Over the past year, CEO?Marissa Meyer has added a lot to Yahoo since last year. But she also subtracted quite a bit: like jobs. During her tenure, about 1,000 of them have been cut.
She’s done it so cool and quietly. And?did it the way it should be: through job performance management and through more frequent reviews. Employees used to get reviewed every year; now, it’s every quarter. In July 2012, when Meyer became CEO, Yahoo had 15,000 employees. That’s not including the thousands of temps coming and going. Instead of gathering thousands and telling them, “You’re fired!” like Donald Trump, or Vince McMahon (how cool would that be?), she cut the jobs few at a?time, kind of like an potter slowly cutting off the excess clay.
This could have had very negative results. This could have put people on such edge morale could have plummeted. This could have led to poorer work, with people saying, “Well, she’s going to fire me anyway, so why bother?” This could have even led to a revolt or strike. But instead, it had a very positive effect. Morale has shot up. Now why is that? Maybe the people that were let go were bringing everyone else down, professionally and personally. Maybe letting these people put others on notice, making them as the Nat King Cole song said, ‘Straighten Up and Fly Right’. Maybe this made everyone better. What lessons could we learn from a story like this?