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Posts Tagged ‘Business’

Yahoo’s Mistake of Indecisiveness is Commonplace

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

My father sent me this email today:

“Please read through this article. Learn something from it. “Indecisiveness” is the killer to a lot business decisions.

Unfortunately, the truth is the reality of business today is aggressive indecision. Faced with an uncertain future, it is just easier for executives to do nothing. Basically, they cease to be executives as they fail to execute a direction, much like a college student in a constant state of procrastination and cramming before an exam. And frankly, given the cost of innovating and investing in future returns, it is safer for company executives to not spend in new way, to not do something until you absolutely have to makes good political sense. In technology, you can even make the plausible argument that it is best to wait it out and then potentially leapfrog. Technology changes so much after all, so why take the risk? Instead of playing to win, you are playing to not lose.Then when you have to do something, your reaction to it like a catastrophic emergency.

Time stops for no one, and passes you by whether you decide or not.

Tags: Business, culture, indecision, innovation
Posted in Uncategorized | 215No Comments »2008-11-19+06%3A08%3A23Irene

More layoff news as we approach the holidays

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and today I read that Citibank is set to lay off 53,000 people, which gives me another thing to be thankful for. I also found on SF Gate the WARN list of layoffs announced. WARN stands for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, which requires some employers to give 60-days notice for mass layoff or plant shutdown. I am not sure why, but I can remember my layoff from Oracle in October 2003 to be quite sudden, it seemed with out WARNing.

Layoffs tend to happen at the end of the third quarter, when companies are in the mind set of dealing with the annual numbers that will come in the next quarter. This is when companies are likely to cut headcount or have layoffs in anticipation of what’s to come in the next year. It’s not to say that layoffs cannot happen during other times of the year, but it just seems to happen with greater volume between end of 3rd quarter and end of 4th quarter.