9 September 2012 | Articles, Articles 2012, Management | By Christophe Lachnitt
The Inept Management Lesson Of Marissa Mayer (Inherited From Google)
Culture is me!
Business Insider reports that Yahoo’s new boss Marissa Mayer has imported within the Company a practice introduced by Larry Page at Google: Approve EVERY hire.
In a company with 15,000 employees, it is no small task and it delays the recruitment process, leading some candidates to choose other companies which finalize their integration in a speedier way.
But what surprises me most is not this method’s drawback but its supposed benefit: Ensuring that each new recruit matches the culture and ambitions of the Company (whether Google or Yahoo!).
I thought that the role of a leader was to disseminate the culture and ambitions of the company within the management team so that managers could in turn deploy those culture and ambitions within their respective teams.
Clearly, in the eyes of Larry Page and Marissa Mayer, “culture is me.” They do not trust their HR teams and operational managers to select the best candidates in line with the corporate values.
Contrary to its objective Marissa Mayer’s decision might signal to some industry talents that they’d better not join Yahoo! if they don’t want to work in an overly micro-managed environment.