When +Marissa Mayer of Yahoo! clicked send on her famous memo
she knew she was going to stir the company to the core. But regardless of what
many telecommuting fundamentalists may think, this decision is all about
program management.
It is still to be determined if this will be the trigger of
the black swan that good old Yahoo! desperately needs to get the dust off their
shoulders and become again one of the relevant players in the technology world.
What it is clear is that this decision is the result of a very thoughtful
strategy.
Let’s get out of the way the initial lack of trust that may be implied from this decision. Although it
may not seem like the best course of action to establish herself as the
ultimate leader in the company, right now it is not the CEO who has to get her
company’s reputation untarnished.
Something smells rotten in Denmark and the stink is not
coming from Marissa’s office. As the top manager, she needs to do a radical
course correction. The company is not agile enough to compete with the top dogs
and she is taking a play from the book of start-ups. She needs the all the kids
to be in the same sandbox.
Communication is
one of the immediate issues that improves when you have people coming to the
office environment. There are impromptu conversations, collaboration to solve
problems, exchange of ideas, the meeting after the meeting, the water cooler
conversation and even having lunch with coworkers and managers. All these
interactions are invaluable to increase collaboration, camaraderie, trust, and
even the desire to do a better job that comes with wanting to go to work to see
people you get on well with.
With teams working under the same roof companies become more
agile. Decisions that need the
group’s input or key player’s buy off are made faster. If you need to lobby to
get a feature in the product or convince a developer that it is critical to fix
a bug you can do this quicker and more effectively if you can swing by this
person’s office.
Focus on key task
and deliverables becomes also easier if teams share a location. When the idea
is to turn around the company with agile development strategies and a bigger
emphasis on creativity you need an environment that fosters these and not empty
hallways and offices.
Acountability has
been lacking for a long time at Yahoo. Since they were dethroned as the
de-facto search engine they have bled users and the current culture of the
company has not produced any breakthroughs that will bring the masses back to them.
All of the company employees need to share the pain for this and work in
start-up mode.
In the end, this may not work, but just the fact that we’re
talking and writing about this may even be a victory for a company that is in
desperate need for some spotlight.
