What Would You Do As A New CEO?

Over the last few months, I’ve followed Yahoo’s CEO situation. In January, Yahoo hired Scott Thompson. While he was the CEO, he made major spending cuts and laid of many people as an attempt to bring the company back from financial woes. His approach demotivated the company and created tension between him and the employees. It didn’t take long for his approach to get noticed by the board of directors. In May, Scott was terminated as the CEO as a result of his leadership style and some integrity issues that were brought to light.

Following Scott Thompson’s firing, Ross Levinsohn took over as the interim CEO. Ross Levinsohn continued some of the initiatives that Scott Thompson started. Since he was only the interim CEO, he was replaced by Marissa Mayer in the end of July.

Marissa is a very young CEO at 37 years old, but she was the 20th employee at Google where she became one of their top executives at a young age. She has now been challenged to turn Yahoo around. The board of directors is not expecting her to change Yahoo overnight because there are many areas that need to be improved. When she took over, she was told she would have time to make the transition required for the company to be successful.

Since she started, people have been anxiously awaiting the announcement of her big new strategic plan. To put her plan together, she has visited many areas of the company and plans to visit all areas. She wants to have a comprehensive understanding of Yahoo and their core business models. Once she completes a thorough review of the company, she will introduce her strategic plan.

So, what would you do as the CEO?

Without knowing all the details of the Yahoo situation, it is very challenging to determine what you would do if you were at Yahoo. However, it is good to think about what you would do as a new CEO. As a new CEO, it would be easy to come in thinking that the organization was not run properly in the past and you were chosen to take over, so you automatically have all the answers.

It could be easy to dictate to all the employees what changes you are going to make and demand they are followed. You could have the threat that if people don’t follow your initiatives, they will be fired. You could even use a few employees as the example and fire them so everyone knows you are serious. This approach, however,  tends to rub employees the wrong way. Employees oftentimes feel that when this method is used, it makes them feel ignorant.

First, learn the existing processes and meet all departments.

Start with a thorough review of the existing processes and try to find out the “why?” behind them. To do this, approach it in a similar way as Ms. Mayer. Start out by visiting all the departments to find out what they did, why they did it, and the results of the process.

Ask what problems/challenges resulted from the current processes and what recommendations they had for fixing them. There may be limitations on the ability to get to know everyone within each department depending on the size of the company. However, you can do your best to understand every department and know how each department interacts with the other departments before making sweeping changes to the organization.

Second, identify the existing focus of the company.

Each company has a specific focus. Some companies focus on innovation, while others focus on services that serve the needs of the customers. By meeting with the departments, the company’s focus should be made clear. The focus would penetrate every department and determine why and how they did what they did.

For example, when the focus is on safety, the company probably meets regularly to discuss the hazards of their job and how they can be minimized. They would also spend time and money to make processes more safe.

Third, determine necessary changes and focus on employees.

Once you learn what each department does, what they feel worked and didn’t work, their recommended fixes, and the overall focus of the company, put together a strategic plan to make changes.  Do all you can to improve the processes that need to be fixed. Where necessary, put together committees to focus on eliminating the inefficiencies of each department. Set specific goals and time lines for completion so the committees know what is expected of them.

As the committees recommend changes involving personnel, let the employees know they are the company’s most important asset and will be treated that way. If there are areas of the company that have too many employees, relocate the employees to other areas of the company that need more resources so they don’t have to be let go.

If there aren’t other areas with needs, have the employees work to expand what they do to make the company more successful. If that doesn’t work, think of another way to put them to work because the employees are the biggest asset.

What would you do?

What would you do as the CEO? What would your first move be? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!

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