Inside Yahoo`s Identity Crisis - Return of the CEO
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Return of the CEO
Does Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang have
what it takes to revive the company's
fortunes?
Yang and David Filo created Yahoo
while they were grad students at
Stanford, but when they formed a
company in 2005, they ceded top management
duties to others, starting with
Yahoo's first CEO Tim Koogle. Yang was
always part of the management team,
and often served as its public face, but
until now he and Filo have shared the
cheerfully vague title of Chief Yahoo.
That's one reason many skeptics,
including former employees, doubt
Yang can serve as Yahoo's equivalent
to Apple's Steve Jobs—instead of
returning to take the reins of the company he started, as Jobs did at Apple,
Yang is taking leadership of the company
for the first time.
The comparison strikes home for
Chris Tung, a former Yahoo interaction
designer who now works for Apple.
"In terms of innovation, you're always
going to take a risk," he says, but at
Yahoo things tended to get bogged
down in "analysis paralysis"—fiddling
with usability tests and metrics gathering
to postpone decision making.
"You cannot have innovation by
consensus," Tung says. "You need
someone who has the clarity of vision,
the confidence, sometimes just the
utmost brashness to push it through."
From a distance, at least, Yang never
displayed those qualities, he says. "I
never saw him, or anyone else there,
have that clarity of vision, that ability
to push things through."
Ken Rudman, a former Yahoo
product manager, expresses more
faith in Yang, calling him "extremely
competent" and suggesting he has
learned the ropes by working closely
with Yahoo's previous CEOs. "I do think
he could be successful," Rudman says.
"Is he what Wall Street is looking for? I
don't know."
Other former rank-and-file
employees who spoke with Baseline,
on and off the record, have at best
lukewarm impressions of Yang's leadership
skills, though some hold out
more hope for Susan Decker, Yahoo's
new president.
One former executive who believes
Yang is the right choice is Tim
Sanders. Sanders, who became part
of Yahoo when the company acquired
Broadcast.com, established himself as
a closer of big deals as chief solutions
officer, and still serves as DJ at the
company holiday party. (After the publication
of his book Love Is the Killer
App, Sanders left in 2005 for a career
as an inspirational speaker, writer
and management consultant.)
Yang "has been groomed for years
to do this, since the moment Yahoo
began," Sanders says. "He's been part
of every important meeting, every
acquisition, every product release.
He's a punch-you-in-the-arm, tellyou-
that-you're-wrong kind of guy,
but he also makes you feel good
about your contributions. And he
has such a passion for the Yahoo
brand."
Although Sanders thinks
Yahoo has made its share
of mistakes, he says its
current problems are "less
about the things Yahoo did
wrong than some breathtaking
things Google did
right. When the history of
Yahoo is written, we're
going to look back at this
as a period of time, unfortunately
longer than one
would have hoped, of readjustment
and realignment,
and having a fierce competitor."
If the challenge is for Yang to
channel Steve Jobs, Sanders says
one way to do it would be to use the negativity about Yahoo as a motivator
and challenge employees to prove the
skeptics wrong. "I would show them all
the negative press about Apple from
15 years ago," says Sanders, recalling
a time when shrinking marketshare for
the Macintosh seemed to spell doom
for that company. "But they stuck to
their guns, they found the iPod, and
the world has changed."
In much the same way, Sanders
says, "I think the public statements of
arrogance from Google could be used
as great motivators" to help Yahoo find
its own next breakthrough product.
One sign Yang is thinking along
the same lines: He invited Jobs to an
October meeting of Yahoo—as a motivational
speaker.—D.F.C
Projects: Web Application Development 
