Ever since Carol Bartz was announced as the new CEO of Yahoo, I’ve been watching the reactions with amusement. The “pundits” or web gurus or whatever they call themselves have expressed their skepticism about how someone who comes from a hardware and software background can turn around a web company. Why Carol Bartz? Why not hire someone with direct web experience instead?
Last week’s announcement that Elisa Steele will be joining Yahoo as CMO was met with the same response: another person w/a hardware/software background and no direct web experience.
Ladies and gentlemen: You’re missing the point.
Yahoo has probably close to 12,000 employees, just about all of whom we can assume know the web inside and out. The place is crawling with web expertise–open a conference room and it probably falls right out at you. Yet all of those people with all of that expertise haven’t helped Yahoo get out of the rut they’re in. In fact, it may have helped them dig a deeper hole.
What Yahoo needs now is strong leadership, solid management expertise, and the ability to create a strategy and execute effectively. And that’s exactly why the hiring of Carol and Elisa is *exactly* what Yahoo needs.
I’ve had the opportunity to see these two women in action–at Sun, at Autodesk, and at NetApp. Carol is a non-nonsense manager who knows her technology and has great business sense. She isn’t afraid to ask tough questions or make hard decisions and she will absolutely tell you what she sees without any hesitation, sugar coating, or concern about being politically correct. What a breath of fresh air.
Elisa is both a seasoned, knowledgeable creative marketing executive and someone who can build and motivate a team with amazing effectiveness. She is one of the best I’ve ever seen when it comes to executing big, complex marketing initiatives–something that should benefit Yahoo tremendously as it navigates perilous waters and attempts to survive as a standalone company.
Both of these women bring the management skills necessary to harness Yahoo’s existing pool of web talent and drive them in the right direction.
One more thing. Let’s not forget that the CEO of Yahoo’s biggest competitor had no more web experience when he was hired than either Carol or Elisa. But, interestingly, Eric Schmidt did have the same hardware/software background–coming from Sun and Novell. Looks like he hasn’t done too badly at Google.
Hmm. Maybe there’s a pattern here?
