yesthattom | When you become the new CEO, make changes fast

You generally only have 6-12 months to make your mark on a company. If you don’t make your big changes fast, making them becomes impossible. People expect changes at the beginning, and are almost disappointed if you don’t make any. If you wait too long, people ignore the request to make the change.

When I was at Lucent, any time the CEO changed the big message was, “But don’t worry, we won’t be making any changes.” Oddly enough, a better message would have been, “I’m the person that’s going to f***ing make the changes that everyone knows we need to make but nobody’s had the guts to make.”

So now eBay gets a new CEO. He obviously didn’t cut class on the day that CEO school taught you about making the big changes first.

eBay | “EBay’s new leader moves swiftly on a revamping” (NYT, Jan 24): “Less than an hour after being named to the top spot at eBay by the departing chief executive Meg Whitman, Mr. Donahoe said in a conference call with analysts that the company must move more quickly and aggressively to make eBay more appealing to buyers and sellers. In an effort to reinvigorate growth of the core eBay site, Mr. Donahoe said he would shift eBay’s emphasis from auctions to fixed priced listing, which could make the experience of buying on eBay more like the one customers have come to expect from sites like Amazon.com.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/technology/24ebay.html

Oh, but I guess he cut class the day they learned that the change was supposed to be a GOOD one.

Compete with Amazon? De-emphasize auctions? There’s someone already doing that, and they’re called Amazon and they’ve already won.