During last week’s analyst call, I stated that Jerry Yang, Sue Decker and Blake Morgensen seemed to be describing another company, because from my vantage point: Yahoo!’s senior management had lost the last shred of credibility they had.
It led me to conclude that these people were either incompetent or dishonest, or both. It then led me to think of Warren Buffett who always looked for management that was candid, be it with shareholders or employees.
Last week, Yang, Decker and Morgensen were not honest with shareholders… and by totally mismanaging the layoff rumors/announcement, they were not candid with staff too.
It is thus interesting to see how Yang reacts to MSFT’s offer in a memo to employees. Allow me to stress that Yang seems like a very nice person who is trying to protect his employees. The man’s is a legend of the Web. But having had no one report to him for over a decade and then walk into a nightmare scenario was an attempt to emulate Steve Jobs. Yang made a mistake my mismanaging expectations with that 100-day assessment period. In his defense, he never said any action would take place in said period, he just suggested that he would look at things. But ultimately the market reversed momentum and Yahoo! began to face headwinds.
This is more about managing a publicly traded company than it is about managing Yahoo! I’ve been harsh on Yahoo!’s management (which includes Yang obviously). I just think that the longer Yang tries to fight the inevitable, the longer this drags out, creating uncertainty for employees who are clearly dusting off resumes and connecting with their networks to see who is hiring for what position.
Yang should be candid with staffers: this MSFT takeover attempt is the greatest challenge the company has faced in its history. It is a greater challenge than the battle against Google, which Yahoo! lost. Yang should not get all of the blame himself, that is for sure, but before suggesting that YHOO has many options (You Have Always Other Options, he once told Mark Cuban) he should analyze history to see how Yahoo! came out of the Google battle and ask himself if Yahoo! stands a chance to survive and thrive against this challenge (of a different kind) by MSFT.
It seems to me that YHOO was on a more solid footing in 2000 when the Google machine ramped up; much the same way that YHOO inadvertently helped Google by showcasing Google’s search on Yahoo!, it might be helping make MSFT’s bid to acquire it easier…
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