Yahoo! Campus Image by Gertrud K.
I have been playing the wrong game. Ever since founding Cloudspace in 1996, I have been responsible for making the companies I am working at both a financial and technical success. I have worked really hard and have become damn good at this role. My problem since selling MyBlogLog to Yahoo! last year is that I am still trying to play this role while Yahoo! is looking for something else entirely.
When I have met with my many bosses inside Yahoo! over the last 21 months, the conversation often devolves into me pointing out all of the things I think the company needs to do to fix itself: sell off search to build up the coffers and get people to stop comparing Yahoo! to Google; focus on the what Yahoo! excels at – providing great media experiences across all of the distribution channels available to it (instead of focusing on building yet another platform); outsource Ops; embrace true openness - on network and off - not just give it lip-service; and, most importantly, stop setting ourselves up to chase both Google & Facebook for the next five years.
I have recently realized that, right or wrong, these conversations are useless. People that I know and trust have been telling me for some time that “The people you report to aren’t idiots, they are just playing a different game” and “You can’t fix Yahoo!” and “Unless you are going to be an empire builder, you need to align with one.” While I understood that the conversations with my managers were not a good use of time at one level, I don’t think that I truly understood why until I heard a recent podcast interview with Jim Lukaszewski on IEEE Spectrum Radio.
Inside large companies like Yahoo! everyone but the top leadership of the company is paid to execute against their “roadmap” to produce ”deliverables” — not to make the company successful. Don’t get me wrong, everyone wants their company to be successful. It is just that they view it as upper management’s job to make it happen. It is also why telling my managers that “I don’t want a raise or promotion, just the resources we need to make MyBlogLog successful” meets with such shocked, often negative, reactions. They think I am out of my mind. I think that their goals and incentive structure are insane. But again, in the end, we are just playing different games.
So, according to Jim Lukaszweski, here is what I should do in my next meeting:
- Focus on what my boss has been assigned to get done since this will help them move up the corporate ladder.
- Don’t bring new ideas to the table since the boss is only worried about doing what they have been assigned.
- Be the pragmatist and help keep the boss realistic about how things are going. (I think that I am pretty good at this.)
- Give advice on the spot they can factor into their thinking — not ”I’ll get back to you” since by the time you get back to them they are already on to another problem.
- Tell them something they don’t already know. If they are checking the Blackberry or are tuned out, they probably already know what you have to say and you should move on.
- At the upper-levels in big companies, read the Harvard Business Review because that is what the person will be worried about this month.
- Keep the person focused on “What are the next actions that we need to take to achieve the assigned goals.”
- Don’t be a “solution provider” — solutions are the boss’s job. Just offer incremental suggestions, as multiple-choice options if possible, to help the person make a decision.
- Don’t worry if my advice isn’t taken. The boss needs to collect input from many sources and make the final decision.
- Don’t whine about what is wrong outside the scope of what they are working on now.
Thanks Jim. While I don’t know if I can (or want to) change just yet, it is interesting to have a deeper understanding of the issue.
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