All Yahoo Needs is Some Grape Jelly and Milk

A memo from Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior vice president, says that instead of a peanut butter sandwich, Yahoo should eat a spoonful of peanut butter, no wait, he said that Yahoo is spreading itself too thin, like peanut butter on a sandwich, a thin layer of investment spread across everything they do, meaning they don’t focus on anything, search, video, community, and it shows, compare it to the changes and innovations Google and MSN have been making. You can’t sit still anymore, someone is always gunning for your position, stop innovating and you start going downhill. I say, just throw some jelly on it. The article on the Wall Street Journal is called The Peanut Butter Manifesto, in case you were wondering about all of the peanut butter references.

We want to do everything and be everything — to everyone. We’ve known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silos that far too frequently don’t talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn’t to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics.

We have lost our passion to win. Far too many employees are “phoning” it in, lacking the passion and commitment to be a part of the solution. We sit idly by while — at all levels — employees are enabled to “hang around”. Where is the accountability? Moreover, our compensation systems don’t align to our overall success. Weak performers that have been around for years are rewarded. And many of our top performers aren’t adequately recognized for their efforts. Source: WSJ

He said he has three pillars to his plan to fix Yahoo, a company he says he loves, and bleeds purple and yellow thru and thru,

1. Focus the vision.
2. Restore accountability and clarity of ownership.
3. Execute a radical reorganization.

Oh and stop eating peanut butter.

That would suck, I love peanut butter. Michael Arrington from TechCrunch weighs in calling this Yahoo’s dirty laundry, and Yahoo’s PR department says that this shows they have a collaborative culture and that the leaders are committed, not committed, but committed.

My guess is that Yahoo senior management has been discussing these types of changes for some time, and this may be a power move by Garlinghouse to get in front of the parade. If changes are made, he looks like a hero. If they aren’t, he can take credit for trying.

Either way, at this point, I don’t see how Semel and Garlinghouse can both remain at Yahoo. From what I’m hearing, Semel may be the one to lose. The WSJ reports that Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig has put Garlinghouse in charge of a working group to review how the points in the memo can be put into action. Source: TechCrunch

J Leroy has a good post on this memo, Yahoo and what they should do called When Life Gives You Peanut Butter, Make Peanut Butter Cookies

Yahoo! seems to need to be taken out for a walk in the park, with a reassuring hug and “You’re a good person, Yahoo! Really you are.”

I think companies like Yahoo and Google are special in their own ways, Google did the best search, note I said did, web pages were small with no graphics and loaded very fast. Yahoo has more of a portal, more of a community built around their site, easy links to check your email, maps, everything from the front page. Yet, each seems to want what the other has, which can never happen, add the community stuff to Google and you’ll loose the people who liked Google the way it was, Yahoo can’t be more like Google without removing some of the stuff people like, sending their users elsewhere. It will be interesting to se who is still around in ten or twenty years, who thinks neither?

Posted by Jimmy Daniels November 2006

One Response to “All Yahoo Needs is Some Grape Jelly and Milk”

Post A Comment