Yahoo Memo: The 'Peanut Butter Manifesto' November 18, 2006

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116379821933826657-0mbjXoHnQwDMFH_PVeb_jqe3Chk_20061125.html

An internal document by Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior vice president, says Yahoo is spreading its resources too thinly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread. Full text of the document is below.

Three and half years ago, I enthusiastically joined Yahoo! The magnitude of the opportunity was only matched by the magnitude of the assets. And an amazing team has been responsible for rebuilding Yahoo!

It has been a profound experience. I am fortunate to have been a part of dramatic change for the Company. And our successes speak for themselves. More users than ever, more engaging than ever and more profitable than ever!

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I proudly bleed purple and yellow everyday! And like so many people here, I love this company.

But all is not well. Last Thursday's NY Times article was a blessing in the disguise of a painful public flogging. While it lacked accurate details, its conclusions rang true, and thus was a much needed wake up call. But also a call to action. A clear statement with which I, and far too many Yahoo's, agreed. And thankfully a reminder. A reminder that the measure of any person is not in how many times he or she falls down - but rather the spirit and resolve used to get back up. The same is now true of our Company.

It's time for us to get back up.

I believe we must embrace our problems and challenges and that we must take decisive action. We have the opportunity - in fact the invitation - to send a strong, clear and powerful message to our shareholders and Wall Street, to our advertisers and our partners, to our employees (both current and future), and to our users. They are all begging for a signal that we recognize and understand our problems, and that we are charting a course for fundamental change. Our current course and speed simply will not get us there. Short-term band-aids will not get us there.

It's time for us to get back up and seize this invitation.

I imagine there's much discussion amongst the Company's senior most leadership around the challenges we face. At the risk of being redundant, I wanted to share my take on our current situation and offer a recommended path forward, an attempt to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Recognizing Our Problems

We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company.

We want to do everything and be everything -- to everyone. We've known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silos that far too frequently don't talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn't to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics.

Our inclination and proclivity to repeatedly hire leaders from outside the company results in disparate visions of what winning looks like -- rather than a leadership team rallying around a single cohesive strategy.

I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

I hate peanut butter. We all should.

We lack clarity of ownership and accountability.

The most painful manifestation of this is the massive redundancy that exists throughout the organization. We now operate in an organizational structure -- admittedly created with the best of intentions -- that has become overly bureaucratic. For far too many employees, there is another person with dramatically similar and overlapping responsibilities. This slows us down and burdens the company with unnecessary costs.

Equally problematic, at what point in the organization does someone really OWN the success of their product or service or feature? Product, marketing, engineering, corporate strategy, financial operations... there are so many people in charge (or believe that they are in charge) that it's not clear if anyone is in charge. This forces decisions to be pushed up - rather than down. It forces decisions by committee or consensus and discourages the innovators from breaking the mold... thinking outside the box.

There's a reason why a centerfielder and a left fielder have clear areas of ownership. Pursuing the same ball repeatedly results in either collisions or dropped balls. Knowing that someone else is pursuing the ball and hoping to avoid that collision - we have become timid in our pursuit. Again, the ball drops.

We lack decisiveness.

Combine a lack of focus with unclear ownership, and the result is that decisions are either not made or are made when it is already too late. Without a clear and focused vision, and without complete clarity of ownership, we lack a macro perspective to guide our decisions and visibility into who should make those decisions. We are repeatedly stymied by challenging and hairy decisions. We are held hostage by our analysis paralysis.

We end up with competing (or redundant) initiatives and synergistic opportunities living in the different silos of our company.

• YME vs. Musicmatch

• Flickr vs. Photos

• YMG video vs. Search video

• Deli.cio.us vs. myweb

• Messenger and plug-ins vs. Sidebar and widgets

• Social media vs. 360 and Groups

• Front page vs. YMG

• Global strategy from BU'vs. Global strategy from Int'l

We have lost our passion to win. Far too many employees are "phoning" it in, lacking the passion and commitment to be a part of the solution. We sit idly by while -- at all levels -- employees are enabled to "hang around". Where is the accountability? Moreover, our compensation systems don't align to our overall success. Weak performers that have been around for years are rewarded. And many of our top performers aren't adequately recognized for their efforts.

As a result, the employees that we really need to stay (leaders, risk-takers, innovators, passionate) become discouraged and leave. Unfortunately many who opt to stay are not the ones who will lead us through the dramatic change that is needed.

Solving our Problems

We have awesome assets. Nearly every media and communications company is painfully jealous of our position. We have the largest audience, they are highly engaged and our brand is synonymous with the Internet.

If we get back up, embrace dramatic change, we will win.

I don't pretend there is only one path forward available to us. However, at a minimum, I want to be part of the solution and thus have outlined a plan here that I believe can work. It

is my strong belief that we need to act very quickly or risk going further down a slippery slope, The plan here is not perfect; it is, however, FAR better than no action at all.

There are three pillars to my plan:

1. Focus the vision.

2. Restore accountability and clarity of ownership.

3. Execute a radical reorganization.

1. Focus the vision

a) We need to boldly and definitively declare what we are and what we are not.

b) We need to exit (sell?) non core businesses and eliminate duplicative projects and businesses.

My belief is that the smoothly spread peanut butter needs to turn into a deliberately sculpted strategy -- that is narrowly focused.

We can't simply ask each BU to figure out what they should stop doing. The result will continue to be a non-cohesive strategy. The direction needs to come decisively from the top. We need to place our bets and not second guess. If we believe Media will maximize our ROI -- then let's not be bashful about reducing our investment in other areas. We need to make the tough decisions, articulate them and stick with them -- acknowledging that some people (users / partners / employees) will not like it. Change is hard.

2. Restore accountability and clarity of ownership

a) Existing business owners must be held accountable for where we find ourselves today -- heads must roll,

b) We must thoughtfully create senior roles that have holistic accountability for a particular line of business (a variant of a GM structure that will work with Yahoo!'s new focus)

c) We must redesign our performance and incentive systems.

I believe there are too many BU leaders who have gotten away with unacceptable results and worse -- unacceptable leadership. Too often they (we!) are the worst offenders of the problems outlined here. We must signal to both the employees and to our shareholders that we will hold these leaders (ourselves) accountable and implement change.

By building around a strong and unequivocal GM structure, we will not only empower those leaders, we will eliminate significant overhead throughout our multi-headed matrix. It must be very clear to everyone in the organization who is empowered to make a decision and ownership must be transparent. With that empowerment comes increased accountability -- leaders make decisions, the rest of the company supports those decisions, and the leaders ultimately live/die by the results of those decisions.

My view is that far too often our compensation and rewards are just spreading more peanut butter. We need to be much more aggressive about performance based compensation. This will only help accelerate our ability to weed out our lowest performers and better reward our hungry, motivated and productive employees.

3. Execute a radical reorganization

a) The current business unit structure must go away.

b) We must dramatically decentralize and eliminate as much of the matrix as possible.

c) We must reduce our headcount by 15-20%.

I emphatically believe we simply must eliminate the redundancies we have created and the first step in doing this is by restructuring our organization. We can be more efficient with fewer

people and we can get more done, more quickly. We need to return more decision making to a new set of business units and their leadership. But we can't achieve this with baby step changes, We need to fundamentally rethink how we organize to win.

Independent of specific proposals of what this reorganization should look like, two key principles must be represented:

Blow up the matrix. Empower a new generation and model of General Managers to be true general managers. Product, marketing, user experience & design, engineering, business

development & operations all report into a small number of focused General Managers. Leave no doubt as to where accountability lies.

Kill the redundancies. Align a set of new BU's so that they are not competing against each other. Search focuses on search. Social media aligns with community and communications. No competing owners for Video, Photos, etc. And Front Page becomes Switzerland. This will be a delicate exercise -- decentralization can create inefficiencies, but I believe we can find the right balance.

I love Yahoo! I'm proud to admit that I bleed purple and yellow. I'm proud to admit that I shaved a Y in the back of my head.

My motivation for this memo is the adamant belief that, as before, we have a tremendous opportunity ahead. I don't pretend that I have the only available answers, but we need to get the discussion going; change is needed and it is needed soon. We can be a stronger and faster company - a company with a clearer vision and clearer ownership and clearer accountability.

We may have fallen down, but the race is a marathon and not a sprint. I don't pretend that this will be easy. It will take courage, conviction, insight and tremendous commitment. I very much look forward to the challenge.

So let's get back up.

Catch the balls.

And stop eating peanut butter.

雅虎的“花生酱宣言”

http://www.flypig.org/002017.html

[ 分类:科技 Tech]

今天最为人津津乐道的食品大概就是花生酱，因为《华尔街日报》网站全文刊载了一份来自雅虎(Yahoo!)公司高级副总裁Brad Garlinghouse的内部备忘，并称其为“花生酱宣言”。在这份备忘录中，Garlinghouse认为现在的雅虎就如同面包上的花生酱一样，摊得很大，却稀薄无比。

这份措辞犀利却不失诚恳的备忘起源于《纽约时报》在10月11日刊发的一篇报道，题为“新对手令雅虎增长乏力”。这篇报道说：

近几个月来，这家公司在页面广告和搜索广告两方面都有所退步。许多广告业主认为雅虎在大客户广告方面的领先地位正在被其他公司侵蚀。这些公司拥有大受欢迎的网站、销售渠道和广告技术。

而且雅虎的问题不仅仅体现在广告方面。从视频程序到社会化网络——对于用户和广告主而言情况相似——这家公司都在失去先机。每次有产品在市场上失败或者迟到，雅虎就要失去一些做更多生意、雇更多好手的能力。他们的股价在今年下跌了38%，一些员工因此去股市上寻找更好的投资机会。

文采不错的Garlinghouse在三段铺陈之后，以《纽约时报》的文章作为切入点开始论述：

上周四《纽约时报》的文章可谓良药苦口。虽然细节上有所偏差，但是结论却十分正确。它就像是及时响起的警钟，号召各位行动起来。我和许多雅虎同事对于文中清晰的观点都深表赞同。这篇文章的警示作用值得我们激赏。它提醒我们，衡量个人的标准并非它跌倒的次数，而是它重振旗鼓的精

神和决心。这对于我们公司同样适用。

文中，他指出雅虎公司目前存在如下问题：

我们缺少专注的公司眼光。对于每个人，我们都想做一切事情并扮演所有角色。我们多年前就知道这点，并且不停地为此抱怨，但是却没有从根本上解决问题。我们害怕被淘汰。我们被动地做出反应，却不能将策略一贯而终。我们各自为政，完全无法在彼此间进行频繁的交流。每次我们坐下来谈的时候，都不失为一个清晰明了的战略进行合作，而是为所有权、策略和战术争论不休。

我们缺少明晰的权力和责任划分。这点最令人不堪的明证就是整个组织内大量的资源浪费。我们现在处在一个极其官僚的组织架构内——虽然它在创立时是出于好意。对于许许多多员工而言，都可以找到一个在职责上高度雷同与重叠的同事。这拖慢了我们的脚步，并且让公司付出了许多无效的成本。

我们缺少决策能力。因为没有清晰的权力划分，使得决策要么无法制定，要么错失良机。因为没有明晰而专注的眼光，没有将权力划分清楚，我们没有制定决策的　宏观视角，也没有选择决策者的敏锐触觉。需要制定富有挑战性的棘手决策时，我们一次又一次地进退维谷。我们因为自己的分析障碍而束手无策。

这些问题导致了公司内部大量的“左右手互搏”：

• YME vs. Musicmatch

• Flickr vs. Photos

• YMG video vs. Search video

• Deli.cio.us vs. myweb

• Messenger and plug-ins vs. Sidebar and widgets

• Social media vs. 360 and Groups

• Front page vs. YMG

• Global strategy from BU'vs. Global strategy from Int'l

Garlinghouse为此开出的解决方案有三个方面：

1. 集中注意力：a) 我们需要果断而清晰地阐明，我们应该扮演什么角色，不应该扮演什么角色；b) 我们需要退出(出售？)一些非核心业务，去掉一些重复的项目和业务。

2. 重新划分责权：a) 现有的业务所有者必须依照公司定位承担责任，带头行动；b) 我们必须深思熟虑地创建高级职位，让他们承担特定业务领域的整体职责(GM构架对于雅虎的新目标将会有所助益)；c) 我们必须重新设计我们的业绩考核和激励机制。

3. 大胆重组：a) 现有的业务单位结构必须推翻；b) 我们必须尽可能快刀乱麻地调整组织矩阵；c) 我们必须裁员15-20%。

调整的目标有两点：

摧毁矩阵。让新一代的“总经理”(General Manager，亦即上文所述GM构架)变成真正的总经理。生产、营销、用户体验与设计、工程、商业开发和执行等缓解直接向少数“总经理”进行报告。让责任毫无疑问地落到实处。

消灭浪费。设置一系列新的“业务单位”(BU，Business Unit)让他们不会彼此掐架。搜索部门专注搜索，社会化媒体部门专注社区和交流。Video、Photos等频道没有内部的竞争者，首页成为核心所在。这个调整将会十分微妙——权力下放将会带来效率低下的问题，但我相信我们将会找到平衡。

对于这个“花生酱宣言”，媒体的态度几乎是一边倒的叫好。雅虎的发言人说，这代表了公司开放的文化。不过，内部的公开民主是一会事儿，但是把对高层的质疑挑到全世界人民面前就是另一回事儿了。雅虎接下来将会有一系列高层更迭，尘埃落定之后，自然可以看出雅虎今后的走向。

[Modified by: 余福祺 on 21 十二月 2006 11:05:21 ]