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Thursday, May 31, 2007
In the twisted minds of some business journalists, business is all about charismatic leadership. In the minds of some business school curricula, business is all about leadership, period. So because Yahoo's CTO is leaving, we're supposed to believe that the company is now in turmoil and facing a "leadership void."
But Zod Nazem has been with the company for 11 years! Just imagine what that must be like at a company that was pretty much synonymous with the growth of the Internet.
Every company's got issues. But I wouldn't rule out the continued success of a company with a range of digital businesses that are profitable, and a brand known globally in mostly positive terms.
I think the problem is, half the world is an armchair manager, possibly even an armchair "C level exec." Even some folks at Yahoo are armchair managers! (but I digress)
But ideally, great companies will run pretty well without a rock star CEO, without a rock star CTO, and definitely without anyone from the press understanding what's under the hood. It's about execution on one hand, and sound fundamental business units on the other. And hopefully a quiet, Level Five leader or two.
Nazem's work with the Panama rollout would be a great example of working on creating a make-money-automatically business that works so well that even top management cannot screw it up. "Playing catchup with Google" isn't the sin it is being made out to be: it was the responsible thing to do!
This just in: Google is doing better than Yahoo. :) In turn, Yahoo is doing better than a million other companies, including some of the biggest and best.Labels: yahoo
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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D'oh!
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