The Fatal Blindness of Unrealistic Expectations
My old employer, Yahoo!, has been in the news again of late.
Its latest CEO (and former Googler), Marissa Meyer, is currently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where she has just given her first televised interview detailing her strategy for the beleaguered web giant.
I wish her and the current team at Yahoo! well with their plans, I really do. The saga of Yahoo!’s descent over the past decade was heartbreaking to watch and experience from the inside. I’d love to see the company find a way to become a leader again.
But I don’t have faith.
In my opinion, the company can’t be “fixed.” At least not the way the tech pundits and the past parade of Yahoo! CEOs have touted it can.
Why? Because of a congenital failure to define its identity, paired with a chronic refusal to be honest with itself.
I get asked a lot for my opinion regarding Yahoo!’s fall from grace. I believe the seeds of its failure were sown from the beginning, and I’ve come up with the following analogy to make it as intuitive as possible. It all starts at the very formation of the company.
The Importance of Clear Vision
First, look at Google. When the founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page first started collaborating, the Internet had been around for a while and they were insightful enough to realize that the data on the Web was growing exponentially. They reasoned that the company who made it possible to sift through all this data and find the most useful content, when needed, would create immense value.
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