive competition in different departments in our company also hinders our own development:

• Yme vs. musicmatch
 
• Flickr vs. Photos
 
• Ymg video vs. Search video
 
• Deli. CIO. US vs. myweb
 
• Messenger and plug-ins vs. Sidebar and widgets
 
• Social Media vs. 360 and Groups
 
• Front page vs. ymg
 
• Global Strategy from BU 'vs. Global Strategy from int' l

 

We lose our passion. Most people are unmotivated and have no responsibility. Everyone has nothing to do. Where is the so-called responsibility? There is also a poor salary system. Poor performance can also be rewarded every year. The contributions of many star employees are also well-known.

The employees we really need go and worry. Unfortunately, the remaining employees cannot lead us to real changes.

Urgent Issues:

We have great advantages. Almost all media and computer companies bid on our leading position in the industry. We also have a large number of clients with extremely high participation and Yahoo! Brand.

As long as we catch up and innovate, the final victory belongs to us.

There are many ways to choose from. I personally want to provide some ideas and methods to solve the problem. I strongly recommend that you perform quick operations. Maybe the method is not perfect, but it is better than nothing.

Three aspects to be improved:

1. Focus
2. Detailed responsibility and ownership
3. Reform and Restructuring

 

1. Focus

A) We must be brave and clear about our strengths and weaknesses.

B) withdraw from areas without core competitiveness and cut off overlapping businesses and projects. I think our peanut butter strategy should shift to the carving strategy-focusing on advantageous projects.

If each department cannot determine what should be done and what should not be done, a feasible strategy cannot be developed. If the media can increase our return on investment, we should not be reluctant to invest in other fields. Make decisive decisions, make clear analysis, and persevere, even if some people (users/partners/employees) dislike these changes. After all, it is difficult to change.

 

2. Clear responsibility and ownership systems.

A) existing business managers are responsible for and practice the current positioning.

B) carefully set up a senior manager to assign him full responsibility for a specific product line (the GM framework will benefit Yahoo's new strategy ).

C) The performance appraisal system must be reset.

There are too many department managers to escape responsibility, or even to escape their positions. Most of the time, they (and we ourselves) are very resistant to problems. We need to express our determination to take responsibility and make positive changes to our employees and shareholders.

By setting up a strong GM architecture, those leaders not only have the right, but also reduce the overall operating costs. Everyone in the architecture must be clear about who has the right to make decisions. The ownership must also be clear. With the establishment and operation of such a mechanism, the person in charge decides the case, and the division of labor and cooperation among other employees, the company will reward and punish the person in charge according to the work performance.

Our current reward mechanism is like the peanut butter. What we need is a more active performance system based on work performance. This not only accelerates our low-efficiency bad habits, but also provides rewards to employees who are eager to learn and learn.

 

3. Reform and Restructuring

A) the existing organizational structure needs to be abolished

B) Focus or focus and minimize our business matrix.

C. layoff: 15%-20%.

Obviously, we need to discard the excessive burden on the company. The first step is to restructure the company's architecture. What we need is more efficient employees and more capable employees. In addition, it is necessary to return the decision-making power to leaders and owners in the company's new organizational structure. It is impossible for us to achieve this. The overall thinking of the system will help our restructuring.

 

The architecture has two characteristics:

Subversion matrix.Give the next generation of GM Real Rights. All the products, markets, User Experience & design, projects, business expansion, and operations must be implemented on each GM. Ensure that all duties are fulfilled.

 

Solve redundancy.

In the company, reset a series of new business units, so that they do not "fight between sides ". Search focuses on search. If you engage in social media, you can honestly build communities and traffic. Do not compete in videos or albums. The home page is the top priority. To achieve these things, we may need to work repeatedly. centralism may affect efficiency, but I believe we can find a good balance.

I love Yahoo! I'm proud to hear the blood from Yahoo. I would also like to be proud to tell you that I have shaved a Y-shaped hairstyle on the back of my head.

We may encounter a bad situation and have to prepare for a long-lasting war. Changes are not easy. We must come up with our own courage, faith, vision, and responsibility to work together to meet the challenge.

Let's take action. Drop all the peanut butter around you. Regain those long-standing morale!