Contemporary Business Leaders

Marissa Meyer:

Marissa Meyer is the current CEO of Yahoo. She is an outgoing performer and the Fortune magazine ranked her as the 16th most influential business woman in the world in the year 2014. Marissa Meyer was born to an art teacher mother and a father who was an environmental engineer working with water companies in Wausau Wisconsin. In her childhood, Meyer was a painfully shy Brownie. She attended Wausau West high school where she took ballet and piano lessons and the ballet lessons taught her confidence, poise, criticism and discipline. She was excellent in her studies and she did well in biology, chemistry, calculus, and physics. She began her leadership way back in high school where she was the president of her school’s Spanish Club, captain of the debate club and treasurer of the key club. After graduating from high school, Meyer had the intention of becoming a pediatric neurosurgeon and she registered for pre-med classes at Stanford University. 

Later on, she switched to the symbolic system. Even at the University, she continued to nurture her leadership skills she was a member of the parliamentary debate. Meyer graduated from Stanford with honors with a B.S (1997) and a M.S (computer science) in 1999. After graduating from Stanford, Meyer got an employment with Google in 1999 where she became the first female engineer at Google. During her tenure at Google, Meyer paid attention to details an attribute that saw her promoted from a mere engineer to product manager and then to director of the consumer web products. In her position, Meyer several notable changes and new leadership skills at the Google and by the year 2005, she got a promotion to assistant president of search products. In 2010, due to her excellent performance in management she got a promotion to the head of the location and local maps services.

In 2012, Marissa Meyer was appointed the CEO and president of the Yahoo. Her appointment was a result of her good performance at Google and her impressive education credentials. She holds the position up to date. Yahoo is an American multinational Internet entity that provides several Internet-based services such as Yahoo Directory, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News and other services. Meyer has brought numerous changes at Yahoo since she joined the American Internet giant. She started by changing the personnel policy change where she required that all remote employees should work from within the company’s office. Her decision to ban remote working received numerous criticisms, but she maintained that the policy is to be adopted. In 2013, Meyer also altered the Yahoo’s maternity leave policy by increasing its length and also offering cash bonus to the affected parents. She also came up with another policy that required all managers to rank their employees in a bell curve. Those employees at the lower ends of the curve would risk losing their jobs. Similarly, Meyer at her current position as the CEO of Yahoo has made major purchases for the company most of which have received criticism from media houses. The media houses such as the New York Times and the New Yorker have leveled heavy criticism towards Meyer due to several of her management decisions.

In her leadership at the Yahoo, Meyer demonstrates Leadership as Scientific Management. In leadership roles, Meyer is interested in making workers get the work that needs to be done, done. She can go to any depths to ensure that workers do what she wants to be done. This is indicated by her banning of the remote-working. She is not interested in the workers human affairs or their emotions, but what she wants is the accomplishment of the company’s goals and objectives (Gagnon, 2012). Similarly, her characteristic of a scientific manager is demonstrated in her directive that all managers should rank their employees in a bell curve and those at the lower ends would lose their jobs. This indicates that Meyer has no interest in the worker's welfare but what she wants is to achieve the company’s objective and goals.

One of the challenges that Meyer encountered was the acquisition of the Tumblr at a cost of 1.1 billion dollars. Tumblr is a social network and a blogging platform. Many criticized her move to acquire the blogging platform and they claimed the acquisition was a waste of the company’s money since Tumblr was a slump. She argued that the acquisition was crucial for the coverage to increase its investments base as well as countering competition. Her response was in line with the managerial role as a good manager has to do anything to ensure that his or her company succeeds.

However, despite the criticism Meyer receives from those who oppose her leadership style, she has achieved much for the few year she has been the Yahoo boss. The greatest achievement she made was to double the stock price of Yahoo in her 14-month stay at the company. This was the biggest leap in the stock price in the history of Yahoo. Similarly, by the end of 2013, the number of Yahoo users had risen above those using Google for the first time in history. The achievements were a promising trend for the company.

Meyer uses her popularity and the reputation she gained while working with the Google as her power base. Meyer played major roles at Google and helped the company to develop a number of products that places the company in the position it is in terms of products and market. These achievements at Google gave Meyer more confidence in her leadership skills and keep her on toes as leader and manager.

Meyer shows an autocratic leadership style. In her entire career, she ensures that under her does whatever she feels is right and she hardly seeks anyone’s opinion (Julio, 2015). She makes most of her decisions without consulting her subordinates and she ensures that her directives are followed. In her tenure at Yahoo, it is rumored that she wants to be involved in the employment of every worker indicating her desire to be in control. Her leadership style is completely the opposite of her predecessor Ross Levinsohn, who could always consult his subordinates before making any crucial decision. Ross had the tendency of holding meetings with managers and other executives to discuss the way forward for the company. Ross demonstrated a bureaucratic type of leadership(Julio, 2015). I feel that Ross was more effective as compared to Meyer. Though some form of authority and control is required in management of a big company such as Yahoo, bureaucracy and trust on those working under the CEO are crucial in effectively running the business. The CEO should trust his managers in making decision in their capacity rather than wanting to control every decision-making process. This gives the managers a chance to exercise their powers.

Being a leader, I would want to be a bureaucrat whereby I would give my subordinates a chance to present their views as well participates in the decision-making process. Being a bureaucrat, would the opposite of Meyer, who possesses some attributes of an autocrat (Fitzpatrick, 2014). Meyer wants things are done her way and she rarely seeks the opinion of her subordinates. This style of leadership would destroy the relationship between the superior employees and the inferior employees as some feel that they are not part of the system. This could significantly affect productivity. I would also have a passion for my leadership roles given to me. I would like have the passion for my duties similar to that of Meyer. Having worked at Google as employee number twenty for more than a decade and being the Yahoo CEO, one would expect Meyer to have retired some years back to enjoy her huge fortunes. However, however, Meyer works in her office for more hour than most of other American employees. This is the kind of passion I will adopt in my leadership roles.

References:

Fitzpatrick, A. (2014). Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Fires Company's COO. Time.Com, 1.

Gagnon (2012) THE PERSPECTIVE AND PRACTICE OF LEADERSHIP BY MANAGERS WITHIN A STATE CORRECTIONAL AGENCY: AN INSTRUMENTAL CASE STUDY; 

Julio (2015) Types of Leadership Styles

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