Category: strategy

Yahoo, Death By 200 Paper Cuts

Posted by joshua duncan – July 9, 2010

Back in April of 2009 when Carol Bartz joined Yahoo as the new CEO, she discussed the challenges of their product portfolio and brining discipline to their product management process.

Techcrunch is now reporting,

In an email to all staff last week, new chief product officer Blake Irving told employees that he would be sending a two page document outlining Yahoo’s overall product strategy moving forward by the end of July. Later employees will be able to dive deeper into a twenty page document, and later still a 200 page detailed product strategy document would be available.

My gut call is that this is not a good sign (yes, I know when the ship is already sinking, it isn’t exactly risky to say it is in trouble).  2 pages is an acceptable length for a strategy document.  I can even buy 20 pages for an in-depth overview of the various parts of the product portfolio strategy.  200 pages?  That to me sounds like death by presentation that most employees will take a pass on.

To use a gardening analogy, when you are overrun with weeds you have to take drastic steps to recover lost ground.  You can’t save everything, so sacrifices must be made and made quickly.  If the plant can be saved you save it,  but this is not a time for nurturing.  What you hope to do is to pick a few hearty plants to focus on and  try to build from there.

Back in 2007, I had a chance to hear Steve Miller speak while he was in the process of trying to turn around the auto part maker, Delphi.  What I remember most from his speech was the sense of urgency he conveyed when talking about his turnaround plan.  He knew that the only way to the save the business was to to take action quickly before it was too late to save any momentum.

I would like to see more action and less presentation coming out of Yahoo.  What does Yahoo stand for?  Which of their many,many products are they going to cut and which one are they going to bet the farm on? What’s going to be the rallying cry to galvanize the organization?

I personally think Yahoo has the resources and the brand equity to make the turnaround happen – plus wouldn’t a comeback from one of the pioneer’s of the Internet make for a great story?  Let’s hope that there is more than talk coming soon!

Photo Credit:  Flickr

A Note on Product Strategy – Phil Libin

Posted by joshua duncan – February 8, 2010

Todd Sattersten captured this strategy advice during an interview with Evernote’s CEO, Phil Libin:

  • Make a product that a billion people will fall in love with and use for the rest of their lives.
  • Make it easy for a single-digit percentage of them to pay you a few bucks a month once in a while.
  • Make sure your variable costs are low enough that you can make a mountain of profit if you get #1 and #2 right.

    • Simple enough but that first one sure is a big step.

    On a side note, I haven’t given up on Evernote yet but I am still not using it on a daily basis.  I do like how they have incorporated a great demo video (see Don’t Hide the Demo Button) on their front page for showing how Evernote can save you from the note monster.

    Starbucks Via – Instant Success, Long Term Failure?

    Posted by joshua duncan – October 8, 2009

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    Kellogg Professor Tim Calkins has a great take on his blog about the new StarBucks Via instant coffee.  Tim’s take is that the coffee is not bad but that it seems to run counter to the Starbuck’s brand experience.  Tim explains,

    Starbucks has long worked to embrace the coffee experience, the crisp beans coming from exotic lands all over the world, the grinding noise, the wonderful aroma, the ritual of precisely measuring coffee and water and then waiting for it to brew.  Starbucks has taught us that coffee isn’t just coffee.  There is much, much more to it.

    On the surface, you could argue that instant coffee makes sense for Starbucks, right?  You can definitely see how the case for it was argued from a product perspective:  Starbucks sells coffee, instant coffee is a big market, Starbucks should sell instant coffee.   At least it is a coffee product and not something as crazy as Burger King’s “Flame” body spray (who doesn’t want to smell like a whopper).

    More…

    Advertising Is Not Marketing

    Posted by joshua duncan – September 20, 2009

    Rocketwatcher had a great post last week reminding people that marketing is not SPAM.   My favorite quote from April’s article,

    Spam is what happens when there is an absence of marketing.  It’s what happens when you don’t think about what customers want and don’t care about building offerings for them.  It’s what happens when you don’t care about market segments and you believe a cat, a CEO and a teenager are equally likely to click on your link.

    I was reading an article on Amazon’s brand this weekend that really helps make the point that marketing is not just advertising either (though the term marketing is often used interchangeably with advertising).

    The Business Week articles Amazon’s approach,

    Instead of shelling out big bucks for lavish trade shows and TV and magazine ads, Amazon pours money into technology for its Web site, distribution capability, and good deals on shipping. The result: a smooth shopping experience that burnishes the company name.

    If your marketing strategy is focused on your customers, your customers will rave about you.  Amazon understands its customer and knows that the best way to delight is by delivering amazing service and focusing on ease of use.  This focus has led to a sterling reputation and increased brand awareness all without spending on advertising.

    Advertising can be a very effective marketing tool but it is definitely not the only tool you should pay attention too.

    The Waterline Principle

    Posted by joshua duncan – July 27, 2009

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    I just finished listening to Jim Collins’s new book, “How the Might Fall“.  One of may favorite quotes in the book was on risk management:

    Bill Gore articulated a helpful concept for decision-making and risk-taking, what he called the “waterline” principle. Think of being on a ship, and imagine that any decision gone bad will blow a hole in the side of the ship. If you blow a hole above the waterline (where the ship won’t take on water and possibly sink), you can patch the hole, learn from the experience, and sail on. But if you blow a hole below the waterline, you can find yourself facing gushers of water pouring in, pulling you toward the ocean floor. And if it’s a big enough hole, you might go down really fast, just like some of the financial firm catastrophes of 2008. To be clear, great enterprises do make big bets, but they avoid big bets that could blow holes below the waterline.

    Excerpt from the book in Business Week here.

    Top Down Strategy

    Posted by joshua duncan – May 7, 2009

    Wanted to follow-up to my last post on Portfolio Management with an add on the importance of strategic direction from the top.  This month’s HBR has an article discussing “What Only The CEO Can Do” and I thought this comment sums it up perfectly:

    Resolving the tension of sometimes divergent short-term and long-term priorities is, as Peter Drucker reminded us, a challenge as old as business itself. Drucker said, “The CEO decides on the balance between yield from the present activities, and investment in an unknown, unknowable and highly uncertain future….it is a judgment rather than [a decision] based on ‘facts.’

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