3 Things We'd Do if We Were Yahoo

Hear about Yahoo's earnings report yesterday? It doesn't look pretty: Its stock fell 22%. That amounted to -- oh -- a $10,000,000,000 loss in value. Ouch. What does Yahoo do now? Three spankin' sweet things we'd do:

1. Accept reality. Don't fight Google.

   Google's kicking our butt in search engine market share. Them = 9% increase in the last year. Us = 2% decrease. We're fighting a game where we can't win -- at least, not any time soon. Google has the technology, the lead, the people power, and the raving influential lunatics that keeps people away from our search engine. We accept the reality. Says HBR's senior editor, Diane Coutu:

   The fact is, when we truly stare down reality, we prepare ourselves to act in ways that allow us to endure and survive extraordinary hardship. We train ourselves how to survive before the fact.

   We have an amazing strategy in creating user-empowered search. No one in the world can compete with us. Let's go that route.

2. Aim for short, sweet, and consistent results.

   We can't change the world overnight. Certainly, we can't beat Google overnight. Instead, what looks like big improvements in the business world are really a series of small improvements. Small improvements. Small improvements. Small improvements! Such as meeting weekly goals. Daily agendas. Partnering with somebody this week. Pitching a sweet idea to a customer. Etc. You climb Everest by taking small, sweet steps. It's never an overnight thing.

3. Make Freakishly Good Lemonade.

   [Scenario: You walk down 5th Avenue. Yankees pitcher Randy Johnson throws a 99mph lemon at you. It hits you. You get up. You pick up the lemon. You go home. You make lemonade.] IBM, Walmart, GE, and Apple went through bad times. They learned. They bounced back. No sustainable company fills their record portfolio with ^1 hits. Instead, companies become sustainable by using their failures as vital ingredients to success.

So what you'd do? Email us.

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