Friday, March 1, 2013

Yahoo stops teleworking are they right?

Last night, I had dinner with some of the smartest people I know and one of the subjects that came up was the fact that Marissa Mayer has decided to ban on teleworking at Yahoo. And we were of all kind of opinions ranging from “I you want to get paid – come to work” to “it is just a matter of setting smart goals”.
I have to say I agree with Marissa Mayer, if you want to reinvent Yahoo you will need everybody moving in the same direction to ensure the message is understood but also for making those important relationship across the organization, that is so important to strengthen the company, but also to unlock those cross functional ideas – that only happens when we are physical together.
Whilst Tele working is great for tasks that do not require much interaction, people need to be together not only to come up with new ideas – but to build a strong corporate brand internally.    
I seems that for some yahoo employees the quality of work have deteriorated when working from home, maybe because of lack of goals or lack of supervision.
The key message here is that Yahoo does not say that there will never be teleworking again – “but right now, this is what is right for Yahoo” – I believe it is the right decision, and it takes some guts to do it.