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Reignite Business Performance for Competitive Edge - From Vision to Reality: Communication
10 January 2011:
Welcome to part one in four-part series of articles based on a recent Executive Briefing entitled ‘Reignite Business Performance for Competitive Edge – From Vision to Reality’. The articles that will follow summarise the perspectives and advice offered by the event’s hosts CorporateLeaders and Raytheon Professional Services, keynote speaker Blandine Kouyaté, Head of HR EMEA, Yahoo! and invited guests from a wide range of multinational corporations.
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Communication
“What we often see is that some companies fall short of successfully enacting their strategic plan because communication gets diluted as it moves down the organization,” explains Raytheon’s Director of Sales and Marketing Europe Paul Swinscoe. “The chief officer may communicate the high level strategic plan and where he or she would like to see the business heading, but the people lower down the organizational chart end up thinking ‘They want to make changes, but what am I suppose to do about it?’”
In order for corporate strategy to successful transition from vision to reality, it’s vital to communicate not only what the strategy is, but also how people throughout all levels of the business can support it.
The Yahoo! Case
Blandine Kouyaté, Head of HR EMEA*
“Yahoo! has a clear vision: to be the centre of people’s online lives,” explains Blandine Kouyaté, Head of HR EMEA, Yahoo!. “Because our company earns a significant portion of its revenue through marketing services, it’s essential that we provide relevant and dynamic content in order to attract an audience that is of interest to potential advertisers.”
Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has more than 13,000 employees in 25 countries, provinces, and territories. As new regional offices open and as new partners are acquired, how does the company ensure that execution of the strategy remains consistent across borders?
To tackle these issues, Yahoo! focuses on proximity. Just as its websites all share a common look and feel while providing unique local content for users, so too does Yahoo! disseminate a global strategy to local teams, encouraging them to set local objectives so long as they are aligned with the master plan.
Additionally, as anyone who has played “telephone” knows, the more messengers between the originator of a message and the final recipient, the more vulnerable the message is to distortion. Communication therefore tends to flow smoother and purer when organisational layers are minimal.
At Yahoo! there were initially as many as 11 layers of reporting lines between the CEO and the lowest level of sales executives covering European country markets. After reviewing which roles were critical to execute the company strategy and which were redundant and/or unnecessary, the company was eventually able shed three layers of reporting to end up with a more manageable eight. The positive impact was felt not only in corporate finances but also in operational efficiency.
Yahoo!’s focus on proximity extends as well to helping improve how functions interact and work together. For example, HR partners directly with the company’s business leaders to support the development of new marketing services.
“Together we’re able to discuss what profiles are needed, if we have the right skills internally and how we can successfully develop those skills,” explains Kouyaté. “Because we work so closely, we are able to address these issues and build new teams rapidly. Our relationship allows us to engage one another easily and implement plans within a very short period of time to achieve an earlier return on investment.”
An earlier return on investment? That’s music to the ears of any corporate strategist.
*Blandine Kouyaté joined Yahoo! in 2002 as HR Manager, France, and then gained responsibility for the HR department in Southern Europe in 2006. Throughout that period, she focussed on integrating several businesses with significant employee populations, while implementing a scalable HR function and supporting cultural transformation within the region.
In 2008, Kouyaté partnered with the VP Sales Europe as an HR Director. In this role, she drove HR strategies aligned with both the business needs and talent aspirations of the unit. In 2010, her scope was extended to support additional regional units (Partnerships, Audience and Marketplaces).
Since June 2010, Kouyaté has been acting as the interim Head of HR for Yahoo! in charge of the EMEA HR function, including 25 direct team members who support a population of over 1700 employees based in 19 countries.
