"We plan to drive growth and profitability by leveraging our deep audience insights to create a full-fledged advertising network.
I'm not a Yahoo! stockholder (actually, I'm not any kind of stockholder) but I find it difficult to believe that statements as lame as these inspires confidence in shareholders or business pundits.
"We're putting the right people in the right places to execute our focused growth strategy."
Jeeze. Do people really read this and not laugh?
"We have a great, great opportunity to capture a lot of future growth"
It just keeps getting worse. Why not throw in a "leveraging synergies" while you're at it.
Why can't these people just say what they mean? "We know we've got to improve our advertising program. We're canning the people that couldn't do that. We're going to use our massive user base to build a program that can compete with Google's."
Now doesn't that sound better than "leveraging deep insight... to capture future growth"?
Posted by: Daniel Glazman | December 6, 2006 4:00 AM
At some point executives lose the ability to express meaningful thoughts.
Let's just keep an eye on Mozilla and be ready to take action if we see similar platitudes dribbling out, OK?
Posted by: Robert O'Callahan | December 6, 2006 12:04 PM
ROC, you make a good point and I'm with you on keeping an eye on our language. (Though, I'm sure we need people keeping their eyes on me too :-)
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | December 6, 2006 3:54 PM
>At some point executives lose the ability to express meaningful thoughts.
Or to have said thoughts.
Well, I'm off to initiate a proactive course of action to benefit and/or fulfill my contemporary, desired objectives (which could be as simple as going to the bathroom).
Posted by: James Napolitano | December 7, 2006 5:40 AM
This past month at my old job they went on a blitz to fire unneeded leadership positions. The net result was the loss of 1 of the higher-ups in the UK. Sorry, I mean they "decided to pursue their interests in other companies" as our press release on the matter states (No doubt with a nice severance package for their years of uninspired leadership).
But yeah, nothing like a buzzword loaded statement to inspire confidence. Why not throw in "helicopter view" & "drill-down" while they're at it.
Posted by: Thomas | December 7, 2006 1:07 PM
well, now, we know why you're not a Senior VP at Yahoo !-)