Reading this morning that Yahoo(!) has hit the 800 million user-mark(!), apparently a 20 percent increase from where it was prior to the appointment of CEO Marissa Mayer. At the very least I think it’s a great story, so congratulations to the Yahoos.
Since I last posted on here, a lot of things have happened, but in the world of Yahoo there have been a number of interesting developments that started with Mayer’s appointment. At this point: disclosure. I don’t know whether or not Yahoo is a current client of my employer – but it isn’t especially relevant to this post.
So – the developments:
1. On 16 July 2012, Mayer was appointed as CEO of Yahoo! – and started work the next day.
2. In December 2012, Mayer gave birth to a baby boy (it’s important in a minute, hold onto your flamewars). On her return to work, she had a nursery built next to her office.
3. In February 2013 (this year, folks) Mayer wound back the company’s telecommuting privileges, attracting much expert commentary from a bunch of people you’d expect would know a thing or two about business.
4. Later in February, that bastion of business leadership thinking, Forbes, had this to say on the matter, and conceded that perhaps there’d been a bit of premature shooting from the hip.
5. In May of this year, Mayer led Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr in a deal worth more than a billion dollars.
And now, not even 15 months after her appointment, Yahoo is celebrating a new milestone in user numbers, following improved profit conditions (albeit with lower overall revenues). Obviously many other things are being skimmed over, but this being the internet I have to keep it short.
My point is simple: it’s easy to judge a decision from outside the room in which the decision is made. It’s far harder to evaluate it from outside the room though, because you don’t know what was discussed inside the room. You weren’t there. Even if you have a transcript, you don’t have tonality, pacing, body language, temperature, humidity, political tensions, the ominous sound of a ticking grandfather clock in the corner, or the complicated backstory that leads to a Han-Greedo stand-off to either deal with or understand.
This is a topic I wrote on back in February 2010, on another platform where I no longer own the credit. However I think it’s worth continually reminding ourselves that while experts, commentators, bloggers and the meeja are all entitle to an opinion on events of the day…unless we ourselves were in the room at the time, we don’t really know. It’s the reason I don’t pass judgement on how companies are handling their crises – despite frequently being expected to have a professional’s opinion of the issue, I honestly can’t say I know what was going on inside the management tent.
If you look at any large-scale disaster of the last decade, the one thing I can guarantee is that no management team ever sat in a room and asked: how can we screw the absolute pants off the people affected by this crisis?
It’s the responsibility of an informed public to analyse and critique the information they consume. The rush to convict Mayer of a seemingly heinous breach of modern leadership principles points to society’s over-investment in what we believe we should say/think/feel. It’s the corporate equivalent of the Greedo shot first argument – as a society we consider Han Solo to be a heroic figure of the rebellion, and shooting the unsuspecting bounty hunter in cold blood doesn’t tally with our ideals of what heroism looks like. Likewise, in an age of enlightened corporate leadership, “old fashioned” directive management can seem out of place, and jarring when we encounter it.
But unless we’re inside the room, we don’t know what the decision-makers know. And perhaps Mayer’s leadership is all the more courageous for knowing the internet bubble in which Yahoo exists was going to burst around her.
Han knew that too. Which is why Han shot first.
Say it Different 