Yahoo problems are universal in nature – focus or die
This is a simply brilliant document. Every Bank should read this. I can tell the Banks that have focus, and those that have the “peanut butter” approach. Its not rocket science, and you can too once you read this.
An internal document by Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior vice president, says Yahoo is spreading its resources too thinly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread. Full text of the document is below.
Source: WSJ 2
The fact this is internal, and obviously somewhat sought to publicise it is interesting, and I won’t go there, but it does add to the validity. The problems identified are always known in companies that have them, and yet Senior Management are Ostriches.
While reading this, consider Yahoo, vs Google. Duplication vs synergy. Focus vs do everything. Team vs committee.
We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything — to everyone. We’ve known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out.
We lack clarity of ownership and accountability. The most painful manifestation of this is the massive redundancy that exists throughout the organization. We now operate in an organizational structure — admittedly created with the best of intentions — that has become overly bureaucratic.
We lack decisiveness. Combine a lack of focus with unclear ownership, and the result is that decisions are either not made or are made when it is already too late.
We end up with competing (or redundant) initiatives and synergistic opportunities living in the different silos of our company.
• YME vs. Musicmatch
• Flickr vs. Photos
• YMG video vs. Search video
• Deli.cio.us vs. myweb
• Messenger and plug-ins vs. Sidebar and widgets
• Social media vs. 360 and Groups
• Front page vs. YMG
• Global strategy from BU’vs. Global strategy from Int’l
Its sounds negative, but its important to be able to look at your own company, and honestly state you don’t have these issues. The last, being characterised as divisiveness is a common one, where Banks are driven by organisational line of business imperatives, and not for the greater good. To place that one in a Bank context:
- When we build a new application, do we lever an existing authentication scheme or build a new one?
- How many applications contain the ability to “transfer funds/ move money”?
- How many applications can “view balances”?
Again not rocket science, but the Yahoo example is fabulous inasmuch as that some in Yahoo recognise the problem. Oh, and why does this matter?
- excessive cost infrastructure
- fractured customer experience
- slow time to market, or inability to get to market due to technology complexity
Finally – winners in my mind are, because they exemplify focus, despite being generally large, and appear at least to have some success at avoidance of the above in their overall execution. I have added one reason for each, as to why I believe they ought to be in the list.
- Bank of America – one customer experience group
- Wells Fargo – clear channel strategies
- Barclays – “Getting it Right” enterprise wide technology initiative (across 60 countries)
- Lloyds – clear customer focus
- Royal Bank of Canada – do it once, the Royal way – enterprise cross selling targets
- Scotiabank – solid customer focus
- TD CanadaTrust – execution around simple customer propositions
- Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ – execution around customers, and security
Tags: customer+experience, productivity, cost+duplication, root+cause
The Full memo follows:
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