What Happens When the New Boss F**ks Up?

It happens.

The new senior hire (formerly called a senior suit in the days when the males who mostly occupied those roles actually wore matching jackets and pants) is keen to make their mark at the new place so they make changes. Often big ones.

Sometimes those changes work, and sometimes they bomb.

New CEO Marissa Meyer has clearly put her mark on a number of shifts at Yahoo in the five weeks she’s been on board changing some obvious practices: free food (a la Google, where she formerly worked) at many of Yahoo’s locations, instituting weekly check-in meetings (called FYI in Yahoo-speak), a reinvigorated and more rigorous hiring process, and engaging in greater dialogue and access with programmers than her predecessors.  … Read the rest

Career Quandry: Should You Take the “Interim” Job?

Your boss has been hired to take another job and will be leaving the company. Or perhaps your boss has been whacked and that’s the reason the job is now vacant.

Either way that box in the organization chart that used have a name is empty.

Do you raise your hand and volunteer to take the job on an interim basis, or do you wait to see if you get tapped – and decide then if you want “interim” next to your name?… Read the rest

Managing Your Career: The End of Privacy

There was a minor kerfluffle with an organization with which I’m associated; a blog stalker noticed that a post I wrote quoted somebody from the organization by name (accurately, and within context, btw) and took exception.

Like the swimmer who admires the beauty in the whites of a sharks’ teeth before realizing they are about to be eaten, there are far bigger issues for anyone to worry about than someone quoting somebody else accurately on a blog.Read the rest

The Talent Secret: The 4H Club

Tech valuations are popping (frothy is the well-used word) in the San Francisco Bay area. And the requirement to have high performing talent to quickly scale and produce a winning product may drive it all.

The scalp price for hiring or retaining top engineers was recently tabbed at $500,000 and the talent acquisition strategies of firms like Facebook includes the purchase of small start-ups only to shut them down and employ the newly acquired talent.… Read the rest

The Corporate Reorganization: If You Shuffle the Boxes Will the Results Change?

McKesson Corporation, where I worked as a senior exec for over a decade, had a habit of the yearly reorganization – usually in March right before the start of the fiscal year on April 1. Reporting relationships changed, some people got shifted, some people got whacked, and business continued along.

Rarely did things in terms of the running the business significantly change.… Read the rest