Hugh MacLeod hits the nail on the head.
Hugh’s latest post offers his insights on why Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Yahoo might be a good idea for Microsoft.
Do read what he has to say if you’re interested in that deal. (Dave Winer also has a perceptive take, on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal, while we’re at it.)
But this is what struck me most about Hugh’s post:
It’s easy to say in a meeting, “The world is changing, and we need to change with it”. And just as easy to get everybody in the meeting to agree with it. What’s harder is what happens after everyone has left the room. When everyone has to worry about keeping their jobs.
This could stand as the Grand Unified Theory of why it’s hard to get things done in a corporate setting. Think about it: many people find it hard enough to get themselves to follow through on their own desires for change, whether that means losing weight or changing jobs or finding someone to love.
When you translate these same psychological challenges into a group setting — especially if it’s a bureaucratized one — the task becomes all the harder.
How do you cope with these pressures?
Category: The working life2 Comments so far
Leave A Comment
Subscribe to the RSS Feed
Coping with the psychology of change is just the beginnings of this nightmare, as Machiavelli pointed out long ago :). If you read on thru Hugh actually raises just a few barrier questions as does the blog he points to. But, IMHO, the difficulties are just beginning to be appreciated. In fact there’s a lot more going on than is generally discussed - so far.
This isn’t just, or only, about coping with change and DNA changes. It’s about re-thinking both businesses on multiple levels. What is MS & Yhoo business models & strategies - are they aligned with the world they want to go to ? Are their messages compelling, authentic (in Seth Godin’s sense),do they support their customers ? On a operational level are the platforms and multiple product lines reconcilable ? Can the cultures, which are wildly divergent, be integrated ? Finally is the leadership in place ? Neither company has shown much strategic vision nor operational capability in adopting and adapting to these spaces yet both have great strengths. If they’d focus more on making what they have work then you’d have something as it is this strikes me as a recipe for multiple parallel, not serial, disasters. And nobody seems to be asking these fundamental business questions. FWIW I took these themes and broke them down as well as included comparisons of AOL and Google here: http://tinyurl.com/yotu2l
[...] far I’ve only alluded briefly to Microsoft’s proposed takeover of Yahoo, figuring mainly that there was plenty of talk [...]