According to the Wall Street Journal, Carol Bartz will be Yahoo’s next CEO. Bartz is chairman and former chief executive of software company Autodesk. Interestingly, she sits on Cisco’s board with Jerry Yang - who she’ll be replacing at Yahoo - and on Intel’s board, along with Yahoo president Sue Decker - who was also after the CEO job.
Is this business incestuous, or what?
Also a former senior executive of Sun Microsystems, Bartz is well respected in Silicon Valley as a competent top executive with the requisite chops to run a troubled company. She’s not a turnaround specialist, but she did ignite a 10x growth spurt in sleepy Autodesk. She’s smart, a strong operations manager, and as a former sales executive, Bartz is customer and market focused.
But is Bartz the right person to fix Yahoo?
From an operations standpoint, yes, Bartz has what it takes to improve the company’s fundamentals. She’s not a visionary, but she knows how to get the right people in a room, lead them to consensus on company strategy, and then drive it through the organization and into the marketplace.
If a divestiture of the company’s search technology is the right thing to do, Bartz will figure it out and make it happen. She won’t botch a deal with Microsoft or anybody else, if that’s what’s best for shareholders. That’s for sure.
Is she a Lou Gerstner or a Mark Hurd? Only time will tell, but I think Yahoo’s board has redeemed itself after a disastrous run with Jerry Yang.
