Robi Ganguly’s Big Ideas

In my last post, I talked about why I thought that picking Joe Biden was both a smart hire and a poor strategic decision. I made the point that I think it’s left the door open for the Republicans to counter and make some pretty aggressive attacks against Obama and Biden’s records.  So, how will John McCain react?

In short, I think he’s going to pursue the strategy and the messaging that the Obama camp could have used in selecting Hillary….

Let me explain

I think that McCain will be highly pragmatic and select Mitt Romney.

• Not because Romney and McCain work together well and have a lot of mutual respect
• Not because Romney brings an extraordinary amount of balance to the Republican ticket

But rather, because McCain knows that he needs to mobilize the “Republican base”. It is because he needs to fully utilize the “Fall into Line and do as we say” mentality that defines Republican politics. Often overlooked in the landscape of recent American politics is the stark contrast in discipline between our two major political parties:

• The Republicans make decisions from the top down and demand obedience. You’re either with them or against them. This is why the ongoing argument that McCain is a maverick is laughable; throughout the past 8 years he has consistently proven that he knows his political future rests on his ability to fall into line when necessary.
• The Democrats abhor that kind of homogenous philosophy and prefer to argue, in public, over their differing stances on major issues. Obama’s continued refrain about “change coming from the bottom up” really resonates with the party for this reason.

Both stances have their benefits and their drawbacks, but one thing is for sure: the discipline of the Republican party offers them a very substantial organizational advantage (I talked about this more in depth in my post about supporting Hillary in the primaries). When your political leaders can consistently be counted on to quote the party line, word for word, you have a lot more control over your message and the “brand message” that voters will consume. In politics, as in marketing, a consistent message is a VERY powerful thing.

So, what I expect McCain to do is the following:

1. Pick a candidate with Executive experience (a current or former Governor)
2. Pick a candidate with strong “Conservative” brand awareness. This will help round out the ticket’s image in Republican voters’ minds, given that McCain’s image is carefully crafted as a “maverick”.
3. Pick a candidate who is known to be pro-business

The most likely candidates for this job, with those criteria, are Mitt Romney and Minnesota Governor Pawlenty.

I think that the McCain campaign will pick Mitt Romney and in doing so, say something along the lines of the following:

“American people, we heard you loud and clear during the primaries. You like McCain’s independence, his experience, his strong domestic and foreign policy capabilities. But you want us to remember our Conservative roots and to make sure we’re continuing on our path of building the American economy through the strengths of small business. Mitt Romney is here to tell you that those voices are heard.”

Now, let me re-state what I mentioned above: I think that this is basically the same messaging that the Obama camp could have used in selecting Hillary. The message could have been, “American people, you shouted at the tops of your lungs that you liked both of our platforms. So, it is natural that the strongest platform will combine the voices of your two public servants.”

Obviously, this isn’t the path that has been taken and I’m not going to cry over it, but I do think it leaves the McCain camp salivating over their ability to exploit the decision.

Let’s see how this plays out. In the best scenario for Obama fans, McCain’s camp will get too cute with its strategy and pick Joe Lieberman, trying too hard to woo the centrists  and swing voters. I’m highly doubtful that’s what we’re going to hear, however.

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As many people across the U.S. did, I spent some of this past weekend thinking and talking about Barack Obama’s selection of Joseph Biden as his running mate. When I found out on Friday evening, I was rather dismayed and Twittered the following:

Biden?! Biden?! No no no. This can not be happening.

My friend Andrew saw that and asked me my thoughts about it, so I wrote him a rather long email, which seems appropriate for a blog post on the topic as well.
In short, the selection of Joseph Biden is a great management decision and a questionable strategic decision. While I certainly appreciate how they came to decision, I’m rather concerned that the Obama team has gotten overconfident in its abilities. I believe that they are really overestimating their abilities to explain nuance and complexity and that overconfidence could really become obvious over the next few months, beginning with this selection.
To explain what I mean, I want to start by saying that I believe that there are many strong reasons for selecting Joseph Biden as Vice President. Some of the strongest are the following:

• If politics is a business, Biden is a fantastic hire. He’s the kind of pick that adds a ton of value and should really round out the adminstration’s skill set. He’s known for getting things done in the Senate and should be a good bulldog in the administration in order to push things through. What you need in any organization, especially one fraught with bureaucracy, is execution. Biden brings a wealth of experience in executing in the political realm. He’s a great COO hire, if you want to think about it that way.
• He’s a team player. I believe that he’s got an ego that will allow him to mesh with Obama and play second fiddle. It’s very very hard for most politicians to accept that Obama is essentially a superstar politician as the result of 6 to 10 years of planning and risk-taking, in conjunction with some luck. They grew up in a system where you’re supposed to work for decades in order to get to the top of the heap. Even the Clintons toiled for a LONG time to get to 1992. It’s tough to really tell, but my sense is that Biden doesn’t actually have this issue and that is important to a positive working relationship because egos derail political organizations far more often than is typically reported.
• Obvious reason #1: He’s well-versed in Foreign Relations and Security matters, as is being talked about. This is actually helpful to Obama and a big asset. Obama shouldn’t think that he’s mature enough to go out and tame the world on his own. A lot of the world operates in a mindset that tradition and seniority matter. Regardless of how they see Obama (in a positive light b/c he’s a big difference from Bush, sure..), many of the countries around the world and their leadership believe that you should be old and a known entity in order to work with them. This is one of the reasons why Condoleeza Rice has a hard time gaining traction abroad and why Dick Cheney, when he does travel, manages to have some pretty meaningful meetings. Sad, but true.
• Obvious reason #2: He’s an asset in courting some of the middle class white vote and should be helpful in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio – swing states. He is not a known entity nationally, but in the Northeast he’s certainly got some name recognition and should assist in some key states.

BUT, the risk here is that the voting population of the U.S. won’t understand the strong reasons for picking Biden and how he’ll be helpful in running the country. Taking complicated decisions and explaining them to the U.S. is exceptionally hard and I am concerned that the Obama team is overconfident in its ability to do so. Especially with the mainstream media constantly wanting to put all decisions in black and white terms (observe how they discuss the selection process, it’s very rarely an investigation of concepts and tradeoffs, it’s mostly presented as a list of bullet points). Consider these broad groups of folks that will be in play:

• The folks who are behind Obama because they’re single-mindedly focused on new, different, aggressive leadership. Many of these folks have reacted by essentially saying, “damn it, that’s not exciting”. Who are these people, for the most part? The young voters. Obama needs to keep them excited enough to actually vote in November. McCain and Co want to bore them into staying at home on Tuesday.
• The folks who are the “centrist objectivists”. You probably know plenty of these folks and might even consider yourself one – they say they’re fiscally conservative and socially liberal. They believe in meritocracy and like to talk about who’s going to run the country the best as a leader and minimize government’s interference in the workings of society and the capital markets. These folks also tend to believe that career politicians are distasteful. They happen to be part of the reason that we haven’t had a president who wasn’t an Executive in some regard for over 3 decades (Carter – Governor, Reagan – Governor, Bush – VP and head of the CIA, Clinton – Governor, Bush II – Governor). Obama picking a senator painted a big target on his back. If McCain picks a former Executive, these folks are very vulnerable to the arguments about career politicians (regardless of the duration of Obama’s career).
• The miffed Hillary supporters. People can be stupid and sometimes people are stupidly loyal. Some of these folks will think it makes more sense to stay home and pout than to vote. I am counting on Hillary to get out there and keep talking to these folks. I think she’ll do it, but this is a big issue.
  • I still maintain that from a pure #’s analysis, Obama picking Hillary means the election is over. It might not have been super practical, but it would have killed the McCain campaign. I personally never got the sense that they really disliked each other and couldn’t work together, but enough smart people have argued convincingly that I see that it could have presented real issues. That doesn’t diminish a key fact, however: Consuming the media is a successful strategy. The chatter about a Hillary selection after the Democratic National Convention would have continued all the way through the Republican convention and established the Repubs as an afterthought in many voters minds. McCain would have had to select Paris Hilton as a response, if he wanted to get some meaningful media time.
• The crowd of folks swayed by attack advertising: Democrats hate admitting that people are swayed and influenced by negative ads. It’s a large blindspot in their decision-making process. The truth is, attack ads fucking work. And it’s really really easy to attack the record of someone who’s been a Senator for 36 years. Why? He’s voted on every issue you can think of dozens of times. Sometimes for, sometimes against. You can paint whatever picture you want.

So, that’s my thinking. Some very broad, simple concepts might drive decision-making for sizeable groups of people. Obama’s campaign requires nuance to counter some of these things. Nuance is terribly tough to communicate during the election cycle. (I want to be clear here though: I very much appreciate the nuance and fundamentally believe that people are more complicated than the buckets that my points imply. But communicating to people in a nuanced manner through the mass media is VERY VERY difficult.)
Despite all of that, I think Obama should still manage to win. McCain’s a terrible candidate for the Republicans – almost as bad as Dole was in 1996. But I believe the Obama team, in picking Biden, made their path to winning in November harder than it should be.
Simple as that. They could have won the campaign quickly, now they have inserted a lot more chance into it. The Republicans are feeling hopeful and seeing rays of light. I don’t think that that is a good thing if you’re an Obama supporter.

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As I wrote last Friday, I went to the Yahoo! shareholder meeting with the hope that I’d find the management team to be open and welcoming to questions from shareholders, but understanding that I was likely to be disappointed.

Unfortunately, the latter proved to be the correct assessment of the situation.

As an ex-Yahoo!, I don’t say this lightly. While I didn’t intend to be a “lifer”, I certainly joined in the hopes that I could add a lot of value to the company while I was there and because I was proud of the many past successes and future opportunities. In retrospect, I would say that I have perhaps given the company too much credit in the past. My time at the company, combined with what I’ve witnessed over the past 6 months has led me to a few personal conclusions about Yahoo!, which were all in evidence at this “shareholder” meeting (quotes included b/c this meeting was not really about shareholders in any way):

1.   I don’t actually believe that the Yahoo! board and management team have any interest in engaging in a discussion of the tough questions facing them. That’s totally fine, of course, because every management team is charged with operating their business as best they see fit. Management is an endeavor that is shaped by each individual, their values and personal philosophy. However, as investors, we are all afforded the opportunity to invest in public companies whose management teams match our own values and philosophies. My personal opinion is that a very key trait of management is honesty, combined with a good ear for listening. I think that it’s important as a leader to accept that you’re going to make mistakes, to be focused less on the making of those mistakes and more on the identification and reaction to those mistakes. My philosophy tells me that this will encourage intelligent risk-taking and that I will earn the trust of the people who choose to do business with me.

Yahoo!’s management team and board clearly have philosophies and values that fail to match mine.

2.   Words are important, but not as important as your actions. When your words and your actions don’t fit, you need to address that issue and fix it. Focusing on anything else is useless, because you’ll always be battling yourself. By my calculation, it’s been about 2 years since Yahoo! started telling Wall Street and its employees that the company was going to take it on the chin in the near-term in order to invest for the long-term. The thing is, I agree with that choice 100%. I really believe that companies should be managed for the long run and need to avoid focusing on quarterly and annual Wall Street expectations. Which is where the big problem for Yahoo! occurs: the company routinely lies to itself. Sue, Jerry, Blake: stop telling analysts, your shareholders and your employees that you’re making “big bets” and investing in the business for the long term if you’re going to continue to turn the screws on your business lines every quarter. It’s one thing to hold executives accountable (that is smart management). It’s another thing entirely to expect your executives to routinely manage end of the quarter fire drills and create plans for long-term projects that return short-term revenues (that is DUMB management). No wonder execution is lacking at Yahoo!.

Yahoo!’s management team and board embrace creating cognitive dissonance. The effects are disastrous.

3.   The environment that you encourage and tolerate determines many of your outcomes. As a former Yahoo!, it was one my great frustrations to discover that the company was intensely political. As far I can tell, not only was this acceptable behavior, it often was rewarded. Executives who were known to be very good at “playing the game” are often the ones who ended up with senior roles. This is but one example of an area where the management team tolerates behavior that has detrimental downstream effects. Another example was the shareholder meeting itself: the management presentations were unsophisticated parroting of the party lines. If you talk AT your investors, guess what? Your investors will talk AT you. Although I was saddened to see it happen, I wasn’t terribly surprised to find that most of the folks who got time on the microphones were basically just using the time to talk for a while. I wish that I’d gotten up right at the beginning and asked one of the questions I typed up, but I think I would have looked quite out of place actually standing up and expecting to hear a thoughtful answer in return.

Yahoo!’s management team and board aren’t good at creating an environment that transfers responsibility and thoughtfulness to their employees and shareholders.

I walked away from the meeting unsatisfied. I’d hoped for more out of the shareholders in attendance and I’d hoped for more from the management team. I certainly take responsibility for not making more of an effort to take the mic, but I also suspect that if I had done so, it would have been wasted breath.

So, as a shareholder, I’m left with a tough question: do I want to continue holding shares of a company whose management team disappoints me and doesn’t seem capable of making the radical changes that are necessary? If the management team continues to ignore the tough questions that the market has for them, what can I do? Is there a way to get the kind of dialogue that is necessary with the management team of Yahoo!?

Ultimately, I think that the answer to both questions is NO. I don’t trust this management team’s decision-making and I don’t believe that it will change in any meaningful way. I wish that there was another way of communicating with them, but I have to accept that it’s just not realistic. Perhaps other companies will navigate this new communications age more successfully, but I’m not hopeful that Yahoo! will be among their ranks.

My last post on this topic will be an investigation of what Yahoo! could do to change their future trajectory and what it would take. Again, I’m not hopeful that they’ll navigate out of their situation, but if I’m going to criticize, I might as well put out some suggestions as well, right?

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Last year, as I sat in my cube and watched executives leave amid financial turmoil, I snapped this picture, which I thought nicely summed up the feeling many of us employees had at the time. Unsure if things were on their way towards getting better, people were asking themselves if the future held more of the same or some brighter possibilities.

I had no way of knowing just how much worse it could get.

Today, I’m attending the Yahoo! shareholder meeting as an ex-employee and a frustrated shareholder. I’m curious to see how management deals with what will likely be a media circus and an auditorium full of vocal people. Additionally, I really want to discover how this management team deals with this pressure. If Yahoo! is really embracing “the Open Web” and understands that the corporate culture starts at the top, I expect them to fess up to their mistakes, take difficult questions and admit to not knowing the answers to certain questions that get asked.

However, if the management team is as weak as I think it is, I expect them to be evasive, use double-speak and generally avoid the really challenging questions.

I thought it would be interesting to make my own Top 10 list of key questions that I think shareholders would like honest answers to:

1. Why are you hiring back people who were laid off and given generous severance packages; especially at higher salaries and with signing bonuses? Isn’t this a complete waste of company money, not to mention a huge burden on employee time and morale?
2. What reason do your search-only customers have for staying with Yahoo!, now that you’ve agreed to place Google searches on the list of results?
3. Are you going to be using the data from the Google partnership to allocate search monetization resources?
4. How long do you believe it takes for a reorganization to prove effective (or not)?
   1. Given your answer, don’t you think that the number of reorgs in the past 18 months has actually been harmful, rather than helpful? Why do you keep pursuing this tumultuous line of action?
5. When will you know you’re not the right leadership for this company? What are you measuring yourselves on?
6. If your Asian presence is so important to your future strategy, can you give us more specifics on what is going on there and how it should be evaluated? The generalities are unsatisfactory at this point.
7. Why is the Connected Life segment of the business still operated separately from the rest? That doesn’t make sense, are you kowtowing to egos?
8. Why aren’t you firing more often? Any large and disciplined company understands that it needs to set the tone for unacceptable behavior – why aren’t you more clear on this?
9. What are your metrics around retention and how have they trended over the past 24 months? Couldn’t you tell that you had a workforce issue quite a while ago, if you’d been seriously tracking these numbers?
10. Given all of the turmoil around the company related to being publicly-traded and the bearish valuation (according to your evaluations) of the company, why haven’t we heard more about a Management Buyout of Yahoo!? Wouldn’t the company be more nimble out of the public markets for a while?

If you’ve got additional questions, please feel free to add them in the comments and discuss them.

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