Marissa Mayer, the ill-fated CEO of Yahoo!, clearly made some major blunders during her early tenure at the company. Specifically, she lacked a long-term strategy, refused to listen to other members of her team, and invested in a series of failed marketing ventures instead of focusing on improving fundamentals. Miguel Helft from Forbes magazine documents these points quite thoroughly in his article “The Last Days of Marissa Mayer?” Time and time again, Mayer refused to adhere to a single, coherent vision which employees and managers could follow. This played out most notoriously when the newfound CEO tried to re-organize the company's business structure: “...she began sketching out different scenarios in one-on-one meetings with various executives,
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This single-minded approach had the effect of alienating company loyalists. (Helft, 2015) Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Mayer appeared fixated on short-term marketing schemes rather than focusing on the nuts-and-bolts improvements. According to Helft “...Mayer spent an entire weekend working with a team of designers to revamp the Yahoo corporate logo, debating such details as the right slant for the exclamation point (9 degrees from vertical). Mayer also insisted on personally reviewing even minor deviations from compensation policy she had instituted.” (Helft, 2015) Such shortsightedness is the primary reason that Marissa Mayer has become synonymous with corporate failure. In spite of Mayer's difficult position, there are a variety of total quality leadership strategies she could have employed which may have had a beneficial effect for Yahoo!. Freedom through control, and recognizing the value of your teammates and their contribution to the company, is a key component in competent leadership. Mayer saw herself too much as a “maverick” in terms of storming into a new
company and making changes in a somewhat reckless fashion. As a result, she undervalued the
This single-minded approach had the effect of alienating company loyalists. (Helft, 2015) Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Mayer appeared fixated on short-term marketing schemes rather than focusing on the nuts-and-bolts improvements. According to Helft “...Mayer spent an entire weekend working with a team of designers to revamp the Yahoo corporate logo, debating such details as the right slant for the exclamation point (9 degrees from vertical). Mayer also insisted on personally reviewing even minor deviations from compensation policy she had instituted.” (Helft, 2015) Such shortsightedness is the primary reason that Marissa Mayer has become synonymous with corporate failure. In spite of Mayer's difficult position, there are a variety of total quality leadership strategies she could have employed which may have had a beneficial effect for Yahoo!. Freedom through control, and recognizing the value of your teammates and their contribution to the company, is a key component in competent leadership. Mayer saw herself too much as a “maverick” in terms of storming into a new
company and making changes in a somewhat reckless fashion. As a result, she undervalued the