Following closely on the heels of the Peanut Butter Manifesto, Yahoo makes some changes at the top. My spies tell me that the departures are a good thing, and the promotion is also a good thing. This being said, I have no clue as I haven’t worked with any of them. However, I did want to comment on the Peanut Butter Manifesto.
Now this is just my own opinion, but I now cringe when I hear somebody say some variation of “spread like peanut butter.” When somebody tells me, “I’m spread like peanut butter” what I hear is, “I’m unable to say no to anything.” When I read:
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.
from a SVP, I translate that as, “senior management isn’t able to say no to anything.” Why? Well, when the boss tells her team of 10 people to do 20 things, chances are each of the 10 people will do two things. When the boss of 5,000 engineers tells them to do 10,000 things, well, no surprises here what happens.
Now, most mature companies will have some kind of project list with “a line.” Projects above the line were funded, projects below the line were not worked on. True story: in an all-hands meeting at a former company, the then president showed a slide highlighting the projects above the line, and then a slide with the projects that, “we won’t be working on as quickly.”
Won’t be working on as quickly?
I and most (if not all) of the rank & file took this as a clear message that our senior management was unable to say no to anything, and subsequently we were spread like peanut butter. Not surprisingly, we didn’t get very much done very quickly.
Now, that being said, I’ll give credit for Brad Garlinghouse for recognizing the problem and calling it out. Recognition is the first step in fixing the problem. The hard part comes next — the 28 (well, 26 now) members of Yahoo’s management team that got them spread like peanut butter now have to start saying no and get them out of the fix they’re in. It’ll be interesting to see how they address things in the coming years.