Dead Man Walking Memo – Yahoo FantasyLand

Anyone who has worked in a big company will tell you that Brad Garlinghouse’s memo sounds so familar.   Personally I think that it’s a ‘dead man walking’ memo – he must be one step out the door to write that piece.  The memo (imho) didn’t feel like leadership or innovative but more like a exit post.   Valleywag calls it the Jerry McGuire move.

In fact his writeup seemed like a classic Peter Drucker-like evaluation of most any big company.  It felt nothing like leadership or innovation to me.  Sorry but if I were a peer or coworker of Brad I would not have been inspired.    It offered nothing tangable other than ‘generic’ process management jargon and concepts – maybe the Yahoo problems are that basic.  The memo also weighted heavily on the negative side.  Yahoo is a great company and I don’t think that they fell down at all – they are a huge success and a growing media conglomerate.  They are a battleship and movement is slow.   Sure Google is kicking ass and that should be the wakeup call not a NY Times article. 

Everyone in a big company knows the problems and wants to make massive change (from their perspective) and can summon up textbook advice in the memo.  To actually implement massive change is difficult for large companies.  The solutions from Brad outlined in the memeo actually reminded me of the scene in the movie Back to School where Rodney Dangerfield responds to professor about ‘how to and where to build the widget factory’…and Rodney replies ‘how about fantasyland’.   The only place that Brad’s solutions will be implemented will be in ‘FantasyLand’. 

The reality is that Yahoo is sitting on a massive userbase and talent.  Yahoo needs a ‘Reality based’ solution not some textbook missive that can only be implemented in FantasyLand.