Yahoo! is a company of pioneer in global internet web services that cover whole world. Yahoo! was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in year 1994 and go for public listed on March 1995. The beginning of time, Yahoo! is very famous and whole world using Yahoo! as primary search engine in daily used. Yahoo not just a Search in engine but they also introduce many kind of tool that make of easier human life such as Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo video, Yahoo News and social media. Yahoo has had reach high share value in 2000 of 475 USD per unit.
Yahoo then had great competition when it came to Google, many people turned to Google instead of using Yahoo because of google give far good service from Yahoo. Yahoo is also experiencing many internal problems as a result of several times the CEOs of the company. Yahoo assign Marissa Mayer as new CEO of Yahoo! in July 2012. Yahoo assign her because she has past experience with google and she need to make the Yahoo become bright again to the world. Next will be discussed on what the outcomes that are important in the case study, which outcome not being achieve and which the important problem is in this case.STEP 1: DEFINE THE PROBLEMAccording to the Framework for Understanding and Applying Organizational Behavior shown in Figure 14.7, there are five outcomes being evaluated in this case, which are:Work attitudesCareer outcomes Group or team performancesGroup cohesion and conflictAccounting/ financial performanceThe outcomes were divided into three parts which are individual, group and organizational level.
For individual level consist of work attitudes and career outcomes, group level consist of group or team performance and group cohesion and conflict, and organizational level consist of accounting or financial performance. Besides that, the others potential problem caused changing the culture at Yahoo! by lack of leadership. Based on the case study the problem is the work attitudes hold by workers. Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller (2012) define work attitudes as the evaluations that someone is hold towards their job, which contribute to the feelings, belief and attachment to that said job. The workers clearly did not have a good attitude towards their job. This could because the lack of focused on vision for the company.
Something like they want to do every single thing and be everything to benefit others people but they do nothing to fundamentally addresses it. Work attitude can affect by culture matters. When the company has the right culture, everyone busy into it and focused on their jobs and the workers are motivated to the best for the brand. The workers will start coming to work if change the culture at Yahoo!.
They should focus on their vision by boldly and declare what they are and what they are not also by sell non-core business and eliminate duplicative projects and business.Work attitude also associate with leadership. The lack of leadership in this case study comes from a top of management. Actually they should represent the best interests of stockholders, customers and employees. Once we have strong the leadership, and the vision was determined so we can focus on the jobs how to overcome or transforming and lead Yahoo! to become popular web portal again.Negative outcome from the case study is based on the work attitude.
With the poor attitude during working will affect the company image. Work attitude is related with lack of decisiveness. Combine a lack of focus with unclear ownership and the results will make or not since they had unclear ownership. So end up with competing or redundant initiatives and synergistic opportunities living in the different part of company such as Flickr vs Photos.The most important problem is group or team performance. When the Yahoo! team lost its way and too many workers are not perform on it, lacking their passion and commitment. When group performance is low and makes it workers being not passionate at all on their job due before this the top management do not recognized the top performer effort and make it them to leave out from this company.
So as result, the workers that really need to stay such as leaders and innovators become discouraged and leave. While there are who stayed not the ones who will lead. From this situation make it the low performance when the important person not around. Once the team performance was weak and combining with lack a focused towards the vision make out the company become worse. STEP 2: IDENTIFY IMPORTANT CAUSESSTEP 3 RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONSThe best solutions to solve the problem of case study are three according to Brad Garlinghouse (2016, November) through Wall Street Journal:Focus on the visionRestore responsibility and clarity of owner shipPerform an essential reorganizationThe first solution is focus on the vision.
According to Guven Ozdem (2011), vision is objectives declaration of company and anticipated to guide for making internal decision making. A vision is not limited to business organizations and also used by non-profit bodies. The purpose for focus on vision is to motivate the current workers and attract them by clearly classifying the company’s goals and future. Brad Garlinghouse (2016) had mentioned to focus on vision can be done by confidently and declaring what we want and not for vision and also to remove or sell non-core business and eliminate duplicative projects and business.
Also he belief that the smoothly spread peanut butter needs to turn into a consideration of technique strategy that is closely focused. The strategy on focus the vision should come decisively from the top and place our bets. Let say the Media will maximize our Return on Investment (ROI) the company should make tough decision to clear them and stick with them.
The second solution is restoring responsibility and clarity of owner ship. This solution based on the outcomes of group cohesion and conflict. Ownership is exclusive the rights and control over the company and act as decision maker. The ownership should be responsible for what we are today and where we find ourselves today.
There are too many of them who have gotten away with unacceptable result and leadership. So the ways they can pay back us by holding them accountable and implement the change. Besides that, by creating the senior roles for General Manager structure that have accountability that can work with Yahoo!. Strong General Manager structure will empower the leader and eliminate significant overhead. So from this, they will make it the decision and the rest of them support those decisions.
Furthermore, redesign the performance and incentive systems will accelerate the ability to weed out the lowest performance and better rewards and productive employee. As stated by Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends 2017 report, 90% of companies that have designed performance management have seen direct improvement in engagement, 96% say the processes are simpler and 83% say the quality of conversations between employees and managers have gone up.The third solution comes out by Brad Glinghouse by reorganization. The created of redundancies should be eliminate by restructuring the organization.
The more efficiency can be done with a fewer people and more quickly. Two principles for reorganization are blow up the matrix by empower a new generation and kill the redundancies.Another solution is from Mayer’s decision based on case study. Mayer’s already ban telecommuting for most employee in the context of the need to change Yahoo!’s comfortable and staid culture.
The reason why she bans telecommuting in order to become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so they need to be working side by side. As reported by Julie Bort from Business Insider (2015), Mayer’s decided to ban after spending months frustrated at how empty Yahoo!’s parking lots and she said people will more collaborative and more inventive when people come together. As an example of Yahoo’s weather app team and the Flickr team, who worked together to show appropriate weather photos in their app. CONCLUSIONREFERENCESJohn Mattone.
, (March, 2018). Yahoo’s problem? A massive lack of leadership at the top, Viewed 16 September 2018. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mattone/yahoos-problem-a-massive-_b_9550092.htmlGifford Thomas (January, 2015). Changing Yahoo’s Culturehttps://www.
linkedin.com/pulse/changing-yahoos-culture-gifford-thomas-mba-acmiJohnson and Stokes (2002). The Meaning, Development and Career Outcomes of Breadth of Vocational Interest. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 61, 327 – 347. doi:10.1006/jvbe.2001.1859Sloat et al.
, (February,2017). Performance management: Playing a winning hand, 2017 Global Human Capital Trends. https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/redesigning-performance-management.htmlJulie Bort.
, (November,2015). Marissa Mayer defends her famous ban on remote work: ‘I hop that’s not my legacy’. Viewed 16 September 2018 https://www.businessinsider.my/mayer-still-defends-remote-work-ban-2015-11/?r=US;IR=TOzdem, Guven (2011). “An Analysis of the Mission and Vision Statements on the Strategic Plans of Higher Education Institutions”. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice. 11 (4): 1887–1894Brad Garlinghouse.
, 2015. Yahoo Memo: The ‘Peanut Butter Manifesto’., Wall Street Journal, viewed 17 September 2018 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116379821933826657
